On some college campuses, a new fall rite: Coronavirus testing

Many schools are focusing on students and employees who have covid-19 symptoms or suspect that they were exposed to the virus that causes the disease. Some also plan to test dormitory wastewater and selected groups of students. Colby, which plans to have classes in person as much as possible, has staked out a maximalist position: Test everyone, and test often. “It’s really important to our students, faculty, staff and families that we have a model in place that does absolutely everything possible to secure their safety,” Colby President David A. Greene said. Frequent and universal testing, he said, will enable the college to isolate those who test positive “before they’re actually spreading the virus in a significant way. That really is what it comes down to.” Behind the strategy is a desire to bring almost all of Colby’s 2,000-plus students to campus. How many will come is unknown. “I definitely overall really appreciate the thoughtfulness” of Colby’s safety plan, said Ellie Batchelder, 19, a rising junior from Kittery Point, Maine. But she confessed lingering uncertainty. Batchelder, a violinist, worries that the pandemic might sideline the orchestra and other extracurricular activities. “There’s a lot of aspects outside of academics that are really important,” she said. “I’m still trying to decide if I will return.” Viral testing will become an essential campus rite in the fall as colleges and universities seek to contain an infectious disease that has killed at least 139,000 Americans since February. Most college students do not face as much risk as people who are older and have more health problems. But students can be asymptomatic carriers, posing a potential threat to others around them, from their professors to the staffers who clean their dormitories and serve their food. They also could bring the virus to campus from hometowns around the country and the world. Confronted with those challenges as the virus surges in parts of the country, some schools plan to continue the remote teaching that began last spring. Others are pledging vigorous health and safety efforts as they bring students back — mindful that campus closure could lead to a plunge in housing and tuition revenue. But their viral testing programs vary widely. The University of Florida, which has more than 50,000 students, will reopen its Gainesville campus without a universal viral testing mandate. Instead, students will be required to answer a health screening questionnaire and get


Senators question Pentagon nominee about whether firm trained Saudi journalist’s killers

Several senators raised concerns Thursday about a Pentagon nominee’s links to a firm that intelligence officials have said may have trained a Saudi hit team that killed Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Louis Bremer, a former Navy SEAL who serves as a managing director at the investment firm Cerberus Capital Management, is the Trump administration’s nominee to become assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low intensity conflict (SOLIC), a key role overseeing elite operations across the globe. He is one of a number of nominees the administration hopes to put in place just months before the November election, filling long-vacant senior positions, despite resistance in some cases from Senate Democrats. Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee alongside several other civilian nominees, Bremer faced questions from Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Sen. Angus King (I-Maine.), about his role at Tier 1 Group, a Cerberus subsidiary on whose board he sits. Cerberus co-founder Stephen Feinberg is close to President Trump. Kaine referred to a March 2019 column by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who wrote that the CIA had warned other government agencies that Tier 1 may have trained some members of the Saudi team that traveled to Turkey in October 2018, where the squad killed and dismembered Khashoggi after he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to get paperwork needed for his upcoming marriage. The CIA later concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman had ordered the killing of Khashoggi, a Virginia resident who was a prominent critic of the kingdom’s leadership. Saudi officials have characterized the assassins as rogue operatives. Bremer said he was not aware of Ignatius’s article and did not know whether Tier 1 had investigated whether the allegation in the article was correct. He said he would check his records and report back to the committee. “So until today, you had not been aware that an allegation had been made that a company on which you sit as a director, with a small board of directors, had potentially been involved in training Saudis who were participants in the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi?” Kaine asked. “Senator, I don’t have any recollection of that,” Bremer replied. “There is a possibility that we did have a discussion about it. It’s a number of years ago.” Speaking later in the hearing, King said he found it “incredibly hard to believe that a five-person board of


Maryland’s Michael Locksley founds organization to help minority football coaches develop and advance

Maryland’s Michael Locksley, one of 14 Black head coaches in the 130-team Football Bowl Subdivision, has founded a nonprofit organization that aims to help minority football coaches advance and develop at all levels. The National Coalition of Minority Football Coaches, established in June and publicly unveiled Thursday, will offer its member coaches professional development opportunities while serving as a resource for teams looking for qualified candidates. The organization has an experienced board of directors, including former Baltimore Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome, Alabama Coach Nick Saban, Pittsburgh Steelers Coach Mike Tomlin, Miami Dolphins GM Chris Grier and Doug Williams, the Super Bowl-winning quarterback who’s now an executive for the Washington Football Team. Locksley, the Terrapins’ second-year head coach, is the organization’s president. “I have dedicated the better part of my 25-year coaching career to leveling the playing field for minority coaches everywhere,” Locksley said in a statement. “I worked hard to create opportunities in my career, sometimes with assistance from others, but more often through my own perseverance. I have learned many things. I have benefited from those who have gone before me so I feel a sense of obligation to help others.” Male and female coaches from recreational leagues, high schools, colleges and the NFL can join the coalition. The organization’s “specialized coaching curriculum will prepare, promote and produce the next generation of career coaches and football operations professionals," the website says. There are three Black head coaches in the NFL — Tomlin, the Miami Dolphins’ Brian Flores and the Los Angeles Chargers’ Anthony Lynn. According to NCAA data from last year, 49 percent of all Division I football players identified as Black, compared with only 15 percent of head coaches, 15 percent of offensive coordinators and 22 percent of defensive coordinators. “The reasons for their exclusion is inextricably interwoven into the societal roadblocks that underrepresented individuals frequently face,” the organization’s website says. “These roadblocks create an unfortunate imbalance where minorities do not enjoy meaningful participation in available coaching opportunities.” The group will use analytics to highlight the accomplishments and ability of minority coaches. The website indicates that the organization will hold events, including a convention, conferences, camps and a speaker series. When Darryll J. Pines became Maryland’s president this summer, the university became the first FBS school to have a Black president, athletic director and head football coach. Damon Evans is Maryland’s athletic director, and Locksley hired Scottie


I travel the country as a nurse. This pandemic is like a wildfire.

In mid-February, I took a 13-week contract to work as a nurse at Westchester Medical Center, outside New York City. I’m a travel nurse, meaning that I work short-term contracts in health-care facilities in different parts of the country. I thought it’d be a chance to check out Broadway, to see some museums. By mid-March, the novel coronavirus hit its peak in the state. In my nearly 30 years as a nurse, I’d never seen anything like this disease. The hospital converted nearly all its units to treat virus patients, even opening up a wing that hadn’t been used in years just to get eight extra beds. I saw patient after patient who, no matter how much I upped their oxygen levels, kept gasping for breath. After transfer to the intensive care unit, they rarely returned. By the time the job ended in May, I associated New York so strongly with all of the suffering and death I’d seen — all those people, of all races and ages, struggling for air — that I didn’t want to stay a day longer than I had to. I flew back to Phoenix thinking I’d left all of that trauma behind. I told myself that the worst of the pandemic was over. What I saw at home shocked me. In Arizona, almost no one wore a mask. People dined indoors at restaurants; they got together in sports bars; they swam in pools. In New York, the pandemic felt inescapable, but here, it was as if they didn’t think the threat was real. Even if they weren’t in outright denial about the virus and didn’t believe in conspiracy theories, they behaved like they were untouchable — like the danger was distant, and it wouldn’t affect them or anyone they knew or loved. By July, Arizona had become one of the hot spots of the pandemic, with thousands of new cases a day. I felt an awful deja vu as, one by one, hospital units converted into coronavirus units. My phone began blowing up with requests for nurses to come to different medical facilities all over the state. A colleague who directs the ICU at a hospital in Chinle, in the Navajo Nation, told me how common it was to see multiple members of a family, across several generations, hospitalized at the same time. I took a contract at a long-term care facility in Yuma,


Who makes the best tortilla chips? We tasted and ranked 14 popular brands to find out.

Tortilla chips are the quintessential party food. And they definitely love a crowd: A big bag pairs perfectly with store-bought salsas or hummus, or even more elaborate concoctions, on a buffet. But these days, we’re reminded that they make a great pantry staple, too. As a midday snack, obviously, for when you need to take a few steps away from your desk/dining room table to the kitchen. They’re a fine lunch (don’t judge) with a hearty dip of whatever’s around. Now that I’m minimizing trips to the grocery store and trying to use up every morsel in the pantry, I’m finding even more uses for them: The last crumbly bits in the bottom of a bag make a crunchy mix-in for a salad, and a slightly stale stash is great in chilaquiles. Grocery shelves are crowded with a head-spinning array of options. So we collected 14 varieties, including the top-selling brands in the United States and popular grocery store private labels, to determine which was the superior chip. (In the interest of keeping things simple and uniform, we omitted any flavored varieties.) We ranked them on texture (how crunchy are they? are they sturdy enough to stand up to your famous seven-layer dip?), salt balance (too much? too faint?) and overall flavor, for a combined score of 20 possible points. With seven tasters, the best possible overall score was 140. Another note about our process: In the Before Times, we conducted these taste tests in our Food Lab at The Washington Post’s headquarters. We would gather around the central counter, nibbling on numbered samples and scribbling notes. When we were all sent home to work in March, we were unsure if we’d be able to pull off such feats remotely. The logistics were daunting. Some things we’d wanted to test (soups, ice cream) were a no-go. But, at least for tortilla chips, we figured out a workaround: I ordered all the chips, made up little packages with numbered sandwich bags containing each variety, delivered them to colleagues via no-contact drop-offs, and asked tasters to submit their thoughts via email. The coronavirus complicated even that plan: It took multiple online and Instacart orders — and assists from a few colleagues scouting out the shelves on their own grocery trips — to procure all the brands. And I put off packaging and delivering the goods for a week while I waited for


Chasing Cancer featuring Ned Sharpless, actor Patrick Dempsey, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan

On Thursday, July 16 at 11:00 a.m. E.T., Ned Sharpless, director of the National Cancer Institute, Patrick Dempsey, actor and founder of the Dempsey Center, and cancer survivor and Maryland Governor Larry Hogan join Washington Post Live to discuss the huge obstacles for people living with cancer during the coronavirus pandemic and the health-care workers who care for them. Sharpless will discuss how COVID-19 is affecting cancer care across the country. As an oncologist and the former U.S. FDA commissioner, Sharpless has spent his career dedicated to advancing cancer research and treatment. Dempsey Center founder, actor Patrick Dempsey, will address the unique challenges facing cancer non-profit organizations working to improve access to care and support for families during the pandemic. Cancer survivor and Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (R) joins us to discuss his new book, “Still Standing: Surviving Cancer, Riots, a Global Pandemic, and the Toxic Politics that Divide America,” which chronicles his battle fighting non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma while serving as the state’s chief executive. From his perspective as the chair of the National Governors Association, Hogan will also offer insight into how the nation’s governors are navigating the pandemic as new cases of COVID-19 skyrocket across the country. In a segment presented by Pfizer, Andy Schmeltz, global president & general manager of Pfizer’s Oncology division will discuss the challenges, barriers and inequities within the current health-care system, and what we can do to fix it. This event is presented by Pfizer. Stream live here: wapo.st/chasingcancerjuly Follow along on Twitter @PostLive for live clips and event updates.


How negligence killed scores in Beirut

How years of corruption and negligence caused the blasts in Beirut. Why sports don’t feel like sports in the time of covid-19. And, a Black doctor who wears his scrubs like armor.


State Department lifts blanket international travel advisory after nearly five months

The State Department lifted its blanket international travel advisory Thursday, almost five months after first urging Americans against overseas travel due to the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, the department will revert to issuing recommendations on a country-specific basis. The department cited “health and safety conditions improving in some countries and potentially deteriorating in others” in its decision to alter the advisory system and said the change in method will allow travelers to make “informed decisions” based on the situation in specific countries. “We continue to recommend U.S. citizens exercise caution when traveling abroad due to the unpredictable nature of the pandemic,” the statement said. While the United States may be lifting its blanket advisory for overseas travels by Americans, other countries are currently restricting American citizens from entry due to the scale of the pandemic outbreak in the United States, which now has more than 4.8 million cases of the virus — far more than any other country in the world. The original U.S. advisory, issued on March 19, encouraged American travelers to “arrange for immediate return to the United States, unless they are prepared to remain abroad for an indefinite period” if they were in “countries where commercial departure options remain available.” At the time, much was still unknown about the spread of the coronavirus. Cases were on the rise in several hotspots around the globe, and as travel restrictions went into place and demand for air travel plummeted, many airlines canceled once-popular flight routes. Travelers from around the world were left scrambling to return to their home countries. Many people, including U.S. citizens, found themselves stuck in countries they were only visiting on a short-term basis. Read more: The new rules for packing a bag during the pandemic ‘Revenge travel’ is the phenomenon that could bring back tourism with a bang The latest trend among wealthy American travelers? Buying another country’s citizenship.


Coronavirus cases plateau across D.C. area as region’s caseload surpasses 200,000

The number of known coronavirus cases in the greater Washington region surpassed 200,000 Thursday, even as health experts noted signs of optimism that the region might be turning a corner after a recent surge of infections. The seven-day average of new daily cases in D.C., Maryland and Virginia more than doubled during July, starting the month below 1,000 and ending above 2,000. But daily caseloads have ticked downward in recent days as hot spots such as Virginia’s Hampton Roads region and the Baltimore area notched slight dips from recent peaks. Officials said the latest numbers are a positive sign after weeks of caseload increases that prompted local leaders to restore some economic and social restrictions. Daily caseloads in the region the past two days have been at their lowest levels since mid-July. William A. Petri, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, said Virginia has made progress with its number of new cases holding steady. The state’s seven-day average stood at 995 on Thursday, down from 1,095 a week earlier. “We may be leveling off in new case diagnoses each day,” he said, noting the daily caseload has hovered in a tight range since late July. While cases have fallen, Petri said the seven-day average death toll — a lagging indicator that has more than tripled in 10 days, standing at 23 on Thursday — could continue to rise because of earlier spikes concentrated in Hampton Roads. He said he is monitoring the state’s reproduction number, which is the average number of infections generated by each infected person. Virginia’s reproduction number is hovering near 1, suggesting the state is “in a steady period where we don’t see exponential rises,” but it’s “not going up and it’s not going down.” Petri said a rate much lower than 1 is unlikely without a coronavirus vaccine, but the current number shows “everyone is paying attention to the really unsexy things of wearing masks, maintaining social distancing and washing hands.” In addition to Hampton Roads and Baltimore, another area of concern has been Prince George’s County, said Neil J. Sehgal, assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. The county — which was hard-hit during the regional height of the pandemic — has seen its average caseload more than double since early July, even though numbers are well below their


A Texas explosion killed hundreds in 1947 with a blast some feared was an atomic bomb

Seventy-three years ago, on an April morning at the port of Texas City near Galveston, crew members of the SS Grandcamp were busy loading thousands of pounds of ammonium nitrate. “It was the beginning of a beautiful, cool day,” the Houston Chronicle reported, “a breeze was coming out of the north.” Around 8 a.m., someone noticed smoke coming from the cargo area. And then, boom. A massive explosion sent a mushroom cloud more than 2,000 feet toward the clear blue sky, triggering not just a massive fire at a nearby chemical plant but frightening images similar to those that resulted from the United States dropping two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945. “The Russians have dropped a damn A-bomb on us,” a nearby worker told his buddy, according to the Chronicle. It was not the Russians. It was ammonium nitrate, a highly explosive material commonly used to make fertilizer. When ammonium nitrate blows up, it blows up big, just as it apparently did earlier this week at a port in Beirut, where the resulting mushroom cloud drew comparisons to the bombing of Hiroshima. But to Texans, the images from the Beirut explosions were an eerie reminder of the disaster suffered there decades ago. More than 500 people died, with thousands more injured. It was one of the largest explosions in U.S. history. Earlier this week, KTRK-TV aired footage from the explosion and recounted the aftermath: The Texas City disaster was not a one-off. In between it and the devastation in Beirut, there have been several other ammonium nitrate disasters, according to the Associated Press. In 2015, 173 people were killed in the port city of Tianjin, China, when a warehouse containing ammonium nitrate exploded. Two years before that, there was a massive explosion at a fertilizer company in West, Tex. The substance has also been used in criminal and terrorist attacks, including Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Tommy Muska, the mayor of West, Tex., was reminded of the explosions in his state after the Beirut incident. “We don’t seem to learn that chemical is deadly,” Muska told the Associated Press. “I feel for those people in Beirut, I surely do. It brought back a lot of memories.” Read more Retropolis: Hiroshima’s Enola Gay carried 12 men, hope and the world’s deadliest weapon Two ships collided in Halifax Harbor. One of them


The Technology 202: Ride-sharing may never go back to normal

which reports earnings next week, can begin to focus on what kind of businesses they want to be in the pandemic’s wake. “Uber and Lyft will emerge on the other side of this dark valley much leaner and more profitable businesses as we head into 2021 and beyond,” wrote Dan Ives Ives noted riders’ skepticism of packing into crowded trains and buses during the pandemic, something he said could be an “incremental demand driver” in the short term. The account was restored after the Trump campaign deleted the video clip from a Fox News interview in which President Trump said that children are “almost immune” to covid-19, Heather Kelly reports. Twitter spokeswoman Liz Kelley said the tweet violated "Twitter Rules on COVID-19 misinformation." Facebook also removed a post of the same video on Trump's official page citing a violation of its covid-19 misinformation policy. “This video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from covid-19, which is a violation of our policies around harmful covid misinformation,” said Facebook spokesman Andy Stone. While many children have had milder symptoms from the virus, researchers have found they are still able to catch it and spread it to other people, Heather reports. This is the Last week Twitter temporarily suspended Donald Trump Jr. for posting potentially harmful misinformation about coronavirus Trump's campaign has promoted multiple untrue claims about opponent former vice president Joe Biden as well as the effectiveness of Trump's response to the coronavirus on the social media platform, a review by The Post found. Yet the posts carry no warning because of Facebook's policy of not fact-checking ads by politicians, Craig Timberg and Andrew Ba Tran report. Fact-checking organizations that work with Facebook say the company's position poses a serious risk to the 2020 election. “It’s crazy,” said Claire Wardle, U.S. director of First Draft, an organization dedicated to fighting misinformation that has a partnership with Facebook. “Because Facebook has decided not to actively fact-check political ads, you have this perverse situation where these fact-checks of problematic ads sit on the fact-checking websites, but there is no mechanism for their work to impact Facebook or their users.” Eugene Kiely, the project director for FactCheck.org, another Facebook partner, said he would like to see fact-checks linked below advertisements it has evaluated. “The policy should be that you provide Facebook users with as much information as you can to make


Covid-19 threatens to overwhelm the developing world

As covid-19 burns its path across the United States, we have seen how a high level of infection in a city or region can overwhelm hospitals, swamp testing services, strain supply chains for protective equipment, crowd out surgeries and generally cause havoc with health infrastructure. Now consider those challenges vastly magnified, with casualties measured in millions. The covid-19 storm has arrived in the developing world. South Africa provides an example. After some initial success in limiting the spread of the disease (thanks in part to widespread testing), that country now has more than 500,000 confirmed cases — the world’s fifth-highest count. And other African nations have begun experiencing an acceleration of new infections. This is disastrous for a number of reasons. Across Africa, health systems are already fragile. Covid-19 is like a battering ram against a paper wall. In crowded slums, the exhortation to socially distance is a cruel joke. And most African countries are already dealing with an assortment of deadly infectious diseases that are infinitely complicated by the addition of a new one. The worst damage is not coming from covid-19 directly but from its knock-on effects. Given the level of fear and stigma, many people are reluctant to seek health services for any disease. Health providers lack the protective equipment to confidently engage with patients. Hospitals are in emergency mode. Factory capacity to produce tests for other diseases has been diverted to covid-19. Laboratory staffs are being reassigned. On HIV, there have been supply chain disruptions for anti-retroviral therapies, and many providers report being stressed or overwhelmed. On malaria — with many places in Africa reaching peak season — the work of net distribution and insecticide spraying has been compromised. On tuberculosis, covid-19 has undermined diagnosis, treatment and prevention efforts. According to a recent worldwide survey, about three-quarters of HIV, TB and malaria programs are facing disruptions. The effect of all this is hard to disaggregate. From May 6 to July 14, South Africa reported 17,000 “excess” deaths — deaths compared with the same period in recent years. These included deaths from covid-19, but also those resulting from the diversion of resources away from other treatable or preventable diseases. [Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic] This is just a foretaste. In 2018, the combined deaths from HIV, tuberculosis and malaria were 2.4 million worldwide. This number may seem high, but it was actually a record low. Recent


For the unemployed, rising grocery prices strain budgets even more

The cost of groceries has been rising at the fastest pace in decades since the coronavirus pandemic seized the U.S. economy, leading to sticker shock for basic staples such as beef and eggs and forcing struggling households to rethink how to put enough food on the table. Long-standing supply chains for everyday grocery items have been upended as the pandemic sickened scores of workers, forced factory closures and punctured the carefully calibrated networks that brought food from farms to store shelves. Even while some of the sharpest price hikes have eased somewhat, the overall effects are being felt most acutely by the nearly 30 million Americans who saw their $600 enhanced unemployment benefit expire last Friday — exacerbating concerns that the recession’s long tail could worsen food insecurity for years to come. Earlier in the pandemic, the shock to the food system collided with staggering layoffs and an economy forced into lockdown. Cars filled parking lots to wait at drive-through pantries. From the beginning of March through the end of June, food banks across the country distributed more than 1.9 billion meals, according to Feeding America. In March alone, food banks gave out 20 percent more food than in an average month. Sean Valadez, 35, of the greater Los Angeles area, came home from Costco in mid-March with a $600 receipt, hoping his grocery haul would feed his family for up to 45 days after he lost work in the music and live entertainment industry. When he went back to the store 40 days later, Valadez was stunned by the rise in prices for ground beef, chicken, salmon and eggs. The grocery bill was an eye-popping $1,000, not including the alcohol he also purchased. Valadez said he didn’t remove anything from his cart “because it was shameful.” He swiped his credit card, went home to his partner, and told her they would have to make a serious change. Their unemployment benefits just wouldn’t cover such high grocery bills. “I left the United States to be able to afford groceries,” said Valadez, who brought his family to stay with his mother-in-law in Mexico, although he maintains his California home. “Food prices are what’s keeping us here.” Overall inflation has not been a pressing concern since the recession touched down in February. Last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell said consumer prices have been kept in check due to weak demand,


A police department quietly hired a deputy involved in the death of a man with Down syndrome. Then one man decided to make noise.

When Bryan Williams called into a live-streamed meeting of Frederick lawmakers toward the end of June, he told them that he had grown up in the Maryland city and that the death of a local man with Down syndrome had shaped his outlook on the police. He reminded those listening how Ethan Saylor had lived: worshiping law enforcement officers. He then reminded them how Saylor had died: being forced from a movie theater by three off-duty Frederick County sheriff’s deputies. “I’m not going to use the term ‘use of force.’ I think the term ‘use of force’ is a little disingenuous,” Williams said. “It was a homicide.” Saylor’s death on Jan. 12, 2013, was ruled a homicide as a result of asphyxia. The 26-year-old suffered a fractured larynx after the deputies, who were working side jobs as security officers, tried to remove him from the theater. At one point during the encounter, Saylor ended up on the ground, in handcuffs. His offense: He had failed to buy a ticket for a second showing of a movie he had just watched with an aide and wanted to watch again. Williams didn’t personally know Saylor. But the 30-year-old says that when protests erupted across the nation in response to George Floyd’s killing in police custody, his thoughts went immediately to Saylor. Curiosity then caused him to start looking into what happened to the deputies involved in the case. It had already been reported that they had been cleared of wrongdoing by an internal affairs investigation and that a grand jury had decided against issuing criminal charges. But what the public wasn’t told, Williams says, was that the Frederick City Police Department hired one of the men to conduct background investigations after he retired from the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office. That day Williams called into the public meeting of the mayor and the Board of Aldermen, he expressed concern about how that decision was made. He did so again during their next meeting. And again at their meeting after that. “As far as I’m concerned, the Frederick Police Department is spitting in the face of the public by hiring this man and thinking that nobody will notice or care,” he said during a call into the meeting in July. “The whole thing is a joke. If someone has a marijuana conviction on file, they probably won’t get hired. If you kill an unarmed


President Trump is committed to defending the U.S., and Russia knows it

includes interfering in Western democratic elections in 2016 and 2017; propping up brutal regimes in Syria and Venezuela; engaging in cyberattacks on America and its allies; violating important arms treaties; and attempting to kill Sergei Skripal, a British subject, with a military-grade nerve agent. In response to this conduct, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on hundreds of Russian entities. These targets include key Russian oligarchs and their companies, senior Russian government officials and a state-owned Russian weapons trading company. President Trump has also sanctioned two branches of Rosneft, a Russian state-owned oil company, for operating in Venezuela in support of the illegitimate Maduro regime. On the cyber front, the administration charged three Russians for the 2014 Yahoo hack, including two officers of the Russian Federal Security Service. It also banned the use of Kaspersky Lab software on government computers in light of the company’s ties to Russian intelligence. In 2018, the United States publicized Russian military involvement in the worldwide NotPetya cyberattack and sanctioned five Russian entities and three individuals for their roles in the incident. In 2020, the United States publicly attributed cyberattacks against the republic of Georgia to Russian military intelligence (GRU) and released a cybersecurity advisory against GRU malware. In light of the Skripal attack and other intelligence operations, President Trump cracked down on Russian intelligence operations in the United States. In September 2017, the administration closed the Russian Consulate in San Francisco, a consular annex in New York and a chancery annex in Washington. In April 2018, the United States shut down the Russian Consulate in Seattle and expelled 60 Russian intelligence officers from the country. When Russia violated two arms control treaty agreements, President Trump withdrew from them. The United States exited the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty in August 2019 and announced our withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty in May. In doing so, President Trump made clear we will not remain in treaties violated by the other side. The president is also investing in U.S. capabilities at a level never before seen. His administration provided states with nearly $800 million in election assistance. It also established federal councils to increase coordination among government and private-sector providers of voting and registration systems. To deter Russian aggression and defend our NATO allies, President Trump has provided billions in additional funding for the European Deterrence Initiative. And to assist Ukraine, the administration sent critical self-defense weapons, including


Amazon’s virus stumbles have been a boon for Walmart and Target

lack of basic items such as paper towels and disposable gloves and delayed or canceled orders. So Wang, who lives in Austin, turned to Target, Office Depot, Chewy and AliExpress instead, as well as smaller online shops. “At the beginning of the pandemic, it was item availability that drove me to other retailers,” said Wang, 36, who runs the start-up program at Cloudflare, a website security company. Four months later, she says, she is “relying a lot more on Target because their shipping is fast.” Plus, she can opt for same-day delivery. Amazon’s rivals fared better in large measure, experts said, because of one distinct advantage: physical stores spread across the country. Walmart customers, for example, were able to order some items online and have them dropped into their trunks at local stores the same day, offering more-reliable selection and faster delivery. Walmart moved quickly to offer “contactless” pickup and delivery options. By April, it had rolled out two-hour express deliveries from many of its 4,750 U.S. stores and had hired more than 150,000 workers to stock shelves, pick groceries and handle pickup orders. Walmart’s U.S. e-commerce sales grew 74 percent in the three months ending May 1. Online sales at Target, meanwhile, have more than doubled during the pandemic, with e-commerce growing a record 282 percent in April alone. “We’ve just seen Cyber Monday occur almost every day, except the volume is twice the size,” Brian Cornell, Target’s chief executive, said in an earnings call in May. Target now fills about 80 percent of its online orders from its 1,900 stores. When the pandemic hit, the company quickly doubled the number of workers at its same-day home delivery service, Shipt, from 100,000 to 200,000 and rerouted merchandise to the stores that needed it most. More than 5 million shoppers used the company’s drive-up pickup service during the first quarter, with drive-up orders — the company’s most popular service — increasing nearly 1,000 percent in April from a year earlier, John Mulligan, Target’s chief operating officer, said in the earnings call. Some of that growth was cannibalized from in-store sales, Robert W. Baird & Co. analyst Colin Sebastian said, as loyal Walmart and Target shoppers switched from in-store to online shopping. Sebastian is bullish on Amazon and believes the company has stabilized its logistics operations. Still, he added, “Amazon is typically the disrupter. And in this case, Amazon was disrupted.”


What we know about ammonium nitrate, the chemical compound linked to the Beirut explosions

greatest explosive in the world,” Marc-Michael Blum, who headed the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons laboratory until last year, told The Washington Post. “It is not a harmless substance,” he added. One factor, he said, links many past accidental explosions: improper handling. If “the ammonium nitrate fertilizer has been exposed to water evaporation or prolonged heating and the containment equipment is poorly insulated, the concentration of explosive substance will increase, thereby increasing the probability of explosion in a confined space,” Jingde Li, a gas explosion expert at Curtin University in Western Australia, told the Science Media Exchange. “Given most storage facilities are made of metals, they are susceptible to corrosion. Metal corrosion can produce chromates, chromium compounds and chlorides, which are dangerous explosion catalysts.” Blum added that the prolonged storage of ammonium nitrate can make it suck in water, turning it into a “solid mass.” In that state, ammonium nitrate becomes more likely “to detonate in bulk” than in its granular form. Storage of ammonium nitrate with organic materials — especially liquids that can leak and readily mix, such as vegetable or fuel oil — poses particular risks, Blum said. Because of its role in terrorist bombings — including in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing — many governments have imposed restrictions on the compound’s purchase and storage. “If you store or handle fertilizer, you must secure it to prevent it from being stolen,” the British National Counter Terrorism Security Office cautioned in 2014. Besides limiting access, some countries or blocs such as the European Union have imposed strict rules on how to store the compound safely. In the United States, journalists and advocates have presented concerns that regulations are insufficient. According to a report by the Center for Public Integrity published in January, efforts to increase ammonium nitrate storage oversight have often failed, and data on how much of it is kept across the country is largely unavailable. In U.S. ports, over which the Coast Guard has regulatory oversight under the Espionage Act of 1917, Coast Guard officials monitor the storage of the compound. Concerns over storage are most dire, however, in countries with chronically weak governance and endemic corruption. To store ammonium nitrate under less-than-deal conditions and over prolonged periods, Blum said, is never safe. “If you do that right in the center of a big metropolis, then that’s of course asking for a disaster,” he said.


He fled Congo to work in a U.S. meat plant. Then he — and hundreds of his co-workers — got the coronavirus.

he said. He then checked himself into the Banner Health emergency room and took a coronavirus test. “I barely finished my shift,” he said, “but going home early is not an option.” Hospital staff checked his vitals and sent him home later that day with instructions to quarantine for 14 days. They later notified Chengangu he’d tested positive, a diagnosis confirmed by the union. More than 30 languages are spoken in the JBS plant. The multicultural group includes men and women from dozens of countries, including a community of African and Middle Eastern refugees who settled in Weld in the past decade. The company has insisted it enlists interpreters to bridge language chasms in its communication with the staff. Yet the accounts of a nurse and a medical assistant, both temporary workers who performed health screenings in May and June at JBS, suggest the company is failing in that effort. When workers told them they were experiencing covid-19 symptoms, the two women handed them documents on where to get tested and how to self-quarantine. However, that information was provided only in English, the two health-care professionals said. They said they asked two supervisors if the materials could be translated so the sick workers could read the materials. “I was told, ‘No. If we do it for one, we have to do it for all of the languages,’ ” said Sarah-Jean Buck, a medical assistant. Erica Villegas, a licensed registered nurse, said she was told the same thing. County records show that one of the conditions for reopening the plant was that reading materials related to covid-19 be provided to workers in their native language. JBS acknowledged that the testing information is available only in English. The company said the quarantine materials, which are produced by the CDC, were originally provided to workers in English only. JBS now says it is giving workers translated versions, which the CDC offers in 25 languages. The day after Chengangu visited the hospital, his 73-year-old mother, who lived nearby and babysat for his family, felt ill. She suffered from high blood pressure. She’d been in the country almost two years, following her son to the United States. He made the decision to pack up his family and aim for refugee status after a brush with death amid Congo’s ongoing civil war. He and his mother and sisters spent two years in Ugandan refugee camps before


Former Saudi intelligence officer accuses crown prince of ordering his assassination in Canada

long past time for the United States to treat the Saudi Royal Family as what it is, a criminal enterprise.” The suit also names as defendants Bader Alasaker, who heads the prince’s private office and travels regularly to the United States; former Saudi officials linked to Khashoggi’s death; the prince’s MiSK Foundation, which Aljabri alleged deployed a network of agents to hunt him; as well as alleged agents and hit team members. The foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Aljabri’s son, Khalid, 36, a cardiologist who moved from Boston to be near his father in Toronto, said in an interview that his father has been an ally of the U.S. government since the 2001 terrorist attacks. “His main goal was the safety of his beloved country Saudi Arabia and its allies,” his son said. Aljabri stepped down in 2016 and “did not have any kind of experience working with the Trump administration,” Khalid Aljabri said, adding, “I think honestly the Trump administration has a role in resolving this whole situation and doing the right thing by securing the release of my siblings.” In a letter Thursday responding to concerns raised by U.S. senators, the State Department called Aljabri “a valued partner” to the U.S. government and said it would work with the White House to resolve the situation “in a manner that honors Dr. Aljabri’s service to our country.” “Any persecution of Dr. Aljabri’s family members is unacceptable,” Acting Assistant Secretary Ryan Kaldahl wrote. He said the department has repeatedly requested Saudi authorities clarify the nature of his children’s detentions and “will continue to urge their immediate release, absent sufficient and compelling justification.” Aljabri’s allegations also underscore strains in relations between Canada and Saudi Arabia. In August 2018, Saudi Arabia expelled Canada’s ambassador and recalled its own envoy from Ottawa and thousands of government-funded Saudi students after Canada’s then-Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland called for the release of civil society and women’s rights activists arrested in the kingdom. Canada imposed a moratorium on new arms-exports permits to Saudi Arabia, partly in response to Khashoggi’s killing. The halt was lifted this April, after Canada secured improvements to a highly secretive $10 billion contract to sell Riyadh light armored vehicles, although the current foreign minister, François-Philippe Champagne, told reporters then that Saudi Arabia’s human rights record “remains troubling.” The suit asserts that on about Oct. 15, 2018, Canadian border


Released from jail at height of pandemic, Virginia rape suspect allegedly killed his accuser

The incident in Karla Dominguez’s apartment last October was violent, and it was not consensual, she testified in Alexandria District Court in December. The man she accused was indicted on charges including rape, strangulation and abduction and jailed without bond in Alexandria. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit. Ibrahim E. Bouaichi’s lawyers argued that the virus was a danger to both inmates and their attorneys, and that Bouaichi should be freed awaiting trial. On April 9, over the objections of an Alexandria prosecutor, Circuit Court Judge Nolan Dawkins released Bouaichi on $25,000 bond, with the condition that he only leave his Maryland home to meet with his lawyers or pretrial services officials. On July 29, Alexandria police say, Bouaichi, 33, returned to Alexandria and shot and killed Dominguez outside her apartment in the city’s West End. When police couldn’t find Bouaichi after the slaying, they issued a video news release asking for the public’s help in locating him, declaring him “armed and dangerous.” Then on Wednesday morning, federal marshals and Alexandria police spotted Bouaichi in Prince George’s County and pursued him, causing Bouaichi to crash, authorities said. When the police went to arrest Bouaichi, they found he had apparently shot himself. He was reported to be in grave condition Thursday. Bouaichi’s release from jail and the slaying of Dominguez represent a tragic side effect of the pandemic. As the coronavirus erupted in America, civil liberties advocates called for the release of large numbers of prisoners from jails and prisons in order to keep them from being infected and possibly dying in necessarily confined spaces. In Alexandria, Bouaichi’s lawyers said in their motion for bond that “social distancing and proper disinfecting measures are impossible while incarcerated.… Simply put, the risk of contracting Covid-19 in a jail is exceedingly obvious.” The lawyers, Manuel Leiva and Frank Salvato, also noted the risk for themselves in the jail, saying that lawyers seeking a contact visit would “also expose themselves to contaminated air and surfaces.” Leiva and Salvato also claimed that the Alexandria jail had “imposed severe restrictions on visitation since the Covid-19 outbreak,” that all contact visits (meaning no glass or separation between visitor and inmate) were stopped and that the lawyers could only have video conference sessions lasting 30 minutes maximum. A trial date was set for Bouaichi, and his lawyers said he was “being effectively deprived of legal counsel.” Alexandria jail officials responded


State Department lifts blanket international travel advisory

The State Department lifted its blanket international travel advisory, almost five months after first urging Americans against traveling around the world amid the pandemic. The United States will revert to issuing recommendations on a country-specific basis. Sign up for our coronavirus newsletter


Facebook, Twitter penalize Trump for posts containing coronavirus misinformation

from COVID-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation." A Trump campaign spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. While many children have had milder symptoms from the virus, researchers have found they are still able to catch and spread it to other people, including adults at home and in school settings, such as teachers. “They get it and can transmit it, but they get it less and transmit it less than adults,” said Theodore Ruel, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Global Health at the University of California at San Francisco. He said the word “immunity” is incorrect in this context but that children, especially younger ones, are less of a risk than adults. More than 240,000 children in the United States have been documented to have covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Around 300 children have contracted a rare inflammatory disease due to covid-19 called multisystem inflammatory syndrome, and six have died. Ruel said that with proper protocols, including masking and social distancing, and a working testing and contact-tracing program, schools for younger children could be safe enough to reopen. “A well-run school is going to be just as safe if not safer than a grocery store,” he said. "But we have to make it safe for both [teachers and kids], and we have to recognize it is a risk for both if we want to reopen schools.” As the start of the school year rolls around, school districts across the country have been torn on how to proceed. With rising covid-19 case numbers across the country, many large districts have decided to start the year virtually, with online classes. Others have opted to go ahead with in-person classes, like in Georgia. Teachers are being ordered to report for work at Gwinnett County Public Schools, the state’s largest school district, ahead of a digital semester. It has reported that 260 district employees had tested positive for the virus or been exposed to someone who had. Facebook previously deactivated dozens of ads placed by President Trump’s reelection campaign that included a symbol once used by the Nazis to designate political prisoners in concentration camps. The company has faced increasing pressure to better moderate its site. More than 1,000 advertisers have joined a boycott regarding its civil rights


Two more retailers file for bankruptcy: Lord & Taylor and Tailored Brands

English immigrants, Samuel Lord and George Washington Taylor, who sold high-end women’s clothing and accessories in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The retailer, which became known for luxury fashions and home goods, expanded throughout New York in the subsequent decades. Dorothy Shaver, a 20-year company veteran, took over as president in 1945, becoming the first woman in the country to lead a multimillion-dollar corporation. She led Lord & Taylor’s expansion into the suburbs and started its personal shopping program. But the company didn’t venture beyond its northeastern roots until the 1970s and 1980s, when it began rapidly expanding into major cities such as Atlanta, Houston, Dallas and Miami, making it a high-end household name across the country. In recent years, though, Lord & Taylor struggled to keep up with growing competition from online luxury start-ups and lower-priced rivals. Many of its stores, which were located in shopping malls, languished as well-heeled Americans shifted their buying to boutiques and e-commerce brands. In 2017, Lord & Taylor sold its flagship store on New York’s 5th Avenue to WeWork and began shutting down about a dozen underperforming stores. Le Tote had hoped to revive the flagging company by adding makeup subscriptions, try-on boutiques and other services aimed at busy millennials. But then the pandemic hit, putting the brakes on its plans and forcing it to reconsider its future as consumer spending plummeted in just about every category, including apparel, jewelry and home goods. It was a similar story at Tailored Brands, where executives said the pandemic left them with little choice but to file for bankruptcy. The Fremont, Calif.-based retailer, which also owns K&G and Moores, said sales had slowed at its 1,400 stores as demand dried up for suits, button-downs and slacks. “The unprecedented impact of COVID-19 requires us to further adapt and evolve,” Dinesh Lathi, the company’s chief executive, said in a news release. The specialty menswear retailer said it will still honor customer gift cards and rewards, and fill rental reservations and custom orders in its stores. It also said it will continue paying its 18,000 workers and providing health benefits. In filings, Tailored Brands said it had more than $2.8 billion in debt against more than $2.4 billion in assets. Lord & Taylor, meanwhile, said it had $100 million to $500 million in both assets and liabilities. Analysts say they expect more distressed retailers to file for bankruptcy in coming


After hundreds of covid-19 deaths in state-run veterans homes, lawmakers press VA to adhere to science

of state data by The Washington Post. Homes in Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts have been hit particularly hard, reporting outbreaks in some facilities of 30 deaths or more. The Southeastern Veterans’ Center has reported more than 40 deaths. As residents fell ill, doctors in the home began to administer hydroxychloroquine, touted by President Trump as a possible remedy for covid-19. The treatment has been shown to trigger heart problems and other serious side effects in covid-19 patients, and the Food and Drug Administration revoked an emergency-use authorization issued in late March. The Post found the so-called “covid cocktail” at the Southeastern Veterans’ Center was administered to 11 residents who had not been tested for covid-19, as well as those with serious underlying health conditions. The use of the drug outraged some local lawmakers, nurses at the center and the families of residents, who said the medication was given without proper oversight after weeks of breakdowns in infection control protocols at the 238-bed home. It is unclear whether other state-run homes for veterans administered the drug. Houlahan asked VA to provide that data; she has not yet received a response. Teresa Boyd, the assistant undersecretary for health for clinical services at VA, said at a House hearing last week that the department provided no specific guidance on the treatment. Medications, she said, are frequently used off-label. Lawmakers at the hearing demanded greater accountability. At the New Jersey Veterans Home at Paramus, about 80 residents and a caregiver have died since the pandemic began. At the Massachusetts Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke, an outbreak killed 76 residents and sickened more than 200 patients and staff. The Government Accountability Office found the home lacked staff and personal protective equipment and failed to enforce social distancing. “The idea that you had homes anywhere in the country where we didn’t do everything possible to protect our veterans is not just heartbreaking, but completely unacceptable,” U.S. Rep Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), whose district is home to the facility in Paramus, told The Post. Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) said VA should increase its presence in state-run homes and “look to the science” when recommending or administering treatments for covid-19. “We’re pushing to ensure VA can monitor and effectively mitigate outbreaks at state veterans homes,” Tester, ranking member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said in a statement to The Post. “And I’ll be holding


Hispanic, Black children at higher risk of coronavirus-related hospitalization, CDC finds

risk in-person learning might pose to children, staff and families. Children should wash their hands often and engage in social distancing, and those age 2 and older should wear a mask when with people outside of their families, the CDC report said. The CDC report underscored the relative rarity of children being hospitalized: While 164.5 adults per 100,000 were hospitalized with covid-19 from March to July, eight children per 100,000 required hospitalization. Those under age 2 had the highest pediatric hospitalization rate. The median patient age was 8, and underlying conditions were common, with 42 percent of those requiring hospitalization diagnosed with such conditions. About 1 in 3 hospitalized children wound up in intensive care units — roughly the same rate as hospitalized adults. But only 5.8 percent of 526 children studied required a ventilator. One patient in the study died while hospitalized. Of 526 children for whom race information was reported, 46 percent were Hispanic and nearly 30 percent were Black. The census reports that 18 percent of people in the United States identify as Hispanic and about 13 percent as Black. The CDC report said it is crucial to continue monitoring covid-19 hospitalizations among children. “These data will help to better define the clinical spectrum of disease in children and the contributions of race and ethnicity and underlying medical conditions to hospitalizations and outcomes,” the report said. “Reasons for disparities in COVID-19-associated hospitalization rates by race and ethnicity are not fully understood.” Similar disparities were identified in a second CDC report Friday that examined a rare multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children — known as MIS-C — that affected 570 American children from April to late July. In April, the United Kingdom issued an alert that children were arriving at hospitals there with symptoms that mirrored those of Kawasaki disease, a treatable condition that causes fever, rashes and vascular inflammation and normally affects children under age 5. By mid-May, with cases emerging in New York City and elsewhere on the East Coast, the CDC issued a warning about the syndrome and asked doctors to report cases meeting the definition of the condition in patients under 18. The most common symptoms were abdominal pain, vomiting, rash and diarrhea. Many of those diagnosed with the syndrome experienced severe complications including cardiac dysfunction (40.6 percent), shock (35.4 percent), coronary artery dilatation or aneurysm (18.6 percent) and acute kidney injury (18.4 percent). Most


and ethnicity and underlying medical conditions to hospitalizations and outcomes,” the report said. “Reasons for disparities in COVID-19-associated hospitalization rates by race and ethnicity are not fully understood.” Similar disparities were identified in a second CDC report Friday that examined a rare multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children — known as MIS-C — that affected 570 American children from April to late July. In April, the United Kingdom issued an alert that children were arriving at hospitals there with symptoms that mirrored those of Kawasaki disease, a treatable condition that causes fever, rashes and vascular inflammation and normally affects children under age 5. By mid-May, with cases emerging in New York City and elsewhere on the East Coast, the CDC issued a warning about the syndrome and asked doctors to report cases meeting the definition of the condition in patients under 18. The most common symptoms were abdominal pain, vomiting, rash and diarrhea. Many of those diagnosed with the syndrome experienced severe complications including cardiac dysfunction (40.6 percent), shock (35.4 percent), coronary artery dilatation or aneurysm (18.6 percent) and acute kidney injury (18.4 percent). Most patients diagnosed with the condition were admitted to intensive care units with a median stay of five days. Ten patients died. Data about MIS-C cases were previously available only on a hospital-by-hospital or region-by-region basis. The CDC’s report revealed that MIS-C occurred in a disproportionate number of Hispanic children. About 40 percent of the 570 cases occurred in children identified as Hispanic, while 33 percent of the children affected were Black. “Long-standing inequities in the social determinants of health, such as housing, economic instability, insurance status, and work circumstances of patients and their family members have systematically placed social, racial, and ethnic minority populations at higher risk for COVID-19 and more severe illness, possibly including MIS-C,” the study concluded. The study showed that while MIS-C can result in dire outcomes, it remains rare: Among pediatric covid-19 patients, MISC-C was found in roughly 0.2 percent of cases. According to the study, all 570 children in the report tested positive for acute covid-19 or for its antibodies, or had an epidemiological reason to believe they were exposed to the virus before symptoms appeared. They were all presumed to have been exposed two to four weeks before experiencing MIS-C, a pattern epidemiologists, pediatricians and virologists say may suggest MIS-C is triggered by a child’s immune response to the virus.


Man, 30, fatally shot in Northwest Washington

A 30-year-old man was fatally shot Friday evening in the 1900 block of Sixth Street in Northwest Washington, according to D.C. police. The shooting occurred about 6:20 p.m. Police identified the victim as Rashad Scott of Southeast Washington. Scott was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. No arrests have been made. An investigation into the incident is ongoing, police said. Homicides in the District are up 17 percent compared with this time last year.


Mid-American Conference cancels fall football, casting more doubt on the 2020 season

The Mid-American Conference postponed its football season, the conference announced Saturday, becoming the first Football Bowl Subdivision league to decide not to hold games this fall because of the novel coronavirus pandemic. The conference canceled all fall competition, affecting about 2,500 athletes in football, men’s and women’s soccer, women’s volleyball, men’s and women’s cross-country and field hockey. The MAC has not made a decision about winter sports, such as men’s and women’s basketball, which typically begin in November. A statement from the conference indicated athletes in fall sports might get a chance to compete in the spring of 2021. “The decision is grounded in the core values of the Conference that prioritize student-athlete well-being, an area the MAC has traditionally taken a leadership role,” Commissioner Jon Steinbrecher said in a statement. “Clearly, we are charting a conservative path — and it is one that has been recommended by our medical advisory group.” The MAC is one of 10 conferences in the FBS, the top tier of college football. Twelve schools play in the MAC — Akron, Ball State, Bowling Green, Buffalo, Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Kent State, Miami (Ohio), Northern Illinois, Ohio, Toledo and Western Michigan. The conference’s Council of Presidents voted unanimously to postpone fall sports. Power Five schools have developed protocols that require frequent testing, which is necessary to return to competition safely. But administering that many tests would be a significant financial burden for FBS schools not in the Power Five. Many MAC schools rely on the revenue generated through guarantee games — when a Power Five school pays another program to play it during the nonconference schedule. Most of these games have been canceled because all of the Power Five leagues have chosen to play one or zero nonconference games this season. “This was not an easy decision but one that we had to make in the best interest of our student-athletes, coaches and institutions,” David Sayler, Miami’s athletic director and the MAC Chair of the Council of Director of Athletics, said in a statement. “It is our responsibility to give our student-athletes an experience that allows them to participate at the highest level in the safest manner possible. After consulting with our Medical Advisory Panel, we felt there were just too many unknowns surrounding the pandemic for us to proceed with the fall season.” On Wednesday, Connecticut became the first FBS school to cancel its


Local Digest: 30-year-old man killed in Northwest Washington

THE DISTRICT A 30-year-old man was fatally shot Friday evening in Northwest Washington, according to D.C. police. The shooting occurred at about 6:20 p.m. in the 1900 block of Sixth Street NW. Police identified the victim as Rashad Scott of Southeast Washington. Scott was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. No arrests have been made. An investigation is ongoing, police said. Homicides in the District are up 17 percent compared with this time last year. — Emily Davies MARYLAND Police responded Saturday morning to reports of a partially burned Black Lives Matter banner on the front lawn of a home in Chevy Chase. There were no suspects or arrests as of Saturday afternoon, according to Rebecca Innocenti, a spokesperson for the Montgomery County Police Department. Maria Lasa-Sloan, 56, said she woke up Saturday morning to find her hand-sewn banner singed and sprawled across her front lawn. “I was shocked and scared,” she said. The banner, 5-by-4 feet, had been hanging between two trees in front of her house for over a month. Aria Noosha, 25, said he was driving by the house just after midnight when he saw the banner ablaze. Noosha said he ran toward the fire and put it out moments before it spread to the trees. “It is scary to think about what would have happened if we weren’t driving by,” he said. Sloan spent hours Saturday researching nonflammable materials for her next, bigger Black Lives Matter banner. “Can’t let whoever did this scare us so easily,” she said. — Emily Davies VIRGINIA Renovations have been delayed at the municipal building in Virginia Beach where a mass shooting happened last year. The Virginian-Pilot reports that city officials don’t have enough money to pay for it now because of the coronavirus pandemic. In a letter last week, the mayor of Virginia Beach asked the state legislature to consider allocating $10 million toward the renovations. Employees who worked in the building where 12 people were killed have been working at home and in offices across the city. The city plans to turn Building 2 into the headquarters for the police department. Plans also call for renovating several other buildings to bring former Building 2 employees back to the municipal center, so the Departments of Public Works, Public Utilities, and Planning can again offer citizens services in one place. — Associated Press


The U.S. sanctions against Hong Kong officials, explained

barbaric interference in the internal affairs of the People’s Republic of China, using Hong Kong as a pawn,” the BBC reported. It also said that the sanctions had no legal standing in Hong Kong. Beijing’s top representative office in Hong Kong called the sanctions “clowning actions” and warned that China would not be intimidated, Reuters reported. Lam posted sarcastically on Facebook on Saturday mocking the U.S. action and writing that she didn’t want to visit the United States anyway. (Lam has previously said that she does not have assets in the United States.) Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activists praised the move. They had previously called for U.S. sanctions against the city’s leadership. On Thursday, President Trump issued two executive orders against China-based TikTok and messaging app WeChat on what he said were national security grounds. That same day he echoed previous criticisms of China’ handling of the novel coronavirus as Secretary of Health Alex Azar prepared to visit Taiwan, another territory China disputes control over. On Saturday, financial regulators in Hong Kong sought to dispel any market fears and worries the sanctions would impact the daily operations of financial firms in the city, Reuters reported. A spokesperson for Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission told Reuters that it “is not aware of any aspect of the (law) or the U.S. sanctions ... that would affect the way in which firms carry on their normal operations in Hong Kong." Facebook, however, told the New York Times on Saturday that it had “taken steps to prevent the use of payments services” for the eleven sanctioned officials, which would mean they wouldn’t be able to buy advertising on the social media platform or related apps. Credit card companies based in the United States could also be effected. A spokesperson for Mastercard told The Post that they “continue to review” the U.S.' latest action “to understand the impact it may have on any financial institution licensed to access our network.” (Visa did not immediately reply to a request whether they are obliged to comply and prevent the newly designated officials from using their payment services.) The United States is not alone in clashing with China over its handling of Hong Kong. In response to the new national security law, Canada, Britain, New Zealand, Germany and Australia have all suspended their extradition treaties with Hong Kong. (France halted ratifying its treaty.) China has responded in kind.


Ticks and mosquitoes may await the pandemic-weary seeking outdoor exercise

Pandemic-weary Americans have begun walking and hiking in recent months to get out of the house while avoiding infection with the novel coronavirus. At the same time, resource-strapped local health departments have been forced to divert money and people to covid-related activities, unwillingly creating openings for outside exercisers to get sick in other ways. Although woods and trails provide some distance from people, they are home to other dangers — such as ticks that carry bacteria-causing Lyme disease or mosquitoes that transmit West Nile virus — especially now, when bugs are proliferating. These and other insects can pass along potentially serious diseases with a single bite. Health departments have been spending their budgets and deploying personnel on covid-19 efforts, which hurts their ability to focus on programs that control mosquitoes and ticks, says Chelsea Gridley-Smith, director of environmental health for the National Association of County and City Health Officials. “Many of the impacted local programs are having staff pulled away to focus on covid-19,” she says. “For example, these include training people as contact tracers and doing lab testing for covid-19 instead of for arboviruses,” which are those carried by mosquitoes and ticks. As a result, existing services are strained or on hold, she says. In Georgia, for example, the vector surveillance program is scheduled to end this month because of a lack of funding, and its full-time epidemiologist will move from vector control to covid-19, she says. In Ohio, laboratories have been “completely devoted to covid-19 since the first week of March,” she says. Cutbacks have hurt surveillance — tracking the bugs and testing them for infectious organisms — as well as control activities, such as using pesticides, she says. Michael Yabsley, a professor in the University of Georgia’s College of Veterinary Medicine who studies vector borne pathogens and infectious wildlife diseases, has launched an online public survey to determine whether the pandemic has driven more people outside, affecting their exposure to ticks and tick-borne diseases. He hopes eventually to publish his findings in several open-access journals. “The survey actually grew out of some neighborhood chat, which was pretty cool, and my observation that so many folks were using our neighborhood trails for the first time,” he says. “Many of them were not really ‘outdoor’ folks,’ and had limited — or no — knowledge about ticks. And when I asked them about why they were now finding the trails


Coronavirus surprise: Remittances to Mexico rise during pandemic

MEXICO CITY — It was an intuitive prediction, supported by virtually every expert who had studied the subject: As the coronavirus pandemic caused the global economy to tumble, remittances to Mexico and Central America would crash. It turns out the forecast was wrong. Instead of collapsing, remittances to Mexico were up year-over-year in five of the first six months of 2020. In June, payments to El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras also increased compared with the same period in 2019, after a dip earlier this year. In March, the month the World Health Organization declared a pandemic, remittances to Mexico topped $4 billion — a record. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh, my God, what happened here?’ ” said Jonathan Heath, deputy governor of Mexico’s central bank. “It’s the exact opposite of what we were expecting.” For years, the logic behind remittances — the payments that migrant workers send back home — was straightforward. As more people migrate and as economies in the developed world grow, remittances increase. During economic contractions, when immigrants are disproportionately vulnerable, remittances fall. So when the World Bank predicted in April that the pandemic would cause their “sharpest decline in recent history,” it seemed reasonable. But that logic is now being thrown into question in countries such as Mexico, where new data continued the surprising trend: Despite the global economic decline, Mexicans received $3.53 billion in remittances in June — an 11 percent jump year-over-year. “We understand the economics of migration and how people make decisions in times of crisis a lot less than we thought we did,” said Andrew Selee, the president of the Migration Policy Institute. Elsewhere, the data is uneven. Migrants sent $2.6 billion back to Bangladesh in July, a record for any month in the country. “Remittances continue to defy all expectations,” Bangladesh’s Daily Star newspaper reported. The payments have also surged in Pakistan. But in other countries, such as the Philippines, Tajikistan and Brazil, remittances dropped by double digits. That unevenness has made explaining the resilience of remittances in Mexico and Central America even more difficult. At Mexico’s central bank, Heath and his colleagues have wrestled with various theories. Initially, they thought migrants might be wiring their savings back home before returning to Mexico. But as remittances remained high, and with little evidence of reverse migration, that appeared unlikely. They debated another possibility: Mexican drug cartels were using remittances to launder money.


Top U.S. border official blames migrants for ignoring health guidelines after arrests jump 24 percent

precautions.” Immigrant advocates and rights groups say the Trump administration has been using the pandemic to advance its long-standing goals of sharply restricting access to asylum protections and other humanitarian programs. The president, who treats the monthly enforcement numbers as the key measure of Department of Homeland Security officials’ performance, has cited his immigration record in making his reelection pitch. Under the emergency border policy in place since March 21, migrants who arrive without authorization are quickly processed and handed over to Mexican authorities, who have agreed to accept nationals of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras as well as their own citizens. If the emergency measures are intended as a deterrent, their effectiveness has been wearing off, as July’s enforcement figures show interdiction levels steadily increasing. The latest figures show single adults from Mexico once more account for the majority of the migrants U.S. agents encounter. That demographic often includes recent deportees who are attempting to return to homes, jobs and families on the U.S. side of the border. Underage migrants who arrive alone and most asylum seekers also are being expelled to Mexico or summarily deported under the emergency measures, which advocates say is potentially exposing them to persecution or abuse back home. U.S. agents say repeated attempts by the same individuals are a significant factor behind the increases, as migrants are repeatedly caught, arrested and returned to Mexican border cities. Morgan said those border-crossers are placing U.S. agents and others they are in contact with at risk, and defended the emergency expulsion system as the best way to prevent infections from spreading at U.S. border stations and detention facilities. Morgan said 10 CBP employees have died of covid-19. The acting commissioner warned that migration levels could increase in coming months as a result of the pandemic’s economic toll on Mexico and Central America. Though the United States has more cases and deaths from the pandemic than any other nation, the positivity rate in Mexico has neared 50 percent, a sign that the virus is spreading rampantly. Separately on Wednesday, the Trump administration unsealed indictments against four suspects in connection with worksite raids on food processing plants in Mississippi last year that led to 680 arrests. It was the first time Immigration and Customs Enforcement has announced criminal charges against management-level employees at the plants, but none of those charged included the owners of the companies or the facilities.


Covid-19 is one of Wikipedia’s biggest challenges ever. Here’s how the site is handling it.

About a dozen years ago, Jason Moore noticed an error on the Wikipedia page for one of his favorite Rufus Wainwright albums. Anyone with an Internet connection can edit the online crowdsourced encyclopedia, so he decided to set the record straight. “I just really enjoyed the instant gratification of making the Internet better so easily,” Moore said. The 35-year-old works as a strategist for a digital consultancy in Portland, Ore. But, like thousands of others, he has moonlighted as a Wikipedia editor, going by the username Another Believer and making more than 350,000 edits since that first fix. Moore generally seeks out topics he’s interested in, such as historic buildings or public art, and either expands an existing page or creates one from scratch. Although medicine isn’t his forte, when the mainstream media began reporting on the coronavirus in China, he thought, “This was going to be much, much bigger than an isolated medical outbreak.” He, of course, was right. As the pandemic overtook the globe, it sparked one of Wikipedia’s largest challenges: to chronicle a massive news event in real time as information constantly shifted and misinformation constantly spread, putting the site’s tried and true process to the test. As of the end of July, according to Wikimedia Foundation spokeswoman Chantal De Soto, more than 67,000 editors had collaborated to create more than 5,000 Wikipedia articles in 175 different languages about covid-19 and its various impacts. Some of these, including the disease’s main English-language article, are sensitive pages restricted to certain trusted users (a decision made by other Wikipedia volunteers), De Soto said. Frequent editors, according to Moore, generally fulfill two primary roles. The first is actually writing or editing a specific page. The second “is kind of like community organizing, is how I often think of it,” by helping manage WikiProjects, which act as organizing spaces for topics that stretch across many pages, such as “medicine” and “disaster management.” Seeing that one didn’t exist for covid-19 as it picked up steam in mid-March, Moore created one. A WikiProject, among other things, includes a page of reliable sources for editors to pull from. It also — like every page on Wikipedia — contains a “talk” page where editors can discuss how to approach certain articles, which ones are needed and what information isn’t up to their standards. By the end of July, the main English-language covid-19 article had been


As of the end of July, according to Wikimedia Foundation spokeswoman Chantal De Soto, more than 67,000 editors had collaborated to create more than 5,000 Wikipedia articles in 175 different languages about covid-19 and its various impacts. Some of these, including the disease’s main English-language article, are sensitive pages restricted to certain trusted users (a decision made by other Wikipedia volunteers), De Soto said. Frequent editors, according to Moore, generally fulfill two primary roles. The first is actually writing or editing a specific page. The second “is kind of like community organizing, is how I often think of it,” by helping manage WikiProjects, which act as organizing spaces for topics that stretch across many pages, such as “medicine” and “disaster management.” Seeing that one didn’t exist for covid-19 as it picked up steam in mid-March, Moore created one. A WikiProject, among other things, includes a page of reliable sources for editors to pull from. It also — like every page on Wikipedia — contains a “talk” page where editors can discuss how to approach certain articles, which ones are needed and what information isn’t up to their standards. By the end of July, the main English-language covid-19 article had been edited 22,000 times by more than 4,000 editors. Among them is Netha Hussain, a 30-year-old doctor from Kozhikode in Kerala, India, who has a Ph.D. in clinical neuroscience and is a researcher for Sweden’s University of Gothenburg. She began editing Wikipedia a decade ago, when she was earning her medical degree. Covid-19 proved more challenging to chronicle than anything else in her 10 years editing the site, as information about the virus, even from reputable sources, constantly shifted. Unlike in the past, she said, “I have to work fast and act fast to ensure it remains reliable and updated.” Editors will ask each other to create or expand articles on certain subjects. Hussain, for example, was asked to write about covid-19 and its effects on pregnancy for its own break-off page. The impacts of the pandemic spread beyond medicine, however, touching on everything from “human rights” to “national politics” to “world economies,” Hussain said. Other editors rushed to fill those gaps. Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight, 66, a visiting scholar at Northeastern University and veteran Wikipedia editor, has been working to expand Wikipedia’s coverage of important women from history — only 18 percent of Wikipedia’s biography entries are about women, according to the


A chilling new chapter of alleged perfidy by the Saudi crown prince

SAUDI ARABIA’S assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi took place Oct. 2, 2018. Khashoggi, a Post contributing columnist then living in exile, went to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul for paperwork so he could remarry. As has been documented by United Nations envoy Agnes Callamard, a Saudi hit squad arrived with forensic tools, including a bone saw. The Khashoggi killing came after previous attempts by the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, to lure the journalist back to the kingdom and silence him. The Khashoggi case is one of deception and murder with impunity. Khashoggi’s body has never been found. Now comes a chilling new chapter of alleged Saudi perfidy that should once again remind all that the kingdom is led by a ruthless despot. When Khashoggi disappeared, the kingdom said he had requested the paperwork at the consulate and “exited shortly thereafter.” On Oct. 7, a Saudi official, responding to reports that Khashoggi was killed in the consulate, “strongly denounced these baseless allegations.” On Oct. 8, the Saudi ambassador to the United States said reports Khashoggi was detained or killed “are absolutely false, and baseless.” On Oct. 15, President Trump said he talked to the crown prince and “his was a flat denial.” However, a lawsuit filed Thursday alleges that about the same day the crown prince made the “flat denial,” a second Saudi hit squad traveled to Canada. This time, the target was Saad Aljabri, a former top Saudi intelligence official who had worked closely with U.S. officials on counterterrorism in the past. The crown prince apparently wanted to silence him, too. The lawsuit, brought by Mr. Aljabri, contains unproven allegations, but they have eerie parallels to Khashoggi’s assassination. According to the complaint, the Saudi killers who flew to Toronto belonged to the “Tiger Squad,” the crown prince’s “personal mercenary group”; they carried two bags of forensic tools; and the squad included an instructor in the same criminal evidence department as the executioner who dismembered Khashoggi. The squad members, traveling on tourist visas, were asked by Canadian officers at border control if they knew each other. They lied, saying they did not. On secondary screening, a photograph was discovered of them together and their plot was thwarted, the lawsuit says. In his final minutes of life, Khashoggi was told by his killers, “There is an order from Interpol. Interpol requested you to be sent back.” Mr. Aljabri alleges in his


Bird population boosted at National Zoo during virus shutdown

During the weeks that the National Zoo was closed to visitors this year, it was apparently a place where many interesting creatures came out of their shells. The emergence is unlikely to be linked to the long shutdown caused by the novel coronavirus. It was, it seemed, a consequence of animals doing what comes naturally, with the assistance of keepers, who remained at work. The creatures in question were birds. The zoo, part of the Smithsonian Institution, reported that from April through July it has hosted the hatching of 34 chicks of 11 species. Many have distinctive stories. Consider the two new Swainson’s thrushes, zoo residents since July 6 and 7, respectively. Their presence among us was described by the zoo as surprising. The last breeding of these birds in human care, the zoo said, had been in Great Britain in the 1950s. The new feathered delegation includes three song sparrows. They are the first born at the Connecticut Avenue site in its 131-year history, the zoo said. Baltimore orioles, maybe more familiar to many of us on the baseball field than the streets, also showed up. Five emerged at the zoo June 11 and 12. Altogether, the new avian arrivals include ducks, flamingos and a pigeon, the zoo said July 31. Adults of their species range across the color spectrum, from the indigo bunting to the redhead duck, rose-breasted grosbeak and red-legged seriema. The running speed of the latter, the zoo said, has been clocked at 43 mph.


Maryland man charged with murder had earlier secured release from jail over coronavirus concerns

A Maryland man accused of killing a 63-year-old last month had earlier secured release from jail by raising concerns about the coronavirus, court records show. The man, Justin Andrew Wilson, 26, of Germantown, was arrested July 28 and charged in the death of Egidio Ienzi, according to Montgomery County police. Ienzi was fatally stabbed in his Germantown home on July 23, police said. Wilson was arrested after a member of Ienzi’s family identified him as the man seen fleeing the scene on neighbors’ home surveillance video. He is now in police custody. This is the second time this year that Wilson has found himself behind bars. Earlier this year, he pleaded guilty in Montgomery County Circuit Court to a charge of theft of less than $25,000. He also was charged with credit card and identity theft. Wilson was placed in custody while awaiting sentencing, according to online court records. But in April, he filed an emergency motion for release “due to immediate threat posed by covid-19 pandemic,” according to court records. That motion was granted at an April 30 hearing, according to records. An unsecured bond of $5,000 was set, and the sentencing hearing was postponed until November. So Wilson walked free — for about three months, until he was accused of fatally stabbing Ienzi. His case marks the second time in recent weeks that a D.C.-area inmate released because of coronavirus concerns has been accused of committing another crime. In Virginia, Alexandria police said this month that a rape suspect released from jail over fear of the virus killed the woman who had accused him. The virus has swept through the country’s jails, which — as necessarily confined spaces — do not easily lend themselves to social distancing and other health and safety measures. In response, civil liberties advocates have argued that inmates should be released in large numbers to avoid their possible infection and death. On the day of Ienzi’s death, a family member who had been sleeping in an upstairs bedroom awoke in the late morning to loud noises and the sound of Ienzi screaming. She headed downstairs and saw Ienzi struggling with an unknown man who was wielding a knife. The man with the knife fled. The relative ran back upstairs, called 911 and was able to give a description of Ienzi’s attacker to police. Ienzi, who had been stabbed multiple times, was transported to a


In college towns and neighborhoods, permanent residents brace for students’ return

Christy Dollymore is livid. After a quiet summer spent in the seclusion of her College Park, Md., home, Dollymore is getting more neighbors. They’re students, enrolled at the University of Maryland’s flagship campus half a mile away, and they’re moving into the apartments and group homes that surround the school. Dollymore, a 61-year-old retired critical care technician, lives on a tree-lined street in the suburbs. It’s not abnormal for her to have college-aged neighbors, but she has a compromised immune system. Her husband nearly died of influenza A, a type of flu, last year, and her 36-year-old daughter is recovering from malignant melanoma, she said. “We have three highly compromised people in my house,” Dollymore said. “Where am I supposed to go to the grocery store?” Although most — and in many cases, all — of their classes will be held online, students at District-area universities are still flocking to neighborhoods in and around the city, stoking fears — and questions — of permanent residents who are anxious about young people spreading the novel coronavirus. “They’re already drinking, maskless, downtown. No one cares,” Dollymore said. When Asher Price, 21, and his roommates signed their leases two months ago for a pale yellow townhouse near George Washington University, they expected to take some of their classes on campus. Since then, the university has retracted parts of its reopening plan and will conduct the fall semester online. “In our minds, it’s either go home and pay rent for a year in a place we don’t live in or, at least, live in D.C. and follow the guidelines,” said Price, who is from Houston. He also moved near the university before D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser imposed travel restrictions that require travelers from coronavirus hot spots, including Texas, to self-quarantine for two weeks. Monitoring the actions of young people in college towns will require collaboration between universities, local officials and law enforcement, said state Sen. Jim Rosapepe (D), whose district includes College Park. “Our residential campus is a lot like a cruise ship on land. A high concentration of people who like to socialize,” Rosapepe said. “Before the pandemic, if you live in College Park, you see a good bit of not-very-responsible behavior, and so I think people are concerned about whether the students who come back, as opposed to those who don’t come back, will be on their best behavior.” Local leaders


In Colorado’s climate change hot spot, the West’s water is evaporating

official temperature records, which show that around the close of the 19th century, Delta County’s climate was more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler than it is today. Even as they eyed the weather, these settlers dug ditches and open canals to maximize their access to water. That early engineering feat has morphed into a vast network that now irrigates 919,017 acres of crops on the Western Slope, according to the state’s water plan. Thousands of miles of ditches crisscross the landscape, a small portion of which have been lined with concrete or transformed into buried pipe. But that network only functions if there’s snowpack. Last year, Paul Kehmeier adapted to the new reality: He installed even more irrigation equipment and took a job in town. “You know the saying you see around here on billboards?” he quipped. “ ‘Behind every successful farmer is a wife with a job in town.’ ” For the most part, the lanky 64-year-old farmer is soft-spoken. He believes human activity is helping warm the planet and seeks to reduce his carbon footprint by raising perennial crops and often using an electric motorcycle to get around on the farm instead of a pickup truck. But he takes umbrage at the idea that he’s a victim of climate change: “I’m not in crisis, and global warming is not going to be the death of me in the next few years.” Scientists are still working to decipher why some parts of the world are warming so much faster than others. It is clear why high latitude regions like the Arctic are melting, but the reasons behind some other hot spots are more elusive. Shifting ocean currents off the coasts of Angola, Tasmania and Uruguay have formed visible warming hot spots, upending marine life. Winters in the Northeast are less cold, but experts cannot say yet whether a warmer Atlantic Ocean is driving it. Western Colorado is experiencing a feedback loop, according to Colorado State University senior scientist Brad Udall, because there is less soil moisture to absorb the solar energy and transfer it to the air through evaporation. “Heating begets drying, and then drying further begets heating,” he said. Dry areas warm faster for lack of moisture to cool things down, said Chris Milly, a senior resource scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey. Land use, irrigation and natural variability could also help explain part of


Baghdad soars to 125 blistering degrees, its highest temperature on record

temperature on record, hitting 114.8 degrees (46 Celsius). More near-record temperatures in the 120s are likely Thursday in and around Baghdad before a slight moderation Friday. Highs to round out the week into the weekend should fall back into the upper 110s. For comparison, the hottest temperature ever measured in Phoenix is 122 degrees in 1990. Records date back to 1895. Phoenix hasn’t made it to 120 degrees or greater since 1995. The excessive heat can be attributed to a ridge of high pressure anchored over the Middle East, drifting west over the Red Sea toward Egypt. Beneath the “heat dome,” sinking air has warmed to extreme levels, while ridding the sky of any cloud cover that could offer the respite of brief cooling shade. On Tuesday, the most intense part of the heat dome stretched from Israel and the eastern Mediterranean Sea to southern Israel and northern Saudi Arabia. That placed Baghdad under the core of the sweltering heat, while light clockwise winds around the high brought a gentle north-northwesterly breeze. In Baghdad, a northwesterly breeze would bring in slightly more humid air from Lake Tharthar, which would acutely reduce the air’s ability to warm up. But a more northerly component to the wind, as occurred, draws in slightly drier air. Temperatures this extreme heat the air up so much that it expands, meaning the height of a column of air grows taller in response to the warming. (It's the same reason an inflated balloon changes size based on the temperature.) The lower half of the atmosphere grew more than 280 feet taller than average on Tuesday thanks to the intense heating. That expansion also causes the air to push outward more, explaining how “high pressure” systems get their name. The high pressure ridge will shift southwest in the coming days, parking over central Egypt. Meanwhile, temperatures may warm into the upper 120s on Thursday over southeastern Mesopotamia near the Zagros Mountains in southwestern Iran. While heat records can occur thanks solely to natural variability, they are disproportionately more likely to occur thanks to warming effects of climate change. Moreover, the human contribution of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere has knocked the earth’s relative balance of cold-and-warm anomalies off-kilter, skewing the planet strongly hot. Several major international cities have notched their highest temperatures on record in the past several summers, including Paris, Montreal, Havana, Glasgow and San Francisco. Mustafa


To downplay the scale of the pandemic in the U.S., Trump inflates its scale everywhere else

cases for every million residents late last month. In fact, individual states in the United States have often seen more new cases per day than any individual state or territory in Australia, Mexico or Canada. That’s the main irony of Trump’s comments about the wall, of course: Mexico and Canada are probably more eager to keep out Americans than vice versa, given how much more widespread the virus is here. Again, the difference in scale is remarkable. The surge in Australia, for example, was largely a function of an outbreak in Victoria. At its peak, the state was seeing 533 new cases a day. In Canada, the province with the highest number of new cases on any given day was Quebec, which hit more than 1,100 — topping the high in Mexico City, where the seven-day average of new cases at one point hit 888. At one point last month, Florida saw a seven-day average of nearly 12,000 new cases. Again, this doesn’t improve if we adjust for population. The peak in Victoria hit 80 cases per million residents, and the peak in Quebec was 132. The highest number of new cases as a function of population in Mexico was in Baja California Sur, where at one point 162 new cases emerged for every million residents. In Florida, the high was more than three times that number — again, adjusted for population. It’s important to note that these numbers are dependent upon the number of people who are tested. In Mexico, limits on test availability mean that many cases are going unconfirmed. That’s true to some degree elsewhere, too, of course, including in hard-hit U.S. states both now and earlier in the pandemic. That said, on both raw and adjusted daily case totals, the worst-hit states or provinces in Australia, Canada and Mexico were surpassed at some point by at least half of the states in the United States. Forty-seven states and D.C. reached higher per-population daily cases than did Australia’s Victoria, for example. Again, this isn’t a particularly complicated line of argument from Trump. It’s misdirection, aimed at immersing the United States’ uniquely poor handling of the coronavirus into a murky puddle of inaccuracy. It’s an attempt to put his leadership on par with leaders in countries such as Japan that have been praised for their efforts to contain the virus. And it very quickly collapses under close examination.