Saudi crown prince on Khashoggi killing: ‘I get all the responsibility because it happened under my watch.’

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said he gets “all the responsibility” for the killing of royal court critic and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, but denied he had any prior knowledge of the plan to murder the journalist, according to a soon to air PBS Frontline documentary. “It happened under my watch,” Mohammed told Frontline’s Martin Smith in December, according to a trailer for the upcoming documentary. “I get all the responsibility because it happened under my watch.” Mohammed, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, has gone to great lengths to distance himself from the slaying of Khashoggi. The CIA has concluded with high confidence that the crown prince ordered Khashoggi’s assassination. On Oct. 2 last year, Khashoggi, an outspoken critic of Mohammed, entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain the documents needed to marry his Turkish fiancee. There, he was killed and dismembered by a team of 15 Saudi agents who had flown to Istanbul on a government plane, according to Turkish and Saudi prosecutors. A CIA report released in November concluded that Mohammed likely ordered the assassination because of Khashoggi’s highly visible criticism of the crown prince. Saudi officials deny that, saying the agents, one of whom was an autopsy expert, defied orders to bring Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia alive. When Mohammed, 34, emerged on the world stage, some Western leaders, commentators and investors considered him a progressive force that would liberalize and open up the oil-rich kingdom that was under strict authoritarian rule. Khashoggi’s death and it’s eventual link back to Mohammed damaged the prince’s glossy international reputation. In June, United Nations Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard, appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council, said the killing was an international crime. While the U.S. Senate has rebuked the kingdom for the killing, President Trump has defended Mohammed and said Khashoggi’s assassination should not interfere with America’s economic and strategic ties to Saudi Arabia. Eleven Saudi suspects are on trial for Khashoggi’s murder, though transparency surrounding those court proceedings remain murky. The trailer for the PBS documentary, called The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, set to air on Oct. 1, contains no footage or direct audio of Mohammed speaking. In the video, Smith narrates that he tracks down Mohammed at an electric car race two month’s after Khashoggi’s death. He asks how the killing could happen without Mohammed knowing about it. “We have 20 million


Lawsuit alleges lunch payment service used in local schools defrauded parents

Nationwide, about 2 million people with children in 30,000 schools use MySchoolBucks and may be affected by this lawsuit, Bennett said. While Heartland allegedly told users that school districts may require program fees, local school systems say they have never enforced such a rule. Fairfax County Public Schools doesn’t keep transaction fees for any of the district’s approximately 56,000 active MySchoolBucks accounts, said Lucy Caldwell, a schools spokesperson. A notice on the Montgomery County schools’ website says the district doesn’t receive income from providing MySchoolBucks. Gboyinde Onijala, a spokesperson for the district, said the message wasn’t posted in response to the lawsuit and has been on the page “for some time.” In a letter Prince George’s County Public Schools sent to families when it introduced MySchoolBucks in 2014, officials didn’t say the district would collect money from families to use the service. D.C. Public Schools does not collect transaction fees, either. Only 28 D.C. schools participate in the MySchoolBucks service. Bennett said Heartland has made attempts to quash the lawsuit, including trying to deposit $40,000 into the bank account Story connected to his MySchoolBucks service. Story didn’t give Heartland permission to put the money into his account and rejected the payment, Bennett said. “They took that information without his authorization and tried to put a bunch of money in his account and say, ‘Hey, this case has to go away now because we put all this money in your account,’ ” Bennett said. “We’ve seen this happen in a lot of cases, this effort by corporations to kill class actions.” Heartland has also limited the number of people who can participate in the lawsuit by disqualifying current users, Bennett said. In its updated Terms of Service, Heartland says users who accept the agreement and complete transactions through MySchoolBucks “will not be permitted to participate in the Story case as a class member.” “I think it’s outrageous that a corporation would take money from parents that the parents thought was going to their children’s school and then, when someone figured out what was going on, try to prevent those parents from going to court to try to get their money back and stop the company from doing this to other families,” Bennett said. A hearing for the case — which has been assigned in the District Court for the Middle District of Florida — has been set for Oct. 25. lauren.lumpkin@washpost.com


Hotels make room for honeybee colonies to create buzz about at-risk pollinators

without pollinators. Or they can support the cause by ordering a beeswax gin “Bee’s Knees” cocktail; for each one purchased, Fairmont donates a dollar to Pollinator Partnership, the world’s largest nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting pollinators. The properties emphasize that guests can take action without building a honeybee hive on their roof (in fact, installing a hive without proper training could do more harm than good to the bee population). “There’s so many things an individual can do, even without a lot of outdoor space or time, to help sustain the populations of pollinators,” Chung said. “Plant a pollinator-friendly plant in your garden or on your windowsill. Reduce or avoid using pesticides that are potentially dangerous. Put up a small solitary ‘bee hotel’ [a wooden structure to serve as a nesting place for wild bees] so they have somewhere to lay their eggs.” Accor Group, Fairmont’s parent company, recently did just that, opening its first tiny bee hotel, arguably the most adorable lodging in Paris, at its headquarters. Chung was sent to do a honey tasting for the opening and was thrilled to see such excitement about and attention paid to the cause. “There’s 4,000 people in that office” at Accor headquarters, she says. “And they were talking about sustainability and the beekeeping program at Fairmont — that had never happened before.” Travel industry professionals are teaming up with beekeeping experts like the Bee Squad, the Best Bees Co. and Bee Local to create memorable experiences for guests and safe spaces for honeybees to thrive in all kinds of locations: oceanfront at the Terranea Resort in Los Angeles, in the city center at New York Hilton Midtown, at quaint Cape Cod B&Bs Aerie House and Sesuit Harbor House, atop luxury hotels such as Taj Boston and the Merrion in Dublin, and in multiple locations across Qatar, thanks to a partnership between Mandarin Oriental Doha and Bu Saif Apiaries. When you think about it, it makes sense that honeybees are at the heart of a travel-related trend — after all, they are an incredibly social species with an intricate community structure, always on the lookout for an authentic, hyperlocal meal. travel@washpost.com More from Travel: How hotels are making it easier to stay fit while traveling It’s all in the (fine) details for upscale hotels seeking to elevate guest experiences At hotel gift shops, local artisans’ wares replace kitschy keychains and T-shirts


Timeline: The alarming pattern of actions by Trump included in whistleblower allegations

Zelenskyy showed willingness to ‘play ball’ on the issues that had been publicly aired by Mr. Lutsenko and Mr. Giuliani." May 16. May 19. In an interview with Fox News, Trump explicitly May 20. June 13. The chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission subsequently June 20 June 21. July 12. Axios reports that Trump and Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats are at odds, with Trump telling confidants that he wants to remove Coats from his position. Mid-July. July 16. July 18. July 22. Shokin July 23. July 24. Mueller testifies before Congress. July 25, morning. The whistleblower wasn’t on the call but was informed that about a half-dozen people were on the call. That group included T. Ulrich Brechbuhl from the State Department, an aide to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. July 25, evening. Emphasis added by the whistleblower. Days following July 25. The whistleblower claims to have been told by White House officials that they were directed by White House lawyers to move the transcript from the normal documentation archive and to “a separate electronic system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature” — a move one official called an “act of abuse.” In an appendix, the whistleblower adds that officials said “this was ‘not the first time’ under this Administration that a Presidential transcript was placed into this codeword-level system solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive — rather than national security sensitive — information." July 26. OMB reiterates that aid to Ukraine is suspended, per Trump. July 28. Trump announces that Coats will resign in August. July 31. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin speak by phone. Early August. Aug. 2. Aug. 3. Zelensky announces that he will travel to the United States to meet with Trump in Washington in September. Aug. 8. Trump announces Joseph Maguire will take Coats’s job as director of national intelligence in an acting capacity. In doing so, he bypasses Sue Gordon, who had been Coats’s No. 2 at the directorate of national intelligence and was a career intelligence official with bipartisan support. Gordon would later resign. Aug. 9. “I think he’s going to make a deal with President Putin, and he will be invited to the White House,” Trump said. “And we look forward to seeing him. He’s already been invited to the White House, and he wants to come. And


Rebuilt Beach Drive to reopen Friday in Northwest Washington

2016, Beach Drive’s deterioration was so bad that temporary repairs, including filling potholes and patching cracks, were no longer cost-effective or efficient. A bike ride on the nearby trail was just as bumpy because of tree roots cracking the asphalt and weed overgrowth. Something had to be done, park officials said. The road’s last complete reconstruction had been more than 25 years ago, which is how long officials say most roads last. So, the road got a complete facelift. Crews excavated the entire area and put in a new gravel base before laying new asphalt. Six bridges were rehabilitated and parking areas rebuilt. New traffic safety features were added, includingguardrails and centerline rumble strips to keep drivers from drifting into oncoming traffic. About 300 new trees were planted, and 14 new bio-retention ponds were installed to reduce storm water runoff from Beach Drive and improve water quality in the park. In the final phase alone, work included the installation of 11,000 tons of asphalt and more than 10,000 linear feet of culvert, and the replacement of more than 29,000 linear feet of curbs and road gutters. “We did reconstruct the road from the ground up,” Washburn said. “It was a pain point, but we got through it and the road is so much nicer now. It is a much more pleasant drive.” The new road is such an improvement that drivers have been caught speeding on the portions already open, prompting the Park Service to add more safety features. This summer, crews went back to two locations to install speed tables, markings and signs to get motorists to obey the 25-mph speed limit and slow down as they approach busy crosswalks near the National Zoo and popular trails. Washburn said the project stayed on budget — $32.9 million — and kept the historical nature and footprint of the road. Garlow, however, said she has noticed more wear and tear on the roads where traffic was detoured during the shutdown. She said she hopes investments are made in fixing them, too. Other big commuter routes such as 16th Street and Connecticut Avenue, which parallel the park, were said to handle the bulk of the spillover traffic during the closure, but some D.C. residents said neighborhood roads also suffered. “It’s been tough. Getting out of my neighborhood can take 20 minutes,” Garlow said. “A lot more traffic — and all day —


Life sentence imposed in killing of artist at edge of Capitol Hill

A D.C. Superior Court judge imposed a life sentence Friday on the man convicted in the killing of an artist found two and a half years ago in an apartment on the northeastern edge of Capitol Hill. Judge Juliet McKenna sentenced El Hadji Toure, 30, formerly of Laurel, Md., in the death of Corrina Mehiel, 34, of Burnsville, N.C., according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia. He was convicted in March of this year of murder and other offenses, the prosecutor’s office said. Under the sentence there was no possibility of release, the prosecutor’s office said. The victim and her attacker did not know each other, according to the prosecutors. She had been staying in a sublet basement apartment in a rowhouse in the 600 block of 14th Street NE, while she was in Washington for a couple of weeks while working on an art show at the Corcoran Gallery at George Washington University, the prosecutors said. On March 20 as she packed, an assailant broke into the apartment, attacked her and took her belongings, the prosecutors said. Her body was found the next day. Prosecutors said she had been bound and stabbed. Martin.Weil@washpost.com


Skywatch: What’s happening in the heavens in October

Draw back the cosmic curtain on October’s night sky to see the month begin with the sliver of a young moon in the darkened southwestern heavens on Oct. 1. By the next evening, the moon gains more heft. The waxing moon approaches the quite bright Jupiter (-2 magnitude) on Oct. 3 and, from our earthly perspective, this young moon and Jupiter pull within 2 degrees of each other, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory. In clear night skies, note that Jupiter has company, as the red supergiant star Antares appears to the lower right of our largest planet. The fattening first-quarter moon sashays Oct. 5 to Saturn (0.5 magnitude, bright, but dimmer than Jupiter.) The ringed planet is to the upper left of Jupiter. The moon snuggles with Saturn that evening in the handle region of the constellation Sagittarius’ tea kettle shape. At the end of the month, the young moon ghoulishly treats our eyes to another dance with large, gaseous Jupiter on Oct. 31. Very low on the evening’s west-southwest horizon, Venus emerges from a summer break, but stays low until December. Mars The Orionids peak on the evening of Oct. 21-22. For this year’s Orionids, don’t expect much. It is predicted to be a small shower, with about 20 meteors each hour at peak, according to the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. Shooting stars are tiny bits of comet dust left behind as comets whiz by the sun. For the Orionids, it’s specks of Halley’s comet. Earth strikes these dusty trails, and these bits burn in our atmosphere, providing a free autumnal show. If you’re persistent, wait outside during the later evening and look up, you’ll probably see a few meteors in an hour. On Oct. 22, the last quarter moon rises at 12:37 a.m., in the eastern time zone, according to the observatory. The moon’s light will probably wash out some of the shower’s peak. ●Oct. 4 ●Oct. 5 ●Oct. 5 ●Oct. 5 ●Oct. 6 ●Oct. 7 ●Oct. 12 ●Oct. 20 ●Oct. 22 ●Nov. 1


Chinese leaders can’t control the weather for their big 70-year bash. But they’re still trying.

skies are pristine Tuesday, the Environment Ministry has called on all municipalities to swing into emergency-response mode. The China Meteorological Administration entered “a special working state” on Thursday, continuing through to Wednesday, for nonstop monitoring of the parade weather. That may not be enough. Some experts expect the authorities to start “cloud seeding” — spraying salt or chemicals into clouds, usually from aircraft, to encourage condensation and make it rain faster than it otherwise would. “The most likely option for Beijing is to create rain through cloud seeding one or two days before the parade,” said Tian Pengfei, an atmospheric scientist at Lanzhou University in China’s sandstorm-prone northwest. “If done earlier than that, air pollutants may start to accumulate again and possibly lead to a new round of smog.” Cloud seeding and other weather-modification measures have become relatively commonplace before big events in China. Authorities spent $30 million shooting salt and minerals into the sky before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and then spent more than $1.2 billion between 2012 and 2017 trying to clear the skies for important events like the Group of 20 summit in Hangzhou and a Belt and Road Forum in Beijing. In 2015, China’s top economic agency announced a plan to build numerous weather-modification laboratories around Beijing. By 2020, it wanted “sophisticated weather-modification systems capable of increasing artificial rainfall and snowfall” and giving it more control over the weather. It has not given an update on its progress. Other pollution-prone capitals such as Bangkok and Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur also use cloud seeding to try to disperse hazardous particles, and drought-afflicted areas in countries including Australia and the United States also sometimes try to induce rain in this way. But there may be yet another quandary facing Beijing. It might not have enough clouds in which to plant the rain seeds. “The problem is that the autumn in Beijing is rather dry, and we might not have enough clouds to make it rain,” said Huang Binxiang, an air pollution researcher at China Agricultural University. That would mean the meteorologists would need to try to imitate rain by spraying water from aircraft to try to wash the small particles out of the air. “I have also heard some crazy proposals to use giant fans to blow away the smog,” Huang said. “I wouldn’t say it is impossible, but it has not worked so far as I know.” anna.fifield@washpost.com


BSO, after choppy summer, embraces fate and voodoo in exuberant opener

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra opened its season at Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, its home house, on Friday night. This sounds like a routine statement, yet it contains a world of news: As recently as last week — after the musicians had been locked out by management all summer, and in the midst of negotiations that didn’t seem to be bringing the two sides any closer together — it seemed highly likely that the performance, if not, indeed, the season, would be postponed. So when conductor Marin Alsop and the musicians took the stage in this warm and homey auditorium, they were greeted with a long ovation. “I’m not sure I can talk,” said a visibly moved Alsop, after leading the national anthem that orchestras around the country play at the start of their seasons. The issue has been whether the orchestra can afford to continue in its current form. The management avers that a 52-week season is no longer viable, and that the orchestra needs to reduce to a 40-week season to survive. Musicians argue that cutting back the season would lower prestige and drive away players. This put management in the odd position of trying to prove to the world just how badly it had managed its money so far, canceling its summer season only weeks after announcing the program, and then locking out its musicians for the 10-week duration. The new agreement is a one-year contract extension that simply kicks the problems down the road. The contract is for 50 weeks (the lockout accounts for the two missed weeks), but provides pay for a 40-week season; the other 10 weeks are being covered by a $1.6 million donation from “special friends of the BSO.” There is no guarantee that those special friends are going to come forward next year. The contract stipulates that management will hire new musicians to fill existing vacancies; the board will create a Vision Committee with musicians to plan for the orchestra’s future; and there will be no strike and no lockout through next September. Negotiations, one presumes, will continue. All of this background puts any concert under a kind of existential filter. What is the purpose of the orchestra? How necessary is it to the city? How glad are people that it’s back? The answer to the last seemed to be “very”: The Baltimore audience, which always seems to me more relaxed and


Wildlife corridors need legislative support

The Post’s Sept 27 news article “Study: Connecting habitats has long-lasting ecological effects ” rightly highlighted the effectiveness of protecting wildlife corridors in the United States and around the world to save biodiversity. With 1 million species threatened with extinction, according to the recent U.N. Global Assessment Report, protecting wildlife corridors along migration routes and other priority areas is a no-brainer. The good news is that policymakers of both parties increasingly support wildlife corridors. The Wildlife Corridors Conservation Act would create a system of wildlife corridors on federal public land and provide funding for states, tribes and private citizens to protect their wildlife corridors. America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act has language that provides $50 million per year for wildlife crossings. And, this year, 11 states introduced, and three of those states passed, bills to protect wildlife corridors. The growing support for legislation to safeguard wildlife corridors gives us hope that politicians can work together to protect our precious wildlife and solve difficult conservation problems. Susan Holmes The writer is the federal policy director for Wildlands Network. Read more letters to the editor.


Jamal Khashoggi: A missing voice, a growing chorus

[This story has been optimized for offline reading on our apps. For a richer experience, you can find the full version of this story here. An Internet connection is required.] By Fred Ryan (Read in Arabic) By David Ignatius By Hatice Cengiz By Karen Attiah By Recep Tayyip Erdogan By Robert Menendez By Asli Aydintasbas By Jason Rezaian By David Von Drehle By Ezzedine C. Fishere (Read in Arabic) By Iyad el-Baghdadi (Read in Arabic) By Hala Al-Dosari (Read in Arabic) By Tawakkol Karman (Read in Arabic) By Tamara Cofman Wittes By Mohamed Soltan Portrait illustration by David Despau for The Washington Post; Based on a photo by the Asahi Shimbun


Forever 21 files for bankruptcy, will close 350 stores worldwide amid restructuring

Forever 21, the fast-fashion retailer known for trendy, low-priced clothing, has become the latest mall giant to file for bankruptcy as it struggles to adapt to changing consumer appetites and a retail landscape dominated by online shopping. The 35-year-old retailer will close 350 stores as it pulls its business from 40 countries. Nearly half the closures will be in the United States, though it did not identify specific locations; the rest will be scattered throughout Asia, Europe and Canada. It will continue to operate in Mexico and Latin America. “This was an important and necessary step to secure the future of our Company, which will enable us to reorganize our business and reposition Forever 21,” said Linda Chang, the company’s executive vice president. In its bankruptcy filing, the company said it owes $1 billion to $10 billion to more than 100,000 creditors, including Simon Property Group (owed $8.1 million), Brookfield Properties (owed $5.3 million) and FedEx (owed $3.4 million), filings show. The retailer was founded in 1984 in Los Angeles by Do Won Chang and Jin Sook Chang. The husband and wife team saved for three years before opening their first store, originally called Fashion 21. From the beginning, they centered the business on affordable, of-the-moment clothing, much of which came from wholesale closeouts that allowed the retailer to get its merchandise directly from the manufacturers at a lower cost. That first year, it made $700,000 in sales. At its peak, in 2015, revenue exceeded $4 billion. “Forever 21 gives hope and inspiration to people who come here with almost nothing,” Do Won told the Los Angeles Times in 2010. “And that is a reward that humbles me: the fact that immigrants coming to America, much like I did, can come into a Forever 21 and know that all of this was started by a simple Korean immigrant with a dream.” The company expanded rapidly from there, opening locations in dozens of countries. The stores also got bigger; the average Forever 21 store is 38,000 square feet, according to the company’s website. Over time, the family-owned company also expanded beyond its core customers — teenagers and women in their 20s — by moving into men’s and kids’ clothing, makeup, and home decor. “There was a time when literally everything in my closet was Forever 21,” said Kasey Meredith, a 25-year-old brands reporter who started shopping at Forever 21 in middle


These two places symbolized Venezuela’s strength. Now they epitomize its implosion

the water. She also worries that she lives in a flammable stew. “If some of those tanks explode, we all explode,” she says. According to the Manatará Ecological Foundation, which studies the contamination of Lake Maracaibo, oil caused 30 cases of asthma and dermatitis among people living on the east bank between 2017 and 2019. At the Cabimas Hospital on that shore, 80 percent of the outpatient visits are associated with oil spills and gas fumes, the foundation says. Doctors warned Jessica Chavez, whose 8-year-old son, José, has suffered from asthma for five years. “They have told me to take him away,” says Chavez. “But we live here. Where else we can go?” The shortage of gasoline in Venezuela's oil capital is perhaps one of the greatest ironies of this place. According to the National Assembly, Venezuela's refining capacity is at 10 percent, which represents 120,000 barrels per day, yet internal consumption is 200,000 barrels per day. (OPEC figures from last year show internal consumption is more than twice that amount.) So residents line up for hours, even days, to fill up their vehicles' tanks at official stations. On the black market, gas sells at 300,000 times its official, state-assigned value. The fall of oil prices in 2014 was a bad enough hit for PDVSA, already an organization in crisis. The U.S. sanctions from January could be the final blow. Since then, PDVSA has been unable to access international markets, hampering the purchase of ultralight oil needed to refine its heavy crude into gasoline. Theoretically, experts say, the oil industry can recover, but it will require attracting a large amount of foreign investment — money that, as long as Maduro remains in office, is mostly blocked from coming here. For Maracaibo, PDVSA was the engine that moved the economy. During international oil fairs, hotels flooded with business executives. Once a year, paint companies were hired by PDVSA to put a fresh coat on the company’s buildings. And every Friday, as soon as they got their salaries, oil workers flocked to the famous flea market. But Venezuela’s centralized economy ground that engine to a halt, and the ensuing economic crisis brought hyperinflation, malnutrition and rolling blackouts, as the majority of oil revenue went directly to Caracas and never returned here. “Despite being the capital of a prominent state,” says a famous folk-music lyric from the 1960s, Maracaibo “suffers from national oblivion.”


Hollywood loves triumphant journalism stories. This isn’t one of them.

Hollywood loves heroic journalists. Brave reporters, editors and publishers take on powerful, corrupt institutions in films such as “All the President’s Men,” “Spotlight” and “The Post.” Relentless determination triumphs in the final scenes as the news heroes drag the ugly truth into the light of day. Presidents and prelates are toppled; wars are hastened to their ends. Based on actual events? Yes — and yet deeply misleading if you draw general lessons from these exemplary cases. Journalism that changes the world is rare. More common is journalism that changes nothing. The brave, intrepid reporting on Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder fits this category. The antagonist was certainly formidable. Few institutions can rival the power of Saudi Arabia’s royal family, which counts its wealth in trillions — with an emphatic capital T. The family’s corruption is bone deep. The kingdom began lying on the day of Khashoggi’s disappearance and never stopped, even as bit by gruesome bit the truth was learned and published. We now know that Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist living in self-imposed exile, was lured into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018, ostensibly to receive paperwork allowing him to be remarried in accordance with Saudi Arabian law. Hailing from a prominent family — his grandfather was personal physician to the king; an uncle was a billionaire arms dealer — Khashoggi was overconfident of his safety. Having criticized the thuggery of his country’s new leadership in his writings for The Post and other outlets, he was a marked man, harassed online by Saudi troll farms, stalked by hackers of his friend’s cellphone. We now know that an elite assassination squad had flown into Turkey to meet Khashoggi. We know that a forensic pathologist was part of the team. His job was to cut the victim into pieces. The CIA concluded that the murder was authorized at the highest level of Saudi government, and a U.N. investigation concurred. In December, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution holding Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally responsible, and Time magazine featured the slain journalist on its “Person of the Year” cover. This is the point in the movie when the music would begin to swell. But in real life, it was the moment when the U.S. government fell into abject and shameful silence. After months of hemming and hawing (“It could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge


Khashoggi and I were targeted for our journalism. But I still have hope.

Though we had our differences, Jamal Khashoggi and I were kindred spirits. We both wrote for The Post’s Global Opinions section, we both believed in the ideals of democracy and free speech, and we were both targeted by authoritarian regimes for our journalism. In 2014, while I was serving as The Post’s Tehran bureau chief, my wife and I were abducted from our home in Tehran by Iranian authorities and taken to Evin prison. I was held as a hostage by the regime for nearly a year and a half. It was an uncomfortably intimate encounter with authoritarian thugs that left me deeply scarred. I was eventually released in 2016, after spending 544 days in prison. By the fall of 2018, I felt as though I had nearly put my life back together — but I hadn’t entirely settled. In my first months back at The Post, because of the high-profile nature of my detention, I felt like little more than an unwilling poster child for the perils of being a contemporary journalist. To rebuild my confidence and do work that felt important, I dedicated much of my writing to telling the stories of other reporters who found themselves the targets of unreasonable governments that couldn’t abide free expression. I wrote stories about journalists threatened, harassed, detained and in some cases murdered for the work that they do. I never imagined that I would be writing columns about a fellow Post contributor whom I was just getting to know. I was attending a lunch at the National Press Club on Oct. 2, 2018, when I learned that Jamal had gone missing. I received a text message from a mutual friend, someone who had hosted Jamal and me at her home for an unconventional Ramadan iftar several months earlier. “Apparently, his son has had no word. In the dark. Very odd that Jamal has not tweeted in 20 hrs,” she wrote. As the hours dragged on, I quietly feared the worst while still hoping for the best. But when Saudi authorities claimed Jamal had left the consulate, although the facility’s own closed-circuit-camera footage showed no signs of him exiting the building, my hopes began to dim. That afternoon, my editors asked me to write our first piece about Jamal’s disappearance, an assignment I accepted without hesitation, but one I immediately wished I had never been given. As grim news continued to


Arab political exiles face a bleak reality. Could there be hope?

the 2011 Arab uprisings threatened rulers with change that was too swift and too thorough, and the autocrats pushed back forcefully. Reformers who escaped outright arrest often found themselves fired from jobs and banned from publishing (as Jamal was), banned from travel or forced to watched their nongovernmental organizations declared illegal. Those who were able to flee did. Jamal gave up on his government’s will to change later than many; but his insider knowledge of the Saudi regime made clear that speaking up required getting out. The situation today looks bleak for these Arab political exiles and the ideals they fight for. President Trump’s visa ban on citizens from countries such as Yemen, Iran and Syria, dramatic cuts to refugee admissions, and recalcitrance in providing temporary protected status for Syrians prevents many fleeing persecution from finding shelter in the United States, once considered a leading refuge. And then there’s the continued impunity of those who killed Jamal, and what it portends. A Saudi exile who fled to safety and legal residence in the United States was targeted and murdered by his own government. He was lured by Saudi diplomatic personnel to a consular facility and killed there; yet the United States has not even expelled a single Saudi diplomat in response. Instead of calling for justice, the Trump administration has worked assiduously to help the Saudi leadership avoid accountability for what was, as U.N. special rapporteur Agnes Callamard confirmed this summer, an act of state. Without accountability for Jamal’s murder, dictators will have free rein to silence their dissidents, and activists will have nowhere safe to go. Arab dictators like to call reformers fools and knaves, and insist that the Arab Spring brought only violence and extremism. Yet Tunisia just held its second free and fair presidential election, evidence of a still-fragile democratic transition. In Algeria and Sudan, a new generation of grass-roots activists has risen up against corruption and military rule. The renewed street demonstrations in Egyptian cities this month reveal that even intense repression cannot squelch dissent forever. Events such as these since Jamal’s death are reminders that the myth of authoritarian stability and inevitability in the Middle East is gone forever. Although Jamal never got the chance, Arab political exiles can still hope and work for a day when they might be able to “redeem this absence” and return home. Read more about Jamal Khashoggi: A missing


Trump’s Saudi Arabia policy has the wrong kind of teeth

Read more about Jamal Khashoggi: A missing voice, a growing chorus Fred Ry Hatice C Ignatius: What happened on the way to Jamal Khashoggi’s horrifying final seconds? Attiah: Let the world hear Jamal Khashoggi’s last words in Arabic Robert Menendez: Trump betrayed U.S. moral leadership with Saudi Arabia. So Congress had to act.


How Khashoggi gave Arab dissidents mentorship — and a community

took a stake in me without premeditated political calculus, just as he did with other Arab voices around the world. Jamal’s support extended far beyond the personal. For the dissident Arab communities in exile and in the region, he offered an integral element that had been missing since the fall of the Arab Spring. Unlike many other dissidents, Jamal had experience championing reforms from within circles of power. He spoke often of the ways good people brought about positive change from within faulty systems. This made him unique, and his message reverberated in the region and resonated with people in differing camps. Jamal articulated his reformist and progressive — but by no means revolutionary — political ideals for the region loud and clear, both privately and publicly. He had the knowledge and insight to back up his ideas, and most important, he had a pulse on both the corridors of power and the streets. In self-imposed exile, he began to cultivate around him a community of surrogates who vocalized a more nuanced narrative of the Arab world and its struggles. Together, Jamal and this community of Arab voices began to deconstruct the reductionist narrative promoted by the Arab world’s authoritarian regimes. Jamal himself embodied their worst nightmare: a pluralistic and nuanced progressive. But it was not just his ideas that led to his gruesome murder. It was also who he was — a gentle giant with a penchant for freedom and the ability to galvanize others. Jamal would not be with me the next time I would drive up to New York. It was the weekend following his disappearance in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, and I was frantically refreshing my Twitter feed, hoping the worst was not true. I was terrified of the possibility of having to break the news of my friend’s murder to his loved ones. I mustered up the energy and courage to push forward as I reached New York — the first but definitely not the last time I channeled my inner Jamal. Rest in power, my friend. Your legacy lives on. Read more about Jamal Khashoggi: A missing voice, a growing chorus Ezzedine Fishere: Jamal Khashoggi symbolized the promise of reconciling political Islam and democracy Asli Aydintasbas: The liberal world order crumbled a year ago. We’re still reeling. Iyad el-Baghdadi: Saudi Arabia is suffocating the Arabic public sphere. We must fight back. David Jason


The Daily 202: Warning flares from Tom Bossert and Adam Kinzinger show the risks of Trump’s hyperbolic defense

preparing to activate an impeachment-focused war room: THE NEW WORLD ORDER: -- Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia denied ordering the murder of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi, despite a CIA assessment that found he probably authorized it. -- To mark the first anniversary of Khashoggi’s death on Wednesday, The Post’s Global Opinions section collected a number of essays on the journalist's legacy and the quests that animated his life. -- Yemen's Houthi rebels claim to have killed or wounded 500 Saudi-led coalition fighters and captured 2,000 in a major assault near the border between the two nations. They released footage they said shows hundreds of captured troops and destroyed Saudi vehicles. -- Amid growing tensions with Iran, the U.S. Air Force shifted its Middle East command center from Qatar to South Carolina. -- American officials are warning of a rising threat from an al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria. -- Dismal turnout in Afghanistan’s presidential election could weaken the country’s next government. -- Exit polls show Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz may have survived a scandal that forced him to call snap elections. -- Several people were seriously injured in another anti-China demonstration in Hong Kong, including an Indonesian journalist hit in the eye by a projectile while live-streaming the event for her publication. -- Thousands rallied in Moscow to demand the release of protesters jailed during political demonstrations over the summer. -- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson denied any wrongdoing over allegations that an American businesswoman, Jennifer Arcuri, received money and perks from his London office when he was the city’s mayor. DIVIDED AMERICA: -- A growing number of migrants are using riskier tactics to cross the U.S. border after being blocked by Trump’s immigration policies. -- While Trump touts his border wall, Los Angeles will unveil a monument to migrants. -- The Los Angeles Police Department launched an investigation into how one of its recruitment ads landed on alt-right website Breitbart. -- Houston police are building a case against the alleged killer of a trailblazing Sikh sheriff’s deputy shot twice in the back of the head while returning to his patrol car. -- One year after the shooting at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, community members have struggled to do something constructive with their tragedy as they remain divided on whether politics should guide their reaction. -- Members of the billionaire Sackler family, owners of Purdue


Man is fatally shot in Shaw neighborhood of Northwest D.C.

A man was fatally shot Sunday night in the Shaw neighborhood in Northwest Washington. The incident happened around 10:21 p.m. in the 600 block of S Street near Rhode Island Avenue NW. The victim was later identified as Tahlil Byrd, 19, of Southeast Washington. Police said the victim was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead. The D.C. region has had 222 homicides so far this year, according to tracking by The Washington Post. Of those, 129 were in the District. dana.hedgpeth@washpost.com


Saudi king’s bodyguard shot dead in private dispute, state news agency says

BEIRUT — Saudi King Salman’s personal bodyguard was killed over the weekend in what the official Saudi Press Agency said was a personal altercation with a friend. Maj. Gen. Abdulaziz al-Faghm, who served as the personal bodyguard for both current King Salman and his predecessor King Abdullah, was at a friend’s house in the port city of Jiddah when another friend, Mamdouh al-Ali, came by and an argument ensued, SPA said, citing a police spokesman. Neither the spokesman nor state media gave details on the nature of the argument. Ali left and returned with a gun and shot Faghm, the police spokesman said, also injuring the houseowner’s brother and a Filipino houseworker. Ali was then killed in a shootout with police officers, five of whom were wounded by his indiscriminate fire, the news agency reported. The longtime bodyguard later died in the hospital, where we was taken to treat his injuries. Saudis took to Twitter, mourning the passing of Faghm with poetry and black-and-white photos of him standing behind King Salman and bending down to tie the king’s shoelaces. A graffiti artist in northeastern Saudi Arabia painted his sharp profile on a wall. “You’ve left and your memory will remain eternal in our eyes,” it said. In an obituary on Monday, Riyadh-based Arab News identified Ali’s father as a Shura Council member. He offered his condolences on Twitter to the nation, the royal family and Faghm’s relatives, and described the killer as “treacherous.” The news of the death came a day before a “60 Minutes” interview with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who denied any involvement in last year’s killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi but said he takes full responsibility for it. “When a crime is committed against a Saudi citizen by officials working for the Saudi government, as a leader I must take responsibility. This was a mistake, and I must take all actions to avoid such a thing in the future,” the crown prince told his interviewer. sarah.dadouch@washpost.com


If you’re an American who loves kiwi, jackfruit or jicama, you have this 96-year-old woman to thank

made all the difference with harried supermarket produce buyers in search of stock. “Frieda endeared herself to the produce industry at large by telling a story with each item, and that has become their company’s trademark,” says Richard McKellogg, director of produce merchandising for Lowes Foods in Winston-Salem, N.C. “Shoppers are maneuvering the aisles with hundreds of choices. Frieda’s tells the story and provides the information to the retailers with a level of detail and knowledge that I could never personally keep up with myself. They took uncommon items — spaghetti squash, sugar snap peas — and made them common.” Sometimes it was as simple as slapping a sticker onto that spaghetti squash that explained how to cook it, a surprisingly revolutionary idea at the time. If you’ve ever wondered why you often find wonton wrappers, tofu and bok choy grouped together in the produce department, that’s a result of a retailer who asked Frieda to come up with a way to showcase fresh Asian vegetables as part of a complete meal. When food writer Marian Burros called Frieda in 1979 to find out what was new on the horizon, Burros ended up writing a story for The Washington Post about an exciting new cross between the English pea and snow pea: the sugar snap pea. “People are calling it the greatest new vegetable in 50 years,” wrote Burros, “and the first shipment is scheduled to arrive in Washington before the weekend.” “This article comes out about this new vegetable,” Karen recalls, “and suddenly everyone’s showing up at the A&P grocery store clamoring for it. The buyer called my mom and said, ‘Frieda, why didn’t you tell me?’ Of course, my mom knew from the moment she ate her first sugar snap pea that they were going to be the next big thing, she just needed to get the retailers to buy in. But today, everything has shifted in terms of consumer demand, and a retailer would never think of not having something in stock that was being written about in the press.” While Frieda’s might be known as a trendsetter, the company has learned that trendiness isn’t enough. In the produce industry, a long shelf life is critical to success, too. (One hard lesson: Pre-peeled kiwifruit is not a good idea.) It’s not surprising the lengthy list of Frieda’s products, from jicama to sunchokes to the kiwifruit that started


U.S. imposes sanctions on Russian tycoon, along with his yacht and private jets

The Trump administration placed new sanctions on a Russian tycoon who the Treasury Department said is a prime financier of a troll farm that used social media to influence the 2018 midterm elections. The Treasury Department’s sanctions on Yevgeniy Prigozhin and six employees of the infamous Internet Research Agency targeted his assets, including three private planes and a yacht used by his family for vacations. The Treasury Department said the newest sanctions are the first made under an executive order President Trump signed a year ago as a warning to countries interfering in U.S. elections. But it underscored concerns about foreign influence in the 2020 elections. “Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of American democracy, and we will use our authorities against anyone seeking to undermine our processes and subversively influence voters,” said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a statement. “The administration will work tirelessly to safeguard our electoral process and will aggressively pursue any other foreign actor that attempts to interfere in the 2020 elections.” The United States previously has imposed sanctions on Prigozhin, though he has denied having any involvement in the Internet Research Agency. Prigozhin is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Internet Research Agency was indicted by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III on charges of interfering in the 2016 election. The company, which is based in St. Petersburg, employs Russians who have posed as Americans on social media pages and websites and who posted extremist messages on racial issues, sexual identity and guns that have fomented division in U.S. politics. Earlier this year, the U.S. Cyber Command shut down Internet access at the firm’s St. Petersburg facility in the hours before the 2018 midterms and for a few days afterward, sources told The Washington Post. In a statement on the Russian version of Facebook, Prigozhin said at the time, “I cannot comment on the work of the Internet Research Agency in any way because I have no relation to it.” The Treasury Department said the Internet Research Agency deployed numerous ruses in the 2018 midterms to undermine the vote. They included a staged video and a statement on a website called the Internet Research Agency American Division discrediting candidates considered hostile to Russia. The Treasury Department said the Internet Research Agency attempted to influence the 2018 midterms through videos and by posting extremist views, but said there “was no indication that


Seize this moment in Sudan

Rebecca Hamilton is an associate professor at American University Washington College of Law. She is the author of “Fighting for Darfur: Public Action and the Struggle to Stop Genocide.” She covered Sudan for The Post from 2010-2011. Sudan is in the midst of a once-in-a-generation moment. Courageous and persistent pro-democracy protesters, who broke the grip on power that president Omar Hassan al-Bashir had held for three decades, have now succeeded in bringing civilian reformers into leadership positions. The significance of this moment might be overlooked by anyone who expects a democratic transition to be heralded by a headline-making event akin to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The democratic opening of Sudan (population 42 million) is equivocal, precarious — but no less historic. In Khartoum, military commanders sit alongside civilian officials in a transitional arrangement that makes everyone uneasy. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemeti, is on the power-sharing sovereign council that will lead the country until elections scheduled for 2022. Hemeti was a commander of the Janjaweed militia that devastated the Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit communities of Darfur in western Sudan over a decade ago. He now heads a proxy militia that was responsible for massacres of pro-democracy protesters in June. No one should doubt that any and all democratic progress could be destroyed upon his command. And yet. Even as Hemeti sits on the sovereign council, the prime minister chosen by the pro-democracy protesters, economist Abdalla Hamdok, has forged ahead with building a cabinet of technocrats more diverse than Sudan has ever seen. On Tuesday, the nation’s new minister of justice, Nasredeen Abdulbari, appeared on behalf of his government at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva: “We believe peace can only be achieved if we address the root causes of Sudan’s wars, which are the marginalization by the state of the peripheries.” For Sudanese and all who follow Sudan, it is impossible to overstate how extraordinary it is to hear such a sentence uttered publicly by a Sudanese official. From British colonialism onward, those on the periphery — what is now South Sudan, along with the Three Areas, Darfur and East Sudan — have been excluded from power. Decades of war and the associated deaths of millions of Sudanese flow from this common root cause. What makes the acknowledgment of this reality all the more remarkable is that Abdulbari is himself of Fur ethnicity. Back


Trump’s Japan saga shows how little was gained from his go it alone approach

PRESIDENT TRUMP has been fixated on Japan’s alleged exploitation of the United States for decades. Starting in the mid-1980s, he criticized Japan for protecting its markets unfairly against U.S. products while this country helped protect it from the Soviet Union and other threats. He took out a newspaper advertisement in 1987, claiming that “for decades, Japan and others have been taking advantage of the United States,” as a New York Times report reminds us. As historian Jennifer M. Miller of Dartmouth College has argued in a study, the origin of Mr. Trump’s entire outlook on foreign policy and economics may be attributed in large part to his response to Japan’s rise from the ashes of World War II. His grievances against Japan, and his belief that tariffs could remedy them, amount to a template that he has applied, as president, to countries as different as China and Germany. And so there is a special significance in the fact that Mr. Trump has just concluded a new trade agreement with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan. Consider it a test of what happened when the erstwhile New York real estate developer finally got to act on his long-standing theory. Answer: not much. After threatening Japan with tariffs on auto exports to the United States — the largest category of Japanese goods, worth $51 billion in 2018 — Mr. Trump extracted from Mr. Abe a promise (subject to parliamentary approval) to give U.S. beef, pork and other agricultural goods the same improved access the Obama administration had negotiated in the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal. In return, Mr. Trump essentially gave Mr. Abe his word of honor that he won’t impose tariffs or import quotas while the two sides continue wider talks. Mr. Abe must be a trusting man. He has to be, given Japan’s dependence on the United States for defense and other support. Still, he also can claim a victory for his own strategy of joining a deal with other Pacific Rim nations, equivalent to the TPP, that excluded the United States, and thus made it more difficult for U.S. agricultural producers to compete for access to Japan’s notoriously closed market. In short, the episode shows how little was gained from Mr. Trump’s decision to go it alone in trade, as opposed to continuing with a broad multilateral approach that would have accrued allies — Japan included — to work together against


In ‘60 Minutes’ interview, Saudi crown prince denies ordering Khashoggi killing

ISTANBUL — Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia told “60 Minutes” that he takes “full responsibility” for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi because it was committed by Saudi government employees. But he denied ordering the murder, despite a CIA assessment that found that Mohammed probably authorized it. “If there is any such information that charges me, I hope it is brought forward publicly,” he told interviewer Norah O’Donnell, according to a transcript of the episode to air Sunday evening. The comments by Mohammed, Saudi Arabia’s day-to-day ruler, came just days before the anniversary of Khashoggi’s death and as the Saudi leadership is struggling to turn the page on a grisly episode that cast an unforgiving light on Mohammed’s human rights policies and Saudi Arabia’s complicated relationship with the United States. The crown prince made similar statements about accepting responsibility to PBS’s “Frontline,” which released a lengthy documentary about Mohammed online on Saturday. In the interview with Martin Smith, he denied any prior knowledge of the killing. Khashoggi, who wrote columns criticizing the crown prince’s policies in The Washington Post, was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018, by agents dispatched from the kingdom. Saudi prosecutors later said two of the crown prince’s most trusted aides had been involved in the planning of what was portrayed as a botched attempt to bring Khashoggi back alive to the kingdom. One of the aides, Ahmed al-Assiri, the former deputy chief of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency, is standing trial for the murder in Saudi Arabia. The other, Saud al-Qahtani, a former media adviser to the crown prince, has not been charged with any crime, according to diplomats and others familiar with the case. The “Frontline” documentary quoted a high-level adviser to Mohammed as saying that “prosecuting someone so close to the crown prince would be politically disruptive.” In the “60 Minutes” interview, Mohammed appeared to deny that any of his confidants were involved in the plot to kill Khashoggi. “There isn’t clear information or evidence that someone close to me did something to that effect,” he said in comments that appeared to contradict the assertions made by Saudi prosecutors. The crown prince also played down the kingdom’s notoriously harsh suppression of free speech. “There is no threat from any journalist,” the crown prince said, speaking of Khashoggi. “The threat to Saudi Arabia is from such actions against


Va. resident dies in North Carolina of vaping-related lung injury

For the first time, a Virginia resident has died of a severe lung injury after vaping, authorities said Tuesday. In a statement, the Virginia Department of Health said the death was reported by Cone Health in Greensboro, N.C. The name of the victim was not released by the department. “I am deeply saddened to announce the first death of a Virginia resident related to this outbreak,” state health commissioner M. Norman Oliver said in a statement. “Our thoughts are with the family during this difficult time.” The statement said the death is one of 31 lung injury cases in Virginia and 805 cases from 46 states and one U.S. territory. Twelve deaths have been confirmed in 10 states, according to the statement. The cause of the outbreak of lung injuries is not known, authorities said, and the Virginia Department of Health recommends that people concerned about lung injuries associated with e-cigarette use or vaping avoid e-cigarette products. Those seeking more information about vaping should visit the health department’s website, officials said, and anyone using e-cigarette products who experiences cough, shortness of breath, chest pain, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain or fever should seek medical attention or call a poison control center at 1-800-222-1222. justin.moyer@washpost.com


What does a conductor do, anyway? A music critic lays it out.

as a useful focal point for musicians glancing up from their scores. The baton, though, varies in size from one conductor to another; Valery Gergiev, the longtime head of the Mariinsky Theatre, famously uses a toothpick. Some conductors dispense with the baton altogether, shaping the music with their hands. The general idea is that one hand is used to keep time and the other is used to signal expression — bringing in the cellos, encouraging the second violins to play more loudly, reminding the winds of a sudden decrescendo. The expressive side of the conductor’s art has developed to a point that it is sometimes hard to find the beat in all of the gestures — Christoph Eschenbach, who until 2017 was music director of the National Symphony Orchestra and is now principal conductor of the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, for example, can be opaque — though musicians tend to appreciate a clear beat when they see it. Conducting, however, involves much more than beating time. Conducting today is communication: A conductor develops a vision of how she wants a piece of music to sound, and then tries to transmit that vision to 80 or 100 players. Hearing the difference between different conductors’ interpretations isn’t hard, even for classical music newcomers. Test it for yourself on YouTube by comparing the start of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, the music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, and by Wilhelm Furtwängler, the legendary 20th-century German conductor. You’ll find plenty of contrasts. In rehearsal, some conductors try to explain in words what they want before starting to play, but in general, orchestra musicians vastly prefer less talk and more action. Thus, conductors develop repertories of gestures that are as specific to them as their tone of voice. It’s hard to codify a gesture. Yes, there are some gestures that are nearly universal — beckoning with one hand to get a section to play louder, for example. And some conductors are technical machines, such as Pierre Boulez or Lorin Maazel, whose brains were veritable musical computers, capable of subdividing beats with mathematical precision or hearing minute variations in pitch, and never leaving their musicians in doubt about exactly what they wanted. For some, a minimalist approach works best: Fritz Reiner, a 20th-century Hungarian autocrat, famously conducted with gestures so restrained and small that once, a musician in the back of the orchestra brought


Moped rider dies after collision in Southeast D.C.

THE DISTRICT A 19-year-old man who was riding a moped died after colliding with a vehicle in Southeast Washington. D.C. police identified the victim as Jawan Evans of Southeast Washington. Officials said the crash happened just before 8 p.m. Monday in the 2900 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue near Malcolm X Avenue SE. A Nissan Murano was turning from MLK onto Malcolm X, police said, when Evans, who riding a moped, ran into it. Authorities said Evans was thrown from the moped. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. It was not known whether Evans was wearing a helmet. — Dana Hedgpeth MARYLAND Police have identified a man who was fatally shot Monday in Oxon Hill. Bryant Brooks, 19, of Oxon Hill, was killed about 10:40 p.m. in the 400 block of Winslow Road near Indian Head Highway, Prince George’s County police said. Police went to the area after receiving a call about a shooting and found Brooks “suffering from multiple gunshot wounds.” He was pronounced dead at the scene. Police are trying to determine a motive and find a suspect or suspects. Police said they don’t think it was a “random crime.” — Dana Hedgpeth VIRGINIA For the first time, a Virginia resident has died of a severe lung injury after vaping, authorities said Tuesday. The Virginia Department of Health said the death was reported by Cone Health in Greensboro, N.C. The name of the victim was not released. “I am deeply saddened to announce the first death of a Virginia resident related to this outbreak,” state Health Commissioner M. Norman Oliver said in a statement. “Our thoughts are with the family during this difficult time.” The statement said the death is one of 31 lung injury cases in Virginia and 805 cases from 46 states and one U.S. territory. Twelve deaths have been confirmed in 10 states, according to the statement. The cause of the outbreak of lung injuries is not known, authorities said, and the Virginia Health Department recommends that people concerned about lung injuries associated with e-cigarette use or vaping avoid e-cigarette products. — Justin Wm. Moyer


The Cybersecurity 202: Trump’s embrace of conspiracy theories could endanger 2020

Journal reports. The U.S. Air Force, which operates over 5,000 planes including converted commercial airliners, will also invest more in examining the cybersecurity defenses of the commercial aviation industry. “If we don’t probe first, our adversaries will,” Will Roper, the service’s assistant secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, told the Journal. PATCHED: The NSA's new Cybersecurity Directorate, which launches today, will focus on more quickly declassifying threat intelligence to make “fresher and faster” data available for use by private-sector firms, The NSA’s defensive operations were rolled into its intelligence-gathering unit in 2016, a shake-up that some critics say diminished the agency’s defensive operations. The new agency will focus on better employing that intelligence into a defensive strategy, director Anne Neuberger tells Ellen. “The mission of the organization is to prevent and eradicate threats,” Neuberger said. PWNED: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), who’s among the top polling candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, wants to help members of Congress wise up when it comes to technology-driven issues including election security, artificial intelligence and privacy. Reviving the OTA would help lawmakers and their staff tackle highly complex technology and cybersecurity topics including privacy and encryption instead of relying on lobbyist talking points, Warren said. She’s also proposing an increase in congressional staff salaries to attract more in-house tech talent. Congress’s lack of tech knowledge became painfully apparent in 2018 hearings over Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, Warren said, noting that “members struggled to engage meaningfully in a conversation about basic technological concepts,” let alone “difficult concepts like end-to-end encryption, location tracking and the competitive landscape of Silicon Valley.” The idea has also gotten traction with other members of Congress. Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and Reps. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) and Bill Foster (D-Ill.) introduced legislation last month that would re-create the office, citing a need to understand complex technological issues from “cybersecurity to artificial intelligence to quantum computing.” You are reading The Cybersecurity 202 , our must-read newsletter on cybersecurity policy news. — Cybersecurity news from the public sector: — Cybersecurity news from the private sector: — Cybersecurity news from abroad: — Today: — Coming Up: Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Sunday on ”Meet the Press” that the Stuxnet attack against Iran’s nuclear program could have killed millions. But that’s not true, cybersecurity reporter Kim Zetter says. Zetter wrote the book “Countdown to Zero Day “ about the attack.


Tree thieves tried to burn a bee nest. They started a forest fire that ravaged 3,300 acres of protected land, feds say.

another unnamed person, Wilke and Williams combed through the area’s dense foliage for about a day before finding a bigleaf maple with the distinctive wood, documents said. But upon further examination, the three people allegedly discovered the inconveniently located bee nest. First, there was an attempt to douse the nest in wasp killer, but that did little to dislodge the bees, according to the indictment. Then, they allegedly came up with another idea. “Wilke would kill the bees by burning the nest,” the complaint said. After pouring gasoline on the insects’ dwelling, Wilke allegedly lit the nest and the tree on fire, creating a blaze that kept burning despite the trio’s efforts to extinguish it with water bottles, prosecutors said in Monday’s release. By the time first responders arrived on the morning of Aug. 4, 2018, the fire was about 30 feet wide and expanding as it burned through the deep layer of dead plant material coating the forest floor, the Kitsap Sun reported last year. The firefighters, however, had a bigger problem to deal with: The flames had also started to engulf “a 90-foot-tall bigleaf maple,” according to the newspaper. One Forest Service firefighter told the Sun that while crews managed to put out the ground fire, the flaming tree showered embers onto the surrounding foliage, and soon the blaze covered three acres. The Maple Fire burned for at least four days before it was controlled, continuing to smolder within containment lines until rains finally quenched the lingering flames, the Seattle Times reported. In May, officials warned that areas affected by the fire were still not safe. It is unclear how investigators connected Wilke and Williams to the Maple Fire, but early incident reports indicated that the blaze was “human-caused.” According to the indictment, as firefighters battled the fire on Aug. 4, 2018, Wilke and an unnamed person were questioned by Forest Service authorities. Both allegedly lied about timber poaching, and Wilke claimed he didn’t know anything about the fire. Wilke faces eight felony charges including conspiracy, two counts of depredation of public property, theft of public property, trafficking in unlawfully harvested timber, attempted trafficking in unlawfully harvested timber, setting timber afire and using fire in furtherance of a felony, Monday’s release said. Williams was charged with conspiracy, depredation of government property and attempted trafficking in unlawfully harvested timber. The charges carry sentences of up to five or 10


Key events in the year that followed Khashoggi’s murder

Jamal Khashoggi visited the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to pick up his paperwork. He was last seen on security footage entering the building. He never reappeared. His fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, was waiting outside with instructions to call a senior official in the Turkish government if Khashoggi did not emerge within a few hours. Saudi officials claim that Khashoggi left the consulate the previous day. Turkish officials dispute the claim. — Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in an interview with Bloomberg — Saudi consul-general Mohammad al-Otaibi in an interview with Reuters The Post reports that, according to U.S. intelligence intercepts, the Saudi crown prince ordered an operation to lure Khashoggi to Saudi Arabia from his home in Virginia. — Khashoggi, in his final column for The Post — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to reporters, after a meeting with President Trump on Khashoggi Saudi Arabia arrests 18 individuals and fires 5 top officials, claiming that Khashoggi was killed after a fistfight at the consulate. — Trump backs Mohammed bin Salman in an interview. But he also casts doubts on the Saudi story, claiming “there’s been deception, and there’s been lies.” — Angela Merkel, German chancellor, as her country halts arms deals with Saudi Arabia over the case — Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of Turkey Saudi Arabia’s Future Investment Initiative (nicknamed “Davos in the Desert”) opened under the shadow of the fallout from Khashoggi’s murder. Fewer global executives and world leaders attended the conference than in previous years. — Trump, in a statement — Then-Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) on the Saudi crown prince’s role in Khashoggi’s killing. The Senate votes unanimously to condemn the Saudi crown prince for the killing of Khashoggi. It also voted to end U.S. participation in the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen. The trial of 11 suspects accused of murdering Khashoggi begins at the Criminal Court of Riyadh. The White House declines to submit a report to Congress on whether the Saudi crown prince was responsible for Khashoggi’s murder. The Global Magnitsky Act says that the president has 120 days to respond to a request about violations. — A State Department annual human rights report of abuses around the world mentions Khashoggi’s murder. — Cengiz tells Congress, asking legislators to put pressure on Saudi Arabia at a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing. — Agnes Callamard, U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, releases a report that


This high-tech vegan ice cream may be good enough to fool even die-hard dairy lovers

For years, people buying plant-based alternatives to animal products were used to flavors and textures that weren’t quite the same as the article they were aping. But just as veggie burger makers like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are inching ever closer to mimicking the real thing, with lab-concocted beef-like marbling and juices, the creators of a new vegan ice cream are using technological wizardry to create a product that could fool even the most die-hard dairy aficionados. Ice cream has been particularly tricky to veganize: Nut “milks” often freeze up hard or chalky or leave an aftertaste. “Dairy is one of the hardest things for us to conquer,” says Washington chef Todd Gray, who hosted a tasting of the new offerings by Eclipse Foods last week. Gray’s downtown restaurant Equinox, which caters to vegan and vegetarian diners as well as “flexitarians,” will be among the first in the country to serve the Eclipse ice cream. Eclipse founders Thomas Bowman and Aylon Steinhart hope to roll out their products to more food-service settings, such as tech campuses and universities, before going retail. They also have big plans for plant-based cheese, sour cream and yogurt. But first, they’re out to conquer ice cream. Bowman and Steinhart claim they’ve re-created the texture, taste and functionality of dairy by using plant products to form micelles, “the magic spheres” that are the molecular structures of milk proteins. But their ice cream’s base ingredients — which include oat fiber, cane sugar, glucose, canola oil, cassava starch and potato protein — are less important than the process used to create it, they say. Tinkering with the steps — how to incorporate the ingredients, and the precise heating, pressurizing and blending — was the key. “It enables the functionality that makes it indistinguishable from its animal counterpart,” says Thomas, whose résumé includes stints as a Michelin-starred chef and director of product development at Just, which makes a plant-based egg substitute that had a similar debut at Equinox. Other vegan ice creams have claimed to do the same. For example, Perfect Day ice cream has re-created dairy protein by adding a cow DNA “blueprint” to yeast, which ferments and produces milk proteins. That kind of tinkering isn’t cheap: A pint of Perfect Day cost $20 when it was available earlier this year in a limited run. Bowman and Steinhart say their processing does not rely on such expensive


Alberto Salazar, track coach who trained Olympians, banned four years by U.S. Anti-Doping Agency

athletes’ records after notice of the USADA investigation had been received.” Even before they began experimenting with L-carnitine, Salazar had already apparently been researching gels, creams and testosterone levels, according to summaries of the arbitration decisions. One athlete, Amy Begley, told investigators of an instance in which Salazar described a “testosterone cream that he was going to use for an experiment to see how much it would take to create a positive test,” Brown’s arbitration summary stated. The panel’s summary further indicated that Brown had alerted Nike executives to some of his testosterone testing — specifically an experiment that involved Salazar’s sons using a cream and running on a treadmill for 20 minutes. “We are next going to determine the minimal amount of gel that would cause a problem,” Brown wrote to Mark Parker, the chief executive of Nike, in 2009, according to the documents. Salazar is an accomplished long distance runner himself who won the New York City Marathon three times and the Boston Marathon once. He helped found the Nike Oregon Project in 2001 with the aim of making Americans more competitive on a global stage. Backed by Nike, Salazar found success with several elite distance runners. Competing for Britain, Farah won gold medals at two distances — 5,000 and 10,000 meters — in both the 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympics. He split with Salazar in October 2017. At the 2016 Rio Games, Centrowitz, who grew up in Arnold, Md., and graduated from Broadneck High, became the first American since 1908 to win an Olympic title in the 1,500. Centrowitz split with Salazar after last season and began running with the Bowerman Track Club. While the year’s biggest meet continues Tuesday in Doha, Salazar’s status will no doubt create a buzz around the track that might linger into next year’s Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Stephanie Bruce, an American long-distance runner, tweeted Monday night her “faith in the sport has been restored. Thanks to all those courageous individuals who spoke out and have been building this case. Mr. Salazar I hope we cease to see your influence in our running world. Also about DAMN time.” Read more: USA judo’s Jack Hatton, an Olympic hopeful and ‘true role model,’ dies at 24 Russia’s spot in the Tokyo Olympics is threatened amid new doping concerns They were once sent home for their Olympic protest. Now they’ll get the USOPC’s highest honor.


The Saudi diaspora of dissidents in exile is fighting back

story, like Jamal’s, highlights the costs of our activism. The Saudi diaspora of political dissidents has been growing since the crown prince rose to power. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, at least 815 Saudis applied for asylum in 2017, compared with 195 in 2012. Internally, a study commissioned by the Saudi royal court reportedly predicted that the number of Saudi political asylum seekers would reach 50,000 by 2030. The escalating crackdown against opponents of the crown prince has scared the growing number of Saudi dissidents living abroad — but it has not silenced us. We are now drawing on this fear to fuel an unprecedented civil, political and human rights dialogue around the world. Those who were once silent or anonymous are deciding to speak out. And it is liberating. In April, I drove more than 3,000 miles across the United States to raise awareness about my country’s treatment of women. On the road from San Francisco to Washington, I met many people who had heard Jamal’s story but few who knew the stories of the women risking their safety and freedom in Saudi Arabia today. I shared Loujain’s name and story, telling people that just as they know of Jamal, they should know of her. I planned to end my journey with a protest outside the Saudi Embassy in Washington. Ironically, this was scheduled to be soon after the first female Saudi ambassador to the United States took her post. I was surprised when the embassy’s spokesperson invited me inside to meet her. “I’ll meet you outside,” I replied, for I did not want to venture inside the embassy as long as Jamal’s murder went without justice. And then I realized that this is exactly what Saudi dissidents are already doing — confronting the Saudi government from the outside. Jamal’s murder has left a gap that we Saudis in exile must fill. But as the Saudi diaspora finds its voice, I hope we can come together and stand united against the injustices we see back home. Read more about Jamal Khashoggi: A missing voice, a growing chorus Robert Menendez: Trump betrayed U.S. moral leadership with Saudi Arabia. So Congress had to act. Iyad el-Baghdadi: Saudi Arabia is suffocating the Arabic public sphere. We must fight back. Tawakkol Karman: We need justice for Yemen — and justice for Khashoggi Hala Al-Dosari: Saudi Arabia’s monarchy has left


Trump betrayed U.S. moral leadership with Saudi Arabia. So Congress had to act.

his administration’s response, undermining our intelligence community’s findings and stonewalling investigations, all to help the Saudis cover up a murder. And so, Congress was forced to act. Then-Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and I triggered a provision in the Global Magnitsky Act, mandating that the administration determine who was responsible and whether the president would sanction them. The Trump administration simply refused to answer our request. Then, the Senate unanimously condemned Khashoggi’s murder, including the crown prince’s involvement. The House of Representatives voted to sanction those responsible. Congress passed a bipartisan measure to effectively end U.S. military support for the Saudi intervention in Yemen, which the president ultimately vetoed. In response, Congress passed a series of unprecedented resolutions to block the sale of thousands of precision-guided bombs to the governments of the Saudi coalition. Trump quickly vetoed those too, in yet another show of loyalty to the Saudi royal family. Yet we remain undeterred. In July, the Foreign Relations Committee approved my bipartisan Saudi Arabia Accountability and Yemen Act to sanction those responsible for Khashoggi’s death, pursue a resolution to the conflict in Yemen and increase scrutiny on Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses. It is now up to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to hold a vote in the full Senate. Khashoggi’s murder reminded us how authoritarian regimes, from Cuba to China to Saudi Arabia, fear the power of a free press. It also exposed the danger of having a U.S. president regularly demonize the media, and laid bare the fragility of our own system and how much it relies on the people in power to respect it. The world will not forget Jamal Khashoggi. His views and aspirations will one day become reality. There will be freedom of expression and respect for human rights in Saudi Arabia. And here in Congress, we will continue to demand accountability, press for justice and work to restore the integrity of our foundational institutions. Read more about Jamal Khashoggi: A missing voice, a growing chorus Ezzedine Fishere: Jamal Khashoggi symbolized the promise of reconciling political Islam and democracy Asli Aydintasbas: The liberal world order crumbled a year ago. We’re still reeling. Iyad el-Baghdadi: Saudi Arabia is suffocating the Arabic public sphere. We must fight back. Tawakkol Karman: We need justice for Yemen — and justice for Khashoggi David Von Drehle: Hollywood loves triumphant journalism stories. This isn’t


What happened on the way to Khashoggi’s horrifying final seconds?

In the hour before Khashoggi’s arrival, Mutreb and Tubaigy talked about what they would do. A book by Turkish journalists who have reviewed consulate surveillance tapes says Mutreb advised: “We will first tell him that we are taking him to Riyadh. If he fails to comply, we will kill him here and get rid of the body,” according to an English translation. A grisly discussion followed in which Tubaigy explained the dissection and disposal: “Joints will be separated . . . If we take plastic bags and cut it into pieces, it will be finished,” Callamard wrote, quoting the tape. “We will have to take you back,” Mutreb told Khashoggi when he arrived, according to the tape. He ordered Khashoggi to text his son Salah in the kingdom to say that he would be away for a while. Khashoggi refused, and Mutreb warned him: “If you don’t help us, you know what will happen in the end.” Khashoggi refused to go quietly. “Are you going to give me drugs?” he protested. Then the tape records a conversation turning to struggle, perhaps as he’s being sedated. Someone asks, “Did he sleep?” and a voice urges, “Keep pushing.” There’s a gasping sound, probably after a bag is placed over Khashoggi’s head, then silence. And then the sound of bones being cut. What does Qahtani say about whether the crown prince authorized these actions? We don’t know, because he has never been compelled to testify in the Saudi trial; Qahtani was fired from his job in the royal court, but a U.S. official says he lives comfortably and continues to advise some of his former colleagues. MBS, embraced by President Trump, travels the world as though the murder never happened. But perhaps we can be guided by a Twitter message that Qahtani sent back in August 2017 when questioned about his activities: “I am a trustworthy employee who carries out the orders of my boss.” Read more about Jamal Khashoggi: A missing voice, a growing chorus Robert Menendez: Trump betrayed U.S. moral leadership with Saudi Arabia. So Congress had to act. Ezzedine Fishere: Jamal Khashoggi symbolized the promise of reconciling political Islam and democracy Asli Aydintasbas: The liberal world order crumbled a year ago. We’re still reeling. Iyad el-Baghdadi: Saudi Arabia is suffocating the Arabic public sphere. We must fight back. Tawakkol Karman: We need justice for Yemen — and justice for Khashoggi


The liberal world order crumbled a year ago. We’re still reeling.

themselves. They do not understand that the human condition is connected, that we are all in this together. No one is better off if some people are brutally suppressed, intolerably poor or murdered and dismembered in a consulate. The West’s ignominious capitulation was made all the more stark by the response from the Turkish government. Turkey’s place in this story is complicated. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is no friend of free speech, as Turkish prisons are still full of journalists and citizens jailed for dissenting views. But Turkish officials and senior members of Erdogan’s team were outraged by the audacious Saudi violence. Erdogan, too, was furious. Yet, there are shades of gray. Throughout this ordeal, covering this story, I couldn’t help but be thankful that Turkey is not as repressive as Saudi Arabia, that our prisons are a revolving door, that our system is closer to democracy than any other in the Middle East. Whatever his reasons were, Erdogan was on the right side of history this time. Yes, there has always been a Turkish-Saudi rivalry for leadership in the Sunni world. And yes, maybe Ankara wanted to milk the situation with its drip-by-drip media leaks to advance a broader regional agenda. But Erdogan called a murder a murder. I am glad he refused to cover it up. And even if Saudi Arabia retains its place in the world order for now, Jamal did not die in vain. Jamal, both in his long struggle to bring the perfidies of the Saudi regime to light and in the memory of his horrific death, will always symbolize the perseverance of the deep rebellion among Muslims against their dynastic dictators. Western leaders might continue to choose to work with these despots, but Jamal’s example will always remind us that one day, they will have to deal with the restless reality of the region’s people, too. The dictators might protect Western interests, but they cannot rescue the Western soul. Read more about Jamal Khashoggi: A missing voice, a growing chorus Ezzedine Fishere: Jamal Khashoggi symbolized the promise of reconciling political Islam and democracy Iyad el-Baghdadi: Saudi Arabia is suffocating the Arabic public sphere. We must fight back. Tawakkol Karman: We need justice for Yemen — and justice for Khashoggi David Von Drehle: Hollywood loves triumphant journalism stories. This isn’t one of them. Hala Al-Dosari: Saudi Arabia’s monarchy has left the country fragile and unbalanced


Recep Tayyip Erdogan: Turkey will continue its efforts to shed light on the Khashoggi murder

indeed been treated like a bilateral problem. However, we continue to see what happened as a question of justice rather than politics, and maintain that national and international courts alone can deliver justice. Khashoggi’s assassination was a tragedy but also a blatant abuse of diplomatic immunity. That the murderers traveled on diplomatic passports and turned a diplomatic building into a crime scene — and were seemingly assisted in the attempted coverup by Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat in Istanbul — set a very dangerous precedent. Perhaps more dangerous is the impunity that some of the killers seem to enjoy back in the kingdom. It is no secret that there are many questions about the court proceedings in Saudi Arabia. The near-complete lack of transparency surrounding the trial, the lack of public access to hearings and the allegation that some of Khashoggi’s murderers enjoy de facto freedom all fail to meet the international community’s expectations and tarnish the image of Saudi Arabia — something that Turkey, as its friend and ally, does not desire. There is an effort underway to justify this lack of transparency with reference to national security. There is a very thick line between doing everything in one’s power to deliver terrorists to justice and committing premeditated murder over the target’s political views. The kidnapping of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, for example, was perfectly legitimate. Yet it would be ridiculous to suggest that Khashoggi’s killing served the cause of justice in any way, shape or form. Going forward, Turkey pledges to continue its efforts to shed light on the Khashoggi murder. We will keep asking the same questions that I raised in an op-ed for this newspaper last year: Where are Khashoggi’s remains? Who signed the Saudi journalist’s death warrant? Who dispatched the 15 killers, including a forensic expert, aboard the two planes to Istanbul? It is in our best interest, and in the best interest of humanity, to ensure that such a crime is not committed anywhere again. Combating impunity is the easiest way to accomplish that goal. We owe it to Jamal’s family. Read more about Jamal Khashoggi: A missing voice, a growing chorus Fred Ry Hatice C Ignatius: What happened on the way to Jamal Khashoggi’s horrifying final seconds? Attiah: Let the world hear Jamal Khashoggi’s last words in Arabic Robert Menendez: Trump betrayed U.S. moral leadership with Saudi Arabia. So Congress had to act.


My quest for justice for Jamal continues. It’s not too late.

Hatice Cengiz was Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancee. When Jamal asked me to marry him, I knew that I would be not just his wife once we were wed. I would also be his life’s companion, his partner in good times and his supporter when things got tough. What I did not know is that he would be brutally murdered at a consulate of his home country — a consulate he visited to procure the documents that would allow us to marry. Nor did I ever imagine I would be left fighting alone in my quest for justice. It has been a year since Jamal’s murder. And, in that time, as I traveled the world seeking the truth and calling for justice, not a single material step has been taken toward punishing the real perpetrators. This is despite the fact that the international media has continued to call attention to the atrocity. Though Saudi Arabia likes to tout its trial of the men accused of killing Jamal, in reality, its government is making everyone wait with bated breath for the outcome of a process that has been engineered to distract attention from those who gave the orders. It is clear that the suspects who have been thrown in jail could not have carried out this awful murder on their own. This ridiculous charade overlooks the fact that the true perpetrators are known the world over — and extend to the highest levels of the Saudi government. While this took place at a Saudi government facility, it also impinges on the whole world — particularly the United States and Europe. Jamal’s violent death is something that goes beyond religion, language or geography. It is a matter of humanity and should concern many countries, especially those that claim to speak for human rights. Yet, despite a U.N. report that makes clear who bears the responsibility for Jamal’s murder, no European Union country has imposed measures that would force the Saudi government to listen. The response from President Trump has been even more disappointing. Rather than call for justice for a U.S. resident lured into danger and assassinated by a foreign power, the president has indicated from the start that he would prioritize his own national objectives above human rights. He and his administration have lent support to Saudi Arabia’s coverup by referring to the kingdom as an ally, continuing to support Saudi leaders and


Let the world hear Jamal Khashoggi’s last words in Arabic

Almost every time I finished editing a piece that Jamal Khashoggi had written for The Post’s Global Opinions section, he would ask me the same question. “Great, that’s done. Do you want me to translate this to Arabic?” In the year since his senseless and brutal murder, amid the pain, grief and anger, I find myself reflecting quite a bit about translation, cultural understanding and knowledge. If there was anything Jamal was passionate about — almost desperate for — it was to be heard, read and understood first and foremost by Saudis, and ultimately by readers across the Arab world. A few weeks ago, Turkish intelligence officials released more details of Jamal’s last words to the newspaper the Daily Sabah: “Do not keep my mouth closed,” he said to his killers, according to a transcript published in English and Turkish. “I have asthma, do not do it. You’ll suffocate me.” To those of us who knew Jamal, the year-long slow-drip release of details has been agonizing. I would console myself thinking that the calculated release of information would help lead to justice. Now, the latest releases feel more like morbid attempts to titillate the public and score political points, rather than honest pursuits of accountability. But there is one release that would honor Jamal’s connection to his mother tongue and serve the cause of justice. Turkish authorities should release the audio of Jamal’s last words in Arabic. Jamal’s fellow Saudis should hear his accent, inflections and distinct Saudi-ness — and they should also hear the voices and tone of Jamal’s killers. I can’t help but think Jamal would have wanted his wish to be heard in Arabic to be honored to the end, so we could hear his unaltered and unedited final plea. Even in death, Jamal deserves to be heard, and his friends, family and compatriots deserve to have the chance to know the truth. But as I reflect, I am also reminded that this is not enough. For every Arab revolution started by viral images of traumatized Arab bodies, there are tens of thousands of traumas that elicit nothing more than a collective shrug and shake of the head. Last year, when Turkish intelligence provided audio of Jamal’s killing to U.S. officials, President Trump refused to listen to the tapes. But it was perhaps now-former national security adviser John Bolton who laid out best why he refused to


As backlash fears fade, major firms are returning to Saudi Arabia a year after Khashoggi’s killing

When Saudi Arabia hosted its high-profile investment conference just weeks after Jamal Khashoggi’s killing last October, top executives from some of the world’s biggest financial companies begged off, skipping the event over fears that negative publicity could tarnish their firms’ brands. A year later, human rights advocates say the kingdom has yet to deliver justice, failing to hold senior Saudi officials responsible for The Washington Post contributing columnist’s killing or to even reveal the location of his body. But business leaders have been far more forgiving. In a few weeks, senior executives from blue-chip firms including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and BlackRock will be returning to the kingdom for the conference dubbed “Davos in the Desert,” according to an attendees list reviewed by The Post. More than 150 executives have confirmed their attendance, the list shows, including more than 40 executives representing U.S. companies. The head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund was attending, along with other executives who represent major banks, tech companies, business conglomerates and defense contractors from China, India, the United Arab Emirates and several European states. Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser and President Trump’s son-in-law, is also expected to attend, leading a U.S. delegation, according to a person briefed on his plans. BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink, who withdrew last year from the Future Investment Initiative event, has framed his decision to return to Saudi Arabia as an effort to promote change in the kingdom, where Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is trying to wean the country’s economy off its dependence on oil. “I believe greater economic integration and diversification will help Saudi Arabia build a more modern and sustainable economy for all of its citizens,” Fink wrote on his LinkedIn page. “I also believe that corporate engagement and public dialogue can help with that evolution.” Over the past year, Saudi Arabia has worked tirelessly to change the subject after Saudi agents killed Khashoggi in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul, in a plot that the CIA concluded with high confidence was approved by the crown prince. The assassination left the Saudi government with its worst public relations crisis since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when the kingdom was vilified after it emerged that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens. Since Khashoggi’s murder, the Saudi government has promoted high-profile entertainment events featuring Western artists, rolled back entrenched restrictions on women’s rights


Saudi Arabia’s monarchy has left the country fragile and unbalanced

to safely speak truth to power. Even those like Jamal, who supported the monarchy as a system, understand the perils of this reality. This fragile system of governance has left the fate of the country in the hands of Mohammed and a few ill-fitted advisers and yes-men. The leadership has turned the capacity and skills of high-ranking officials, including consular staff and journalists, into tools of oppression. The media has been fueling ultranationalist sentiment to justify its domestic and foreign policy failures. No public discourse exists on critical issues, including the war in Yemen, the Saudi-led boycott of Qatar or the enduring challenges of unemployment and poverty — let alone discussion on the trial of Jamal’s killers or justice for political prisoners. There was a point when hope for a societal transformation was centered on the return of thousands of Saudis who studied abroad. Instead, there has been a sharp rise in asylum seekers fleeing Saudi Arabia. This figure more than doubled between 2015 and 2018. In European countries alone during the first half of 2019, the number of Saudi asylum seekers has shown a 106 percent year-on-year increase. The unabated persecution will, without a doubt, continue to fuel this trend as long as the current system is in place. The Saudi monarchy might claim to be forward-thinking with its Vision 2030 modernization plan and efforts to court Western leaders. In reality, however, it has simply institutionalized a centuries-old monarchic legacy of violence, disenfranchisement and repression. Jamal’s brutal murder and the torture of female activists have brought this all to light. In doing so, it has crystallized what Jamal and I have been warning, from different sides of the debate, for years: Unless power is decentralized away from the royal family and its cronies in power, Saudi Arabia’s drift toward more repression and destructive interventions abroad will continue unchallenged. Read more about Jamal Khashoggi: A missing voice, a growing chorus Robert Menendez: Trump betrayed U.S. moral leadership with Saudi Arabia. So Congress had to act. Ezzedine Fishere: Jamal Khashoggi symbolized the promise of reconciling political Islam and democracy Asli Aydintasbas: The liberal world order crumbled a year ago. We’re still reeling. Iyad el-Baghdadi: Saudi Arabia is suffocating the Arabic public sphere. We must fight back. Tawakkol Karman: We need justice for Yemen — and justice for Khashoggi David Von Drehle: Hollywood loves triumphant journalism stories. This isn’t one of them.