The 2010s were a lost decade for climate. We can’t afford a repeat, scientists warn.

extinction. “Climate change is not a cliff. It’s not a pass-fail course,” Georgia Tech researcher Kim Cobb said. “If we meet the 1.5 target, there may still be tons of ugly surprises. And if we don’t meet it, it’s not that everybody’s going to die.” According to Cobb, the report is better understood as a road map for navigating the perilous path to sustainability. “Our decisions over the next 10 years will affect the magnitude of climate change for centuries to come,” she said. “I don’t think it can get more sobering than that.” The first and most important step will be reducing fossil fuel consumption, experts say. According to the latest emissions gap analysis, the past 10 years of inaction have more than doubled the rate at which emissions must fall; to meet the 1.5-degree goal, emissions must be cut by 7.6 percent each year. Such action would require “unprecedented" transformation of society the report acknowledged. But many of the solutions needed — both economic and technological — already exist. The report called on the global community to replace coal power with renewable energy, decarbonize transportation and manufacturing, and help developing nations build green infrastructure to meet their growing power needs. Ending subsidies for fossil fuels could reduce global emissions 10 percent by 2030, the U.N. has found. And eliminating “short-lived” greenhouse gases — including methane, black carbon and fluorinated gases, which linger in the atmosphere less than carbon dioxide but trap more heat — over the next 20 years could help Earth avoid between 0.3 and 0.8 degrees of warming by 2050, research suggests. Menon draws hope from progress that has been made on the ground in the past decade, even as global leaders fell short. Global renewable energy capacity has quadrupled since 2010, largely because of improved technology and falling costs, she noted. People increasingly see climate change as a threat; a Washington Post poll this year found that 76 percent of American adults view the issue as a “major problem” or a “crisis.” This year’s global climate strikes, led by teenagers such as Benson and Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, were among the largest environmental protests in history. “We know what we have to do,” Menon said. “And we know there are pathways, there are policies, and there are people willing to do it.” The rate at which greenhouse gases are removed from the atmosphere must also


Dry January is easier than ever, thanks to the rising popularity of nonalcoholic drinks

Dos Mamis (Besides, Steiner says, it’s also something she looks for when she’s not at her bar: “I consider myself a drinker, but there are times when I don’t want to go out and drink four cocktails. I’ll have two or three cocktails and then nonalcoholic drinks.”) Seedlip is the main ingredient in three of the four drinks on Dos Mamis’ current menu, including the Nahhhgroni, a surprisingly good copy of the traditionally boozy Negroni. No wonder Steiner says that on some weeknights, drinks without booze outsell those their higher-proof cousins. For those who prefer to drink beer, however, it’s been more difficult to participate in this nonalcoholic revival. It’s not because there aren’t any hitting the market: The last few years have seen nonalcoholic beer releases from a succession of big-name nonalcoholic brands — Heineken’s 0.0, Pabst Blue Ribbon Non-Alc, Guinness Pure Brew (still only available in Ireland), and Leffe Blonde 0,0 — and a growing section of craft nonalcoholic IPAs from producers as diverse as Connecticut’s Athletic Brewing and California’s Bravus. (Both call themselves breweries, but neither makes any beer with alcohol in it.) Despite all these new choices, nonalcoholic options still seem neglected in bars. There might be hundreds of beers on tap and in cans at your local Pizzeria Paradiso, but only one, Germany’s Bitburger Drive, is alcohol-free. At ChurchKey, which boasts about its 555 choices, there are two: Bitburger and Erdinger Weissbier Alkoholfrei. Part of the problem could be that most American nonalcoholic beers have traditionally been terrible — note the prevalence of German brands at better beer bars — so those who aren’t familiar with new craft options might be hesitant to try them. Bill Shufelt, the founder of Athletic Brewing, thinks it’s only a matter of time before that changes. In New York City, he says, Athletic is featured at beer bars, barbecue joints and the Michelin-starred Danish restaurant Agern. “Velocity is super-high during the week,” he says, especially at work dinners and among health-conscious millennials, though he’s found that placement matters: “As long as our beers are on the menu, people order with comfort,” he says, but people tend not to order nonalcoholic beers if they’re “hidden” away from the rest of the beers. If nonalcoholic spirits continue on their upward trajectory, they won’t be hidden much longer — even in the places where you might not expect to find them. fritz.hahn@washpost.com


Local Digest: Pedestrian struck, killed by SUV in Southeast Washington

THE DISTRICT D.C. police said they were searching for the occupants of an SUV who fled on foot after the vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian early Wednesday in Southeast Washington. The incident occurred shortly before 4:30 a.m. at Minnesota Avenue and L’Enfant Square SE, in the Dupont Park area, when the silver-colored SUV “failed to negotiate a turn and left the roadway,” police said in a statement. Loleita P. Gross, 32, of Southeast, who was walking on a sidewalk, was run over and killed. “The vehicle’s occupants fled the scene,” police said, leaving the victim and the SUV behind. — Paul Duggan MARYLAND One of three men authorities said robbed a Bethesda jewelry store at gunpoint and escaped with an estimated $60,000 in merchandise is in custody in Virginia, according to Montgomery County police. The robbery occurred about 5:45 p.m. on Dec. 13 at the Jewelry Exchange in the 7700 block of Old Georgetown Road. Police said one of the robbers was armed with a gun. Police released surveillance video on Dec. 17 and charged a suspect with robbery in an arrest warrant the next day. He was identified as Derrick Lamont Graham, 42, of an undetermined address. Graham was being sought in the jewelry store case when police said he was charged on Monday with robbing a bank in Arlington County. Police there alleged he passed a note to a bank teller in the 2200 block of Wilson Boulevard demanding money and implying he was armed. He escaped with an undisclosed amount of money. Arlington police said Graham was arrested a short time later at the Court House Metro station platform, about one-third of a mile from the bank. Ashley Savage, a spokeswoman for that department, said Graham was also wanted in connection with the jewelry store robbery in Bethesda. Montgomery County police said Graham is awaiting extradition to Maryland. In a statement, police said they believe Graham was the person with the gun. Two others are being sought. — Peter Hermann VIRGINIA Three men were injured in a shooting early Wednesday at a hotel in Tysons, just off Leesburg Pike, according to Fairfax County police. The shootings occurred about 3 a.m. at Hawthorn Suites by Wyndham in the 8600 block of Westwood Center Drive, according to police Lt. John M. Lieb. Lieb said the three victims were injured in their legs or lower part of their bodies


Bloomberg’s business in China has grown. That could create unprecedented entanglements if he is elected president.

story as written because it would offend the Chinese leadership. A Bloomberg manager was quoted as telling members of the Hong Kong bureau, “If we run the story, we’ll be kicked out of China.” A Bloomberg reporter suspected of leaking the information was suspended and left the company, joining the New York Times. Bloomberg, who was then mayor of New York City, stressed at the time that he was not running Bloomberg LP and that his assets were in a blind trust. Still, he said Bloomberg’s editors had assured him they had not censored the information. After returning to run the company in 2014, Bloomberg was asked by CNBC whether his news service had “muzzled” reporters. He responded: “In China, they have rules about what you can publish. We follow those rules. If you don’t follow the rules, you’re not in the country.” Since then, Bloomberg has spent many hours with China’s leaders and the relationship has blossomed. While the company’s website is still blocked in China, as are other American media sites including The Washington Post’s, it is allowed to sell its terminals and subscription service and has expanded its operations in the country. About 200 of Bloomberg LP’s 20,000 employees work in mainland China and another 800 work in Hong Kong, the company says. But the company’s presence in China is invaluable in ways that don’t show up in a balance sheet, enabling Bloomberg to provide economic data that is crucial for many subscribers around the world. Parag Khanna, founder of the strategic advisory firm FutureMap and author of the book “The Future is Asian,” has written that Bloomberg’s company is “effectively the world’s largest private intelligence service,” which is particularly notable in the relatively opaque Chinese marketplace. Subscribers around the world rely on Bloomberg-generated information to help them decide where and how to invest capital — a trove that is vital to China’s efforts to entice investment in the government’s bonds. To meet that need, Bloomberg’s company in March 2018 announced that it would add 333 Chinese government bonds to its Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate Bond Index. That opened the way for tens of billions of dollars to flow from investment funds in the United States and elsewhere to four Chinese institutions that issue bonds, including the Chinese government and the China Development Bank. It was a breakthrough achievement for Bloomberg LP — and China. Bloomberg’s company


Mexico is giving millions of workers a historic pay increase. But will it have much effect?

if fairly lethargic. Inflation dipped, from an annual rate of 4.37 percent in January to 2.97 percent in November. Now, López Obrador is betting that the economy can again absorb the pay increases. “We’re going to raise the minimum wage without hurting job creation, without affecting businesses,” the president told journalists. The 2020 salary increase could directly benefit 3.4 million Mexicans, officials say. But it won’t necessarily lift people out of misery. The government calculates the poverty line to be around 12,000 pesos a month — roughly $667 — for a family of four. And the increases are unlikely to change things for workers who can’t find jobs in Mexico’s informal economy or pass up openings because of dismal wages. They are people such as Camerina Salazar, 33, who works as a street artist, dressing up as a “Catrina,” a figure from Mexico’s Day of the Dead iconography who mocks the well-to-do. She paints her face and wears a dress made from Doritos bags, while her 13-year-old son sports a suit styled from empty cigarette packs. Shoppers and tourists flooding Mexico City’s central Zocalo square over the holidays pose for pictures with the pair, paying a few pesos in tips. “This is seasonal, and we’re doing well, so we’ve been able to pay some of the bills that we’d fallen behind on,” Salazar said, estimating that she, her son and her husband — who covers himself in black and gold paint and poses as a human statue for tips — earn about 800 pesos daily on weekends, around $44. “It’s more than people make in a week at their jobs,” she said. Aldo Muñoz, a labor expert at the Autonomous University of Mexico State, noted that the government’s tally of minimum-wage workers may be overstated. Many companies report only part of their employees’ salaries, to pay less in social security fees and other benefits, he said. In such cases, an increase in the minimum wage “is not reflected in an improvement of people’s earnings,” he said. Moy said that the wage hike was “good news” but that the government cannot keep raising salaries so fast. “If you want to improve the conditions for workers, you have to do structural things that are harder,” she said. They include shifting people to the formal economy, requiring them to pay social security taxes, and upgrading education and training, she said. López Obrador said


The proposed ‘maglev’ project would benefit future generations

Regarding the Dec. 24 letter, “What’s the attraction to ‘maglev’?”: If the proposed maglev from downtown Washington to downtown Baltimore is given the green light this year after the environmental impact statement is completed, the segment would become operational in 2028. It would be at least a decade before the remaining segments would be built all the way to Philadelphia and New York City. I suppose in the early 1800s some folks opposed building rail lines, wanting instead to improve and expand canals and waterways. And in the mid-1900s, I’m sure there was resistance to airports. Every generation or two, the United States has provided new forms of transportation for its citizenry using available technology. We do not focus only on people using public transportation today, next month or next year. We plan for future generations. I can think of 101 reasons one would want or need to get to New York from the District or Baltimore in about an hour and return later the same day, not needing to stay overnight in New York: cultural and sporting events, conferences, job interviews, airport connections, visiting family and friends, weddings and religious events, a rally or concert in Central Park or just a date! Maintaining existing infrastructure should not prohibit us from developing forms of transportation that will benefit future generations. Give future generations choices other than congested freeways, existing diesel trains that take three to five hours one way, or air travel with its delays, long lines and time spent getting from the airport into the city. Robert L Snyder Read more letters to the editor.


Maryland open houses Jan. 4-5

Ct ELKRIDGE 21075 6428 Park Forest Cir ELLICOTT CITY 21042 10217 Cabery Rd 2626 Vardon Lane 21043 8493 Timberland Cir 4954 Bramhope Lane MONTGOMERY COUNTY CHEVY CHASE 20815 8803 Walnut Hill Rd CLARKSBURG 20871 23514 Overlook Park Dr #101 23522 Overlook Park Dr #014 23516 Overlook Park Dr #8 23516 Overlook Park Dr #7 23518 Overlook Park #10 23524 Overlook Park Dr #15 23524 Overlook Park Dr #16 13001 Martz St 23407 Harnes Point Dr 23518 Overlook Park Dr 21913 Woodcock Way 21917 Woodcock Way 22651 Majestic Elm Ct 12801 Clarks Crossing Dr GAITHERSBURG 20878 210 Decoverly Dr #205 210 Decoverly Dr #106 210 Decoverly Dr #10003 250 Decoverly Dr #220 250 Decoverly Dr #226 428 Salk Cir GERMANTOWN 20874 12822 Cloverleaf Center Dr 20361 Century Blvd #1740 20361 Century Blvd #1730 20305 Century Blvd 20307 Century Blvd 20309 Century Blvd 12810 Cloverleaf Center Dr 20396 Stol Run 20343 Century Blvd #a 3322 Provider Way 3330 Provider Way 20876 20039 Dunstable Cir #310 21937 Boneset Way 21933 Boneset Way 21929 Boneset Way #0 HYATTSVILLE 20782 6500 America Blvd #208 NORTH POTOMAC 20878 12329 Sour Cherry Way OLNEY 20832 3601 Bermuda Ct ROCKVILLE 20850 587 Shorthorn Way 585 Shorthorn Way 577 Shorthorn Way 591 Shorthorn Way 20851 708 1st St 20852 4606 Wilwyn Way 20854 10903 Gainsborough Rd SILVER SPRING 20901 502 E Schuyler Rd 20904 13700 Modrad Way #8-A-13 20906 15320 Baileys Lane 12724 Saddlebrook Dr PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY BELTSVILLE 20705 13218 Ronehill Dr BOWIE 20715 12424 Kemmerton Lane 12113 Rockledge Dr 20720 13701 Heatherstone Dr CAPITOL HEIGHTS 20743 7004 Valley Park Rd FAIRMOUNT HEIGHTS 5901 L St FORT WASHINGTON 20744 8618 Sapienza Dr GLENN DALE 20769 3101 Hiland Ave LANDOVER 20785 0 Stoddert Lane UPPER MARLBORO 20772 9103 Fox Stream Way 0 Marlboro Pointe Dr 0 Tealbriar Dr 13804 Carlene Dr 17109 Usher Pl 4315 Stockport Way 20774 0 Capital Ct 13718 Hebron Lane 13711 Hebron Lane 13808 Hebron Lane 13608 Hebron Lane 803 Rexford Way 13602 Hebron Lane 2911 North Grv ST. MARY'S COUNTY CALIFORNIA 20619 43755 Winterberry Way 0 Winterberry Way GREAT MILLS 20634 22148 Clipper Dr HOLLYWOOD 20636 44942 Blackistone Cir LEONARDTOWN 20650 23573 Gunnell Dr ANNE ARUNDEL COUNTY ANNAPOLIS 21401 702 Pilot House Dr 2003 Phillips Ter #3 141 West St #303 21403 1003 Paca Lane 21409 725 Mount Alban Dr CROFTON 21114 1727 Fillmore Ct CURTIS BAY 21226 7977 River Rock Way GLEN BURNIE


Local Digest: Woman found slain in car in D.C. suburb is identified

MARYLAND The woman found slain in a car in Capitol Heights this week has been identified as Nika Dorsey, 42, of Greenbelt. Prince George’s County police said officers were in the 8700 block of Ritchie Drive near Ritchie Marlboro Road in Capitol Heights and were asked to check on the welfare of someone about 5:30 a.m. During the check, officers found Dorsey’s body in the car. She had upper-body trauma and was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. — Dana Hedgpeth A Prince George’s County Circuit Court judge issued an arrest warrant Friday for a Rockville man who allegedly swindled a District Heights woman out of her home. William Wayland, who has been indicted on five criminal counts including theft and unauthorized law practice, was released Dec. 13 on his own recognizance ahead of his February trial. But Judge C. Philip Nichols said that after reading media reports about Wayland, who is accused of stealing more than $7,000 from Patricia Duckett, he worried that others were at risk. Wayland, 52, was called back to court for a hearing Friday but did not appear. Duckett said she had paid Wayland to obtain a loan modification on her home but later learned that her house had been sold. She was evicted. Wayland did not respond to requests for comment, and a lawyer for him could not be reached. — Rachel Chason


Quadrantid meteor shower peaks early Saturday morning

short glance before sunrise). It’s great news for those dwelling in the Americas, however, as the first quarter moon sets about an hour after midnight local time in most spots. It retires below the horizon at 1:10 a.m. in Washington, 1:22 a.m. in Minneapolis, and 12:59 a.m. in Los Angeles. If the four-hour peak is centered on the 3:20 a.m. Eastern mark, that means the show should really ramp up about two hours before, and taper down two or so hours after the mark. That would put the times to watch between about 1:20 a.m. and 5:20 a.m. Eastern. That’s why this show favors East Coast viewers, as it is squeezed perfectly in between moonset and sunrise. If you can find a clear, dark location, no other celestial objects will obscure the view. The “radiant,” or the point in the sky from which the meteors appear to emanate, will also be higher in the sky for the East Coast, which means better meteor rates. Western North America will still enjoy a decent show, but a lower radiant could cut back markedly on the number of meteors observed. If you’re feeling ambitious, are lucky enough to have clear skies and want to catch the show, you can see it. Just find yourself a clear, dark location with a wide view of the sky. Make sure to be there an hour or so before the scheduled peak in your time zone. That’s a good question. The show is advertised as featuring 100 shooting stars per hour, but don’t trust numbers like that. That’s a Zenithal Hourly Rate. It’s an idealized number assuming absolutely perfect viewing conditions and that you can stare at the entire sky at once without blinking. Instead, plan for about 20 to 40 meteors per hour, depending on how conditions evolve and the specifics of your viewing location. If at first you don’t see any, don’t give up. It requires patience and a bit of luck. Plus, your eyes need to adjust. Despite being fainter, the Quadrantids tend to be slower streaking across the sky. They move at about 25 miles per second. Let’s hope so! A frontal system will bring widespread cloudiness over the East Coast, the storm’s sky cover lingering as far back as the Mississippi valley. Over the Plains, however, conditions appear ideal. The West may be socked in beneath some patchy cloud cover, as well.


‘Here, life is cheap’: One store, 16 surveillance cameras, and two murders in seven months

cash registers, inside a rectangular box of bulletproof plate glass. Goods and money are exchanged through rotating, cylindrical compartments. He wears acid-washed jeans, a charcoal tee and light gray Nikes; his aquiline profile, wide eyes and shaved, gleaming head would give him a severe look if he did not smile so frequently. Two other men in the store share his copper complexion and high cheekbones. They are his employees, Yohannes, 22 — known to customers as “Squid” because of his springy, shoulder-length hair — and Dawit Geber, 31. Amid the stern voices of adults and squeals of children, the three converse in the singsong cadences of Tigrinya and Amharic, languages born in the highlands to the southwest of the Red Sea. Both Yohannes and Geber are Eritrean refugees, and both are waiting, as Abraha once did, for immigration authorities to process their asylum claims. If successful, they will join the tens of thousands of Ethiopians and Eritreans who make up one of the Washington region’s largest immigrant populations. It was 1991 when the triumphant soldiers of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front entered the capital city of Asmara, ending the country’s decades-long war for independence from neighboring Ethiopia. There was jubilation then, followed by a United Nations-supervised referendum on a new government. But within several years, freedom fighter-turned-president Isaias Afwerki was jailing ministers and newspaper editors. The country has held no elections for the last 26 years, a period in which Afwerki has cemented his grip on a totalitarian society that human-rights advocates compare to that of North Korea. Geber says that after trying to flee the country he was imprisoned with 18 other people inside a cargo container, a notorious practice in Eritrea’s prison system. “In the nighttime, it’s very cold. In the daytime, it’s very hot,” he says simply of his incarceration. “You cannot imagine it.” Resolving to leave his home country or die, he made it into Ethiopia and obtained a fake passport. In the United States, he likes it better but is still coming to grips with the idea that violence in his adopted country is random, not institutionalized, and therefore harder to predict. “In Eritrea,” he says, “if you don’t talk about the government, no one is touching you.” Geber’s escape across the Eritrean border took two days on foot. But he won’t risk the half-mile walk from Holiday Market to the closest Metro station after


dark. The District is no longer called “the murder capital” of the United States. In 2019, Washington ended the year with 166 homicides — the most since 2008 but well below the 348 killings in less-populous Baltimore, let alone the 482 murders that the District endured in 1991. But there is an insidious quality to D.C.’s present-day bloodshed. In the 1980s and 1990s, a soaring murder rate was but one element in a catalogue of urban decay that included an unchecked AIDS epidemic, a local government teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and the serial transgressions of a crack-smoking mayor. Today, Washington is one of America’s most prosperous cities, flush with tax money from a booming population and economy. Yet the residents of Southeast remain submerged beneath a crime wave that the city has proved powerless to stop. Among the dead last year were a dozen children between the ages of 11 and 17, all shot or stabbed. Those unaccustomed to living with daily violence sometimes speculate that people become numb to it. Nonsense, say some in Congress Heights. “The community, they’re livid right now,” said Mike Austin, chairman of the Advisory Neighborhood Commission that includes Holiday Market. “While we’re preaching this narrative — ‘crime is down, crime is down’ — they don’t feel it. I don’t feel it. People don’t feel safe to go to stores, gas stations, whatever.” That includes the businesses’ owners and employees. “Every day I wake up, I’m worried,” Abraha says. “I’m using extra caution, especially when I open the store. Someone could come — “ he holds his hand to his head in the shape of a gun. Violence Interrupters, Beat the Streets, the Gun Recovery Unit — Southeast residents are skeptical that the initiatives concocted at city hall and police headquarters are working. Austin says some have suggested calling in the National Guard. The problem seems bigger and more entrenched to Russell Rowe, leaving Holiday Market on this Monday morning in gray sweats and a white tank top that stretches over his muscular torso. “Bruh, look, there is one solution to this that we need. It’s public safety, but what’s causing our public safety issues? It’s mental health. Half of us probably have a diagnosis,” says Rowe, who is about to turn 30. “It’s what happens when you been eatin’ this s--- your whole life” — he gestures toward the store, with its


stores. Now this expensive grocery store caters to a very different world: Affluent, white, willing to pay $12 for a jar of organic virgin coconut oil or $1.2 million for a two-bedroom condo. After listening all day to a scratchy boombox tuned to a hip-hop station, Abraha shops to the accompaniment of rock music from the Wallflowers. The store is mostly empty, and very bright. Into his basket he places a jar of raw honey and a jug of organic apple juice. His wife has asked for tiramisu, but he can find only cheesecake. After speaking to her on the phone, he addresses the Ethiopian bakery attendant in Amharic and loads the dessert into his carrier. It is after 10 p.m. when Abraha opens the door to his family’s one-bedroom apartment, permeated with a welcoming aroma from its cramped galley kitchen. Abraha’s wife, Selam, is in pink pajamas, cooking spinach pasta. He hands her the groceries, then steps into their bedroom, leaning over the bassinet of 4-month-old Sabia Abraha. The couple’s daughter was born less than a month after Maurice Scott died. Tonight she is wearing footed gray pajamas trimmed with pink and shiny earrings offset by her full head of dark hair. Abraha plays an Ethiopian sitcom in the background on YouTube. As he sits in his armchair cradling Sabia he watches her face, not the television. Soon, he hopes, he will have saved enough money for the family to move into a house in the Maryland or Virginia suburbs. His daughter will grow up as an American, and if he can help it, she will remain as ignorant as she is now of what happens across the river, where her father will go seven hours from now, quietly dressing and sneaking past her bassinet at dawn. Selam has never been to Holiday Market. Sabia hasn’t, either. While Abraha appreciates the grit of his customers, raising their children amid so much violence, he won’t willingly put his wife and baby daughter at risk: “I don’t want to bring my family to that store.” Peter Hermann contributed to this report. Editing by Lynda Robinson. Photo editing by Mark Miller. Copy edited by Thomas Heleba. Designed by J.C. Reed. Read more: She and her twin were inseparable. Then a gunman tore the 15-year-olds apart. A generation of African American heroin users is dying in the opioid epidemic nobody talks about. The


You should go to the grocery store every day. Several of them. Seriously.

I go to three or four grocery stores a day, almost every day. On Saturdays, it’s not unusual for me to go to five or six (and to stop by the farmers market). I am not a candidate to join the estimated 93 million Americans who bought groceries online last year. I love shopping for food. In the United States, we waste up to 40 percent of the food we produce, and a sizable chunk of that comes from people throwing away spoiled food, which, in landfills, releases methane, a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Planning ahead might be good for retirement, but not for food shopping. How do you know what you’re going to feel like eating for dinner next Thursday night? What if you end up working late? Or your kid’s soccer game goes long and you stop for pizza on the way home? There goes the graying ground meat you planned to use tonight. By shopping daily, I throw away almost nothing, and I get to eat exactly what I want every day. But I don’t shop daily to save the environment: I do it because I can’t help myself. Shopping fills some deep Maslovian void in me. I wasn’t always an avid grocery shopper. Until my wife and I blended our families in 1997, it was just another weekly chore. Suddenly there were five kids to feed. Nothing was safe. They were like termites, eating through cupboards and boxes and bags. They could consume two or three days’ worth of food in hours, especially if they all had friends over. So I started shopping each morning after dropping the kids off at school, buying just what we needed for that 24-hour period. I figured if they wiped us out, we only had to survive until tomorrow. What began as a budgetary move soon became a way of life. Daily ritual is how we make the profane sacred. On the days when I eat out with friends, and don’t shop or make dinner, I feel a bit empty. I miss the baskets of dragon fruit and litchis at the Asian market near my office. I miss the bright abundance of my neighborhood grocer. During my forays, which I now squeeze in on the way home from work or during lunch breaks, I watch people stuff their shopping carts with what looks like two weeks’


Maslovian void in me. I wasn’t always an avid grocery shopper. Until my wife and I blended our families in 1997, it was just another weekly chore. Suddenly there were five kids to feed. Nothing was safe. They were like termites, eating through cupboards and boxes and bags. They could consume two or three days’ worth of food in hours, especially if they all had friends over. So I started shopping each morning after dropping the kids off at school, buying just what we needed for that 24-hour period. I figured if they wiped us out, we only had to survive until tomorrow. What began as a budgetary move soon became a way of life. Daily ritual is how we make the profane sacred. On the days when I eat out with friends, and don’t shop or make dinner, I feel a bit empty. I miss the baskets of dragon fruit and litchis at the Asian market near my office. I miss the bright abundance of my neighborhood grocer. During my forays, which I now squeeze in on the way home from work or during lunch breaks, I watch people stuff their shopping carts with what looks like two weeks’ worth of provisions. A pound of spring mix in a plastic container the size of a small suitcase. Bags full of peaches that will certainly go bad or worse, never ripen. I feel sorry for them — mixed with a healthy dose of disdain. I can point out things that will end up in the garbage, like that 16-ounce tub of mushrooms: They’ll use half of it, put the survivors back in the fridge and then throw the slimy things out a week later. I want to tell them, “Better to buy a few ounces of bulk mushrooms the day you need them.” (Yes, I am insufferable.) At times when money was tight, finding just the right tomatoes to make an inexpensive pasta dish shine made me feel like a good provider. These days, shopping provides a daily dose of meditation. I don’t shop so much as search. That’s a better way to describe the existential nature of my yearning. If I need an avocado for tonight’s dinner, I’m willing to go to five stores for a ripe one. An avocado has a window of about six hours when it’s perfect, when the skin gives just a bit but bounces


The conundrum affordable housing poses for the nation

homeownership out of reach for more and more families, particularly families of color. The homeownership rate for African Americans has fallen to a half-century low. This in turn is exacerbating the growing wealth gap. In generations past, the primary way lower- and middle-income households were able to build wealth was by owning a home. More than investing in the stock market, more even than investing in their 401(k) and other retirement accounts, the middle class built wealth through the simple act of paying their monthly mortgage. But with fewer families able to buy a house, and more renters spending so much of their income just to keep a roof over their heads, housing is increasingly more of a drain than a source of wealth building. The affordability crisis is also undermining labor mobility, another pillar of the American economy. Unlike in much of the rest of the world, Americans have historically been willing and able to move where there is economic opportunity. In today’s economy, the best job opportunities are often in the nation’s big urban areas, but this is also where housing is least affordable. Many are thus faced with the Hobson’s choice of long commutes, unaffordable housing or forgoing good jobs altogether. Paralyzed by this, Americans aren’t moving as much, and our economy is diminished as a result. And then it isn’t hard to connect the dots between the affordability crisis and the mounting problem of homelessness. Homelessness is a complex problem with many causes, but it isn’t surprising that the big cities in California and the Northeast have among the least-affordable housing markets and the largest number of homeless. An increasing number of communities, including ones in California, Oregon and New York, are responding to the affordability crisis by imposing rent controls. At best this is a short-term financial salve for struggling renters. At worst it may exacerbate the problem, by limiting the returns to builders and their incentive to construct more dwellings. What is needed instead are policies that reduce the cost of building houses more Americans can afford. Most obvious is beefing up the tried-and-true programs dedicated to reducing the cost of development, including the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and the New Market Tax Credit. These tax breaks have proven effective in addressing precisely the supply problem at issue. But instead of expanding them, last year's tax cut reduced their value to developers. The new


Cancel the D.C. ‘maglev’ train

The Dec. 18 Metro article “Review of Baltimore-D.C. ‘maglev’ project paused,” about a pause in the Federal Railroad Administration’s analysis of a high-speed magnetic-levitation train system, known as “maglev,” to give those behind the project more time to provide engineering and design details, noted that the FRA could rule against the project entirely. A ruling against it would be the right outcome. At a price of between $10 billion and $12 billion for just the portion from the District to Baltimore, this works out to about $250 million to $300 million per mile. Even if $5 billion comes from Japan, that leaves $5 billion to $7 billion to be financed. It is likely that the cities and states along the route and their taxpayers would foot most or all of the bill. Such a sum of money would be better spent improving the existing Northeast Corridor, expanding or enhancing commuter rail such as Maryland Area Regional Commuter and Virginia Railway Express trains, or on any number of other types of infrastructure, the crumbling state of which has been documented in many areas. It could even replace old water mains that break on a regular basis, causing traffic nightmares such as the one that recently occurred at the Chain Bridge. Those kinds of projects are more valuable for all of us every day than the ability to travel from the District to New York in an hour. Judith Collins Read more letters to the editor. Read a letter responding to this one: The proposed ‘maglev’ project would benefit future generations


Railroads are slashing workers, cheered on by Wall Street to stay profitable amid Trump’s trade war

of the $70,000-a-year conductor and maintenance jobs are unlikely to return. The rail industry, which once employed more than a million Americans, fell below 200,000 employees in 2019, the first time that has happened since the Labor Department started keeping track of railroad employment in the 1940s. “We fundamentally changed the way we operate over the last 2½ years,” said Bryan Tucker, vice president of communications at CSX. “It’s a different way of running a railroad.” A Norfolk Southern spokeswoman said the company was focused on increasing efficiency and profitable growth and that “as our business changes, so too do our personnel needs.” Union Pacific stressed the environmental benefits of moving goods by rail instead of truck. Even if business bounces back, the industry embrace of PSR promises to hold down the need for more workers. Freight railroads used to run trains carrying just one type of good, and the trains could sit in yards for hours or days until they had enough of a load to justify departing. Now, after PSR, railroads are running more trains with mixed goods and on a set schedule that leaves no matter what. The goal now is to minimize stoppage and use the same locomotive and crew as much as possible, akin to the way the same airplane shuttles constantly between the Washington area and New York City. Rail executives say these changes are delivering more reliable service that can better compete against trucks. PSR is aided by new technology such as drones and artificial intelligence to monitor tracks and send customers alerts about train locations. But PSR is also causing railroads to turn away some business that isn’t profitable enough, says Peter Swan, associate professor of logistics at Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg. Some routes are now gone or downsized. “Shareholders at railroads are looking at the financial success of PSR and now every single big railroad is trying to adopt some form of this,” Swan said. “If you’re trying to save money, you cut people like crazy.” Canadian railroads embraced PSR over a decade ago. The strategy has taken hold among major U.S. freight railroads since 2017, as executives hunted for a way to increase profits to make up for shrinking coal traffic and the recent downturn in the industrial economy. Wall Street has applauded the changes, signaling this could be a model for other industries that encounter rough times. Norfolk


Local Digest: Man killed in Southeast is city’s first homicide victim of 2020

THE DISTRICT Police are investigating the killing of a 60-year-old man early Saturday in Southeast Washington. Charles Robinson, who was found shot inside a residence in Anacostia, became the first homicide victim in the nation’s capital in 2020. In 2019 there were 166 slayings in the District — the most in a decade. Police said they responded to a report of a shooting about 3:30 a.m. Saturday in the 2000 block of 19th Place SE, near Good Hope Road. Robinson was dead by the time fire and emergency medical services workers arrived. — Peter Jamison An 18-year-old man was arrested Friday in connection with the fatal shooting of a teenager three months ago in Southwest Washington near Nationals Park, D.C. police said. According to the police, Javon Gunter, 18, of Southwest was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Thomas Johnson, 15. Johnson lived in Southeast Washington, police said. No specific motive in the shooting has been made public. The shooting occurred at about 1:15 p.m. in the 1300 block of Half Street SW. — Martin Weil MARYLAND Police arrested one person who they believe is linked to three armed robberies in Prince George’s County and were seeking four other people who fled into the District as authorities gave chase, officials said. Police said they were called to an armed robbery in Capitol Heights about 12:50 p.m. Saturday. There they found a vehicle with five people parked in a residential neighborhood. After police arrived, the vehicle headed toward the District. Prince George’s police received permission to pursue, and police said a brief chase followed. The people bailed out of the car in the District, near East Capitol and 53rd streets, police said, and officers pursued them on foot. Prince George’s police are now being assisted by D.C. police in finding the four people who remain at large. — Rachel Chason


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I’m Okay, You’re Okay

on terrorism. It was a time of optimism unleavened by sacrifice. Digitally driven exuberance produced an economic boom and a psychological bubble. Although Clinton portrays this period as one filled with Herculean struggles by progressive forces to beat back the regressive right, which was occasionally the case, more often the fights were so bitter because the stakes were so small. Clinton’s psychological introspection, rendered in lingo from personal therapy and couples’ counseling, is another reason his memoir reads like a period piece. In that regard, it contrasts with the most underrated modern presidential memoir, Richard Nixon’s RN, the product of a more emotionally inhibited generation. Nixon’s crisp opening sentence -- “I was born in a house my father built” -- stands starkly without further reflection. Clinton’s opening sentence likewise describes his birth, but it’s clogged with fact-filled clauses and followed by pages of analysis about how both his father and stepfather helped to instill his drives and demons. Perhaps the best presidential autobiography, or so we were informed repeatedly in the walkup to the Clinton launch, is Ulysses S. Grant’s Personal Memoirs, which wins this month’s Alexis de Tocqueville award for being the book most often cited by people who have not actually read it. Its opening sentence is likewise revealing of the tenor of its times: “My family is American, and has been for generations, in all its branches, direct and collateral.” The critic Edmund Wilson called it “a unique expression of the national character.” It was helped by having a great editor -- Mark Twain -- who relentlessly pushed Grant to write it, then edited it into shape and promoted it brilliantly. In a blurb that would have dazzled even today’s promotion-savvy publishers, Twain called the memoir “the best of any general’s since Caesar’s.” Which brings up one additional way, alas, that Clinton’s tome reflects our times. It is the product of an age of hyper-marketed blockbusters that are rushed into print and hurled into promotional orbit. Clinton was inexplicably pushed by the normally stately House of Knopf to meet an arbitrary deadline, and guessing whether he would meet it became a public pastime. The result is as messy as certain months of his presidency. His beguiling recollection of his childhood is stapled together with a hastily-disgorged data dump on the day-by-day chronology of his presidency that features stretches of unrelated paragraphs beginning with such phrases as, “Also


Gulls were lured to parking lot in Maryland and run over, police say

In what appeared to be an unusual act of animal cruelty, someone attracted seagulls to a parking lot in a suburb of Washington on Saturday and ran them over with a vehicle, according to authorities. At least 10 seagulls were killed Saturday in a lot in the Laurel Plaza Shopping Center in the 9600 block of Fort Meade Road, Laurel police said. Someone bought a bag of pre-popped popcorn at a store there and emptied it in the lot, “intentionally luring” the gulls, police said. Then, the gulls were run over, according to the police. The driver left the scene, police said. After arriving about 10:45 a.m., officers found the seagulls dead in the lot, close to one another, police said. Police said their investigation indicated that the incident occurred between 9 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. Saturday. Gulls are not uncommon in this area, sometimes scavenging for food. They are known as opportunistic feeders, consuming a wide range of items. Anecdotes suggest that they may be slow to scatter when approached and are sometimes regarded as pests. In a Twitter post, Audrey Barnes, spokeswoman for the city of Laurel, called on the public for assistance. She joined with the police in asking for help in finding “the suspect behind this senseless act of animal cruelty.” Laurel, with an area of a little more than four square miles, is northeast of the District, in northeastern Prince George’s County, and about equidistant from Washington and Baltimore. The city of about 20,000 people is on the Patuxent River, which flows into the Chesapeake Bay. martin.weil@washpost.com


Where U.S. troops are in the Middle East and Afghanistan, visualized

for U.S.-Iranian contestation,” the ICG has warned. In November, Trump made a surprise visit to troops stationed at Afghanistan’s Bagram air base. The United States has about 13,000 military personnel spread among several bases in Kuwait, according to the Congressional Research Service. The two countries have had a Defense Cooperation Agreement since the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Jordan — bordering Iraq, Syria, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, as well as Saudi Arabia — is a strategically located U.S. ally. Its Muwaffaq Salti Air Base was an important launching point in the battle against the Islamic State, and there are plans to upgrade the complex. In November 2016, three U.S. soldiers were killed by a Jordanian air force sergeant in a rare shooting at King Faisal Air Base. In October, the United States announced that it was sending additional troops to Saudi Arabia as tensions with Iran continued to build. Saudi Arabia and Iran have long been regional rivals: The two are involved in a proxy war in Yemen. Washington has accused Iran of attacking oil and gas facilities in Saudi Arabia, which Iran has denied. Bahrain hosts a U.S. Navy base, where several thousand personnel are stationed or pass through. The island nation is a close ally of Saudi Arabia and has supported Trump’s aggressive stance toward Iran. Bahrain also suppressed a Shiite uprising in 2011, putting it further at odds with Iran’s government. Aboard a U.S. patrol ship in the Persian Gulf, where tensions are spiking Oman hosts only a few hundred troops. In March, it signed a deal allowing U.S. planes and warships to use some Omani airstrips and ports. Most important, Oman is along the Arabian Peninsula near the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil choke point. It’s also where the United States and Iran for months have been engaged in oil tanker standoffs: Since withdrawing from the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear deal almost two years ago, the United States has increased pressure on Iran, including canceling waivers for countries to buy Iranian oil. Iran has in turn threatened to close access to the strait, which would severely constrain access to oil. Washington has also accused Iran of sabotaging oil tankers in the waterway, which Iran has denied. The UAE is another country near the Strait of Hormuz that’s been part of the tanker confrontations. It has hosted as many as 5,000 troops in


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Expect a tumultuous 2020 in the Middle East

protests across the Middle East rivaled those of the Arab Spring in 2011 — and in some ways were more impressive. Protests challenged regimes in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon; forced political change in Algeria; and overthrew the Sudanese regime. More will come. Lebanon’s economic crisis is intersecting with the protests in unprecedented ways, while the sudden death of Algeria’s military strongman and the election of a new president have opened the door to the possibility for real change. Sudan’s remarkable democratic transition will be sorely tested. Popular dissatisfaction had been building in these countries — and others — for years, with widespread discontent over worsening unemployment, food shortages, crippled or nonexistent public services, and corrupt or repressive governments being amplified by a new generation’s impatience. New protest waves were only a matter of time. Sudan’s remarkable success offers a glimmer of hope that protest movements may break with recent patterns of failure in 2020. Protesters have learned from past failures, showing remarkable resilience, creativity and political discipline. However, keep an eye on whether these sustained peaceful protests will tip over into violence, as loosely organized opposition coalitions fray and impatient regimes use harsher policing tactics. In Iran, brutal repression seems to have quashed its 2019 protests, but the underlying grievances simmer. In Iraq and Lebanon, the governments’ violent attacks on protesters haven’t yet slowed those demonstrations — and could escalate from arrests and beatings to slaughter. Don’t be surprised if protests erupt in other countries this year. Egypt’s government has been intensifying its repression, arresting journalists and shuttering civil society while its economy has struggled. Jordan’s economic struggles have become more pressing under the weight of Syrian refugees and reduced aid from the Gulf, and Israel’s annexation of the West Bank could spill over onto Jordan’s territory. Oman’s long-ruling sultan is reportedly critically ill, and his succession is of great interest to its bickering Gulf neighbors. While renewed protests in Syria against Assad’s brutal regime are difficult to imagine, the dramatic spillover of Lebanon’s economic crisis into Syria poses a challenge that the regime cannot kill its way out of, and few if any other nations are likely to send assistance. Expect these three trends to bring numerous crises during this U.S. election year, shaping the challenges that will await the next administration. Don’t miss anything! Sign up to get TMC’s smart analysis in your inbox, three days a week.


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U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan departs as Taliban peace efforts remain stalled

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — U.S. Ambassador John R. Bass is ending his two-year tenure in Afghanistan Monday as peace talks with the Taliban remain stalled. The State Department said in a statement Monday that “Ambassador Bass’s departure is long-planned and part of the normal rotation cycle.” The departure of the top American diplomat in Afghanistan comes as American and Taliban negotiators are once again trying to revive efforts to reach a peace deal. During a surprise visit to Afghanistan in November, President Trump announced peace efforts had “made tremendous progress.” A peace agreement would pave the way for the withdrawal of thousands of American troops, a key Trump campaign promise. American and Afghan government officials are asking the Taliban to commit to a reduction in violence before talks are formally restarted. Over the course of Bass’s tenure, peace efforts with the Taliban gained steam and at several points a deal appeared imminent. In September, Taliban and American negotiators agreed on a framework that would have seen the withdrawal of American troops in exchange for a Taliban pledge not to harbor terrorist groups with ambitions to attack the United States. That draft deal was called off by Trump after a Taliban attack killed an American service member. More recently, after a prisoner swap helped bring the two sides back to the negotiating table, a Dec. 11 Taliban attack on the highly fortified U.S. Bagram air base derailed talks once again. “My earnest hope is for leaders and citizens across this country to find strength in unity, put aside their differences, and work together to negotiate a political settlement with the Taliban. Afghans and this beautiful country deserve nothing less,” Bass said in a farewell message posted to Twitter on Monday. While efforts to reach a peace deal were the most high-profile diplomatic effort during Bass’s tenure, the ambassador spoke out against corruption and publicly criticized Afghanistan’s main intelligence agency for employing “Soviet-style tactics.” Bass recently said he was “disturbed” by reports that a former bank manager convicted of multimillion-dollar fraud was moved from prison to house arrest after making a large campaign donation to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. “This action, along with the continued failure to execute warrants for those accused of corruption, calls into question the government’s commitment to combating #corruption and making best use of donors’ support,” Bass said in a tweet. His comments were met with swift criticism from


Borden Dairy becomes second major milk producer to file for bankruptcy in two months

Borden Dairy filed for bankruptcy Sunday, becoming the second major milk producer in as many months to seek Chapter 11 protection. Chief executive Tony Sarsam said the company’s debt burden, coupled with industry head winds, left Borden with few options. “This was our final resort,” he told The Washington Post on Monday. Dean Foods, the nation’s largest milk producer, filed for bankruptcy protection in November. From major corporations to small farmers, milk processors are seeing their margins pinched as wholesale milk costs climb and consumers gravitate to dairy-free options such as almond, soy and oat beverages. The industry head winds go on from there. Milk producers are up against a decline in cereal sales as consumers shift toward breakfast options with more protein and less sugar. Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, has started processing some of its own milk, cleaving sales from legacy brands like Borden and Dean, which have had to keep prices low to stay competitive. Americans are even milking goats as never before. All told, more than 2,700 dairy farms have gone out of business in the past 18 months, Borden noted in its filing. The 163-year-old company has a storied history. Borden was the first to patent its process for condensing milk and the first to use glass milk bottles. Its mascot, Elsie the cow, is so identified with the brand that Ad Age named it one of the top 10 advertising icons of the 20th century. Decades ago, Borden looked beyond dairy and went on an acquisition tear; in 1987 alone, it bought 23 companies for $442.6 million, CNN reported. But the buying spree took a financial toll, and Borden was sold to private-equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts for $2 billion in 1995. Many of Borden’s nondairy businesses were eventually sold off. Headquartered in Dallas, Borden operates 12 milk processing plants and distributes nearly 500 million gallons of milk a year for grocery stores, food service, the hospitality industry and schools. It employs 3,300 people. In 2018, Borden had $1.2 billion in net sales and losses in excess of $14.6 million. From Jan. 1, 2019, through Dec. 7, Borden reported a net loss of $42.4 million. Borden said it will continue to operate while it goes through restructuring. It had recently tried to prop up sales with a relaunch of its mascot, Elsie, plus the rollout of other products like a gingerbread eggnog and a


before. All told, more than 2,700 dairy farms have gone out of business in the past 18 months, Borden noted in its filing. The 163-year-old company has a storied history. Borden was the first to patent its process for condensing milk and the first to use glass milk bottles. Its mascot, Elsie the cow, is so identified with the brand that Ad Age named it one of the top 10 advertising icons of the 20th century. Decades ago, Borden looked beyond dairy and went on an acquisition tear; in 1987 alone, it bought 23 companies for $442.6 million, CNN reported. But the buying spree took a financial toll, and Borden was sold to private-equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts for $2 billion in 1995. Many of Borden’s nondairy businesses were eventually sold off. Headquartered in Dallas, Borden operates 12 milk processing plants and distributes nearly 500 million gallons of milk a year for grocery stores, food service, the hospitality industry and schools. It employs 3,300 people. In 2018, Borden had $1.2 billion in net sales and losses in excess of $14.6 million. From Jan. 1, 2019, through Dec. 7, Borden reported a net loss of $42.4 million. Borden said it will continue to operate while it goes through restructuring. It had recently tried to prop up sales with a relaunch of its mascot, Elsie, plus the rollout of other products like a gingerbread eggnog and a milk with higher levels of protein and calcium. According to the consulting firm Euromonitor, Borden and Dean Foods controlled roughly 13.5 percent of American milk sales last year. Milk consumption in the United States has dropped 6 percent since 2015. Farmer bankruptcies are on the rise, and farm debt is at record highs, crippling farmers who have struggled to cover essentials such as groceries and electricity. Still, Sarsam pointed to categories that are seeing an uptick, including whole milk, flavored milk and eggnog. The company has also seen growing popularity with cottage cheese, sour cream and dips. “Companies that have had similar circumstances have gotten in and out of the filing in about six months,” Sarsam said. “We expect that or faster.” Dean Foods has said that it sought Chapter 11 protection to meet debt obligations while it looked for a buyer. NBC News reported in mid-November that Dean had secured commitments for $850 million in debtor-in-possession financing, which is for companies under financial strains.


Afghanistan shows the dangers of relying on the Pentagon to assess war

a result, official government messaging on the state of our wars has often come via congressional testimony from senior generals. Visits to Washington by generals such as David H. Petraeus and others became media events and key check-in points for public messaging on the state of our wars. The military undertakes massive responsibility around the world, and our uniformed personnel have won tremendous respect. But they are not particularly good at grading their work for the public. In numerous briefings and testimony over the course of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, general after general assured us that the training of the local forces was a success and on schedule. But when the insurgent Islamic State force raced toward Mosul in Toyota pickups, the Iraqi army fled without putting up a fight. The army and police in Afghanistan are not much better despite years of training and millions of dollars in equipment. A large reason that military officers make bad spokesmen is because they can never publicly admit that they are losing. They have built a can-do culture. Their job is to salute civilian leadership and do their best to make it work. They can’t afford to be pessimists or believe they are sending young people to die in vain. How can a commander testify publicly that we are losing one day, and lead troops into battle the next? By contrast, intelligence agencies take pride in sharing unvarnished analysis and don’t hesitate to speak truth to power. These two cultures clashed most directly in 2009 when Adm. Dennis Blair, then the director of national intelligence, sought to uproot the practice of CIA station chiefs abroad serving as de facto national intelligence representatives. Blair believed that in certain countries, the senior military commander or a representative from another agency could serve as the senior intelligence representative — the intelligence official responsible for coordinating all U.S. intelligence activities in any country, and representing the intelligence community with local security services. But if Blair had his way, the senior military official in a country such as Iraq or Afghanistan could also serve as the senior intelligence representative. In such cases, the official intelligence representative might be pressured to resist supporting intelligence assessments that undercut Pentagon policy. But then-CIA Director Leon Panetta argued that one individual should not be responsible for both arguing policy aspirations and providing intelligence analysis. He successfully pushed back against


More than 60,000 Mexicans have disappeared amid drug war, officials say

MEXICO CITY — More than 61,000 people have disappeared in Mexico, authorities announced Monday, sharply raising their estimate of those who have vanished in more than a decade of extreme violence by and among organized-crime groups. The government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador released the new figure after an exhaustive analysis of data from state prosecutors. The previous official estimate, released in April 2018, put the number at 40,000. While hundreds of cases date to the 1960s, over 97 percent have been reported since 2006, when Mexico launched an all-out offensive targeting drug trafficking and criminal organizations. Karla Quintana, head of Mexico’s National Search Commission, which coordinates the effort to find the missing, said that at least 61,637 people had been reported disappeared and not been found. “These are data of horror, and behind them are stories and narratives of great pain for families,” she said at a news conference. The numbers confirm that Mexico is suffering one of the worst crises of “the disappeared” in Latin American history. In the 1970s and 1980s, forced disappearances in the region became a global human rights concern as governments systematically detained and killed opponents — most suspected of involvement in leftist insurgencies. Around 40,000 people went missing in Guatemala’s 36-year civil war, which ended in 1996. An estimated 30,000 disappeared during Argentina’s “dirty war,” which lasted from 1976 to 1983. Unlike those countries, though, Mexico has not been at war — at least, not officially. And while militaries were behind most of the Cold War disappearances, narco-traffickers and other criminals are the likely culprits in the majority of the Mexican cases. Authorities suspect many of them worked with corrupt police and politicians. The Monday announcement highlights the toll of more than a decade of extraordinary violence in Mexico that shows no sign of abating. Last year, homicides through November topped 31,000, a record. In some regions, organized-crime groups openly battle police and soldiers. Quintana said 3,631 clandestine graves have been discovered since 2006. But the updated figures also indicate how López Obrador’s leftist government, which took over in December 2018, has placed more priority on the issue of the disappeared, after years of official indifference. U.N. human rights officials have praised the National Search Commission, while warning that Mexico faces “enormous challenges” in other areas. Under previous governments, there was “in some sense a denial of the magnitude of the problem,”


A D.C. Dream Day with DC Brau co-founder Brandon Skall

a really amazing gift to impart onto a child to be bilingual. I’ve got a running club I meet up with early in the morning once a week. We call ourselves the Croissant Club. We usually go for a run around the city and we finish south of Dupont Circle at a bakery called Un je ne sais Quoi. It’s an amazing little French bakery that’s owned by a French couple. They are just the nicest, sweetest people, and they make all their croissants fresh every single day. It’s a great way to start my day. I’d make a quick jaunt to DC Brau. Make sure everything’s okay. Probably won’t spend too much time, just make sure there’s no fires to put out. I try to say hello to everybody every day. I think that’s important. I’ll stop in at All-Purpose Pizzeria in Shaw. A couple years ago I had what I called the summer of pizza where I was just going to have pizza as much as I wanted to, and it just never ended. I’d get the Buona, which is their pepperoni pizza with this little honey glaze on it. I like to add a little bit of their Italian sausage. Man, it’s so good. In addition to always having great beer, they’ve got a really good wine list. I might have a nebbiolo. If I could grab my kids out of school for a bit, I would take them to the National Air and Space Museum. That’s one of our favorite places to go. Both my kids are really fascinated by space. They’re really into superhero movies, and when we go there we get to see real superheroes and people who have done some pretty amazing things as well as some pretty cool hardware — all those planes — and the Imax movie is always fun. From there, I’d run down to Vida Fitness on U Street. It’s my gym, and I love it there. My girlfriend, Christine Kontra, is a personal trainer there, and I really love getting in a workout with a friend or someone you care about. She specializes in weight training and yoga, so either one of those would be would be great. From there, we’d go to a beer event at Roofers Union. One of my favorite things to do every year at Roofers Union is their ugly sweater toy drive holiday


Climate change is playing havoc with Mexico’s monarch butterfly migration

weather patterns. That consistency no longer exists. Now summer temperatures in the Midwest are soaring. The milkweed in Texas is drying up. Winter storms, once rare, are snaking through central Mexico regularly as air warms over the Pacific Ocean and blows across the region. “The question we’re asking is ‘Can one of the world’s most adaptive insects adapt to climate change?’ ” asked Karen Oberhauser, who studies the species at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “We are changing the conditions and just waiting to see.” Between 1990 and 2015, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says, a billion butterflies vanished. Because over 95 percent of the population migrates en masse to a few patches of Mexican forest, each smaller than half a football field, a single storm or heat stroke could effectively kill off the population. (A smaller percentage of the butterflies winter in Southern California or Florida, where they face their own challenges.) That nearly happened in 2002, when a winter storm killed about 75 percent of monarchs. And again in 2012, when a heat wave in the Midwest killed tens of thousands. “At every stage in their migration, they are threatened by climate change,” said Eduardo Rendón, the monarch butterfly coordinator for the World Wildlife Fund in Mexico. Each time, they rebounded — but barely. In 2018, the population grew when a cold front in North Texas forced butterflies to stay in South Texas for longer than usual, increasing the length of their breeding season. But last year brought another scare, as temperatures in Oklahoma and Kansas soared as monarchs passed through. It was the second hottest September in 125 years in those states. The impact on the population has not yet been calculated. “If you’re talking 20, 30, 40 years out, we’re not going to be talking about monarchs any more,” said Chip Taylor, the founder of Monarch Watch and a professor at the University of Kansas. One way to chronicle the toll of climate change is simply to list, one by one, the species that it eliminates. By one measure, that list started this past year. In February, the government of Australia recognized the first mammal to go extinct due to climate change: the Bramble Cay melomys, a small rodent that lived on an island in the Great Barrier Reef. But the melomys, with its glassy eyes and tiny rat-like mouth, was — to the


the monarch butterfly coordinator for the World Wildlife Fund in Mexico. Each time, they rebounded — but barely. In 2018, the population grew when a cold front in North Texas forced butterflies to stay in South Texas for longer than usual, increasing the length of their breeding season. But last year brought another scare, as temperatures in Oklahoma and Kansas soared as monarchs passed through. It was the second hottest September in 125 years in those states. The impact on the population has not yet been calculated. “If you’re talking 20, 30, 40 years out, we’re not going to be talking about monarchs any more,” said Chip Taylor, the founder of Monarch Watch and a professor at the University of Kansas. One way to chronicle the toll of climate change is simply to list, one by one, the species that it eliminates. By one measure, that list started this past year. In February, the government of Australia recognized the first mammal to go extinct due to climate change: the Bramble Cay melomys, a small rodent that lived on an island in the Great Barrier Reef. But the melomys, with its glassy eyes and tiny rat-like mouth, was — to the human imagination, at least — as far from the majestic monarch as a species can get. Sympathy for animals is not democratic. There’s nothing logical about our love for the monarch, nothing that makes its possible extinction any more tragic than that of the melomys. But! To see the monarch migration arrive in central Mexico is to be transported into a waking dream. Tree branches droop under the weight of thousands of butterflies. Each morning, when the sun hits, they scatter in a glittering cloud of orange wings. In parts of the forest, looking up from the ground, visitors see more butterflies than sky, the only sound the quiet flapping of wings against the ground and leaves. “The monarch's overwintering colonies in Mexico rank as one of the great biological wonders of the world,” wrote Lincoln Brower, the world’s preeminent expert on the species, who died in 2018. The United Nations reported this year that 1 million species of plants and animals face possible extinction “within decades” — due in large part to climate change. The monarch is among them. American scientists spent more than a century trying to find the population in Mexico. A National Geographic headline celebrated their


All his life, his health was poor. It took more than 50 years to find out why.

For as long as he can remember, Steven Knapp never felt well. “That was pretty much true from early childhood,” said Knapp, a self-described “Army brat” who was born in Germany and grew up in Turkey and a half-dozen states, including Georgia where he has lived since high school. Now 61, the technology writer said that childhood trips to the emergency room were not uncommon. A small and skinny child, he seemed accident-prone. He also had recurrent bouts of bronchitis, episodic nausea and a seasonal cough that was thought to be allergic. But doctors never found anything out of the ordinary. Instead of outgrowing his problems, they worsened in adulthood. His cough became year-round and was attributed to an asthmalike condition. His digestive problems were chalked up to acid reflux disease or irritable bowel syndrome. One doctor suggested Knapp’s problems might be psychological. Others couldn’t make sense of his disparate symptoms. More than 50 years would elapse before Knapp learned the reason for his poor health. A referral to a new specialist led to a work-up that yielded a surprising result: a little-known form of a progressive, life-shortening disorder typically diagnosed in infancy. “I think part of the challenge is that a lot of my symptoms are very common,” said Knapp, who lives in Marietta, outside Atlanta. He said he sometimes feels angry about the years of ineffective treatments he underwent, largely because medical knowledge had not sufficiently advanced until he was well into middle age. Mostly, Knapp said, “I feel very fortunate that I finally got a diagnosis that seems to make sense.” Once he hit his 30s, Knapp recalled, his health seemed to nose-dive and he suffered unexplained bouts of exhaustion. But invariably when doctors tested him, he said, “my bloodwork was surprisingly good.” One of his most perplexing and bothersome symptoms was the chronic cough that had morphed from seasonal to year-round, accompanied by obstructed sinuses. Knapp underwent a tonsillectomy and sinus surgery; neither helped. The lack of improvement puzzled his doctors. “They would say, ‘It doesn’t seem like asthma, but let’s treat it like asthma’ ” he recalled of the inhaled corticosteroids, a mainstay treatment for asthma, that he took for years to little effect. Knapp also tried acupuncture, massage, a narcotic cough suppressant and Neurontin, an epilepsy drug sometimes used to treat a chronic cough. Only the cough medicine worked. His gastrointestinal problems were equally


‘It’s a lot happening all at once’: Illinois shops run out of marijuana just six days after start of legalization

“We’re still waiting on cultivator deliveries but will serve as many rec customers we can each day til further notice!” the dispensary tweeted on Monday evening. Standing in line for hours in frigid temperatures, tens of thousands have flocked to the nine dispensaries selling recreational cannabis in Chicago after Illinois’s newly legalized cannabis sales began on New Year’s Day. The numbers have been staggering: Fifty-five dispensaries in the state sold more than $3 million in THC-imbued products on day one, matching Oregon’s record-setting opening for recreational sales in 2015. By Sunday, Illinois’s cannabis customers had bought nearly $11 million worth of recreational marijuana in the first five days, making more than 271,000 purchases. But the crush of eager buyers strained the state’s marijuana supply, leading many dispensaries in Chicago to turn away customers before the first week of sales even ended. Meanwhile, given the state’s restrictive licensing rules, some large cultivators are now rushing to keep up with recreational demand in a market previously designed to serve a much smaller number of medical cannabis patients. Illinois passed legislation in June to legalize the sale and possession of recreational cannabis by January 2020, giving the existing growers — who served about 87,000 medical marijuana patients before the change — fewer than six months to expand their operations to meet the increased demand. The Chicago Tribune reported last year that the state, which was the first to legalize recreational marijuana through legislation instead of a ballot measure, estimated it could have more than 900,000 marijuana users. Although the 11 states to legalize recreational marijuana sales have struggled to adopt regulations, Illinois’ first week of sales has been particularly rough for dispensaries. Colorado and Washington state, the first to allow recreational sales, had much smaller opening weeks in 2012. Oregon and Washington have since struggled with a different supply problem, after hundreds of cultivators grew far more cannabis than consumers can buy and use. In other industries, if a state produced too much of a commodity, the extra would probably flow to places facing shortages. Marijuana is still illegal under federal law, so it can’t be sold across state lines. As a result, states that have too much cannabis, like Oregon, can’t sell their surplus inventory to those, like Illinois, that have too little. Demand from recreational users often outpaces medical marijuana use by up to 10 times, economist Beau Whitney told the


Animal advocacy group offers $5,000 reward in Md. case of driver who ran over gulls

The animal advocacy group PETA said it is offering a reward of up to $5,000 for help in figuring out who allegedly lured sea gulls to the parking lot of a Dollar Tree store in Laurel and then ran them over, killing 10 of them. The incident happened Saturday morning at the Laurel Plaza shopping center on Fort Meade Road. Laura Guenin, a spokeswoman for the Laurel Police Department, said Tuesday that detectives didn’t have any leads on who might have been involved in the gull incident. She said police officers and commanders who had been with the agency said that “in over 20 years on the force, they’d never seen anything like this.” Guenin said police were alerted to the situation after a tow-truck driver in the parking lot called authorities. Police said the tow-truck driver said he had seen the birds after they were run over but talked to people who had seen the incident unfold. Those witnesses left the area without calling law enforcement, according to Guenin. Laurel police said on Facebook that an initial investigation found that someone had bought a bag of popcorn from the Dollar Tree store and then “emptied it in the lot to lure in the birds before running over them with his or her car.” Police said the person then fled. PETA said the reward is for information that leads to an arrest and conviction in the case. In a statement, Colleen O’Brien, a vice president for PETA, said “it takes a cruel, dangerous person to coax gulls over with the intention of violently killing them.” Audrey Barnes, a spokeswoman for the city of Laurel, also asked the public for help in finding the “suspect behind this senseless act of animal cruelty.” One of the gulls was still alive when officers arrived, and police posted a photo on social media showing an officer holding the injured gull. Guenin said the gull later died. Anyone with information in the case is asked to call 301-498-7645. dana.hedgpeth@washpost.com


The Daily 202: Esper’s split with Trump over targeting Iranian cultural sites is a nod to ‘the laws of armed conflict’

the start of legalization. THE NEW WORLD ORDER: -- More than 61,000 people have disappeared in Mexico amid the drug war, authorities said, sharply raising their estimate of those who have vanished in more than a decade of extreme violence by and among organized-crime groups. -- A 13-year-old American boy was killed in Mexico near the U.S. border while traveling with his family. -- Mexican asylum seekers could now be deported to Guatemala as part of a deal that the Department of Homeland Security struck with the Central American nation. -- Mexico rejected the proposal, saying it's working with American authorities to offer “better options.” -- The Trump administration will seek the death penalty against an MS-13 gang member, who immigrated here from El Salvador, accused in the kidnappings and killings of two Virginia teenagers in 2016. -- The U.S. government has launched a pilot program to collect DNA from people detained at the border, which will then be turned over to the FBI. -- A senior employee at a for-profit immigrant detention center in Nevada was active on the neo-Nazi website Iron March and wanted to start a white nationalist chapter in his area. -- Venezuelan opposition lawmakers led by Juan Guaidó vowed to retake the National Assembly after being barred from the chamber this weekend, setting up a showdown over President Nicolás Maduro’s attempt to seize control of the last democratic institution left in the nation. -- During a 10-minute call, Vice President Mike Pence told Guaidó that he is the “only legitimate president” of Venezuela. -- After nearly a year without a government, Spain ended its deadlock Tuesday with a parliamentary vote that approved a left-wing coalition led by current caretaker Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. -- Australia’s catastrophic fires threaten to upend the way people live. -- The world’s oldest person broke her own record by turning 117. -- Japan issued an arrest warrant for Carlos Ghosn’s wife on suspicion of perjury, even as Nissan said it would continue to take legal action to hold its former boss accountable for “serious misconduct.” SOCIAL MEDIA SPEED READ: A Republican congressman, Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, tweeted a fake image of Barack Obama with Iran’s president. The two men never even met: Donald Trump Jr. has a new weapon that includes questionable icons: History repeats itself. Fox News putting Judy Miller on the air caused flashbacks for many to


Do Americans really need to be more thrifty?

Few economic virtues are more universally applauded than thrift. Going back at least to Ben Franklin, Americans have equated greater thriftiness with greater worthiness. Progressives decry the limited saving and wealth accumulation of middle-income families and express alarm over the widely reported “fact” that 40 percent of Americans cannot come up with $400 in an emergency. Conservatives applaud thrift as an aspect of self-reliance and propose ideas such as health-savings accounts to help families prepare for emergencies. Moderates believe universal social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare, which they label as entitlements, should be modest or even curtailed out of fiscal prudence. In the current economic context of extremely low interest rates, however, these views are more wrong than right. The federal government should provide more, not less, social insurance. If it did, the result would be reduced inequality, a more secure middle class and a stronger economy. The immediate financial insecurity of the middle class has been exaggerated. That frequently cited 40 percent figure comes from a Federal Reserve survey asking how individuals would meet an unexpected $400 expense. About 60 percent said they would meet the expenditure by dipping into cash or its equivalent, which in turn is the basis for the claim that 40 percent of families would have to borrow on credit cards or from family members. But the same Fed survey found that 85 percent of adults could meet a $400 expense while still paying all their bills. The real challenges that keep middle-class families up at night are retirement, economic dislocation and supporting their children as they go to college and then buy a first home. These cost far more than $400 and are not best met by personal saving. Rather, a generous and well-functioning society in which Social Security meets retirement needs, appropriate unemployment and wage insurance programs cushion economic shocks, adequate public funding holds down college costs, and health insurance has generous coverage would greatly reduce the need for most households to save. It is highly inefficient to rely on individual saving rather than universal public programs to deal with life’s contingencies. Social Security, for example, pays out close to 99 percent of the revenue it collects in benefits. In contrast, individuals saving for retirement or the proverbial rainy day can over a lifetime dissipate as much as 20 percent of their savings in commission payments to financial institutions. Similar,


Impossible Foods is finally making a new fake meat: Pork

LAS VEGAS — Trade tariffs and the specter of African Swine Fever made 2019 a harrowing year for pork producers. And there may be more bad news on the horizon: The makers of the Impossible Burger announced Monday they will launch two plant-based pork products, which they claim will taste authentic enough to woo some of the world’s billions of pork eaters. Impossible Foods’ new faux ground pork and breakfast sausage will be the first products mimicking a non-beef protein that the company has sold since it launched its first burger in 2016. The Impossible Sausage will be available at 139 U.S. Burger King locations starting at the end of this month, where it will be served in the restaurant’s “Croissan’wich” breakfast sandwich. The Impossible Pork doesn’t yet have a release date. Meatless replicas of the real thing have taken off in popularity in recent years, as more people choose vegetarian options due to environmental, ethical and health concerns. Tyson Foods recently announced it invested in a San Francisco-based company creating plant-based shellfish, while companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Burger have focused on recreating the texture and taste of meat with plant-based ingredients. Pork could be a particularly good bet for Impossible Foods. It is the most consumed meat in the world and is particularly popular across Asia. The industry is also facing a crisis as the African Swine Fever epidemic has decimated pork supplies around the world, killing nearly a quarter of all pigs globally since August 2018. While the California-based company wasn’t motivated by African Swine Fever specifically when it started working on the product last year, it was motivated in part by health concerns with how animals are raised for food in general, said Celeste Holz-Schietinger, Impossible Food’s director of research. The primary ingredients in the Impossible pork products are mostly the same as what’s in the Impossible Burgers — water, soy protein concentrate, coconut oil, sunflower oil and natural flavors. The differences between the ground Impossible Burger and Impossible Pork and Sausage product are all in the details, like how the sausage has a bit of springiness to and the pork is fatty. “The first things you would notice is the release of juices, the juiciness in the mouth, the coating on the palate, followed by the flavor,” said Holz-Schietinger. “You’re going to taste the fat and the umami.” The company chose to reveal the


Local Digest: Police arrest woman in connection with Northeast D.C. slaying

THE DISTRICT A 21-year-old woman was fatally shot Monday in Northeast Washington, police said. Tia Carey, of Southeast Washington, was shot about 3:45 p.m. in the 3700 block of Minnesota Avenue NE and died at a hospital, police said. Police said Tierra Posey, 21, of Southeast Washington, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder while armed. Police gave no motive for the shooting. — Martin Weil MARYLAND Animal advocacy group PETA said it is offering a reward of up to $5,000 for help in figuring out who allegedly lured seagulls to the parking lot of a Dollar Tree store in Laurel and then ran them over, killing 10 of them. The incident happened Saturday morning at the Laurel Plaza shopping center on Fort Meade Road. Laurel police spokeswoman Laura Guenin said Tuesday that detectives don’t have any leads on who might have been involved in the gull incident. Guenin said police were alerted to the situation after a tow-truck driver in the parking lot called authorities. Police said the driver said he had seen the birds after they were run over but talked to people who had seen the incident unfold. Laurel police said on Facebook that an initial investigation found that someone had bought popcorn from the Dollar Tree and then “emptied it in the lot to lure in the birds before running over them with his or her car.” Police said the person then fled. — Dana Hedgpeth THE REGION A man was fatally shot Monday in the Temple Hills area of Prince George’s County and police said two people were taken into custody after a chase that ended in the District. The shooting occurred about 4 p.m. in the 4200 block of 28th Avenue, said Officer Antonia Washington, a county police spokeswoman. The victim died at a hospital, she said. Officers pursued a vehicle a short distance after the shooting, Washington said. The pursuit ended near the intersection of Savannah and 23rd streets SE when the car crashed, she said. Two people were taken into custody, Washington said. One had apparently been shot in the arm, she said. It was unclear how the wound was inflicted. Police did not fire their weapons, she said. On Tuesday, Prince George’s police said detectives were investigating the death as a homicide. — Martin Weil


The Cybersecurity 202: The 2020 election will be the country’s biggest cybersecurity test ever

in cyberspace and at what point a cyberattack merits a conventional military response. “Up to this point, we’ve done a lot of hemming and hawing about what cyber actions would trigger a [conventional military] response, but it’s been a lot of hypotheticals,” Jake Williams, a former NSA hacker and founder of the cybersecurity company Rendition Infosec, told me. “We don’t have a playbook for this.” China is racing ahead in 5G and more. The big China story for cybersecurity watchers in 2019 was the U.S. effort to prevent the telecom giant Huawei from taking a leading position in super-fast next-generation telecommunications networks, which officials feared would allow Beijing to increase its spying on Western governments and companies. In 2020 get ready for a far broader battle across a range of emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence and quantum computing, that will determine who controls the future of the Internet — and how secure it is. “The single nation that could be a genuine game changer for the U.S., without a doubt, is China,” Frank Cilluffo, a former White House cybersecurity official during the George W. Bush administration and director of Auburn University’s McCrary Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Security, told me. “They’re much more strategic than us and they’re playing a long game.” You are reading The Cybersecurity 202 , our must-read newsletter on cybersecurity policy news. PINGED: DHS is encouraging businesses to evaluate their digital defenses amid threats of Iranian cyberattacks. Iran might launch destructive cyberattacks against companies in the finance, energy and telecommunications sectors, the agency warned in a A DHS-affiliated group that shares cybersecurity threat information with state and local governments is also warning officials to be on the lookout for suspicious computer network activity, according to an alert obtained by Benjamin Freed at StateScoop. Top cybersecurity firms are offering up similar advice. McAfee’s Chief Technology Officer Steve Grobman warned about “cyber warfare campaigns to inflict significant damage or disruption” and urged companies to fortify their digital security. The cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike warned that organizations in the defense, government, and oil and gas sectors are also likely targets. PATCHED: Google has reinstated a popular messaging app to its app store despite concerns it could be a a spying tool for the United Arab Emirates, A classified U.S. intelligence assessment and a technical analysis by the Times connected the firm behind the app to a company likely associated


Alexandria plans to buy Freedom House, former slave pen now home to a museum

The city of Alexandria plans to buy and restore Freedom House, the site of one of the nation’s most notorious pre-Civil War slave pens, and expand exhibits inside the building that showcase its cruel history. City officials announced the $1.8 million purchase agreement Monday after months of negotiations with the Northern Virginia Urban League, which has owned the 1812 brick rowhouse at 1315 Duke St. since 1996. Mayor Justin Wilson (D) called the building’s preservation “vital . . . to connect the stories of our past to our present-day conversation about race and equity, and ensure we are telling a broader, more candid account of Alexandria and our nation’s history.” Between 1828 and 1836, the property served as headquarters for Franklin and Armfield, at the time the richest and most successful slave-trading business in the United States. Other slave-trading firms operated there in later years, until Union troops arrived in Alexandria in 1861 and found a lone black man chained by the leg in the basement. Historians say as many as 50,000 enslaved Africans passed through the depot on their way to servitude in the Deep South. After being herded off boats at Alexandria’s port and marched to the property, they were held in the dingy basement or in cells behind the house, then forced to walk in chains or sail on packed ships to bondage, primarily in Mississippi and Louisiana. The local Urban League was praised for saving the four-story rowhouse from oblivion in 1996 when it bought the property and created a small basement museum that includes shackles and recordings of slave narratives. But upkeep proved too much for an organization that focuses primarily on scholarships and economic self-reliance, parity, and civil rights for disadvantaged communities. In the summer of 2019, heavy rainstorms flooded the basement with three inches of water, damaging the flooring and some exhibits. The league put Freedom House on the market for use as a commercial or residential property, with an asking price of $2.1 million. In October, Urban League board chair Diane McLaughlin said the Alexandria government was interested in taking over the building. Wilson said the city wanted to keep the property from falling into private hands, and City Manager Mark B. Jinks predicted a deal by year’s end. The Alexandria City Council will officially vote whether to buy the building in February. Last month, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) included $2.44


The future of American skiing may be inside a New Jersey mall

a million patrons during Big Snow’s first year of operation, half of them novices like Nazur, which would produce a 25 percent spike in national first-time visits. By comparison, Mountain Creek (a medium-size resort) averages 300,000 skiers per season. Killington in Vermont, the East Coast’s largest destination, welcomes around 800,000. So, when you think about it, why wouldn’t America’s newest ski resort be located in a mall off Exit 16W of the Jersey Turnpike? Big Snow is also key to satisfying people’s voracious need for immediate, novel, Instagrammable fun. America is a land rich in dead malls. Triple Five Group, which operates American Dream, reacted by creating one that’s richer in experience than stuff. It’s a palace of fun. Long the white elephant of New Jersey, American Dream took 16 years and three owners to build, and was previously named Xanadu. When completed, the mall will be 45 percent retail and 55 percent entertainment, including a Nickelodeon Universe theme park, and an NHL regulation-sized ice rink. Three restaurants will offer expansive second-floor views of Big Snow, providing entertainment for people who prefer chairs to chairlifts, the mall take on apres-ski without the ski. It’s the mountains’ seemingly unconquerable beauty that first attracts people to ski and board. The mall removes people from nature. Indoor skiing follows “the natural trajectory of increasing dependence on technology and development. You want skiing to be out in nature,” says Coleman, the Notre Dame professor. But she wishes skiing were “less expensive. I wish it was more accessible.” Big Snow, she acknowledges, is both. Perhaps, it will prove the gateway experience: “I hope it gets people to the mountains.” American Dream has yet to open the majority of its shops and restaurants, as well as the Angry Birds mini-golf and a massive DreamWorks water park with a wave pool and surfing. When the water park opens, Hagerty and Braunsdorf plan to snowboard and surf during a single visit. On this Wednesday morning, Big Snow’s patrons are far more diverse than skiing’s snow-white image and include immigrants speaking multiple languages and plenty of novices. These are the industry’s dream patrons. Rappers Lil Uzi Vert and Meek Mill had visited Big Snow just days earlier. (Did Big Snow stay open late for Meek? Yes, it did.) Veteran snowboarder Reuven Rowner and newcomer Azi Zimmerman of nearby Passaic hit Big Snow after their overnight nursing shifts.Army Staff Sgt.


The Technology 202: Silicon Valley will face new challenges in 2020. Here’s what we’re watching.

to use artificial intelligence to make it appear someone is saying or doing something that never happened – are developing swiftly and creating new concerns. Expect these evolutions to be a key focus of Washington lawmakers in the coming weeks. The House Energy and Commerce Committee will kick things off Wednesday with a hearing on “manipulation and deception in the digital age.” 3. California’s new privacy law took effect on Jan. 1, and other states will consider adopting their own data-collection restrictions in the absence of federal action. It’s official. California residents have new controls over their privacy. But tech companies still have some time before enforcement of the law begins in six months, so expect them to spend the first half of the year adjusting to the new regulation. In the absence of federal action in Washington last year, other states are considering their own privacy legislation. The tech industry is closely watching states like New York and Washington, which could adopt their own privacy legislation in the coming months. This flurry of activity at the state level is prompting the industry’s lobbying groups to invest more in states, Axios’s Kim Hart and Margaret Harding McGill write. States are also expected to take a greater role on issues such as autonomous vehicles and facial recognition. 4. Tech giants’ power and size will be under the microscope as antitrust investigations heat up at the federal and state level. Antitrust will continue to dominate the tech policy debate, especially as the House subcommittee leading an antitrust investigation into Big Tech plans to release a report on its findings in the first half of 2020. The action on the Hill comes as the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department have their own ongoing probes of the tech giants, and states attorneys general are also launching investigations of companies including Facebook and Google. Any developments in these investigations could become a key topic on the campaign trail. Many Democratic candidates have been weighing in on their positions on breaking up Big Tech as they try to differentiate their economic platforms. 5. The industry’s treatment of contract workers will face a reckoning Companies like Uber, Lyft and Postmates built entirely new business models by relying heavily on contract workers to power their driving and delivery workforces. But a new law in California that aims to reclassify these gig workers as full-time employees could pose