Veterans drop hundreds of empty pill bottles in front of the White House

House, some smoking joints along the way, which is illegal in D.C. VA health-care providers can’t talk to their patients about medical marijuana options, even in states where there are legal medical marijuana programs. A bill in Congress, the Veterans Equal Access Amendment, would allow doctors to provide recommendations about participating in such state programs. “There’s something seriously wrong going on. It’s disgusting,” said Jose Martinez, 27, a triple amputee who stepped on a bomb while serving in Afghanistan in 2012. Martinez, who lives in California and works with the Weed for Warriors Project, said he was prescribed a cocktail of pills and had a debilitating pain pill addiction. He now uses marijuana and says he no longer takes those prescribed pills. A volunteer collects symbolic pill bottles placed by U.S. flags before a group of veterans and supporters of medical marijuana march to the Department of Veterans Affairs and the White House. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post) Organizers said that about 50 people slept in tents in McPherson Square on Monday and Tuesday as part of the rally. The participants outfitted McPherson Square for the rally, selling cannabis products, giving away samples and displaying photographs of veterans using marijuana. Twenty-two small American flags were planted in the ground at the front of the park, each representing a veteran to illustrate the oft-cited statistic that 22 veterans commit suicide each day. Each flag was adorned at its base with empty pill bottles and glow sticks meant to signify syringes. A larger flag at half-mast stood at the center of the park mounted to a “liberty pole” — the same pole that local D.C. marijuana activists chained themselves to on the National Mall in April as they decried congressional meddling into D.C.’s local marijuana laws. People set up for a Weed For Warriors Project event on Tuesday at McPherson Square in Washington. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) [Marijuana and statehood activists are chaining themselves to ‘liberty pole’ on the Mall] “Here on Veterans Day, we have to acknowledge that this change has to happen,” said Brandon Wyatt, 31, who served in Iraq for two years when he was 18 and later graduated from Howard University law school. The group is circulating a petition to President Obama and the Senate with hopes of building support for the Veterans Equal Access Amendment. The Department of Veterans Affairs didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.


Hillary Clinton’s claim that she tried to join the Marines

that in 2008, Bill Clinton told an audience that his future wife tried to join the Army. “I remember when we were young, right out of law school, she went down and tried to join the Army and they said ‘Your eyes are so bad, nobody will take you,'” he said. Of course, this leaves open the possibility that she did try to join the “dogs” after the Marine Corps brush-off. As far as we can tell, the only time a journalist quizzed Clinton about this incident was in 2007, when Michael Crowley wrote a profile for The New Republic. In a brief interview, he asked what should people make of the fact that she had briefly tried to enlist in the military. He wrote: “At this her eyes narrowed and she threw me a glare of mistrust. ‘I have very deep and quite broad relationships with people in the military,’ she said. As for the meaning of the recruiting visit, ‘I can’t tell you,’ she said with a dismissive wave. ‘You go look at that.'” A campaign spokesman initially did not offer a comment but on the evening of Nov. 12, spokesman Nick Merrill issued a statement appearing to take issue with the recollections of her friends. The statement also suggests the visit to the Marine recruiter took place in 1974, not 1975: “As she has noted in the past, Hillary visited a Marine recruiter shortly after moving to Arkansas because she was interested in exploring options for serving in the military. She did not pursue the idea further and her sole reason for visiting the recruitment center was to determine if there was a suitable opportunity for her to serve in some capacity. Her interest was sincere and it is insulting, but not surprising, that Republicans would attack her for this, too.” The Pinocchio Test At first glance, this story doesn’t really add up, for the reasons that Dowd initially outlined. But as we noted The Post did locate friends who recalled she had tried to join the Marines, though the circumstances are fuzzy. Clinton suggests she simply decided to join the Marines, as part of way to serve the country. But it makes more sense that she approached the Marines as part of a deliberate effort to test the boundaries available to women, especially given her documented antiwar activities. As Ben Carson can attest, memories can get


These newly discovered stars may be the oldest in our galaxy

changes our universe has seen over the past 13.8 billion years. The researchers found 23 stars in the bulge of the Milky Way that were metal-poor enough to warrant further study. Nine of those stars turned out to have metal contents less than one-thousandth the amount seen in the sun. The most metal-poor star of them all had a record-breaking one ten-thousandth of the metal content of our sun. [Newly found star system has 5 Earth-size planets, the oldest ever seen in the Milky Way] The true first stars would have formed as much as 100 million years earlier than the ones featured in the study, based on previous research. In fact, the newly discovered stars show evidence of being second generation — they contain even less carbon and iron than astronomers expected to find, suggesting that they may have formed from material left over from a massive star explosion called a hypernova. The researchers say this could indicate that all early stars went out this way — in explosions 10 times as powerful as more typical supernovae. An artist’s impression of a hypernova, which emits 10 times more energy than a regular supernova. (European Southern Observatory) “This work confirms that there are ancient stars in the centre of our Galaxy,” study co-author Andrew Casey of Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy said in a statement. “The chemical signature imprinted on those stars tells us about an epoch in the Universe that's otherwise completely inaccessible.” Because the center of the Milky Way, which is probably where the true first stars would be found, is full of so many metal-rich stars, finding the old-timers is similar to looking for a needle in a haystack, to say the least. But the latest study is an indication that astronomers may finally have the right needle-finding tools to get the job done. “The Universe was probably very different early on, but to know by how much, we’ve really just got to find more of these stars: more needles in bigger haystacks,” Casey said. Read More: Why NASA’s top scientist is sure that we’ll find signs of alien life in the next decade This cosmic ‘dinosaur egg’ is about to hatch There’s a new Earth-size planet in the neighborhood (galactically speaking) More evidence that Jupiter kicked ancient planets out of the solar system The new biggest thing in the universe, and why it’s a headache for scientists


Who still smokes in the United States — in seven simple charts

to the growing popularity of e-cigarettes, hookahs and other "non-cigarette tobacco products," CDC officials said. 3) People with lower levels of education tend to smoke at higher rates. The new data also show that smoking among people with graduate and undergraduate degrees has fallen more sharply over the past decade than among most other groups. 4) Smoking among multiracial people and those classified as American Indian or Alaska Natives (AI/AN) far outpaces that of other ethnic groups. Notably, Asians continue to have the lowest rate of smokers and, along with Hispanics, have cut their smoking rates steeply over the past decade. CDC officials said the disparities across ethnic groups, which are consistent with previous research, might partly be due to cultural differences related to the acceptability of tobacco use. 5) Midwesterners still smoke at higher rates than anyone else in the country. This was true a decade ago. But Thursday's data show that while other regions have cut smoking rates by 20 percent or more since 2005, the Midwest's dropped only 14.4 percent. [The FDA is trying to keep 'hip-hop' teens from smoking] 6) U.S. adults who are uninsured or on Medicaid smoke at rates more than double that of people who have Medicare or private insurance. There could be many factors at play here. But health officials said one contributing factor is likely the "variations in tobacco-cessation treatment coverage and access to evidence-based cessation treatments" across different insurance types. 7) The number of heavy smokers seems to be declining. Between 2005 and 2014, the number of daily smokers dropped from 36.4 million to 30.7 million. Those daily smokers also reported smoking fewer cigarettes over time, from an average of 16.7 a day in 2005 to 13.8 a day in 2014. The number of people smoking more than 30 cigarettes a day fell by almost half. Read more: Modern men tend to overeat like cavemen as a way of showing off to women Autism cases in U.S. rise to 1 in 45: A look at who gets the diagnosis, in 8 simple charts Cutting sugar from kids’ diets appears to have a beneficial effect in just 10 days Neighbors file ‘extraordinary, unprecedented’ public nuisance lawsuit against autistic boy’s family Groundbreaking face transplant: After a firefighter was injured on duty, a deceased 26-year-old cyclist gave him his life back For more health news, you can sign up for our weekly newsletter


Why you might be paying too much for your beer

SABMiller and Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world's largest brewers, announced plans to merge on Wednesday. (Photo illustration by Scott Olson/Getty Images) If any brand can claim to be a true American icon, it's surely Bud Light. A can of Bud, in fact, is almost as American as a free-and-open market in which firms compete to offer high-quality products at low prices. But today, control of the market for beer in the United States is concentrated in just a few big brewers, and the industry's critics worry they have enough power to shut out the competition. The beer industry underwent substantial consolidation in 2008, when Anheuser-Busch, the maker of Bud Light, was bought by InBev, a Belgian company. Around the same time, SABMiller of London and MolsonCoors of Denver merged their U.S. operations. Those two companies brewed other popular American beers, Miller and Coors. Now, a new economics paper suggests all that deal-making may have increased the price of those companies' most popular brands. In late 2008, the price of those beers increased sharply, from below $10 to nearly $10.40 for a 12-pack. There is no definitive explanation for the change, but one theory is that the newly combined MillerCoors and its freshly conglomerated Belgian rival, called Anheuser-Busch InBev or ABI, might have coordinated their prices to charge consumers more. "The paper supports the increasing concern that highly concentrated industries result in higher prices from anti-competitive coordination," said Diana Moss, an economist who advocates for more competition as the president of the American Antitrust Institute. The data on beer "should not be a surprise," she said. "There's no one else to inject any competition into the market." ABI is the world's largest brewer, and it completed an agreement Wednesday to buy the world's second largest, SABMiller. The price tag is $108 billion. Together, the two brewers currently control 31 percent of the global market, according to the research firm Euromonitor. SABMiller owns a stake in MillerCoors, which brews Miller beers in the U.S.. MillerCoors was established on June 30, 2008. Prices for the most popular beers had been declining gradually up until that summer, according to two economists from Georgetown and Drexler universities, who analyzed a proprietary database of tens of thousands of transactions at cash registers in groceries and pharmacies. That fall, prices for Miller Lite and Coors Light (both brewed by the newly merged company), as well as Bud Light


Why I sleep in the same bed as my 6-year-old

his first year of life than most people I know have experienced in their 40-something years of life, his worries make perfect sense. Along with making sure that nothing happens to him, he wants to make sure nothing happens to me. My eyes on him, he knows he’s okay. His small toes gripping my ribcage, he knows that at this very moment he won’t lose a second mother, and so he sleeps. Watching him sleep I think about what it means to be seen. I think about how most of us have the need to be seen. We want to be seen as many things, a kind friend, a reliable daughter or son, a sexy partner, a good parent. Does being seen by someone make us feel safe? Even as adults? What happens when no one sees you at all? What happens when those people who tether you safely to the earth simply with their grounding gaze stop gazing at you? How do you maintain the strength to feel strong and safe all by yourself? For some reason, this all makes me think of selfies. Selfie taking is said by many to be an indicator of narcissistic behavior. But what if selfies are just everyone’s version of “Look at me until I fall asleep? I’m afraid of the dark. I’m afraid of being alone. I’m afraid of having bad dreams. Will you please turn around and see me?” We’ve tried many things to help Melese transition into his own bed: placing his bed just one foot away from his beloved sister’s, promising frozen yogurt, celebratory Lego sets, and dinner at a favorite restaurant- none of it worked. The other night he said to me, “Mommy, I think I will be ready to sleep in my own bed the next time we have a Blood Moon.” Happily encouraged by this I quickly Google, “When is the next Blood Moon, the next total lunar eclipse?” Google quickly responds, “October 8, 2033.” We smile at each other. He knows he’s made a really funny joke. I know Melese will one day soon fall asleep by himself, in his own bed. I’m predicting it happens in January, right around his seventh birthday. He won’t need me to look at him to fall asleep. He will feel safe and tethered through the night. He will sleep soundly and have pleasant dreams. I know this day


For latest federal building sale, foreigners need not apply

probably one of the worst neighborhoods in D.C. at the time. I don’t want to judge, but this was kind of like a crack neighborhood. And now it is one of the most expensive places in the city,” he said. Built in 1882, the Webster School was named for Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster (Jonathan O’Connell/TWP) Given its location, lots of developers and retailers have looked at the Webster School’s availability. Jon S. Bouker, a partner at the law firm Arent Fox, said he brought a “major national retailer” to look at the building with the idea of turning it into a center reminiscent of the Polo Ralph Lauren store in New York built to resemble a mansion Bouker said a GSA official unlocked the building to let he and his client walk around, and that when they left, someone surreptitiously walked over and inspected the lock behind them. “He checked the lock at least two or three times to make sure that we had locked it up properly and it became clear to me that we had been observed the entire time we were there,” Bouker said. Bouker said that in the hands of the right company the building “could be a very cool boutique hotel, or some cool, funky office space” the likes of which co-working groups like WeWork have been snapping up. It could also make an attractive location for a charter school if the Secret Service didn’t mind having teachers and students coming in and out. That could create a more defined pool of people in the building than a shop or hotel would. “The location is good for a lot of charter schools who are looking at putting their students into a business or professional environment,” said F There is some concern among GSA officials that banning foreign buyers or renters could tamper interest in the property, which is also subject to historic preservation rules. Foreign investors are buying up parts of nearly every part of downtown. CityCenter was built mostly using money from a Qatari soverign wealth fund. The Marriott Marquis convention center hotel was built using funds from Abu Dhabi and the new Fannie Mae headquarters project is owned by Carr Properties, backed with Israeli funds. An all-time record $2.1 billion in foreign money poured into commercial real estate in the District last year according to the services firm JLL. That was double the


8 countries where children are still forced to fight wars

of armed conflicts to torment the Democratic Republic of Congo include myriad cases of child soldiers being drafted into the ranks of both government forces and a constellation of rebel groups. South Sudan Young boys, child soldiers, sit with their rifles at a disarmament ceremony in Pibor overseen by UNICEF and partners on Feb. 10. (Charles Lomodong/AFP/Getty Images) As Sieff reports, some 16,000 children have been recruited by both government and rebel forces since hostilities flared in late 2013. "They are foot soldiers and cooks and cleaners, boys and girls as young as 9. Many were taken from their homes and schools and forced onto the battlefield," Sieff writes. Syria Young boys known as the lion cubs hold rifles and Islamic State group flags as they exercise at a training camp in a photo released on April 25. (Militant Web site via AP) Syria's miserable disintegration — the country is now in the fifth year of a grinding civil war — has displaced half the Syrian population and led to a hodgepodge of militant factions carving out fiefdoms within the unraveling state. The jihadist Islamic State has released propaganda videos and photos of its young recruits, including hideous images of children as parties to hideous slaughters. They are not alone, though: a recent Human Rights Watch report accused Syrian Kurdish factions, erstwhile allies of the United States, of also sending children to war. Somalia Security forces stand by the wreckage of a car after it was bombed in the Wardhigley District south of Mogadishu on Feb. 27. (Mohamed Abdiwahab/AFP/Getty Images) War-torn Somalia has endured decades of conflict and currently is still in the midst of a long-running battle pitting government and African Union forces against al-Shabab, an Islamist group with ties to al-Qaeda. Both the extremist group and the government have been accused by the U.N. of recruiting child soldiers. Last year, the U.N.'s top envoy for children and armed conflict found that former child soldiers rescued from al-Shabab were being "punished" in camps intended for their rehabilitation. Sudan A boy watches as a military convoy of government forces accompanying Yasir Ahmed Mohamed, special prosecutor for crimes in Darfur, and arrives in Tabit village in Sudan's North Darfur region on Nov. 20, 2014. (Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters) In Sudan's war-ravaged Darfur region, there are myriad reports and eyewitness accounts of child soldiers participating in alleged war crimes and massacres of civilians.


‘Have you SEEN Pluto?’ — New Horizons scientist still rallying for planetary status

A new false color image of Pluto designed to show the subtle variations of its surface. (NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI) Thursday night Smithsonian Magazine gave out its American Ingenuity Awards, and among the nine winners [correction: 12 winners in 9 categories] was Alan Stern, the human engine of the New Horizons mission to Pluto. Before the ceremony I remarked to Stern that the Pluto encounter was the biggest science story of the year. He upped the ante: The biggest of the decade, he said. [Ancient volcanic rocks suggest that Earth’s water arrived surprisingly early] Is that true? There have been bigger, more compelling stories in this decade that deal with science and technology: The oil spill of 2010 (if you count that as this decade), and the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. But the first was an engineering and environment story, the second a public health crisis. [The heroes and the secrets of the Pluto mission] In any case, Stern was referring to space stories, and Pluto looms large there. What else are we forgetting here among space stories? NASA’s attempt to find a path forward in the post-shuttle era has been a slow-moving and awkward (some would pick harsher adjectives) spectacle. The emergence of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and other “New Space” ventures looks historic in my eyes, but that’s been spread out over many years and thus lacks the Holy Cow nature of the Pluto encounter of July 14. When he took the stage to accept the award, Stern alluded to the fact that Pluto had been demoted by an international astronomical organization to "dwarf planet" status. [New images of Pluto show a surface ‘every bit as complex as that of Mars’] "All I can say to that now is, have you seen Pluto? Does it look like a planet to you or not?" Stern asked. And he came back to that theme: "Have you seen Pluto? Have you seen the thousand-mile heart on its surface?" Yes, Pluto didn't disappoint. New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern and other team members hold their suggested revision of a U.S. postage stamp. (Bill Ingalls/NASA via AP) Here's the Smithsonian press release on all the winners. I was particularly intrigued by the first honoree, Rana el Kaliouby, who works on "affective computing," and specifically on computer technologies that can be used to decode facial expressions, gauge your true feelings, and add non-verbal signals to human-machine interactions.


What happens to your body during an ultramarathon

Sometime in the past couple of decades, the idea of running a marathon became less crazy. Since Oprah Winfrey finished the Marine Corps Marathon in 1994, millions of average Joes and Janes have tackled the distance, and now “26.2” shows up routinely on bumper stickers and bucket lists. But for some people, a 26.2-mile marathon just isn’t long enough. These athletes are turning to ultrarunning, a sport that not long ago was considered the reclusive, funky-smelling cousin of traditional road racing. About 1,000 of them will line up Nov. 21 in Boonsboro, Md., to run the JFK 50 Mile, the country’s oldest ultramarathon and one of the two largest. (An ultra is anything longer than 26.2 miles; the most common distances are 50 and 100 miles and 50 and 100 kilometers, or 31 and 62 miles.) No one is saying that a marathon is short or easy, but there are some huge differences — physiological, logistical and psychological — between running far and running really, really far. In contrast to big-city marathons, U.S. ultramarathons tend to be spartan, low-key affairs, often beginning in very small towns near very long trails. JFK, for instance, is run mostly on the Appalachian Trail and the C&O Canal Towpath. Many ultramarathons have fewer than 100 runners and almost no spectators. “You’re surrounded by nature,” said Amy Pope Fitzgerald of Chantilly, who has run both Marine Corps and JFK each year since 2012 and has completed one 100-miler. “I like the fact that ultras are smaller, and you’re just running, so you make friends. I’m not having to fight for my spot on the course.” Not yet, anyway. The closest thing ultrarunning has had to an Oprah moment was the 2009 publication of Christopher McDougall’s “Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen,” a bestseller that introduced many readers to the world of ultras. U.S. participation has more than doubled since then. More than two-thirds of those participants are men, according to UltraRunning Magazine, and more than half are older than 40. Longer distances seem to attract older runners who can compensate for lost speed with greater perspective and experience — not to mention perseverance. Most people finish a marathon in three to six hours and make it home in time for lunch. But a 50-miler takes an average of 10 hours, said Karl Hoagland, publisher of


It’s not just Cecil: Trophy hunting is threatening mountain lions right here in the U.S.

ones usually responsible for preying on livestock and otherwise causing problems with humans, said Wielgus. Additionally, female cougars often go into hiding to protect their cubs if younger males start invading their territories, Wielgus added. This means they sometimes end up hiding out in places they previously didn’t inhabit and start eating animals they didn’t prey on before. “Basically the bottom line was this heavy hunting of cougars was actually causing all the problems we were seeing,” Wielgus said of his work in Washington. Cougar-related problems in the state largely dissipated once an appropriate hunting quota was established, according to Wielgus. The harvest rate is currently set at 12 to 16 percent of the population. Wielgus’s research in Washington, along with other studies in Montana, has suggested that cougar populations tend to increase at a rate of 12 percent — meaning a hunting quota of 12 percent or lower is best for maintaining stable cougar populations and minimizing conflict with humans. But state wildlife management agencies don’t always want to abide by the 12-percent quota — and it’s not just limited to Washington. Many states contemplating changes In Utah, state wildlife management officials decided this year to slightly increase cougar hunting quotas in an effort to protect mule deer and bighorn sheep. In its updated And in Colorado, state officials recently proposed increasing harvest rates in certain areas, mostly surrounding the town of Westcliffe, by up to 46 percent in a research project aimed at doubling local mule deer populations. The proposal would have increased the harvest limit in the area from 24 cats to 35 — potentially up to 50 percent of the cougar population in that area, according to Wendy Keefover, native carnivore protection manager for The Humane Society of the United States. This proposal was later withdrawn. But it’s not just the increase in hunting quotas that’s bothering scientists and conservationists. It’s the reasons for doing so. In several recent cases, the rationale behind proposing an increased harvest is to protect livestock or increase prey populations, frequently mule deer. This was the case in Colorado, and was also the motivation behind a recent decision in Oregon to increase hunting by 25 percent. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife But there have also been at least four studies so far indicating that removing cougars doesn’t do much to help mule deer populations, according to Quigley, the Panthera


Here’s the mysterious space junk that crashed into Earth on Friday the 13th, caught on camera

WT1190F reentry on Nov. 13, 2015 https://t.co/7B63BLXlxa #WT1190F #spacejunk https://t.co/Almrubq3JI Great news, everyone! As expected, the mysterious piece of space garbage known as WT1190F came crashing into Earth's atmosphere on Friday morning at around 1 a.m. Eastern time. And (also as expected) it failed to cause any injury or damage. The three-to-six-foot-long object burned up off the coast of Sri Lanka. [Mysterious space junk is hurtling towards Earth (and scientists are super excited)] (The International Astronomical Center) In fact, far from being in danger of any close encounters with the space debris, onlookers in Sri Lanka probably didn't have much luck even spotting the fireball. It was around noon local time, so it was too bright for the flaming debris to be very visible. It was also raining and hazy, making any faint signs of the debris in the sky even more difficult to spot. [This is what it looks like when a black hole tears a star apart] But there are some images of the collision, as you can see above and in the video embedded below: WT1190F Reentry on 13 November 2015 The footage comes from a team of scientists hosted by The International Astronomical Center (IAC) and the United Arab Emirates Space Agency. The researchers were excited to study WT1190F, because its orbit indicated that it would come toward Earth at an unusually steep, fast trajectory. Since there wasn't going to be good visibility from the ground, they maneuvered a plane to get themselves in a prime viewing location. The hope is that studying objects like this one can help scientists better prepare for asteroid impacts that pose an actual threat. (Dead Like Me via YouTube) NASA tracks over half a million pieces of space junk — defunct satellites and pieces of rockets — as they orbit the Earth. In just this past week, in fact, three unexpected pieces of space trash have crashed down in the southeast of Spain. Most space junk burns up in the atmosphere, but some say it's high time for space agencies to figure out a solution. This particular object was unaccounted for, but it was probably an old hunk of a rocket. Read More: Why NASA’s top scientist is sure that we’ll find signs of alien life in the next decade ‘Have you SEEN Pluto?’ — New Horizons scientist still rallying for planetary status Comet Lovejoy pretty much spews sugar and


The Weather Channel’s first attempt at a live shot in 1983 was a total bust

Lead forecaster Al Lipson (Tom Moore) The stage was set. It was December 1983 and the Weather Channel was finally ready to air an event outside of the broadcast studio. A lunar eclipse was occurring that evening and the sky was crystal clear. A camera was attached to a telescope situated on top of the roof and with the flip of a switch, the nation would see the moon gradually be eclipsed. What could possibly go wrong? After over a year and a half on the air, several of us at TWC were getting a bit antsy. All of our segments had been broadcast live from our studio. Our vice president of human resources (a staff of one at the time), Hugh Eaton, set up a “good suggestion” box on the wall in our meteorological laboratory. Several of us had discussed the possibility of broadcasting from the field for active weather events. There was really no room in our budget for such endeavors, but we placed suggestions in the box anyway. A lunar eclipse was coming up and it was decided that showing this event in real-time would be interesting to the viewers and there was really no cost to it. One of our technical directors owned both a telescope and a small camera that could be attached. Just climb up to the roof, set everything up and we would be ready to go. We were pleased our suggestion was being addressed. Several meteorologists, including myself, were on duty that evening and were excited about the eclipse. Our wise-cracking lead forecaster, Al Lipson, would often keep us laughing during a shift with witty comments often interrupted by pauses, for maximum effect. A couple of hours before the event our technical director climbed up the narrow steps to the roof with telescope and camera in hand. We thought nothing more about it as we continued with our work. There was a large monitor in the room where we could see our live broadcast and we would soon watch the upcoming event with others who tuned to TWC. The time had come and the on-camera meteorologist in the studio said “and we will now take you to see the lunar eclipse up close.” Master control switched to the camera on the telescope and there was total black. Oops! The technical director bolted out of the control room. He blurted out: “I set


Cantaloupes to cauliflower, pineapples to plantains: FDA finalizes first federal safety rules for produce

Gorny said many fruit and vegetable growers around the country already adhere to the new standards. But the rules essentially amount to a set of best practices that will apply to most farms and packing houses. "A rising tide lifts all boats, and everybody going to have a minimum standard they’ll have to abide by," Gorny said. "This is certainly a big step forward." The produce rule is a key piece of a far-reaching law, signed by President Obama in early 2011, that marked the first major overhaul of the nation's food-safety system in generations. That legislation was aimed at putting in place safeguards to prevent foodborne illnesses, rather than to only react to outbreaks. Tainted foods sicken an estimated 48 million Americans each year, sending 128,000 to the hospital and killing several thousand, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In addition to the produce rule, the food-safety law mandated a series of other reforms. Among them: Manufacturers must create plans to identify and prevent contamination risks in processing plants, and food importers must verify that their foreign suppliers are producing food at a level that meets U.S. standards. (The FDA also finalized the details of this latter requirement on Friday). Taylor said the produce rule in particular is meant to prevent the type of high-profile outbreaks that have become commonplace in the United States. Those episodes have involved spinach tainted with E.coli, cantaloupes contaminated with Listeria and a recent multistate outbreak of salmonella in imported cucumbers that has killed four Americans and sickened hundreds of others. [FDA moves to ban trans fat from U.S. food supply] The new regulations do contain exemptions for certain people and certain foods. For instance, the rules exempt farms with average annual sales of $25,000 or less, as well as certain farms that bring in less than $500,000 a year and sell primarily to consumers within a 275-mile radius. Smaller farms also will have much longer to comply with the new rules, which will be phased in over the next several years. The FDA exempted a lengthy list of fruits and vegetables that it said are usually cooked or processed prior to being consumed, and therefore are less likely to harbor pathogens. That means pecans, peppermint, potatoes and pumpkins are exempt, while papayas, parsnips, passion fruit, peaches, pears, peas and peppers are covered. Disagreements remain, especially around how -- and how


World track body suspends Russian athletes from competition following doping revelations

IAAF President Sebastian Coe gives a statement to journalists outside his office in London, Friday. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein) Russia’s national track and field federation was slapped with a provisional suspension by the sport’s international governing body Friday, leaving open the possibility its athletes will be barred from the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics. The move came five days after the World Anti-Doping Agency issued a scathing report alleging a “systemic,” “deep-rooted” and “state-sponsored” doping program among Russian athletes, coaches and officials. Among the report’s recommendations was a suspension of the country’s track program for the Rio Olympics unless it demonstrated a significant improvement to its anti-doping program. [Read the full WADA report The IAAF’s decision to issue the suspension Friday came after a 22-1 vote of its executive council. The suspension was deemed provisional, as no end point was specified, but it began immediately, with Russian athletes now banned from sanctioned international competition. This is the first time the IAAF has suspended a nation because of doping concerns. “This has been a shameful wake up call and we are clear that cheating at any level will not be tolerated,” IAAF President Sebastian Coe said in a statement on the organization’s Web site. The Rio Olympics are scheduled to begin on August 5. Russia won 18 medals, including eight golds, at the last Summer Olympics, in London in 2012. At least two of those medals are now under suspicion following the WADA commission report, which said the London Games were “sabotaged” by athletes who had been using performance-enhancing drugs. Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko told the Associated Press on Friday that he is “completely sure” Russia will be reinstated in time for Rio. “We may miss one or two [smaller] competitions,” Mutko told the AP, “but for athletes with clean consciences to miss an Olympics … would be real stupidity.” [Russia’s doping cheated American out of medal — and she knew it] On Monday, Russian officials reacted with defiance to the WADA commisson’s report, dismissing it as politically motivated. But that rhetoric softened in recent days, with President Vladimir Putin vowing to conduct a thorough internal investigation and comply with outside ones. The World Anti-Doping Agency commission report on Monday, Nov. 9 allegedly found a "deeply rooted culture of cheating" in Russian athletics. Putin, in first comments on the allegation, says Russia needs to cooperate with international organizations and will


The top 13 issues in Saturday’s Democratic debate

a recently unveiled bipartisan Senate criminal justice reform bill that would shorten the lengths of sentences for many non-violent drug offenders. Interestingly, Clinton's and Sanders's supporters are sharply divided demographically, mostly between white and non-white. In South Carolina, for instance, an October CNN/ORC poll indicated Sanders led Clinton among white voters but trails Clinton by 55 points among African Americans. The picture is similar in a new Fox News poll: (Philip Bump / The Washington Post) 6. Income inequality and Wall Street reform In a time in which two-thirds of Americans (68 percent) believe our economic system favors the wealthy rather than being fair, according to a July Washington Post/ABC News poll, income inequality is arguably one of the top issues for Democrats in the race. And they're mostly in agreement when it comes to the broad strokes, even as Clinton has weathered criticism that the former New York senator is too close to Wall Street. The candidates all agree that first, Wall Street executives who broke laws ahead of the 2008 recession should face criminal charges. Big banks should be broken up. Regulations like the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law should be protected or even boosted. But a Depression-era financial reform law repealed by President Bill Clinton, the Glass-Steagall Act, is a flashpoint between Clinton and her primary opponents. She said Oct. 6 she would not put her efforts into reinstating the law requiring big banks to separate their investment and commercial-banking practices -- even though a bipartisan coalition in Congress that includes Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) have proposed putting it back on the books. Sanders and O'Malley have both said they'd reinstate Glass-Steagall as president, a statement that The Washington Post's David Weigel points out is akin to saying "then-President Clinton made a blunder that enabled the banker chicanery that led to the 2008 financial crisis." 7. Gun control A summer and now fall filled with mass shootings -- including nine killed at a community college in rural Oregon on Oct. 1, two local Roanoke, Va., reporters gunned down in August on live television, a deadly Lafayette, La., movie theater shooting in July by a man with mental problems and another apparently racially motivated mass shooting at a black church in Charleston, S.C. -- has brought the gun debate back into the spotlight. Nowhere is that more evident than on a Democratic debate


Fact checking the second Democratic debate

acknowledge there are many factors involved. The claim is based on a major March 2015 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers found the duration and severity of the extreme drought in Syria from 2007 to 2010 was due to human interference in the climate system. Agricultural policies enacted by the Syrian government increased production despite the region’s growing water scarcity and frequent droughts, the study says. This depleted Syria’s water resources, which made the region more vulnerable to drought. This drought — the most severe in the greater Fertile Crescent area — preceded the Syrian uprising that began in 2011. As a result of the drought, Syrians in rural areas began migrating to peripheries of Syria’s cities, which already had overwhelming population growth. “The rapidly growing urban peripheries of Syria, marked by illegal settlements, overcrowding, poor infrastructure, unemployment, and crime, were neglected by the Assad government and became the heart of the developing unrest,” the study says. But researchers also acknowledged that “civil unrest can never be said to have a simple or unique cause. The Syrian conflict, now civil war, is no exception.” The drought may be one of the factors, but it’s a stretch to say climate change is “directly related” to the growth of terrorism. “When you talk about the long-term consequences of war, let’s talk about the men and women who came home from war. The 500,000 who came home with PTSD, and traumatic brain injury.” –Sanders This figure largely is on point, specifically for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan wars. But the number can change depending on whether non-deployed members are included. Interestingly, when FactCheck.org looked into this figure in July, Sanders’s campaign could not provide an accurate source. FactCheck.org found that among those who received care through the Department of Veterans Affairs, approximately 500,000 veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TB). But a more recent Congressional Research Service report shows lower figures, based on data from the Defense Medical Surveillance System. The Aug. 7, 2015, analysis looked at diagnoses of PTSD and TBI among servicemembers who were deployed and not deployed in conflicts from 2000 through June 5, 2015 (including new military operations in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State). The CRS analysis of annual new PTSD diagnoses in all services from 2000 through June


Jonathan Aberman: It’s time to solve our transportation woes, fast.

cut out for him — taking on a transit system with diminishing ridership and safety issues. Meanwhile, news of the D.C.-New York Maglev sped into town. The Federal Railroad Administration gave the green light to a $27.8 million grant for the Maryland Department of Transportation and Maryland Economic Development Corp. to evaluate a magnetic-levitation high-speed system. That’s peanuts compared to the estimated $10 billion it would take just to connect Washington to Baltimore. Many question whether there’s enough capital available to fund either Metro or the proposed Maglev system. In fact, many question whether government can succeed at all in the driver’s seat — naysayers insist government can’t do anything well, and certainly can’t be tasked with managing these large enterprises. We’ve all heard the skeptics. The current political climate is focused on limiting federal expenditures, and questioning the government’s ability to deliver services. But let’s put the brakes on for a second to check the blind spot in those arguments. First, the challenge with evaluating infrastructure such as roads, railways and air lanes is that they offer public benefit. We can’t measure the direct economic advantages of such infrastructure, because many things a cutting-edge transportation system provides cannot be measured by simple profit and loss — it is more intricate than that. By measuring public benefit of efficient transit systems against the same criteria as a for-profit business, we lose the ability to make informed decisions about whether something is worth doing for societal purposes. There is a major difference between running a business, and running a government, between looking to turn a profit and building something for the public good. Second, I must push back against the drum beat that “government can’t do anything right.” Every day government does billions of things well, and those essential things touch our lives. Yes, the news media focus on instances of incompetence, corruption and inefficiency. But there is a broader story of services and products being delivered, and jobs being done, that the private sector simply cannot — or will not — do. We chronically underfund our transportation infrastructure in the name of financial prudence, and when we are let down by it, promptly say “well, that just proves government doesn’t work.” We could have trains to zip us to NYC at 300 mph, a Metro that runs on time and a transportation infrastructure that leads the world. All that we


Morning Bits

… there was also something almost beautiful about the sheer chutzpah of the move.” No Republican will miss the opportunity if even Dems won’t defend her. Stephanie Cutter: “I don’t think that was the finest moment of the debate and I think she is going to have to answer to that. You know, getting into a position of defending Wall Street is a problem for her which she simply should have said is, yes, Wall Street has given me money, could you point to anything that I have done because of that money?” This might be the moment to come up with one. “Intelligence chairmen: US has no strategy for ISIS.” He had an opening to go after Republican rivals but instead took on Hillary Clinton. “The former Florida governor said ISIS cannot be contained and must be defeated. He also criticized Hillary Clinton for suggesting action against ISIS ‘cannot be an American fight’ during Saturday’s Democratic debate. ‘I’m more concerned about Hillary Clinton thinking the United States doesn’t have a leadership role in this, that’s my big concern if you listen to the Democrats debating,’ he said.” He should be clear who on the GOP side is not prepared to be commander in chief. At this juncture we need a post-Nov. 13 commission. “Senior Iraqi intelligence officials warned coalition countries of imminent assaults by the Islamic State group just one day before last week’s deadly attacks in Paris killed 129 people, The Associated Press has learned.” This is one of the occasions for assessing who has been right all along. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.): “The bottom line is that this is not just a threat coming from abroad. What we need to open up to and realize is that we have a threat here at home — homegrown violent extremists. Individuals who perhaps have not even traveled abroad, who had been radicalized online. This has become a multifaceted threat.” Here is an instance when we really miss presidential leadership. “Along with our allies in Europe, we are the only ones who can carry that military, political and moral banner. Of course, in the end, there must be something to replace the ideology of ISIS and al Qaeda that has become so magnetic in the Islamic world. But military defeat is the prelude to a political solution, or there will be no political solution that lasts.” Read the whole thing.


Researchers mapped the weather of a planet outside our solar system — and it’s pretty blustery

An artist's impression of the planet HD 189733b in front of its parent star. (Mark A. Garlick/University of Warwick) Scientists have just mapped the weather of a very windy exoplanet. Exoplanet HD 189733b, which sits about 60 light years away from Earth, has wind speeds of up to 5,400 miles per hour. On Earth, that would be seven times faster than the speed of sound. My eardrums hurt just thinking about it. [NASA estimates 1 billion ‘Earths’ in our galaxy alone] The extra-solar weather report was published recently in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. It's no easy thing to get a forecast for a planet 60 light years away. In fact, the University of Warwick researchers who managed it believe they're the first scientists to directly measure and map weather phenomenon on a planet outside of our solar system. So how was it done? HD 189733b is an ideal target for study: In addition to being (relatively) close to home, it's a nice big observational target, 10 percent larger than Jupiter. It's also very close to its host star, which comes in handy because of the way we study exoplanets. [There’s a new Earth-size planet in the neighborhood (galactically speaking)] The observations made with space telescopes when a planet passes in front of its star tell us basically everything we know about exoplanets. Scientists can look at the fading and winking of a star's visible light and use those changes to model the planets that must be passing in front of it. You may recall that a distant star's unusual blinking patterns recently had some speculating that alien spacecraft might be orbiting it (but that almost certainly wasn't the case). [No radio signals from that ‘alien megastructure’ yet — but scientists are listening] A star's shine can help scientists look at its planet's atmosphere, too. When the planet passes in front of its host, scientists can measure the star's light as its absorbed by molecules in the atmosphere. These wavelengths warp as the planet moves,for the same reason that a siren sounds funny as it speeds away from you. Interpreting those changes -- which are directly related to the speed at which the molecules are moving -- allowed the researchers to calculate wind speeds on the distant world. “The surface of the star is brighter at the centre than it is at the edge, so as the planet moves in front


A ‘supergene’ turns these male birds into female impersonators or sneaky mate thieves — for life

The original genome produces what's called an "independent" male, making up 80 percent to 95 percent of the male population. These ruff boys have spectacular plumage, so variable in color as to make each individual look unique. They put all of their energy into gathering together and fighting, making a sort of arena where females can select a mate. [These ant queens compete with other species by becoming ‘sperm parasites’] Then there are "satellite" males, which make up five percent to 20 percent of the population. These males still have plumage, but it's always white. And while they participate in the arena fights, they're always dominated by independent males. Satellite males are actually just biding their time; they carry on their genes by stealing mates already won over by more aggressive birds. Ruffs come in three flavors: the female mimic, the satellite and the territorial male. (Susan McRae) The third type of male is so stealth that researchers only discovered it a few years ago. "It had been totally undetected, because he looks so much like a female," Burke explained. Indeed, that seems to be the point: The third type, known as "faeder" males, are thought to make up less than one percent of the population. They lack the plumage of other males entirely, and their strategy is to go incognito amongst females of the species. That way they can "steal" mates the same way a satellite male does, while avoiding the violent attention of independent males entirely. [Female fruit flies prefer mates with dazzle. Dullards needn’t bother.] According to the new findings, the different behaviors are probably caused by differences in the way the birds handle testosterone and other steroids. But the supergene cluster that determines what morph a bird will be also contains genes that control plumage, explaining why behavior and appearance are affected in one fell swoop. The two research groups who published on Monday came to their conclusions separately. "It's not so long ago it was very hard work to do a genomic study in any organism," said Leif Andersson of Uppsala University, an author of the second published paper. "The technology has become available now, and it’s such an interesting scientific question, so it's not surprising that two groups were working on solving this riddle at once." Both Andersson and Burke were surprised to see just how old the genetic variation is. "The sequence difference


U.S. Olympic runner Molly Huddle calls for lifetime bans on dopers

the more threatening it is to the countries and individuals that do things the wrong way, hopefully they’ll be scared off of doing that. That only benefits the clean athletes. I think one way to kind of improve the future would be lifetime bans. I think everyone agrees with that, and I’m not sure what the holdup is there. Hopefully things are taken care of sooner rather than later.” Sam Chelanga, who recently became a naturalized U.S. citizen, agreed with Huddle and wanted those in charge to put more pressure on those caught with doping violations. [For Chelanga, one of the best finish lines he’s ever crossed] “It seems like it’s a tough time if you are into running,” he said. “There’s always cynicism. You always look around wondering who is clean and who is not. It’s very important that we put this to rest. Everybody that’s in a position of power should do something. If the good people just sit there and watch, then this fight is just going to continue and continue. Send a strong message and endure through the tough times. If somebody gets banned, or even a whole federation like Russia, it’s tough, because maybe there are some clean athletes there. But it’s the price the sport has to pay to get better.” The sport is no stranger to controversy, as a quick search online for “track and field” and “doping controversy” will yield hundreds of results. Just this year, Pro Publica and the BBC alleged that American running legend Alberto Salazar and his top star, Galen Rupp, committed doping violations, something that both have vehemently denied. And it’s not only Russia that WADA has its sights on, as the report’s co-author, Dick Pound, alleged that Kenya has a “real problem with doping.” In response, the Kenya government approved the immediate establishment of an anti-doping agency, the BBC reports. It is this ripple effect from WADA’s report that professional runners like Tyler Pennel sees as making a difference. “We, as the clean athletes, tend to benefit more by getting drug cheats out of the sport and leveling the playing field,” he said. “As this keeps developing, hopefully other countries see that maybe if Russia gets banned from the Olympics, they’ll be like, ‘Well, we don’t want to get banned from the Olympics. That’s a really prestigious event.’ And that sends a strong message.” Added Kim Conley:


just going to continue and continue. Send a strong message and endure through the tough times. If somebody gets banned, or even a whole federation like Russia, it’s tough, because maybe there are some clean athletes there. But it’s the price the sport has to pay to get better.” The sport is no stranger to controversy, as a quick search online for “track and field” and “doping controversy” will yield hundreds of results. Just this year, Pro Publica and the BBC alleged that American running legend Alberto Salazar and his top star, Galen Rupp, committed doping violations, something that both have vehemently denied. And it’s not only Russia that WADA has its sights on, as the report’s co-author, Dick Pound, alleged that Kenya has a “real problem with doping.” In response, the Kenya government approved the immediate establishment of an anti-doping agency, the BBC reports. It is this ripple effect from WADA’s report that professional runners like Tyler Pennel sees as making a difference. “We, as the clean athletes, tend to benefit more by getting drug cheats out of the sport and leveling the playing field,” he said. “As this keeps developing, hopefully other countries see that maybe if Russia gets banned from the Olympics, they’ll be like, ‘Well, we don’t want to get banned from the Olympics. That’s a really prestigious event.’ And that sends a strong message.” Added Kim Conley: “I think if we can push as the athletes and you as the media can push for a more transparency overall, we all stand to benefit.” The fallout from WADA’s report has brought some relief for runners like Alysia Montaño, who told the Post’s Adam Kilgore last week that she knew the whole time that some of her competitors were cheating. Sara Hall, who is coached by Steve Magness, one of the former Nike Oregon Project members who has made allegations against Salazar, remains optimistic of what the latest controversy means for her sport. “I feel hope and encouragement through this process that we are getting to the root of some of the really bad seeds of the sport,” Hall said. “I would just encourage fans not to lose hope in track and field; there are lots of people at the highest level that are clean and are doing it the right way. There’s lots of them, I think. Just hang in there and keep celebrating those people.”


Where to see the no-longer-endangered Delmarva fox squirrel

The formerly-endangered Delmarva fox squirrel is up to twice as large as a regular grey squirrel.<br />(Photo by John Kelly /The Washington Post) With a population of about 20,000 and growing, the Delmarva fox squirrel is no longer threatened with extinction, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The squirrel, which was on the first-ever federal endangered species list in 1967, will be delisted as of December. “When they were listed, they had been reduced down to a small area. Only four counties in Maryland had the squirrels left in them,” says Cherry Keller, leader of the Fish and Wildlife Service Delmarva fox squirrel recovery team. Thanks to conservation and reintroduction efforts, Delmarva fox squirrels are now found in forests in 10 counties across Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. Unlike the gray squirrel, the shy Delmarva fox squirrel eschews city life. To see one in the wild, your best bets are to pay a visit to the Blackwater or Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, says Blackwater ranger Thomas Miller. Go in the morning and scan the forest floor for what appears to be an oversized city squirrel. Look for an animal with a steely gray coat and a lumbering gait. “They don’t really move as fast as gray squirrels, and they definitely have a more laid-back approach to life, it seems like,” Miller says. More wildlife stories Video: In search of the Delmarva fox squirrel National Geographic photographer aims to capture the world’s endangered species on film Rare bird alert: A Bell’s vireo is attracting crowds to the National Arboretum


Why leasing solar panels may not be a good idea if you’re planning a home sale

will be counted in the debt-to-income ratio when qualifying for a loan. “Think of it like leasing a car,” Adomatis said. “If you lease a car and then go to borrow money, you cannot use the value of a leased car as an asset on your application. Rather, the lease payments are an expense.” Other rules for FHA loans on homes with leased solar panels include: The monthly lease cost cannot be financed into an FHA mortgage. The lease must be free of restrictions that prevent the borrower from freely transferring the property. The lease cannot be subject to a third party approval. It cannot be subject to limitations on the amount of sale proceeds a borrower can obtain due to a lien or sale clause. There can be no liens on the property from the solar company that are superior to Fannie Mae’s first lien position. The panels must be removable without causing damage to the property. Adomatis also explained that a big part of the revenue model for solar companies is the 30 percent federal tax credit and the five-year appreciation schedule. “Because the solar company owns the panels, they reap the benefit of the federal tax credit, not the homeowner,” Adomatis said. [Real Estate Matters | Are solar panels worth the investment?] “In addition, the solar companies make it very difficult to buy out a lease agreement in the first five years. They don’t want to lose the five-year appreciation on the equipment.” Adomatis suggested strongly to read every item in the lease agreement and to consult your accountant and an appraiser to understand all the ramifications of the lease agreement. “A few dollars spent now can save thousands later,” she said. Help is available So, are solar panels just a dark and gloomy proposition, or is there a brighter side? The good news is that there is a brighter side, and help is right nearby. The Community Power Network (CPN), a national nonprofit based in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood in Northwest Washington, helps communities build and promote local renewable energy projects. Anya Schoolman, founder of CPN, has been working to make solar accessible and affordable to homeowners. She has implemented state projects in Washington (DC SUN), Maryland (MD SUN), West Virginia (WV SUN) and Virginia (VA SUN), through which homeowners can get advice and assistance in going solar. Schoolman and her staff will assist homeowners in


This squirrel was one of the nation’s first endangered species — but now it’s off the list

The Delmarva fox squirrel is finally off the endangered species list. (Photo by John Kelly /The Washington Post) Three cheers for the Delmarva Peninsula fox squirrel! In a great victory for American conservationists, this O.G. member of the endangered species list is saying sayonara to endangerment. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the squirrel will be officially removed from the endangered species list before the end of 2015. [An endangered giant tortoise population is finally stable, thanks to some aggressive goat eradication] The Delmarva Peninsula fox squirrel is part of the list's old guard: The squirrel was one of 78 species listed under the Endangered Species Preservation Act in 1967. At that time, the species -- larger than most squirrels and generally not found in suburban or urban environments -- had a habitat range reduced some 90 percent by forest clearing and development. Since then, efforts to rebuild the squirrel's population have been quite successful. In addition to a ban on hunting the animals, the FWS used strategic relocation -- taking squirrels from successful areas and transferring them to new outposts -- to rebuild the population. Now the species boasts around 20,000 individuals throughout Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia. They're now spread out over 135,000 acres of forest in the area, compared to just 32,000 in 1990. Conservationists say that private landowners provided invaluable support. Most of the areas that remain forested enough to house these squirrels are privately owned, and many citizens had to cooperate for these squirrel relocations to stick. Now that a five-year review has proven the species to be truly robust, efforts to rebuild the population can give way to more passive maintenance. [These three Siberian tiger cubs are very sleepy and very endangered] “The natural world is amazingly resilient, especially when a broad collection of partners works together to help it,” Sen. Ben Cardin (Md.), a senior member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement. “Today’s announcement is a major victory for the Endangered Species Act and the Delmarva fox squirrel itself, and much credit is due to the federal biologists who have worked for decades to rebuild the squirrel’s populations. But we could not have reached this point without the many citizen-conservationists who changed the way they managed their forest lands to make this victory possible, and I am deeply appreciative of their efforts." So what happens to


Federal privacy law lags far behind personal-health technologies

apps connected to third-party Web sites without users’ knowledge and sent data in unencrypted ways that potentially exposed personal information. “Consumers should not assume any of their data is private in the mobile app environment — even health data that they consider sensitive,” the group said. [Wearable gadgets portend vast health, research and privacy consequences] Consider a woman who is wearing a fetal monitor under her clothes that sends alerts to her phone. The device “talks” to her smartphone via wireless Bluetooth technology, and its presence on a network could be detected by others, alerting them to the fact that she’s pregnant or that she may have concerns about her baby’s health. “That is a fact that you may not want to share with others around you — co-workers or family members or strangers in a cafe,” said David Kotz, a computer science professor at Dartmouth College who is principal investigator of a federally funded project that is developing secure technology for health and wellness. “We’ve seen this in the tech market over and over again,” he added. “What sells devices or applications are the features for the most part, and unless there’s a really strong business reason or consumer push or federal regulation, security and privacy are generally a secondary thought.” Walking through an open door In Florida, Stokes is one of those people enamored with emerging health technologies. Several years ago, she rushed to sign up for 23andMe to analyze her genetic profile. And when she was pregnant with her daughter, she purchased a test that said it could predict the sex of the fetus. (It was wrong.) The paternity test kit that piqued her interest earlier this year advertised “accuracy guaranteed” for “1 alleged father and 1 child.” She remembers the kit costing about $80 at a nearby Walgreens. Such tests sell for about $100 online. “It was kind of a nerdy thing that I was interested in doing,” Stokes said. The test was processed in New Mexico by GTLDNA Genetic Testing Laboratories, then a division of General Genetics Corp. Stokes was directed to log into a Web site and enter a unique code for her results. When they appeared, she noticed an unusual Web address on her screen, and she wondered what would happen if she modified it to remove the ID assigned to her. She tried that and saw a folder containing the results of


Patent infringement is theft, plain and simple

War II, the government enlisted thousands of the nation’s most creative scientists, engineers and experts in all fields of human knowledge and located them in national research laboratories around the country. The result was an explosion of progress and creativity, an advancing of science and technology that is probably unmatched in human history. The astounding possibilities for postwar commercialization were realized and acted upon by both industry and the federal government. Major corporations in every industrial sector set about establishing their own research and development laboratories. A portion of the patent design for the first transistor, created by John Bardeen, William Shockley and Walter Brattain in Bell Labs in 1948. (U.S. Patent and Trade Office) By the late 1970s, the government funding agencies The almost immediate result of the Bayh-Dole Act was a huge increase in university interest in patenting inventions that stem from their research and licensing them out to commercial businesses. To this day, patenting and licensing offer the best way to get results out of our laboratories and into practical use. The As we consider additional changes to patent law, it is very important to protect the essential provisions of the Bayh-Dole Act. Some industrial sectors are notoriously predatory, preferring to infringe patents held by others and then settle in court when sued for infringement instead of simply paying modest (and mutually negotiated) licensing fees. This ugly, time-consuming and expensive process is easily avoided by simply licensing essential patents instead of infringing upon them. Ironically, universities If the majority of the technology we enjoy today was born in corporate research labs of the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, the majority of our future economy is being born today in university research labs. Congress should listen with a very skeptical ear to IT and electronics companies that are whining about paying even a dime for intellectual property owned by others. Licensing is simply a legitimate cost of doing business. Not paying that cost is theft. Explore these other perspectives: Joseph Allen: Abraham Lincoln loved our patent system. Let’s not tear it down. James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer: A third of the economy is at stake — and trolls are to blame David Pyott: Don’t let hedge funds undermine public health Julie Samuels: Patents are supposed to encourage innovation. Without reform, they’ll do the opposite. Colleen V. Chien and Michael Risch: A patent reform we can all agree on


Mark your calendars: You can finally see the new baby panda in person on Jan. 16

Baby panda Bei Bei at the National Zoo. (National Zoo) Panda enthusiasts, rejoice: There’s soon to be another panda cub that can be publicly viewed in D.C. The National Zoo announced Tuesday that the public will start being able to see Bei Bei — the cub that was born in August and took his first steps earlier this month — at the zoo on Jan. 16. Just don’t expect much if you are planning to line up on opening day: Panda cubs spend a vast majority of their time sleeping. Bei Bei will make his public debut Jan. 16! @FONZNationalZoo member previews will be Jan. 8-15 #PandaStory https://t.co/TKy3eJ9wAZ Mei Xiang watched as her cub, Bei Bei, took his first wobbly steps on Monday, Nov. 9.


Charlie Sheen’s HIV status and the dawn of medical-data blackmail

months, there have been a number of other prominent hacks that involved stealing medical data. Excellus Blue Cross -- which is based in Rochester, N.Y., -- reported in September that personal information from more than 10 million people may have been taken and that it included names, addresses and Social Security numbers, as well as sensitive medical information. William Valenti, a physician at Trillium Health, which provides provides primary health care, as well as specialized services for people with HIV/AIDS and those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, told the Democrat & Chronicle that the hack "prompts us to take another look at the way we handle this information through our electronic records." In November, OH Muhlenberg LLC reported a breach at one of its hospitals in Greenville, K.Y. In a press statement shared by security blogger Dissent , the health care provider said that the computers that were accessed contained a huge amount of data, including information about diagnoses and treatment. Last week, HIPAA Journal, which focuses on news related to health care privacy (and was named after the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), reported that a former employee at Children’s Medical Clinics of East Texas took screenshots of records -- including diagnosis information and treatment details -- of a number of the group's 16,000 patients and disclosed them to a third party. The Identity Theft Report Center reported in January that breaches in the medical/health care industry topped its list of breaches in 2014 with 42.5 percent of the 783 incidents they tracked. The 333 medical/health care incidents affected 8,277,991 records and took place at small health care clinics as well as a diverse group of large organizations, including Novo Nordisk, Tennessee's State Insurance Plan, Touchstone Medical Imaging, the University of California Davis Health System and the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Colorado. (Identity Theft Resource Center) Read more: Groundbreaking face transplant: After a firefighter was injured on duty, a deceased 26-year-old cyclist gave him his life back Autism prevalence jumps 80 percent to 1 in 45: Who gets the diagnosis, in 8 simple charts Sorry, kids. There's a nationwide FluMist shortage so you'll probably have to get a shot. Unsettling finding from CDC investigation: Tapeworms can pass cancer cells to man Neighbors file ‘extraordinary, unprecedented’ public nuisance lawsuit against autistic boy’s family For more health news, you can sign up for our weekly newsletter


So much for the West ‘saving’ Muslim women from terrorism

Malala Yousafzai, the teen activist for girls’ rights to education who survived being shot by the Taliban in Pakistan? It was just last year that Cruz sent a message of congratulations on her Nobel Peace Prize win, calling her a “brave and powerful voice.” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said this month that he would love to have a beer with the young Muslim. But today, if Malala were a Syrian, Rubio wouldn’t be so generous. In the wake of the Paris attacks, the presidential candidate, who once was open to the idea of resettling those fleeing from Syria, has reversed course, saying Sunday “we won’t be able to take in more refugees.” For her part, Malala, who opened a school for Syrian refugee girls in Lebanon in July, blasted the response to the refugee crisis, calling world leaders “stingy.” She likely would be even more furious with the virulent anti-Muslim sentiment and xenophobia being spouted by leaders in the same countries that toasted her accomplishments. It’s ironic that the Nobel Peace Prize winner who became a symbol for the global war against terrorism would likely be refused shelter. The issue of women and children fleeing war and terrorism is fundamentally a global feminist issue. The use of brutality against women and children that Laura Bush spoke of 14 years ago is well-documented within the Islamic State. Rukmini Callimachi of the New York Times penned a chilling exposé of the Islamic State’s use of kidnapping, systematic rape, and forced enslavement of women and girls from the Yazidi minority in Iraq. The Islamic State has beheaded and stoned women in Syria. Speaking up for resettling women and children fleeing such violence should be a priority for Americans right now. At this juncture, it’s not. “In America, next week brings Thanksgiving,” Bush said at the end of her radio address in 2001. “After the events of the last few months, we’ll be holding our families even closer. And we will be especially thankful for all the blessings of American life. I hope Americans will join our family in working to insure that dignity and opportunity will be secured for all the women and children of Afghanistan.” As Thanksgiving approaches this year, it’s a shame that American leaders are actively working to ensure that dignity and opportunity are being denied to women and children fleeing Syria and other places affected by war and terrorism.


The Daily 202: Fear reigns, and attention turns to the long war ahead

File Photo/Damian Dovarganes) — Los Angeles Times, “Backed by California Democrats, Chinese American scientists arrested on espionage charges demand answers,” by Sarah D. Wire: ”Three California House members and other members of the congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus are again pushing the Department of Justice for an independent investigation into the arrest, indictment and release of Chinese American scientists. Flanked by two scientists who experienced this, Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) said at a news conference Tuesday the arrests appear to show a ‘practice and pattern of the federal government profiling Chinese American scientists as spies from China even when there is no credible evidence to support it.’ Members of the caucus are scheduled to meet with U.S. Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch on Wednesday to discuss the cases. National Weather Service employee Sherry Chen of Ohio and Temple University physics professor Xi Xiaoxing of Penn Valley, Pa., were arrested this year on suspicion of espionage. Charges in both instances were dropped with little explanation before going to court.” HOT ON THE LEFT Transgender issues finally gain recognition on Capitol Hill. HOT ON THE RIGHT Kerry gaffe: At least the Muslim extremists who attacked Charlie Hebdo had “a rationale.” DAYBOOK: — What’s happening today on the campaign trail: This weekend in Iowa: –On the Hill: –At the White House: QUOTE OF THE DAY: NEWS YOU CAN USE IF YOU LIVE IN D.C.: — Winter weather is coming. Heavy snow engulfed parts of Colorado and Kansas this week: (@capitalweather) — The National Zoo announced the new panda cub will make his debut in January: (@NationalZoo) — Washington College — Virginia — 60 homeless people who live in tents near 26th and K streets in Northwest are being ordered to move. — Virginia Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam (D) formally announced that he is running for governor, setting up a match-up between him and Republican Ed Gillespie. — The Wizards crushed the Milwaukee Bucks by 29 points. — Clemson, Alabama, Ohio State and Notre Dame stayed as the top four teams in the College Football Playoff rankings. VIDEOS OF THE DAY: On the campaign trail, Ted Cruz did another set of Simpsons impressions: Cruz does a Simpsons impression One of the Cruz super PACs, meanwhile, released a brutal attack ad against Rubio over his role in the Gang of 8 on immigration. Donald Trump asked if President Obama is “insane” on the


Light therapy effective for treating depression, not just winter blues

health disorders in the United States and one of the leading causes of disability worldwide. Light therapy is cheap, easy to use and comes with few side effects compared to medication such as antidepressants, said lead author Raymond Lam, a professor of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia. Previous research on light therapy for non-seasonal depression has been limited. This study "shows a new, proven-safe treatment of depression that is probably both more effective and less expensive than drug treatment or anything else," said Dan Kripke, a psychiatrist and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, who has studied the topic but was not involved in the latest trial. [It's 3 a.m. and you're depressed. How technology is transforming mental health care.] The researchers said enough clinical evidence now supports mental health professionals recommending light therapy as a treatment for depression. Most people typically receive medication and psychotherapy — but medications don't work in all cases and there's a shortage of providers in many areas. [Why it's so hard to find a mental health professional ] Lam and his colleagues followed 122 patients and evaluated whether light therapy improved their mood when it was used both with and without fluoxetine, or Prozac, a commonly prescribed antidepressant. Over eight weeks, participants were exposed daily to 30 minutes from a fluorescent light box soon after waking up. Some participants were instead given placebo pills and placebo devices. Although the light therapy helped many patients, it provided the most benefit to those who were also taking the antidepressant. About 60 percent of those using light therapy with the antidepressant reported feeling almost back to normal, Lam said. Researchers have two main theories on why light therapy works. One is that it affects the biological clock in the brain. There's some evidence that depression, like jet lag, occurs when the biological clock is out of sync, and light helps to correct that, Lam said. Light is also believed to affect neurotransmitters in the brain. Those are considered important for the development of depression and are the targets of most antidepressant medications. Read more: Women more likely to have serious mental health problems than men, study says NIH's mental health chief on why he's leaving for Google: Technology may hold key to better diagnosis How magnets "reset" depressed brains Most Americans will get a wrong diagnosis at least once in their lives


Photo released by Islamic State purports to show bomb that downed Russian jet

Islamic State's official magazine prints photo of what it says was the bomb that brought down the Russian airliner over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. The latest issue of the Islamic State militant group's online propaganda magazine claims to show the bomb that brought down the Russian jet in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula more than two weeks ago. The image, which includes a Schweppes Gold can and other apparent components of improvised explosives, could not independently verified. The Islamic State's Sinai affiliate asserted responsibility for the downing of the jet on Oct. 31; 224 people were killed. An accompanying text in the English-language magazine, Dabiq, states that the decision to target the Russian jet came "after having discovered a way to compromise the security at the Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport and resolving to bring down a plane belonging to a nation in the American-led Western coalition against the Islamic State." An undated image made available in the Islamic State's magazine Dabiq on Nov. 18 claims to show the bomb that downed a Russian plane bound for St. Petersburg. (Militant photo via AP) The release of the magazine issue comes one day after Russian officials confirmed that the jet's downing was the result of a terrorist attack. Russian intelligence chief Alexander Bortnikov on Tuesday gave the first official confirmation from Russia that a bomb detonated aboard the Airbus 321-200, causing it to disintegrate and scatter wreckage over about seven square miles of desert. Bortnikov told President Vladimir Putin that the device was homemade and that it had under one kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, of TNT. [Russian airline spars with government over cause of crash in Egypt] A report in the Russian daily Kommersant on Wednesday said the bomb was most likely inside the cabin and not in the luggage hold. The report cited anonymous sources and could not immediately be verified. Russia suspended all flights with Egypt on Nov. 6 after statements by Western leaders, including President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron, that a bomb smuggled on board was a likely cause of the plane crash. The Islamic State took responsibility soon after the crash, but the claim was widely disregarded. The plane bombing is one of several attacks in the last month that have brought new attention to the militant group's reach outside Syria and Iraq. The cover of the latest Dabiq focuses on the terrorist attacks in Paris on Nov.


James Cameron wants you to fight global warming by changing what you eat

House, a London-based think tank, which also calculated that livestock drives 39 percent of human-caused global methane emissions and 65 percent of human induced nitrous oxide emissions. You can’t fix global warming without fixing carbon dioxide — it has a longer atmospheric residence time than these other gases, and is the dominant greenhouse gas in general. But Cameron observes that because agriculture is so closely tied to deforestation — in many places around the globe, forests are being cleared for cattle and other agricultural activities — it’s also in effect a major source of CO2 to the atmosphere. Moreover, given global goals to keep global warming between 2 degrees Celsius, it has often been observed that taking action on non-CO2 gases with greater immediate warming consequences, like methane, can buy us some time. There have been proposed techno-fixes to the problem of agricultural emissions — including the intriguing idea of changing the chemistry going on in cows’ rumens (one chamber of their stomachs) by feeding them a “methane inhibitor” powder, which has been proved in published research to work. DSM, the Dutch life-sciences company, is developing this product. [Meet the ‘clean cow’ technology that could help fight climate change] But there’s also changing what we consume and, in effect, driving market-based changes on a global scale. On the latter front, Cameron and his wife, Suzy Amis Cameron, founded the Food Choice Taskforce, seeking to change our diets, and thereby, lessen climate change and other environmental impacts. “It’s a viable choice, it’s essentially a thermostat that’s being handed to us that we can use to turn down climate change,” Cameron says. The group is supported in part by the private Avatar Alliance Foundation, which Cameron endowed with some of the film’s proceeds. The foundation has also supported Chatham House’s research on agriculture and the environment. According to Chatham House, international negotiations to address climate change naturally target the energy and transportation sectors, and the forest and land use sector — but for a complex set of reasons, they have just as traditionally overlooked agriculture. The report contended that “dietary change is essential if global warming is not to exceed two degrees Celsius – the stated objective of the international community.” “I think they’re basically unachievable goals if we don’t embrace the way we eat as well as part of it. But nobody’s talking about it,” says Cameron. Granted, there are signs


Jeb Bush calls for use of ‘overwhelming force,’ including ground troops, against ISIS

up billions of dollars to be spent on uniformed personnel, according to Bush. Bush regularly criticizes the rapid growth of the defense industry and on the campaign trail he often uses anecdote about the breakneck pace of economic development that he's seen along the Dulles Corridor in Northern Virginia. In his policy paper, he calls for greater competition in awarding defense contracts and believes that the next defense secretary should "establish a small task force of experienced business people and retired senior military officers" to come up with ways to trim back "bloated headquarters." The Citadel often hosts presidential candidates seeking to outline their national security plans when campaigning in this early primary state. George W. Bush gave a similar speech here in 1999 before winning the Republican nomination. Already in the past year, businesswoman Carly Fiorina, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Texas governor Rick Perry have delivered similar speeches. Walker, Jindal and Perry have since left the GOP presidential race. Bush told the hundreds of cadets gathered to hear him that he had joined classmates on an early-morning jog around the bucolic campus. "So the next time a presidential candidate comes by here, tell them that Jeb has set a new precedent," he said. "From now on, you can’t give a speech to cadets without first doing some PT," or personal training. Bush has two foreign policy advisers on his campaign staff who used to work for House Republican leaders and aides said Wednesday that they helped craft the bulk of the candidate's remarks. But shortly after launching his campaign in February, Bush unveiled a team of foreign policy advisers, a who's who of past GOP administrations led by his father and brother. The group includes former secretary of state James Baker and former deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, plus others with expertise in the Middle East and Latin America. Given the disparate nature of the politics and views of the group, its creation caused early headaches for him and raised questions about whether he would serve much differently than George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush. Jeb Bush insists that he would. He told NBC's "Meet the Press" last Sunday that "The world is going to be dramatically different in 2017 than it was in 2000. We need to be focused on the future." Greg Jaffe and Dan Lamothe contributed to this report.


New research reignites concerns that pesticides are harming bees

the UK Science Media Centre, saying, “The conclusion reached in this study that thiamethoxam impairs pollination services provided by bumble bees to apple trees is not conclusive, it is premature, and only representative of a single experiment conducted under artificial conditions for the apple trees being pollinated and using unrealistically exposed bumble bees.” Campbell also made a number of other technical criticisms of the study. For one thing, he highlighted the fact that certain other aspects of the bees’ pollination services were not affected by the treatment. Although treated colonies were less active pollinators and were associated with fruits that contained fewer seeds, they did not seem to make a significant difference in whether apple trees produced fruit or how many fruits they produced. But the authors maintain in the paper that it’s unclear whether pesticide-exposed colonies’ altered behavior may affect other plants differently. And they also noted that the reduced seed production observed in this study could be a serious problem for agriculture, indicating a lower fruit crop quality with the potential to reduce agricultural output down the road. So far, most studies on neonicotinoids and pesticides have focused on honeybees, said Thorp. This is largely a reaction to widespread honeybees losses to But it’s important not to forget about bumblebees, Thorp cautions. While honeybees are generally considered a managed species in the U.S., “wild bees are kind of the under-appreciated resource that we have out there,” he said. “They’re extremely important in pollination of our native ecosystems, and many of them…are important contributors to crop pollination.” Furthermore, he added, if honeybees continue to decline, other pollinators — including the bumblebee — will become increasingly important to the survival of plants that rely on pollination for their reproduction. So the study has some worrying implications for a valuable wild pollinator. But Stanley cautions that the study “only looked at one pollinator species and one crop species,” so it’s impossible to say for sure that the effects would be the same with other bees or other plants — or other pesticides, for that matter. The study also doesn’t provide a clear explanation for why, exactly, thiamethoxam caused the bees’ pollination services to suffer. In a mysterious twist, the researchers found that when bumblebees were released into the field one by one — not as a whole colony — the bees exposed to pesticides were actually more active than the control


Scientists caught a new planet forming for the first time ever

were working on separate PhD projects, but had decided to focus on the same star — LkCa15, located 450 light years from Earth. [NASA estimates 1 billion ‘Earths’ in our galaxy alone] "The reason we selected this system is because it’s built around a very young star that has material left over from the star-formation process," Follette said in a statement. "It’s like a big doughnut. This system is special because it’s one of a handful of disks that has a solar-system size gap in it. And one of the ways to create that gap is to have planets forming in there." The women and their colleagues set high-powered telescopes to look at the system and used a new technique to look for protoplanets. They searched for the light emitted by hydrogen as the gas falls toward a newly forming planet. That process is hot — roughly 17,500 degrees Fahrenheit — and it produces a signature red glow. [Why NASA’s top scientist is sure that we’ll find signs of alien life in the next decade] "The difference in brightness between a star and a young exoplanet is usually comparable to the difference between a firefly and a lighthouse," Follette said in a statement. "It's very hard to isolate the light from the planet when it is so faint and so close to the star from our point of view. But, because we could focus on a special color of light where the planet is glowing very brightly, the signal was significantly stronger than what we normally look for." Here's a composite image made from the telescope observations: (Steph Sallum. Greyscale image generated from sub-millimeter data published in Isella et al. 2014.) The researchers were able to determine the orbits of two young planets, and suspect there may be a third as well. They're likely to be gas giants. The team was surprised to find that at least one of the planets has been forming for around 2 million years. In a commentary article for Nature, Zhaohuan Zhu, an astrophysicist at Princeton University who wasn't involved in the study, wrote that such direct images of planetary formation could help answer a lot of questions. “Little is known about how microscopic dust particles can grow 14 orders of magnitude to become a giant planet," he wrote, but "the authors have demonstrated a powerful technique to find young planets in circumstellar disks, one


PM Update: A few showers into tonight, main rainy period early Thursday morning; First D.C. freeze on the way?

Two hour radar loop of rain and storm movement through the area. Refresh page to update. After a nice morning with some sunshine, clouds took over and have thickened and lowered throughout the day. Those clouds didn’t keep temperatures from rising though, as most spots reached the low-to-mid 60s. It’ll stay mild tonight, and we might even crack 70 again tomorrow. Cooler days are ahead though! Through Tonight: Tomorrow (Thursday): See Dan Stillman’s forecast through the weekend. And if you haven’t already, join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram. For related traffic news, check out Dr. Gridlock. Want our 5 a.m. forecast delivered to your email in-box? Subscribe here. Clouds rolling into town this morning. (Jarrett Hendrix via Flickr) First freeze for D.C.? The National Weather Service is going with a freeze in D.C. on Monday morning: (Weatherbell.com) The GFS model suggests it could be close over the weekend as well, with freezes more likely to the west both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday lows per the GFS (Weatherbell.com) Sunday lows per the GFS (Weatherbell.com) Monday lows per the GFS (Weatherbell.com)


Ta-Nehisi Coates, Adam Johnson win National Book Awards

continued, “because when Prince Jones died, there were no cameras, there was nobody looking.” According to the Wall Street Journal, the book’s publisher Spiegel & Grau moved up the release date of “Between the World and Me” in response to the massacre of nine African American parishioners at a Charleston, S.C., church this June and the subsequent debate about the Confederate flag. [Read The Post’s review of “Between the World and Me"] That Coates’s book — which has already been the subject of critical acclaim and national debate — won the award didn’t surprise most observers. Adam Johnson, on the other hand, was not expecting to be standing on stage Wednesday night. “I told my wife and my kids, ‘Don’t come across America because this is not going to happen,’” Johnson, who won the fiction award for his short story collection “Fortune Smiles,” told the Los Angeles Times. Johnson won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2013 for his novel “The Orphan Master’s Son,” about a young man seeking his mother and an identity in totalitarian North Korea. One of the six stories in “Fortune Smiles” returns to North Korea, and all of them return to Johnson’s familiar theme of moral struggle. Short story collections don’t often win the NBA fiction prize. But this is the second year in a row that one has received the big-ticket literary award (last year’s winner was Phil Klay’s “Redeployment.”) “I think the short story is a machine, and it has lots of gears that turn: Voice, style, architecture, chronology, scene selection,” Johnson said in an NPR interview this August. “I think they’re difficult, but they can be very perfect and powerful — I missed them, working on a novel for many years.” [Read The Post’s review of “Fortune Smiles"] Neal Shusterman brought his son with him to accept the award for young people’s literature for “Challenger Deep.” The novel about a schizophrenic teenager was inspired by Shusterman’s son Brendan. The poetry award went to Robin Coste Lewis for “Voyage of the Sable Venus,” a debut collection that examines race and identity across generations and millennia. At the close of her acceptance speech, Lewis recited the Pablo Neruda poem “Keeping Quiet”: “Those who prepare green wars/wars with gas, wars with fire/victories with no survivors/would put on clean clothes/and walk about with their brothers/in the shade, doing nothing.” All four winners will receive $10,000. [See


Expensive running shoes are no better, and often worse, than cheaper ones

shoes." [Marathons and male egos: Just about the results you'd expect.] That doesn't mean that you should buy $15 running shoes at a department store. Those will almost surely cause you injuries. But Andersen believes that running shoe makers have poured so much money into marketing in their battle for a slice of a multibillion-dollar market that we don't know what's real any longer. According to Running USA, 46.25 million pairs of running shoes were sold in 2013, at a cost of $3.09 billion. Hence this study Most of the shoes reviewed did reasonably well. "Runners are pretty satisfied with the shoes they buy in general," Andersen says. But that also highlights the fairly large satisfaction gap between high- and low-priced shoes. "When you spend more, you expect more," Andersen says in trying to explain why expensive shoes may have disappointed some purchasers. "... But you should not expect to be less satisfied spending more money." (Courtesy runrepeat.com) Runrepeat bills itself as the Yelp of running shoes. Andersen says he takes no money from any company, funding the site himself. There are no ads. So which brands come out on top? Skechers, Saucony and Vibram FiveFingers took the three spots on the podium, while Reebok, Adidas and Hoka One One brought up the rear. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Skechers? Seriously? I know that elite marathoners like Meb Keflezighi and Kara Goucher are wearing them, but I had no idea they were that popular. "What Skechers are doing great is that they don't do the really high premium running shoes," Andersen says. "They are the running shoe brand for moms." [Time's up barefoot runners. Make way for fat-soled running shoes.] As for Vibram FiveFingers, well that's a shock, too. It's all here in a nutshell. The company agreed to pay $3.75 million in refunds after settling a lawsuit that claimed there was no scientific backup for the assertion that the converted boat shoe reduced injuries and strengthened foot muscles. (Skechers paid a much larger refund, by the way, in a similar situation.) On the other hand, they have allowed many people who suffer injuries in regular running shoes to get out on the roads again. Average prices across brands. (Courtesy runrepeat.com) As for the bottom, I was very surprised to find Hokas there. The pioneer of the current fat-sole boom is a hot item right now. Ultra-marathoners swear by them, and lots