These bugs’ babies get eaten by birds but it might be for their own good

It's hard to be an attentive parent when your entire life strategy is predicated on looking and behaving like an inanimate object. But members of the order Phasmatodea — better known as stick insects for their resemblance to leafy branches and dried twigs — try their best. To protect their eggs from predators, some females lay them in hard-to-reach places, like the undersides of leaves. Others enlist the help of ants by attaching an irresistibly nutrient-rich knob called a capitulum to the ends of their eggs. The unsuspecting ants will carry an egg into their underground nest, eat the capitulum and toss the rest of the egg into their garbage zone, where it can incubate in safety, away from predators. In a few months, the hatchling stick insect will crawl back into the open, its inadvertent hosts none the wiser. These animals may even have picked up a parenting pointer from the plants they emulate. A study published Monday in the journal Ecology found that some stick insect eggs can still hatch successfully after passing through the digestive tract of a bird, much as plant seeds do. It's possible, the study authors argue, that stick insects use this strategy to spread their offspring far and wide, mimicking the way motionless plants rely on animals to distribute their seeds via eating and excreting them. “Considering that stick insects are slow moving and often flightless, with a limited capacity for dispersal,” said lead author Kenji Suetsugu, a biologist at Kobe University in Japan, “the benefits of long-distance dispersal via bird predation should not be underestimated.” Suetsugu has long been intrigued by the striking similarities between stick insect eggs and plant seeds. The eggs are encased in hard, tough shells. Their size, shape and color can resemble that of acorns, corn kernels and others seeds. Often, the eggs are also coated in a protective substance called calcium oxalate (the major component of kidney stones) that doesn't dissolve except under the most acidic conditions. Could these features protect an egg as it passed through a bird's gut? Results from previous studies were not promising; a 2011 study found that only one in 1,000 eggs fed to chickens and quails could be recovered unbroken from the birds' feces. In 2015, Suetsugu and his colleagues tried their own experiment, feeding 145 eggs from three stick insect species to brown-eared bulbuls, a common bird in Japan. Several


Ireland just eased its tough abortion laws, but don’t count on Northern Ireland following suit

Shannon Patterson told BBC News. “It's time to progress.” Such activists want British Prime Minister Theresa May to relax Northern Ireland's laws or to call for a referendum on changing them. Although Northern Ireland has its own parliament, the British government retains the right to shape national policy on several key issues. Abortion rights advocates argue that abortion is a human rights issue and therefore under May’s jurisdiction. So far, May has declined to act. After Ireland's referendum, May's spokeswoman told reporters that the prime minister believes only Northern Ireland's local government can change the rules. But that's currently impossible. The country has been without a functioning parliament since last year, when Northern Ireland's two main parties stopped working together. Given that deadlock, many British officials, including cabinet members, want May to step in. Penny Mordaunt, Britain’s minister for women and equalities, told Reuters that Ireland's decision to legalize abortion should bring change north of the Irish border as well. “A historic and great day for Ireland and a hopeful one for Northern Ireland,” she said. “That hope must be met.” But May's parliamentary majority — and, therefore, her ability to maintain her position as prime minister — relies on support from the socially conservative Democratic Unionist Party, one of the main parties in Northern Ireland. The DUP is opposed to abortion, and its lawmakers voted down a 2016 proposal in Northern Ireland's legislature to ease some abortion regulations. Arlene Foster, who leads the DUP, told BBC News that abortion is a local issue. “The legislation governing abortion is a devolved matter,” Foster said in a statement after the Irish referendum, using the term for powers that the British Parliament has handed to local governments, “and it is for the Northern Ireland Assembly to debate and decide such issues.” Foster's comments resonate with Northern Ireland's antiabortion groups, which have vowed to strenuously oppose any efforts to ease restrictions on abortion. Bernadette Smyth, who runs an organization called Precious Life, called the Irish vote “the most tragic day in Irish history.” “Every unborn child still has the right to life,” she said in a statement. “Northern Ireland is now the beacon of hope to the pro-life movement around the world.” Read more: The many countries where abortion is basically banned How an Irish American woman’s legal case helped spur Ireland’s abortion referendum Northern Ireland has become an unexpected hurdle for Brexit


Should the U.S. worry about meddling in Mexico’s July presidential race?

Mexico’s political parties have been implicated in a range of shadowy practices. The incumbent Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has been accused of hiring the firm Cambridge Analytica, which harvested the data of hundreds of thousands of Facebook users in Mexico to analyze for electoral disinformation. Other parties have deployed armies of Twitter bots and social media trolls for misinformation campaigns and targeting political opponents. Even President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration has allegedly conducted clandestine surveillance of activists and journalists, contributing to the media’s self-censorship. Organized crime has also sought to influence elections across the country, mostly at the local level — because electing local candidates who collude with organized crime can bring impunity and greater profits. Online tactics toward this end include intimidating opposition candidates and harassing journalists through threats on social media, suppressing turnout through rumors of violence and swaying voters through the spread of misinformation. The real risk to the United States is post-electoral instability and violence The head of Mexico’s electoral authority reports that it is targeted by thousands of hacking attempts every month. If an attack succeeds well enough to make Mexicans doubt the electoral results, post-electoral violence could destabilize the country. Mexico has narrowly missed electoral violence in the past. In 1988, the electoral authority’s main computer allegedly crashed after the opposition candidate pulled ahead on election night and the incumbent was declared the winner. In 2006, the difference between the two presidential front-runners was less than 0.6 percent of the vote. Since Mexicans already had fairly low confidence in the integrity of their electoral institutions, in both cases they responded with mass protests involving hundreds of thousands of demonstrators that continued for months. But at least those protests were peaceful. That’s not guaranteed this time around. Mexico’s violent crime has increased dramatically since 2006. Gangs and individuals have smuggled tens of thousands of weapons from the United States, especially since 2004, when the assault weapons ban expired. Some communities have organized self-defense vigilante groups. Worse, since campaign season started in September, at least 82 candidates for different offices have been killed, according to one estimate. As of December 2017, a whopping 56 percent of respondents to a nationally representative survey of Internet-connected Mexicans do not trust that elections are free and fair. Mexico’s democracy dates back only to 2000. As the conflict that erupted after Kenya’s 2017 elections reminds us, when electoral results are


Two sprinters gave the black-power salute at the Olympics. It took them decades to recover from that gesture.

the national anthem, talk of a boycott dominated headlines and chatter at every track and field event in 1967 and ’68. The UCLA star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then known as Lew Alcindor, refused to try out for the U.S. basketball team, and because many of the top American sprinters were black, they thought they had leverage. The threats had become a major source of concern in and out of the Olympic world. In researching his 1980 autobiography “The Struggle That Must Be,” Edwards obtained more than 2,000 pages of documents via the Freedom of Information Act from the FBI, CIA and U.S. Military Intelligence that showed that law enforcement was investigating the group well before anyone set foot in Mexico. Edwards was under surveillance, and the FBI, under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, had informants or undercover agents in his classrooms, tracking his movements and attending his speeches. One dispatch from the FBI director to the San Francisco field office is dated March 7, 1968, and instructs the special agent in charge to “promptly review the information in your files concerning Edwards and submit a recommendation to include him on the Rabble Rouser Index if justified.” A document barely two weeks later indeed shows that Edwards was a “new subject” on the Rabble Rouser index, a federal database used by Hoover’s agency to track individuals considered to be a political or national security threat. Three months before the Summer Games, the OPHR effort ran out of steam, and some athletes began discussing individual forms of protest in Mexico City: refusal to stand on the medal podium, a black-power salute, intentionally finishing in last place to symbolize the place many blacks felt they occupied in American society, or perhaps sitting out events after the Opening Ceremonies to show how blacks were excluded. Olympic officials were eager to stay on top of the plans. Doug Roby, the USOC president at the time, wrote a letter to Brundage on Aug. 8, 1968, and acknowledged the swirling issues and continued threats of a boycott. “I wish to assure you that we are very much concerned . . . and we intend to have every athlete thoroughly understand that we will countenance no nonsense and that anyone that participates or that attempts to participate in any demonstration as referred to, will be immediately suspended as a member of our team and returned to his home


weeks later indeed shows that Edwards was a “new subject” on the Rabble Rouser index, a federal database used by Hoover’s agency to track individuals considered to be a political or national security threat. Three months before the Summer Games, the OPHR effort ran out of steam, and some athletes began discussing individual forms of protest in Mexico City: refusal to stand on the medal podium, a black-power salute, intentionally finishing in last place to symbolize the place many blacks felt they occupied in American society, or perhaps sitting out events after the Opening Ceremonies to show how blacks were excluded. Olympic officials were eager to stay on top of the plans. Doug Roby, the USOC president at the time, wrote a letter to Brundage on Aug. 8, 1968, and acknowledged the swirling issues and continued threats of a boycott. “I wish to assure you that we are very much concerned . . . and we intend to have every athlete thoroughly understand that we will countenance no nonsense and that anyone that participates or that attempts to participate in any demonstration as referred to, will be immediately suspended as a member of our team and returned to his home at the earliest possible date.” 'Something had to be done' On Oct. 16, Smith took first in the 200 meters, setting a world record, and Carlos was third. During the medal ceremony, a murmur went through the Mexico City crowd when both men made their gesture. Olympic and U.S. government officials immediately sprang into action, frantically discussing the consequences for the two sprinters and the larger ramifications for the country. A dispatch from the U.S. Embassy in Mexico to Secretary of State Dean Rusk on Oct. 19, 1968, read, in part: “USOC executive committee met and decided against severe action such as suspension but agreed to issue warning to all U.S. athletes against further demonstrations.” It went on to say that the “IOC replied that suspension was minimum acceptable punishment.” “IOC reasoned that USOC not controlling its athletes and that racial dissension might spread to other delegations if USOC refused to suspend Smith and Carlos,” it read. The IOC met twice Oct. 17, once in the morning and again at 10 p.m., according to the IOC minutes kept on file at the group’s headquarters in Switzerland. “In [the USOC’S] opinion it was more an internal social affair than an international


In a time of chaos, a breakout year for black athletes

black NBA superstar. “We see each other as men,” he said. “We judge a guy by his character.” The boycott threat Harry Edwards, a sociologist and activist, led the Olympic Project for Human Rights. He inspired the protest by Carlos and Smith. Long before Abdul-Jabbar made a final decision to boycott the Olympics, he attended an Edwards presentation on Thanksgiving Day in 1967, and the superstar center gave a passionate speech in which he said boycotting was the right thing to do to highlight racial injustice in the United States and apartheid overseas. Edwards and the OPHR were deemed such a threat that International Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage enlisted the help of Jesse Owens, the hero of the 1936 Olympics, to speak to black athletes about not protesting. “You’re going to be Olympic heroes, but you’re not going to get jobs if you protest,” Haywood remembers Owens telling athletes in the room. The meeting turned tense. Carlos and Smith talked back to Owens, declaring, “We ain’t got no jobs right now.” Then, on Oct. 16, 1968, the men acted on their emotions. Smith won the 200 meters. Carlos finished third. Australian Peter Norman was second. They decided to make their statement on the medal stand, with all three wearing OPHR badges. Smith and Carlos didn’t wear shoes, only black socks to symbolize black poverty. Smith donned a black scarf, and Carlos unzipped his tracksuit jacket to represent blue-collar workers and to show a necklace of beads to acknowledge those who had been murdered and lynched. When “The Star-Spangled Banner” played, Carlos and Smith provided the enduring image of the Olympics, raising their black-gloved fists — Carlos with his left hand, Smith with his right — and lowering their heads. “People tried to make it a black thing,” Carlos said in an interview several years ago. “They called it a ‘Black Power salute.’ It wasn’t a black thing. It was for human rights.” Carlos and Smith had made the world pay attention, but then came the repercussions. They were sent home, ostracized and left to live in limbo until history judged them more kindly for fighting against inequality. For 50 years, Edwards has applauded the bravery and used their example to make a point. “You don’t have to have numbers,” Edwards said. “You have to have acts. You have to have activism. The image of John Carlos and Tommie Smith


Don’t kill that spider in your house. It’s unlikely to bite you and is good for the environment.

I know it may be hard to persuade you, but let me try: Don’t kill the next spider you see in your home. Why? Because spiders are an important part of nature and our indoor ecosystem — as well as being fellow organisms in their own right. People like to think of their dwellings as safely insulated from the outside world, but many types of spiders can be found inside. Some are accidentally trapped, while others are short-term visitors. Some species even enjoy the great indoors, where they happily live out their lives and make more spiders. These arachnids are usually secretive, and almost all you meet are neither aggressive nor dangerous. And they may be providing such services as eating pests — some even eat other spiders. My colleagues and I conducted a visual survey of 50 North Carolina homes to inventory just which arthropods live under our roofs. Every single house we visited was home to spiders. The most common species we encountered were cobweb spiders and cellar spiders. Both build webs where they lie in wait for prey to get caught. Cellar spiders sometimes leave their webs to hunt other spiders on their turf, mimicking prey to catch their cousins for dinner. Although they are generalist predators, apt to eat anything they can catch, spiders regularly capture nuisance pests and even disease-carrying insects — for example, mosquitoes. There’s even a species of jumping spider that prefers to eat blood-filled mosquitoes in African homes. So killing a spider doesn’t just cost the arachnid its life; it may take an important predator out of your home. It’s natural to fear spiders. They have lots of legs and almost all are venomous — though the majority of species have venom too weak to cause issues in humans, if their fangs can pierce our skin at all. Even entomologists themselves can fall prey to arachnophobia. I know a few spider researchers who overcame their fear by observing and working with these fascinating creatures. If they can do it, so can you! Spiders are not out to get you and actually prefer to avoid humans; we are much more dangerous to them than vice versa. Bites from spiders are extremely rare. Although there are a few medically important species such as widow spiders and recluses, even their bites are uncommon and rarely cause serious issues. If you truly can’t stand that spider


Here’s why there are so many coyotes and why they are spreading so fast

place. They are sneaky enough. They eat whatever they can find — insects, smaller mammals, garbage,” he said. Stanley D. Gehrt, an Ohio State University professor and wildlife ecologist who runs the Urban Coyote Research Project, which studies coyotes in the Chicago area, said in a recent interview that coyotes “are extremely flexible and adaptable to different kinds of environments … they’re generalists for sure, so generalists tend to do pretty well in cities, but they also benefit once they move into cities. “Their primary source of mortality in rural areas is now removed, and that was people. You might wonder: How can that be removed? That’s because you don’t have hunting and trapping occurring in the cities. The cities actually act as a kind of refuge for coyotes once they get established.” Coyotes do not breed like rats, but they could hold their own in a contest. It is an animal that, when threatened, somehow reacts by making more coyotes, becoming stealthier, nearly impossible to find even as their numbers grow. The attitude of game officials in the 1930s, the researchers said, was to get rid of the wolves and then deal with coyotes. “But you can’t get rid of coyotes,” Kays said. “It doesn’t work. The one thing that will reduce coyote numbers are wolves. “In many ways, wolves are more easily managed than coyotes,” he said. “They don’t breed as fast. You have to manage their behavior. A bold coyote is a dangerous coyote because they attack humans.” Gehrt said cities and towns recently colonized by coyotes often contact him for advice. “Their first inclination, at least it used to be, [was] ‘We want to get rid of them, so how do we get rid of them?'” Gehrt said. “Just to be clear, we’re not in the business of protecting coyotes or defending them or anything; we provide the best science that we can. What our science tells us is that you’re not going to be very successful at trying to remove them permanently.” The better approach is to advise residents to keep food — trash, cat kibble — out of coyotes’ reach, he said, and to keep pets inside. Another problem wrought by killing animals that contained and killed coyotes is that the larger gray wolf, left without mates, turned to another species, perhaps the first waves of eastbound coyotes, and hybridized. That happened in the


More than 20 nighttime explosions have rocked rural Pennsylvania since April. No one knows why.

That’s about it. Charlene Hennessy, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said Wednesday that the agency was involved in the investigation in a limited capacity but did not offer details about the federal response, which includes agents from the FBI. Yet Hennessy previously speculated about the cause, telling Lehigh Valley Live that the blasts could have been caused by large amounts of explosive firearm targets called Tannerite — which are sold legally and not regulated by ATF. Tannerite-brand targets are sold as separate components that, when combined, can produce a small explosion. Blowing up large amounts of Tannerite is its own YouTube genre. In one video, a group of enthusiasts gathered 164 pounds of Tannerite in a plastic bin and stuck it inside an abandoned barn, as explained by a man wearing a Richard Nixon mask, sunglasses and ear protection. The barn is obliterated in the video. “I would not be surprised if that’s what it turns out to be,” Hennessy told local media, referring to Tannerite. Still, the paucity of information has left locals to speculate about the nighttime blasts, with guesses including satellites falling from the sky and illegal drilling. Sue Crompton said an April 30 explosion shook the earth and rattled the windows in a trailer home shared with her mother. “It practically knocked me out of bed,” Crompton told Philly.com. “Your mind goes to meteorites or people making bombs. I just don’t want anyone to get hurt.” Crompton knows explosions: She told the Inquirer she previously worked at a ski resort in Colorado and sometimes watched controlled demolitions to blunt dangers from sudden avalanches. That April explosion told her everything she needed to know — it wasn’t a fire, even though two weeks earlier, two blasts about five minutes apart led her neighbors to suggest a fire at a nearby barn must have been the source. Zangli, who was jolted in Upper Black Eddy on Mother’s Day, does not believe the explosions are nefarious. But he’s worried about what could result if they continue. “Probably kids that come up with a formula to blow stuff up, and you know it’s cool to watch something blow up,” he told the local ABC outlet, “but you could kill somebody in the process.” Read more: The stories you missed on Memorial Day weekend Love and Fire: How a troubled romance triggered an arson spree


U.N. says Mexico’s security forces likely behind disappearances of people along the border

has endured record levels of violence in the past year as the drug war rages in many parts of the country, including in the states along the U.S. border. Mexican production of opium poppy and heroin has risen to meet American demand, and the quantity of methamphetamines and other drugs flowing into the United States has also increased. Mexico’s military has a visible presence in many hot spots, and the navy’s elite marine units have played a key role in anti-drug operations. The military has faced regular accusations of human rights violations, including torture, disappearances and extrajudicial killings. A report last year by the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a research and advocacy group, found that about 97 percent of human rights violations committed by Mexican soldiers go unpunished. Concern about disappearances in Nuevo Laredo, a city across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Tex., has been building in recent months. Relatives of the disappeared blocked the border bridge this month, demanding that the navy leave their city and that the Mexican government investigate more than 40 cases of people who had been abducted. “The silence of the government in these situations is really unacceptable,” said Ximena Suarez-Enriquez, assistant director for Mexico at WOLA. It is “necessary now for the government to come out and clarify if they are investigating these cases and if there are members of the navy or the military involved.” In the state of Tamaulipas, which includes Nuevo Laredo, the threat of violence and the power of drug cartels often make it difficult for human rights groups and journalists to investigate such allegations. A civil society group called the Network of Disappeared of Tamaulipas has a database of more than 1,300 unresolved disappearances in Nuevo Laredo since 2006, said its president, Josefina de Leon. She added that sometimes organized crime groups wear police and military uniforms, making it even more difficult to identify those responsible. “The state has little capacity to find the disappeared” or prevent the phenomenon from happening, she said. Last month, Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission sent a message to the navy and other security bodies urging them to protect civilians in Tamaulipas. Mexico recently passed a law intended to improve the government’s ability to track and investigate disappearances. Zeid called it “extremely worrying that these enforced disappearances are taking place just a few months after the adoption” of the new law. joshua.partlow@washpost.com


This mock pandemic killed 150 million people. Next time it might not be a drill.

A novel virus, moderately contagious and moderately lethal, has surfaced and is spreading rapidly around the globe. Outbreaks first appear in Frankfurt, Germany, and Caracas, Venezuela. The virus is transmitted person-to-person, primarily by coughing. There are no effective antivirals or vaccines. U.S. troops stationed abroad are infected. Now the first case to reach the United States had been identified on a small college campus in Massachusetts. So began a recent day-long exercise hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. The simulation mixed details of past disasters with fictional elements to force government officials and experts to make the kinds of key decisions they could face in a real pandemic. It was a tense day. The exercise was inspired in part by the troubled response to the Ebola epidemic of 2014, and everyone involved was acutely aware of the very real and ongoing Ebola outbreak spreading in Congo. In the simulation, a bipartisan group of current and former high-ranking U.S. government officials played a team of presidential advisers faced with a host of real-world policy, political and ethical dilemmas. The actors included former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), who played the Senate majority leader, and Rep. Susan Brooks (R-Ind.), who played herself. They had to react as the outbreak unfolded according to a script provided by Johns Hopkins, with no advance knowledge about how the mock disaster would play out. They faced difficult questions throughout the exercise: Should the United States impose an entry ban on flights from Germany and Venezuela? If not, they faced the problem of explaining that decision to the American public and Congress in the face of political pressure to act. Should the United States send troops to Jordan, where a major outbreak has occurred and the key Middle East ally is requesting assistance? Once a vaccine is developed, who should get it first? Should priority go to officials, to ensure continuity of government, or to children and pregnant women? Or should there be a lottery? There were no easy answers. That was the point of the day-long exercise, held in a darkened hotel ballroom before a rapt invitation-only audience of about 150 people and live-streamed on Facebook. There were experts from academia and think tanks, and officials from across the U.S. government, including the White House, defense and intelligence communities, health and security agencies and Congress. Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins


Small dog attacked and killed by coyote in Northern Virginia

But the dog went into the woods and was attacked, apparently by the coyote. Police said no humans were hurt. Officials said wildlife specialists are “monitoring coyote activity” in the area and warned “dogs are vulnerable to coyote confrontations, especially when unattended.” Officials with the Fairfax County Police said that although the animals may be considered a nuisance, experts will not catch coyotes because it is illegal in Virginia to capture and relocate animals. The county’s Animal Services Division said it will use searches and cameras to monitor coyotes in the area. It is also working with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries to determine whether more needs to be done. Experts said coyotes will only attack humans if provoked. “It is extremely rare for a coyote to attack a human unprovoked,” said Officer Tara Gerhard, a spokeswoman for Fairfax County Police. Coyotes have expanded from the plains areas of the western United States as their competitors have gradually disappeared. They now can be found in parts of Rock Creek Park in the District. And, they have been found in New York’s Central Park. On rare occasions, they attack people. Authorities said while it is not uncommon for coyotes to have run-ins with dogs, they are more likely to occur at certain times, particularly in coyote mating season, from January to March, and when coyotes are caring for their young between March and August. But officials said “unprovoked conflicts between humans and coyotes are extremely rare.” Experts said coyotes are “an established part of the local wildlife community” in the county and that “the mere presence of coyotes should not alarm you.” Still, they offered tips on how to prevent contact with a coyote, including never feeding one, securely covering trash bins and never leaving cats outdoors or dogs unattended — even in a fenced yard. Officials also suggested installing sensor lights or motion-activated sprinklers around a home to ward off wildlife. In December, authorities said a dog was killed by a coyote in the Annandale area of Fairfax County. There was a report in 2012 of coyotes attacking a dog in Daniels Run Park in Fairfax City, and a cat being hurt after coyotes attacked it in the Pasadena area of Anne Arundel County. Correction: This story was updated to reflect that officials believe one coyote was involved in the attack, not a pair of coyotes. dana.hedgpeth@washpost.com


Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize? How about the Parkland students?

start what some see as a new era of student protest. There is also a Twitter campaign, #NobelPeacePrizeParklandKids, seeking the Nobel Prize for them: The award was established by Alfred Nobel, who said in his will that he wanted “champions of peace” to be rewarded with the Nobel Prize. It is awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which has five members chosen by the Norwegian parliament. The Parkland activists are 18 or younger. The youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner — 131 laureates have been named since 1901 — was Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani advocate who at age 17 was a co-winner in 2014 for her work in support of girls’ education around the world. The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize has been controversial in some years. In 1973, Henry Kissinger, secretary of state in President Richard Nixon’s administration, was a co-winner for negotiating a cease-fire in Vietnam after years of prosecuting the war and even ordering a bombing raid over the North Vietnamese capital of Hanoi during the talks. The other co-winner was North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho, who declined the award. The American satirist Tom Lehrer remarked that “political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize.” In 2009, President Barack Obama won, surprising even him as he was starting his first term as president and hadn’t had time to accomplish anything on the world stage. The prize was given as aspirational support for his campaign message of cooperation across borders. In 2015, Geir Lundestad, a former director of the Nobel Institute, wrote that he regretted the decision. In 2012, the European Union was given the award for contributing to the advancement of peace for more than six decades, the awards committee said. The choice was savaged by critics who noted that the EU does not advocate for disarmament, as Alfred Nobel had championed. The 2017 Nobel Peace Prize went to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons “for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons.” Trump supporters say he deserves the prize for attempting to force the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un, to give up the country’s nuclear weapons. They note that Obama won without having accomplishments toward peace. Trump said this recently when asked about whether he deserved a


Ireland’s abortion referendum reminds us that history is never written in stone

the Irish voted to put the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe — forbidding abortion even in cases of incest and rape — into their constitution. Now, they have voted to repeal that amendment. Once again, the “yes” vote was higher than expected, not just in Dublin but also in many rural areas which had been expected to vote the other way. Once again, this latest Irish vote also disproves our widespread assumptions about historical determinism. The belief that some nations have always behaved in a certain manner, and thus will always go on behaving in a certain manner, is extremely powerful. “Russia was always a dictatorship, and always will be,” I am often told. “They loved the czar; now they loved Putin.” But that too is just one of those mantras which will be accepted as true until the moment it isn’t. Much like the mantra “Ireland will always be Europe’s most Catholic country,” which was also true until it wasn’t. It’s a lesson worth remembering. Places do change; people become different. Politicians can make decisions that create new attitudes; artists and writers can say things that make people think differently; economic change can also create cultural shifts. Most of all, new reporting, new information and new analysis can change how people see their history. Ireland’s vote to loosen its abortion laws is partly the result of a series of revelations about Ireland’s past: stories of the workhouses where single mothers were once pressured to live; of homes where hundreds of illegitimate children died; of pedophilia and the church hierarchy that covered it up. The cruelty of those institutions was once widely accepted, partly because people didn’t really know much about them. Now that everyone knows, they don’t seem acceptable anymore. This isn’t to say that history doesn’t shape the present; it does, but not in the simple ways that most of us assume. “The past is never dead,” wrote Faulkner. “It isn’t even past.” We are constantly interacting with our history, reevaluating it, sometimes seeking to repeat or revive it, sometimes revolting against it. History never changes, but our memories of it, and our judgments about it, change all the time. Ireland was reckoning with its history when it voted on Friday, and it has decided that it wants a different relationship with one of its most important historical institutions, the Catholic Church. At least for the moment.


A pilot kidnapped a foreign student and tried to deport him to China, police say

to return home to China.” McConkey and Hoser first showed up at the apartment on Thursday night, according to a police statement. Shi told the Searchlight that they ordered him to pack and be ready to leave for China at daybreak. “I said I didn’t receive any documents from China,” he said. McConkey and Hoser didn’t explain why they wanted him out of the country, the student said, and police have not explained either. But Shi told the Searchlight that he had been forbidden to fly two months earlier, and suspected that his limited English was the problem. An unrelated federal lawsuit, filed last year by a former instructor, alleges that many of IASCO’s Chinese students spoke so little English that they could not safely fly — that one had nearly crashed into another plane because he had misunderstood his teacher’s instructions. The instructor was fired after he reported such problems the Federal Aviation Administration, according to the complaint. The lawsuit predates Shi’s training, and does not mention Hoser or McConkey, who is reportedly a 48-year-old manager at the flight school. In any event, police said the two employees returned to Shi’s apartment around dawn on Friday. Shi had made up his mind by then not to go with McConkey and Hoser, and played an audio recording for the Searchlight of what he said transpired. “You’re going home, with or without your luggage,” a man’s voice told Shi, as transcribed by the newspaper. “If you cannot speak English, you are not going to be able to stay here,” added a woman whose voice alternated between English and Mandarin. “Do you understand what ‘in my custody’ means?” the man told Shi. “It means I will forcibly remove you … If you want the police to come with guns, I got you on that. Alright? You ass is leaving right now.” The man continued to curse. He threatened to break Shi’s arm, the Searchlight wrote, and finally told the student: “The United States government needs you out of this country right now, you understand?” “You are here illegal, you know that,” added the woman. “If you don’t go with us, you go to jail.” Police said McConkey “battered” Shi during the argument. The student told the newspaper that the pilot grabbed him roughly by the arm and “bent his left side over the kitchen island,” which would leave him days later with


Japan urges Trump to take a hard line with North Korea

position is maximalist. Not only must Pyongyang dismantle all its nuclear and missile programs, but also it must resolve the cases of 12 Japanese abductees who remain unaccounted for in North Korea, an issue Trump promised Abe he would add to the agenda. If North Korea does all that, Japan will normalize relations and provide economic assistance, Katsunobu Kato, Japan’s minister in charge of the abductee issue, told me. But, “without resolution of the abduction matter, North Korea is not in a position to envision any bright future for itself,” he said. The Japanese government’s message is directed both to its domestic audience and the Trump administration. But with Trump changing his mind by the day, Tokyo can’t be sure what Trump will say or do inside the room. To influence Trump ahead of a summit, Abe’s personal relationship with Trump is key. Abe was first on the scene at Trump Tower after Trump’s election. Abe and Trump have spent more than a dozen hours together one-on-one at Mar-a-Lago and elsewhere. Officials close to both men say that they genuinely like each other and that Trump respects Abe’s opinion and seeks his counsel. Trump has a real incentive to keep Abe close. If the summit fails or doesn’t happen, the Trump administration will attempt to return to maximum pressure, perhaps without full Chinese and South Korean support. In that environment, if North Korea offered Japan resolution of the abductee issue in exchange for aid, Abe would have a tough political decision to make. Right now there is no public space between Japan and the United States, but that could change. Is Trump thinking through the regional strategic implications of his meeting with Kim? Is he in command of the details, aware of all the permutations and factoring in allies’ interests as he prepares to possibly sit down at that table? For Japan, Trump’s personal unpredictability is the biggest and most dangerous unknown in the entire equation. In that respect, we are all in the same boat. Abe has a chance to pin Trump down when the two meet in Quebec during the Group of Seven summit next week. For everyone’s sake, let’s hope Abe is able to impress upon Trump’s mind what a good deal with North Korea actually would look like. josh.rogin@washpost.com Read more from Josh Rogin’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.


Romaine lettuce made 172 people sick. Government investigators might never know why.

Yuma region, they don’t appear to share a common farm or processing plant. Without those usual “convergence points,” investigators have struggled to nail down where the outbreak started. “The source and mode of contamination may remain difficult to identify,” Gottlieb said. But some consumer advocates and industry groups have said new technologies and regulations could provide solutions — if not for this outbreak, then for the next one. Walmart, for instance, has advocated the use of blockchain technology to better trace produce as it moves through the food system. In a letter to Gottlieb last week, a coalition of nine consumer groups called for a decidedly less high-tech system: The FDA, they said, should pass mandatory record-keeping requirements for "high-risk foods" including lettuce, so that the agency has an easier time parsing through those documents during its investigations. Congress mandated those requirements as part of the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act, but the FDA has not acted on them. "These actions are urgently needed in light of unsolved multistate outbreaks of pathogenic E. coli in leafy greens in recent months," the consumer groups said, referring not only to the April E. coli outbreak but also to an earlier cluster of illnesses in the United States and Canada. The FDA, for its part, says it is weighing changes that could speed up future investigations. The agency is considering new recordkeeping standards and product labels, such as QR codes, that could encode tracking information. The FDA is also implementing new hygiene and food-safety standards for fruit and vegetable farms designed to prevent contamination. According to one CDC analysis, leafy vegetables were responsible for 22 percent of foodborne illnesses between 1998 and 2008, the latest period for which detailed attribution data is available. A more recent analysis of outbreak data from 2013 concluded that “vegetable row crops” — lettuces plus broccoli, asparagus, celery and some other vegetables — account for 42 percent of E. coli infections. "We live in an era of unprecedented innovation and technology," Gottlieb said, "and we want to bring more of that innovation and technology to bear to help solve this problem and ensure consumer confidence in healthy fruits and vegetables." Read more: 20 percent of serious food safety violations go ignored, new report finds Why a top food poisoning expert won't ever eat these foods You're about to see a big change in the sell-by dates on food


The NSO’s Noseda, Met Orchestra show mutual affection at Carnegie Hall

This was Noseda’s first appearance with the Met’s players since he took over as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra last September. It also was a tonic reminder of Noseda’s high degree of international popularity. The programming didn’t have the flair of some of Noseda’s musical choices at the NSO this year: The concert was devoted to two canonical Fifths, Mozart’s “Turkish” violin concerto and the Mahler. But there was a sense of excitement in the hall, and from the players, who plunged in with gusto. Whether Levine, in the past 15 or so years during which health problems frequently sidelined him, actually led this orchestra to great heights is open to debate, but the musicians showed their signature energy and warmth, if a touch of callowness, particularly in a few moments from the horns. Noseda is never not committed, and he seems ever more open, as a musician, as he continues his steady rise to the top. Nonetheless, this program, though in many ways at a higher level than his NSO concerts, had a touch of the dutiful that I used to observe in him in guest appearances — a great deal of energy, but also calculation. Noseda dove into the Mozart’s opening theme with the flowing vibrancy he does well, then markedly dialed back mood and tempo for the soloist’s entrance, heavily underlining his intentions, which set the tone for the whole piece. Well, clarity is not a bad thing. The violinist was James Ehnes, one of Noseda’s favorite collaborators, recently so fine in the Berg concerto with the NSO. Here as with the NSO, Ehnes showed himself to have substance beyond what I had expected from earlier outings. He was thoroughly capable and lyrical, if not always inspired. He was at his best in the first of his two encores, the third movement of Bach’s Sonata No. 3, which showed his ability for dexterity and lightness. (The poetry in the quieter second encore, from Sonata No. 2, was slightly lacking.) The Mozart was an appetizer for the Mahler, which set out to establish itself as a tour de force, attaining heights of intensity and volume. I was in the minority in not having been absolutely transported. I’ve heard Noseda conduct this symphony twice — the first with the Philadelphia Orchestra three years ago — and he has not yet fully convinced me as a Mahler conductor.


In the south of France, Nimes celebrates and preserves ancient Rome

de la Romanite, a highly anticipated museum that is hailed as one of France’s biggest recent cultural projects. Scheduled to open June 2, the museum, which cost about $65 million, is devoted to the civilization of ancient Rome and its legacy in Nimes. It was the brainchild of Mayor Jean-Paul Fournier, who has championed a contemporary urbanism that showcases the city’s rich heritage. “We wanted to create a museum that befits the quality of the city’s 25,000-piece archaeological collection,” Fournier wrote in an email, “including the exceptional mosaics and a Roman house discovered during an excavation in 2006.” Brazilian-French architect Elisabeth de Porzamparc beat out more than 100 other architects with a bold building draped in an undulating glass facade she has likened to a pleated toga. Explains Fournier: “For centuries, the architects in Nimes have drawn inspiration from the city’s ancient edifices while anchoring their buildings in modernity, and de Porzamparc continues this process . . . establishing a dialogue with both nature and the surrounding urban landscape.” As does Norman Foster’s Carre d’Art, a contemporary art museum that overlooks the Maison Carree, the Musee de la Romanite has a restaurant (overseen by Michelin-starred chef Franck Putelat) with a view. You can admire the amphitheater from there or from the rooftop terrace. Following the city’s original Augustan ramparts, the museum’s inner “street” is open to the public, so that visitors can freely enter the monumental 17-meter atrium, adorned with the temple pediment from the sacred spring where the pre-Roman settlement of Nemausus was founded. Inside the museum, visitors will find cool 3-D renditions and virtual tours of ancient Gaul to enhance their understanding of objects such as the prized Pentheus mosaic. But perhaps the highlight is the archaeological garden. Free to access, it’s designed as a plant museum, with species chronologically arranged according to when they were introduced to the region. The landmark museum is a cornerstone of Nimes’s campaign to become a UNESCO World Heritage site, the result of which will be announced in the summer. “Roman history has profoundly influenced the Nimois, creating our city’s identity and constituting our roots,” Fournier said. “We share this common good in everyday life, and want to bring it to the world’s attention.” Pétanque and parties Nimes came to my attention in 2006 via my first French friend, a Nimoise by the name of Marielle. As a Latin nerd, I found


Nearly 60% of drug-tested drivers killed in U.S. crashes had pot or opioids in their system, report says

who were killed in highway crashes and tested for drugs afterward had opioids, marijuana or some combination of the two in their bodies, according to a new report on driving drugged in the United States. That number is likely to increase as more states move to effectively legalize marijuana while struggling to find ways to detect its active use in motorists. With legislation to legalize recreational marijuana pending in 21 states, the new Governors Highway Safety Association report urges states to move faster toward developing reliable roadside testing devices and providing better training for law enforcement to detect drivers under the influence of such drugs. That’s because studies and federal crash data suggest that more people are getting behind the wheel after getting high. In 2006, for example, nearly 28 percent of drivers who were tested for drugs also tested positive; that number increased to 43.6 percent in 2016. Thursday’s report, using a February 2018 survey and other data, acknowledges that the science on whether legalizing marijuana has contributed to higher crash rates — or even significantly impairs one’s ability to drive — is not settled. Tests that detect marijuana’s active ingredient, THC, don’t always do so in a way that reflects whether a person is impaired, as traces of THC can remain in the system long after use and individual tolerance varies widely. But the group says it is reasonably certain to believe that marijuana has contributed to the causes of some crashes and increased the risk of driving for some motorists. In addition to speedier development of new roadside tests, such as those that use saliva or sweat from a driver’s fingertips, the group call for better research on the issue. For example, testing of fatally injured drivers varies widely by state, with some conducting toxicology tests on only 2 percent of those killed in such crashes. The report comes as nine states and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational marijuana, while 29 states and the District have allowed the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Opioid addiction has been deemed a national crisis, with an average of 115 deaths a day. The full report can be found here: Read more of Tripping: Uber, Lyft and other ride-hailing apps are ‘useless’ for disabled riders, NYC advocates say Uber will use its app to remind riders to buckle up TSA has created secret watch list for unruly passengers


Not just for vegans: How to rock your tofu with cheese, eggs — and even meat

chilled tofu cubes with lemon juice and cracked black pepper to accompany bacon, hard-cooked eggs and avocado in a twist on a traditional Cobb salad. Silken tofu Dragonwagon blends silken tofu with coconut oil, almond butter and melted semisweet chocolate chips for a luscious mousse that can be topped with either dairy or nondairy whipped cream, saying, “I’ve served it to people who thought they’d never be able to enjoy a dessert like that again and they literally had tears of gratitude.” If you still find tofu intimidating, looking to commercial tofu makers for advice can be a good place to start, says Kala Patel, vice president of marketing for Sunrise Soya Foods, Canada’s largest tofu manufacturer. “We’re focused on educating customers on how to use tofu in their everyday recipes,” she says. “For new users who aren’t Asian, they may think of tofu as used mostly in Asian stir-fries and soups, but those might not be recipes they typically cook at home. Now we’re seeing them take their favorite dishes and just substitute tofu for certain ingredients.” It’s no surprise, then, that one of the most popular recipes on Sunrise Soya’s website is Tofu Parmigiana, a reimagining of the classic chicken dish in which slices of extra-firm tofu are marinated overnight in pesto, dipped in an egg batter and coated with seasoned bread crumbs before being fried, then baked with tomato sauce and Parmesan. “I think these kinds of recipes show that you don’t have to be vegan or vegetarian to enjoy a plant-based protein,” Patel says. “People are interested in making small changes that contribute to a healthier lifestyle, or help stretch their grocery budget. They can add firm tofu to ground beef for a lasagna, or throw soft tofu instead of yogurt into the blender for a smoothie. There are no rules.” So pile that tofu high, Dagwood-style, onto your favorite deli sandwich. Wrap it in bacon, as the Japanese do, and whip it into a rummy piña colada. Splash it with Sriracha, coat it in cheddar, barbecue it on a bun. As for dipping it in nacho cheese sauce? Don’t mind if I do. More from Voraciously Carrot dogs are not your typical veggie dogs. They’re much, much better. These vegan, gluten-free chocolate cookies are all about what you gain — not what you miss Five cheap kitchen tools that make cooking and cleaning way easier


Kenyan athlete admits to giving drug tester money but says he thought it was for ‘fuel or tea’

and so tampered with his sample. “The minute I went into my room to send them the money, probably something happened there on the table to my urine sample,” he said. “It is not beyond my suspicion that my sample turned positive because I might have remitted less money than I was expected to remit.” The out-of-competition test took place in November, and in February, he was notified that he had failed it. The Athletics Integrity Unit, which handles all doping cases in international athletics, confirmed that his sample tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs and insists that there was no tampering with the sample. The group also said that Kiprop should not have been given advance notice of the test, and said that it was “extremely disappointing” that the tester broke the rules and gave Kiprop a heads-up, but that it does not disqualify his positive sample. In March, the 28-year-old was charged with violating anti-doping regulations. His case now sits with the International Association of Athletics Federations. A disciplinary tribunal could ban him for competing for up to four years if they determine he is guilty of doping. The Kenyan athlete is one of the fastest 1,500-meter runners in history. In the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, he came in second but ended up earning a gold medal when Bahraini runner Rashid Ramzi failed a doping test. This is just the latest doping scandal that has embroiled Kenya's international athletes in recent years. Ahead of the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Kenya was almost banned from taking part because the World Anti-Doping Agency found the country to be noncompliant after missing two separate deadlines to improve its doping policies. At the time, about 40 Kenyan athletes had failed drug tests since 2012. Then, at the games themselves, one Kenyan sprint coach posed as an athlete and provided a urine sample on that runner's behalf. And Kenya's athletics manager, Michael Rotich, was sent home early from the games after he was accused of trying to find a way to provide athletes with early warnings about drug tests. Still, Kiprop claims he is clean and that he even supports jail time for dopers, and that now he himself is “suffering like a prisoner.” “I’m being put in the category of the dopers,” he said. “Good people, athletes, my competitors and opponents, they think I have been racing with them and cheating.”


The inconvenient truth about carbon capture

involved in the emerging technological system: not just scientists and engineers, but also companies, financiers, regulators and crucially, adopters of the technology. Little has been said about who might use the technology or what their incentives to do so might be. A breakthrough invention in science often stimulates exuberant assumptions that shortcuts in the process of technology adoption are available. But they rarely are. The research community on carbon dioxide removal may be proceeding down a path of wishful thinking that the brilliance of the ideas behind this research will inherently create adopters and users. A revealing point is that in many studies and news articles, these technologies will be “deployed.” Only rarely do we read about people “adopting” them. This top-down orientation, using military language, is bound to run into problems, especially at the massive scales involved. Consider the experience of arguably the most dynamic low-carbon innovation so far, solar photovoltaic panels. It took 60 years after the first commercial use, the Vanguard-1 satellite in 1957, to get to the current state where solar beats coal and gas on cost in sunny places. By the 2030s, more than 10 percent of global energy supply is expected to come from solar. The first commercial direct CO2 air capture system came online last year. If air capture is to follow a similar timeline to solar, it will be low cost in 2077 and attain widespread adoption by 2100. That is far too late. Therefore, we need two major efforts. First, we need a new emphasis from the research community on innovation beyond research and development. We need serious work on early deployment, niche markets, scale-up, demand and public acceptance. Second, we need to implement ways to accelerate the innovation process for carbon removal to ensure that technologies are available in time at the scale we need them. Right now, national and international climate policy has done little to ensure this. Even if there are no shortcuts, we can use what we have learned from other technologies to speed things up: funding research and development continuously, government purchasing of early models, enabling the international spread of know-how, identifying spillover opportunities across technology areas and — last but not least — taking seriously the political economy of negative emissions. But we also need a turnaround in climate policy. We need to bend the path of continued increases in greenhouse gas emissions and start


The Middle East doesn’t lack democracy. It has too much.

and praised Hamas after the cross-border violence last month, the Turkish president was similarly responding to public sentiment. While commentators explained Erdogan’s attacks as part of a political ploy to garner votes in the parliamentary elections in June, it is telling that it works: Although Erdogan long ago left behind the legitimate democratic leader he was when first elected prime minister 15 years ago — he is now basically a modern-day sultan who has centralized power and neutralized any serious opposition — he still needs to compete in relatively open elections. And he can bash Israel and extol Hamas exactly because he knows he will be rewarded by voters for doing so. In an astounding 2014 poll, the Pew Research Center found that a vast majority of Turks disliked Israel more than the Islamic State, Hamas or Hezbollah; while 86 percent of Turks held unfavorable views of Israel, only 2 percent had favorable ones. Two important recent elections also spell bad news for the United States. Hezbollah’s victory in the Lebanese parliamentary balloting nearly a month ago means that most Lebanese voters aren’t all that interested in efforts by the West to block Iranian influence in their country or disarm Hezbollah. The Iraqi election results that came in a few days later were equally discouraging: Sadr, whose Mahdi Army ferociously battled American troops during the war, has now become the kingmaker of Iraq’s next government by securing the largest number of seats in parliament. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, whose party finished a disappointing third, called the elections “a remarkable victory for democracy.” He is right. But that doesn’t mean they were a victory for American interests in the region. Meanwhile, the main source of stability in the Middle East remains the dictatorships and monarchies where the popular will has little impact on government policy. The only governments that openly maintain stable relations with Israel are Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority (Saudi Arabia has also cooperated with Israel through back-door channels to curtail Iranian influence). Unlike the short-lived democratic government in Egypt, headed by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, that threatened to review the 1979 peace agreement with Israel, the general-turned-president Abdel Fatah al-Sissi maintains peace with the Israelis exactly because he doesn’t have to answer to the Egyptian public, which remains overwhelmingly hostile to the Jewish state. Theorists and policymakers long thought that dictators like Hafez al-Assad in


Egg farm responsible for salmonella outbreak had ‘unacceptable rodent activity,’ FDA report says

infested with rodents. In 1990, three separate outbreaks that sickened about 450 people in three states were traced back to Rose Acre Farms. In response, the federal government prohibited the company from selling products from three Indiana farms where the contaminated eggs originated and required expensive cleanups that threatened to put the company out of business. Rose Acre Farm sued, setting off a nearly two-decade-long legal battle. A federal judge ruled that the government had overstepped its boundaries and ordered to pay the company $6 million. But a federal appeals court tossed out the judgment, ruling that regulations did not hurt the company’s bottom line. After a few more years of back-and-forth appeals, the case was dismissed in 2009. Aside from recalling eggs, Rose Acre Farms said it is retraining its employees and has created a position called “Corporate Sanitation Manager,” the Indianapolis Star reported. The recalled eggs were sold under brand names as such Great Value, Country Daybreak and Crystal Farms. Recalled eggs have plant numbers of P-1065 and P-1359D, which can be found on egg cartons, and should be discarded, the FDA said. (Click here for a full list of brands and stores.) The company began in Indiana in the 1930s with about 1,000 hens in two poultry houses, according to its website. Its founder, David Rust, later began selling eggs at the Indianapolis Farmer’s Market and small grocery stores. Rose Acre Farms expanded throughout the Midwest from the 1960s to the 1980s and in southeastern states in the 2000s. The company now has 17 facilities in eight states. Salmonella can come from contaminated animal products such as beef, poultry, milk and eggs, as well as fruits and vegetables. It can cause fever, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain among healthy people but can lead to fatal infections among children younger than 5, adults older than 65 and those with weak immune systems. Salmonella causes about 1.2 million illnesses, 23,000 hospitalizations and 450 deaths every year in the United States, according to the CDC. While most recover completely, some people can suffer from long-term effects such as reactive arthritis, which is joint pain and swelling caused by infection. Read more: 22 states now affected by dangerous outbreak of E. coli illness from romaine lettuce In a first, FDA orders recall of a ‘contaminated food’ — kratom with salmonella Think you can only get salmonella from chicken? Think again.


Ethiopia moves to lift state of emergency two months early as tensions ease

opposition figures both inside and outside Ethiopia. A number of opposition figures and experts have been cautiously hopeful that he seeks to bring real democratic reform. “I am optimistic about Abiy; this measure is really encouraging, even though it should have been lifted earlier,” said Atnafu Berhane, a blogger who spent years in jail for his writings, was released and then detained briefly under the state of emergency. “Once again he did the right thing; it’s a good sign.” Abiy’s chief of staff, Fitsum Arega, announced Saturday on Twitter that the Council of Ministers had “reviewed the security situation of the country. It noted that law & order has been restored. It has approved a draft law that lifts the State of Emergency.” Parliament, which is entirely controlled by the ruling party coalition, is expected to approve the law. This was the second state of emergency declared in as many years in Ethiopia, Africa’s second-largest country by population and a key U.S. partner in the fight against extremists in the Horn of Africa. The Oromo and Amhara ethnic groups, which make up two-thirds of Ethiopia’s population, have been protesting the government over the lack of jobs and lack of political freedom. Hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands imprisoned. Abiy, an Oromo, is one of the youngest leaders on the continent at 41. Among the prisoners he has released is Andargachew Tsige, a British citizen and leader of the opposition Ginbot 7, which the government had branded a terrorist group. Andargachew, who was arrested by Yemeni authorities in 2014 and turned over to Ethiopia, returned to Britain on Friday. While it has long had the trappings of a democracy, including elections and a parliament, Ethiopia has functioned as an authoritarian state with a ruling party coalition backed by a powerful military. The last two elections saw almost no opposition presence in Parliament. Abiy has reached out to the opposition and encouraged them to return to politics. On Friday, he gave a speech to the military that made clear it had no role in the civilian politics of the country. “We will face chaos if the army involves itself in party politics from A to Z or if it does so remotely, like proxy war, to influence outcomes,” he said. “The army should be able to continue serving under the party that is elected by the people.” paul.schemm@washpost.com


Are dockless bikeshare systems changing Washington’s biking culture?

if so, what’s the ideal number to meet the demand. Surveys like those done by Virginia Tech, along with data from the companies offer insight on the performance of the dockless bikes and their potential to grow bike commuting by reaching a wider group of riders, officials say. But as the services expand across the region, they also increase the need for more bike parking and uniform policies to govern the services, addressing problems ranging from inadequate use to safety and to keeping the companies accountable, they said. “We need to have a seamless system just like with Capital Bikeshare,” said Gary Erenrich, special assistant to the director of the Montgomery County Department of Transportation. “The regional coordination is essential,” he added, noting that bikes are inevitably going across jurisdictional lines. Erenrich’s comments were made Thursday during a discussion of dockless bikeshare at a meeting of the Transportation Planning Board of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. The District and Montgomery County launched pilots last year to allow the companies to operate while they come up with permanent regulations. Neighboring jurisdictions are a keeping close eye on their experiences. So far, officials say the programs are operating as expected, expanding options by making bikes available in neighborhoods not served by Capital Bikeshare. However, they also cite challenges, such as dealing with bikes left abandoned for days in parks, dumped in creeks and being ridden to jurisdictions where they are not permitted to operate. “When you are talking about a region that’s so close together, things are going to cross borders,” said Darren Buck, program manager for Alexandria’s Complete Streets Program. Alexandria has seen bikes show up on its side of the Potomac and is studying how to properly bring the services in. “We have to think about what makes sense not only for our jurisdiction, but what is rational for what is happening in the rest of the region,” Buck said. The influx of the dockless bikes on park land has prompted the National Park Service to review its bike policy and contemplate issuing a formal authorization for dockless companies to operate on park land, Laurel Hammig, regional planner for the National Park Service said at the meeting. Officials said complaints about the bikes are lessening as users learn the rules of the systems — and non-users adjust to having them around. At a recent Montgomery town hall meeting about


From cameras to maps to bombs, a quest for perfect accuracy

eventually down to about 60 feet. That observation led to the Navy’s Transit navigation satellites, the first step toward the development a few decades later of the Global Positioning System, which helps guide your car with a precision of a few feet and enables surveyors with specialized GPS tools (and a little bit of patience) to map locations on Earth down to millimeters. Such stories are the focus of Simon Winchester’s new book, “The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World.” Winchester examines how a desire for precision has driven technological progress and often been a prerequisite for it. The Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins and the Transit satellites needed precision to a few hundred feet so that the Navy could target nuclear-tipped missiles. The military later needed GPS to provide greater location precision for conventional bombs. Surveyors desired exactitude as they carved up parcels of land. Photographers and scientists also sought greater precision in their devices. Precision emerges from both mathematics, which was essential for making Transit and GPS work, and materials — hard materials like metal and glass with predictable qualities. Winchester approaches the subject in terms of degrees of precision, starting with the 10th-of-an-inch precision of a steam engine achieved in 1776 by Englishman John Wilkinson and proceeding to the incredibly fine tolerances required for the scientific device at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory in Washington state, which was used in 2015 to successfully detect gravity waves. Along the way, he tells stories about finely balanced Rolls Royce engines, Leica cameras and their prized lenses, and the Hubble Space Telescope, whose mirror was carefully ground to exactly the wrong shape, “precisely imprecise,” as he puts it. Have no fear: It was later fixed and is widely regarded as one of the greatest scientific instruments ever created, becoming as universally known as Einstein and Shakespeare. Winchester describes the smartphone as the most precise device that most people encounter in their everyday lives, and certainly the most common. This requires some qualification, however, because it is a precision electronic device, not a mechanical one; its parts all fit closely together, but they do not have to move. As Samsung recently discovered, precision can be problematic. The company packed everything in its Galaxy Note 7 phone so tightly that when the battery inevitably swelled a tiny amount, there was no room, and the highly charged device could burst


An Indian state banned pesticides. Tourism and wildlife flourished. Will others follow?

quit farming altogether. One farmer, Pem Dorjee Sherpa, who grows potatoes and cardamom, said his income has fallen dramatically since he switched to pesticide-free farming, and he complained that farmers need better access to markets, organic manure and training. “The benefit of going organic has not reached us,” he said. Sonam Taneja, the program manager for food safety and toxins at the Centre for Science and Environment, a research and advocacy organization in New Delhi, received similar feedback when she visited 16 farms across the state for a report that came out last year. “The information I was getting was that farmers are struggling, fighting with pests, and yields are lower, and therefore they’re upset,” Taneja said. Productivity of most crops remained the same, except oranges, but the state will probably continue to have to rely on conventional produce from other states to feed itself, the study said. In April, state officials opened two markets where farmers can sell their products directly to consumers and have added more than two dozen transport vehicles help them move their goods to markets more easily. Officials say that the switch to all-organic has health benefits for Sikkimese, who are getting more nutritious food, and has rejuvenated the health of its soil as well as wildlife and dwindling bee populations. The country’s yield of large cardamom — dependent upon cross-pollination from bees — has increased more than 23 percent since 2014. The country’s move to all-organic also has been a boon to its tourist industry, with a growing market for eco-tours and farm vacations. The Lonely Planet travel guide named it the world’s top destination in 2014, and the number of foreign visitors has more than doubled since 2011, the state’s tourism department says. As a consequence, tourism provides a growing share of the state’s gross domestic product, rising from 5 to nearly 8 percent by 2016-2017. “It’s had a huge impact,” said Khorlo Bhutia, Sikkim’s secretary of horticulture and cash crop development. “It’s because of the good environment — chemical-free air, water, food — all these factors.” Experts say that India’s organic product market has been driven by health-conscious, middle-class urbanites alarmed by the overuse of pesticides. But that’s changing. India is encouraging farmers to engage in a self-regulating organic certification process that is cheaper than outside consultants and will make organic food more accessible for the domestic market. Choitresh Kumar Ganguly, an


Ethiopia chooses new leader from protest-hit region in break from past

after days of closed-door meetings and six weeks after Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn abruptly announced his resignation, saying it was to further democracy in the country. The resignation prompted the declaration of a nationwide state of emergency. Abiy, who has a Muslim father and a Christian mother, would be the country’s first Oromo head of state in modern times. Oromos make up a third of Ethiopia’s 100 million people, but they say they have been consistently excluded from having a voice in shaping the country. Abiy’s accession to the premiership is expected to calm the persistent protests and violence in the countryside. “There was dancing last night in the town. People were dancing in the streets and congratulating each other,” said Andu Selam, an engineering student in the town of Mettu in the Oromia region. “People have hope now that things will be different — if someone else had been selected, [the demonstrations] would not have stopped.” Abiy would be only the third prime minister since the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, or EPRDF, overthrew the communist regime in 1991, and his predecessor was seen largely as a placeholder dedicated to maintaining the policies of Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s leader until his death in 2012. Abiy, however, is expected to bring something very different. “He was the candidate with the most radical reform agenda compared to the other three candidates,” said Hallelujah Lulie, a political analyst. “His biggest challenge will be the state of emergency ... he won’t be a fully mandated prime minister while the military and intelligence handle the major political and security situation.” Abiy’s victory was clinched when his chief rival, Demeke Mekonnen of the Amhara National Democratic Movement, withdrew his candidacy and became the coalition’s deputy chairman. The move suggested that the Oromos and the Amharas, the country’s two largest ethnic groups, have formed an alliance. Abiy’s agenda, however, is likely to face opposition from the establishment. Among the biggest challenges will be addressing complaints against the security services, widely reviled by the Oromos for their role in suppressing dissent. At the very least, his accession on the heels of the widespread turmoil means he will not be seen as a puppet the way Hailemariam was. “Abiy came to the chairmanship and the premiership rebelling against the status quo,” Hallelujah said. “He is the result of a popular uprising that rocked Ethiopia for the past two years.


China’s bear bile industry persists despite growing awareness of the cruelty involved

PHUNG THUONG, Vietnam — Inside a row of rusting cages, 15 adult moon bears are imprisoned in varying degrees of apathy and distress. Some lie on their backs in the tiny enclosures, unable even to stretch out; others loll their heads or chew listlessly at the bars of the cage in tortured, repetitive motions. Every few days, the bears are sedated, a needle is inserted into their gall bladders and bile is extracted to be sold as a cure for ailments as diverse as hemorrhoids and hangovers. More than 20,000 bears are kept, most in appalling conditions, across eastern Asia to satisfy an age-old obsession with the medicinal and magical powers of products culled from exotic animals. Yet there is a ray of hope for some of these bears, as public awareness of animal cruelty and welfare gradually rises across Asia. Last year, Vietnam’s government promised to close down all of its bear farms by 2022, after a pledge by the country’s traditional Chinese medicine community to stop prescribing bear bile products by 2020. That means bear farming is very clearly coming to an end in Vietnam, “once and for all,” said Jill Robinson, founder of Animals Asia. “I think they realized that both internally and internationally, bear bile farming was becoming a very unpalatable subject.” There has been progress as well in South Korea, where the government completed a sterilization program on captive bears last year as part of an effort to phase out farming. Outside these bright spots, however, the picture is much grimmer. China is the center of the industry and of demand for bear bile products. Bear farming remains legal in China, and at least 10,000 bears are kept in cages on nearly 70 farms. Asian black bears — closely related to the American black bear — live in mountains and forests from Japan to China and across the Himalayas to India. They are known as moon bears because of a white marking on their chests, roughly in the shape of a crescent moon. The first known record of the use of bear bile for its medicinal properties comes from a Tang Dynasty document that dates to A.D. 659. But the idea of farming living bears to extract bile originated in North Korea in the early 1980s before rapidly spreading to China, Vietnam and Laos. Studies show In Vietnam, though, the industry is on the retreat.


Skywatch: Saturn, Jupiter and Mars heading for opposition in June and July

Saturn The gaseous Jupiter reached opposition May 8, and Mars gets to opposition July 27. The plump full moon (officially, June 28 at 12:53 a.m.) tours the ringed planet’s space in our sky. Catch the gibbous moon approaching Saturn, which is at zero magnitude, bright, starting around June 26. The ringed planet sits in the constellation Sagittarius, right above the teapot’s dome shape. You should see Saturn and the moon in the southeastern sky in the evening and the southwestern heavens before dawn. The full moon then dances with Saturn after sunset June 28 in the southeast. The moon gets within 1.8 degrees of Saturn at midnight June 28, according to the observatory. Early in June, Saturn rises around 10 p.m., and in the middle of the month, the planet rises at 9 p.m. Late in June, the planet rises in the 8 p.m. hour. Throughout the month, Venus is a brilliant evening object. This week, find this cosmic gem in the west-northwestern sky after sundown, hanging out near the constellation Gemini’s twins, the stars Pollux and Castor. At negative fourth magnitude, Venus easily pierces the evening sky’s light pollution. Enjoy the splendor of Venus since it sets after 11 p.m. all month long. Jupiter rises before the sun sets, but it can be spotted now in the evening’s southeastern heavens at -2.5 magnitude, bright. See the waxing gibbous moon scoot by the gaseous Jupiter on June 23 as the planet sets in the western sky before dawn now. The Red Planet Mars rises late at night, perfect for views before dawn in the south. Mars is a planet so nice it rises twice, according to the Naval Observatory. On June 6, Mars rises at one minute past midnight, and then — 23 hours and 58 minutes later — it rises again at one minute before midnight. At the end of June, Mars rises at 10:40 p.m. The official, astronomical start to summer occurs at the summer solstice, June 21 at 6:07 a.m., says the Naval Observatory. That’s when the sun appears to reach the Tropic of Cancer and then appears to retreat toward the equator. Down-to-Earth Events: ●June 4 — ●June 5 — ●June 7 — ●June 9 — ●June 10 — ●June 13 — ●June 20 — ●June 20 — ●June 23 — ●June 23 —


Unintended consequences: Inside the fallout of America’s crackdown on opioids

up. Then came a thought. He could drink a beer. A little alcohol helps. All he had to do was find a gas station. But he knew what could happen. He could fail his urine test. The pain clinic could then kick him out for violating an agreement he’d signed promising that he wouldn’t mix the medication with alcohol, would submit to pill counts, and would treat opioids like “a loaded gun,” storing them where only he could get them. He called the clinic, listened to the message saying, “We are no longer accepting any pain management referrals,” and the receptionist picked up. “How do I put this?” he said. “Am I going to get pee-tested tomorrow?” He gripped the wheel so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “I want to have a beer,” he said. “I need something.” He heard her saying, “I’m sorry.” She couldn’t answer his question. “You know me,” he pleaded, laughing nervously. “If I had a beer . . .” “Have you found another pain clinic yet?” the receptionist, Jennifer Perkins, asked. He hadn’t. A year of searching, and he hadn’t. “Because, you know, in July she’s not going to be doing this anymore,” she said. “I know,” he said, looking at the traffic, cars pressing in from every direction. “Believe me, I know.” He hung up the phone, finished his bottle of water in one gulp and crushed it between his hands. Twenty-one miles away, the receptionist walked over to Aileen Wedvik's office and told her that Kenyon Stewart had just called. He was thinking about drinking a beer. It sounded as if he was coming apart. It was a call that had become more familiar, as Wedvik tapered 325 pain patients, some by 50 percent, others by 90, to bring them within the CDC guidelines. When she’d first told Stewart and the others that she was leaving pain management, they had seemed to understand. Providers had gone to prison, lost their licenses, faced lawsuits. She already had received two complaints of excessive prescribing, both from insurance providers. The state had substantiated neither, but she couldn’t deal with the stress of it anymore, so come June, she’d explained, she’d write the patients three final prescriptions, and then they would be on their own. It was months later now, and the effects of the taper had set in, and not a single patient had found


U.S. military killed 500 civilians in 2017, Pentagon study finds

Secretary Jim Mattis have called the U.S. operations against often-brutal militant groups highly precise. But the challenge facing military leaders has increased as the fight is more often conducted from a distance, using aircraft and local partners to reduce harm to U.S. troops. That approach often reduces U.S. forces’ view of what is occurring in battlefields where militants and civilians exist in proximity. The period covered by the report included intense U.S. air operations to expel the Islamic State from the Iraqi city of Mosul and the Syrian city of Raqqa; both offensives occurred in crowded urban areas. The Pentagon said it and its allies conducted more than 10,000 strikes against the Islamic State in 2017, a massive air operation that presented a challenge to U.S. surveillance and intelligence capabilities. The report also included an increasingly intense air war in Afghanistan, where U.S. commanders have been granted new authorities to target the Taliban and provide air support to Afghan troops. Also in 2017, U.S. forces continued their counterterrorism campaign in Yemen, where a raid in January 2017 left a Navy SEAL dead and, according to Yemeni villagers, killed dozens of civilians. The Pentagon study, which was first reported by CNN, found no credible allegations of civilian casualties in separate U.S. operations in Somalia and Libya. Watchdog groups have long derided the Pentagon’s count as noncredible, accusing the department of failing to conduct interviews with witnesses and survivors. They also fault the military for a lack of widespread condolence payments. In its study, the Pentagon acknowledged the divergent death tolls but said its analysis incorporated certain information unavailable to civilian investigators “such as operational planning and intelligence sources.” Ryan Goodman, a professor at New York University School of Law and a former Pentagon official, argued in a recent op-ed that a central flaw in the military’s process is the high bar that must be cleared by those asserting harm before an investigation is opened: The military requires substantial indications that a death may have occurred. An even higher standard is required for confirming that a death took place. Speaking Friday, Goodman said the report failed to include information requested by Congress about confirmed and “reasonably suspected” cases. “I am sure Secretary Mattis as well as Congress want to know the true number of cases in which civilians may have been killed,” he said. “This report does not provide that number.” missy.ryan@washpost.com


Finally seeing the forest for the trees

15 percent of grazing land globally, most notably in Latin America. “Silvopasture systems combine trees, livestock (ruminants like cattle, sheep and goats) and grazing,” he writes. “Ranchers and pastoralists plant trees or manage the land for spontaneous tree growth. The trees provide shade, timber and food for livestock. In most silvopasture systems, the carbon captured in soil and trees more than makes up for the greenhouse gases (methane and nitrous oxide) that ruminants emit through belches and flatulence.” Promising though such practices as reforestation and silvopasture may be, they will not be enough to meet the Paris agreement climate goals, say Jan Christoph Minx and Gregory Nemet. “Simply reducing emissions from their current level is unlikely to be enough to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius. In fact, we need to remove huge amounts of carbon dioxide — billions of tons per year — to meet these goals because we have repeatedly delayed our decarbonization efforts.” Though aware there is no one silver bullet, they call for an acceleration of research and development in a diverse range of new technologies. “There are high-tech options such as bioenergy — energy from any form of biomass such as plants, trees or other organic matter — combined with carbon capture and storage,” they write. “With this approach, the biomass absorbs CO2 from the air through the process of photosynthesis; it is released again when it is burned to produce electricity in power plants but then immediately captured and stored underground. There is also the possibility of filtering CO2 directly out of the air through chemical processes.” Even as such technologies become available, the authors warn, they are not being deployed “at the required speed.” Prudence dictates, they continue, that “we need to bend the path of continued increases in greenhouse gas emissions and start an era of rapid and sustained emissions reductions.” Others look to advances in biotechnology for solutions. Andrew Newhouse considers the advantages of genetically engineered trees that grew out of an effort to restore the American chestnut forests nearly decimated by blight. “By breeding transgenic trees with surviving wild American chestnuts,” Newhouse says, “we can incorporate genetic diversity and regional adaptations to future generations of American chestnuts, while also protecting them from chestnut blight. Breeding with regionally adapted chestnuts, moreover, or even with hybrid or backcross chestnuts, means that a restoration program could potentially address unrelated challenges,


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Hero crayfish amputates his own claw to avoid being boiled alive

It seemed like the crayfish's day had come. He'd been dropped next to a pot of boiling water. He'd been slated to die, just one more ingredient for a hot pot prepared in a Chinese kitchen. Not today, the crayfish seemed to think. Not today. Instead of joining his boiling brethren, the crayfish appeared to clip off his own claw, scuttling out of danger. Weibo user Jiuke caught the whole thing on video. It has since been shared more than 1 million times. A happier ending still: Crayfish's claw will regenerate. And he'll become Jiuke's pet. According to the BBC “Don't eat him,” one person wrote. “Seeing how hard he's trying to survive. “I let him live, I already took him home and am raising him in an aquarium,” Jiuke wrote on Weibo. This intrepid crayfish joins the ranks of such esteemed animals as Inky the octopus. Inky had been living at New Zealand's National Aquarium. One day, the staff came in to find he'd escaped, slipping out of his enclosure and sneaking several feet over to the six-inch-wide drain. As The Washington Post reported Let us also honor Stoffel, the South African honey badger, who learned how to unlatch the gate of his enclosure at a wildlife rehabilitation center. Stoffel has also been known to dig holes underneath the cement walls that pen him in. Once, he stacked rocks high enough to get over the walls. “He outwitted us each time with his schemes,” Brian Jones, his keeper, told the BBC. Crayfish have become a popular dish in China in recent years, leading to a boom in crayfish restaurants and farms. China is the world's largest source of the crustaceans, according to China's state news agency Xinhua.


Only Western pressure can save Oleg Sentsov

On Monday, the Ukrainian film director and Russian political prisoner Oleg Sentsov entered the fourth week of his hunger strike. Sentsov, who is being held in the Polar Bear penal colony in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District in the far north of Russia, more than 3,000 miles from his native Crimea, has refused food since May 14. He is demanding the release of 64 Ukrainian political prisoners held in Russian custody. (He is not demanding his own.) Last week the prison administration placed him under medical supervision. “Mr. Sentsov was detained for preparing terrorist attacks,” Russian President Vladimir Putin snapped last week after a reporter asked him about the prisoner at a news conference with French President Emmanuel Macron. The “terrorist attack,” if one is to believe the official story from Russian prosecutors, consisted in setting fire to the door of the Crimean office of Putin’s United Russia party. For this act — which he denies having any involvement in — Sentsov was sentenced to 20 years in prison. This is the same as the sentence given to the man convicted of assassinating Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov. Sentsov’s real “crime” was his outspoken opposition to Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. He has been recognized by Russia’s Memorial Human Rights Center as a political prisoner. Amnesty International has called his trial “unfair.” The Russian authorities have denied Senstov consular access by Ukrainian diplomats, claiming that, since Crimea is in their eyes (and in flagrant violation of international law) now a part of the Russian Federation, he is consequently a Russian citizen. Leonid Gozman, a political analyst, compared this to the de facto restoration of serfdom, when people were sold along with the land on which they lived. “This was normal practice before 1861,” he noted. “An estate lost in a card game would be transferred to its new owner along with the barns, the women, the men, and the other property. [Czar Alexander II] put an end to this, but who cares about him?” Over the weekend, rallies in support of Sentsov were held in 78 cities around the world. Parliamentarians, diplomats and leaders of nongovernmental organizations were among those who joined the movement, calling on the government of Canada, the host of the upcoming Group of Seven summit, to put Sentsov on the agenda. In Moscow, the authorities have banned the pro-Sentsov rally on the grounds that it would


Black bears are going bald. It might be even worse than it looks.

popping up in neighboring states such as New York, West Virginia, Maryland and Virginia, black-bear mange is becoming a Mid-Atlantic regional issue, said Mark Ternent, a wildlife biologist and the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s black-bear expert. “Every week we get sightings reported of a bear on a trail cam where someone’s asking us, ‘What’s wrong with this bear?’ ” Ternent said. Mange is caused by a microscopic mite known as Sarcoptes scabiei, a parasite that afflicts more than 200 species, including humans. The mites burrow into an animal’s skin, where they dig tunnels and slurp naturally occurring liquids. Normally, this doesn’t cause much more than some itching or irritation, but in extreme cases an infestation can lead to extensive hair loss and an immune response so strong it can kill the host animal. “It’s a spiraling decline,” Ternent said. “Nutrition goes down, the bear spends a lot of time scratching, and it might not be foraging or hibernating as efficiently as a healthy bear. As their health declines, their immune system is affected and the mites become more prevalent.” That smell Greenberg mentioned? It was probably due to a secondary infection on the bear’s skin, probably yeast. Some bears can recover, Ternent said. But in others, all of these maladies eventually build to the point that a bear can die of starvation or some other related complication. Although mange is hardly an emerging disease, it is relatively new to black bears. Historically, mange in bears was relatively rare, with isolated cases being documented by scientists only occasionally. That is probably because mites can’t survive long away from their host, which means they are usually spread by contact. This works well for the mites that reside on social animals, such as coyotes. But bears are mostly solitary when not breeding or raising cubs, Ternent said. These days, the Pennsylvania Game Commission estimates that about 50 mange-infected bears die each year — from the disease or after being trapped and euthanized by state officials who deem the animals’ condition untreatable. That’s a relative drop in the bucket of Pennsylvania’s current population of about 20,000 black bears — a record number for the state — but “it is something that’s got our attention,” Ternent said. The growing bear population makes it difficult for wildlife managers to know whether mange is on the rise or whether cases are increasing along with bear numbers, Ternent said.


Multilevel condos reach the higher end of Shaw

wall-mounted fixtures. The Triplex’s lower level has a laundry room and two more bedrooms, each with a full bathroom attached. The Penthouse Loft, with 2,870 square feet, has a private elevator, a balcony facing O Street, a private roof terrace with city views and a dog run. This condo, priced at $2.7 million, has an entry off the main hall with two closets and access to the private elevator. Near the elevator on the second level, there is an office, a double-door closet and the laundry room. One bedroom has windows on two sides that overlook Naylor Court, with views of treetops and church spires. This bedroom has a walk-in closet, a second closet and a private full bathroom. The second bedroom has city views, a double-door closet and a private full bathroom. The main living level, on the third floor of the penthouse, features an open living and dining area and a kitchen set under a massive skylight and clerestory (above eyel level) windows. French doors connect the living area to a balcony high above O Street. An adjacent wall has a contemporary-style fireplace with a wall of glazed brick. The kitchen has textured gray cabinets and a sculptural white-quartz center island. This level also has a coat closet and a powder room, as well as a media room or den adjacent to the master bedroom. The bedroom has windows on two sides with city views, two walk-in closets and a bathroom with a free-standing tub and a no-threshold shower. A staircase and the elevator lead to the rooftop terrace. The Garden Level loft, already under contract, has two levels and includes a private patio with a recessed linear fireplace. What’s nearby: Restaurants and coffee shops can be found in abundance on and near Blagden Alley. “Walk out your back door from Naylor Court and in less than two minutes, through a few twists and turns of the historic alley, you’ll be seated at a Michelin-starred restaurant, the Dabney (if you can get a table), or at Unconventional Diner, one of The Washington Post’s “top 10 new restaurants of 2018’,” Pike says. Other nearby restaurants and cafes include Convivial, Sundevich, El Sol, Espita Mezcaleria, La Colombe, the Maxwell Park wine bar, All Purpose and Buttercream Bakeshop. Also within walking distance are other restaurants in Shaw, the Union Kitchen grocery store and cafe, and a Giant supermarket. Schools: Transit: realestate@washpost.com


Satellites sweeping over Earth are turned into sound at NASA pavilion

You may not give them any thought, but NASA satellites are constantly sweeping overhead, their equipment trained on the planet below. As they move, they observe Earth’s weather, oceans, atmosphere and more. The data they beam back to Earth is used to predict weather, understand climate change and track environmental changes. Inside a giant aluminum shell on the grounds of the Huntington Library near Pasadena, Calif., the movements of the spacecraft create an otherworldly soundscape. NASA’s Orbit Pavilion, open through September 2019, turns research activities into sound. Go inside the nautilus-shaped sculpture and you’ll hear sounds assigned to different Earth science satellites and the International Space Station as each of them crosses over. Each NASA instrument has been given a sound that represents its mission, such as crashing waves and desert winds. As the satellite moves overhead, its trajectory is reflected through 28 surround-sound speakers. The experience recruits listeners’ ears and minds, reminding them spacecraft are always tracking Earth. Nineteen satellites and the ISS — which makes 16 rotations around Earth each day — are part of the mix. The pavilion is the brainchild of the Studio at JPL, a workshop based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that’s tasked with making space exploration accessible to the public. Dan Goods and David Delgado, two visual strategists at JPL, spearheaded the project and worked with Shane Myrbeck, a sound artist, to create the immersive experience. The shell itself, designed by Jason Klimoski and Lesley Chang, offers glimpses of the sky through its aluminum panels. Those views are a reminder that someone’s always watching and that there’s plenty of wonder to record. Can’t make it to California? Catch a video of the pavilion at vimeo.com/190270237, or listen to a 2016 panel discussion on how the aerospace industry shaped California.