Federal judge blocks Keystone XL pipeline, saying Trump administration review ignored ‘inconvenient’ climate change facts

protections to chemical plant safety operations. Robust environmental and administrative procedure laws, many dating back to the 1970s, have given the administration’s opponents plenty of legal ammunition. Thursday’s decision does not permanently block a federal permit for Keystone XL, a project of the Calgary-based firm TransCanada. It requires the administration to conduct a more complete review of potential adverse impacts related to climate change, cultural resources and endangered species. The court basically ordered a do-over. In a 54-page opinion, Morris hit the administration with a familiar charge that it disregarded facts, facts established by experts during the Obama administration about “climate-related impacts” from Keystone XL. The Trump administration claimed, with no supporting information, that those impacts “would prove inconsequential,” Morris wrote. The State Department “simply discarded prior factual findings related to climate change to support its course reversal.” It also used “outdated information” about the impact of potential oil spills on endangered species, he said, rather than “'the best scientific and commercial data available.'” “Today’s ruling makes it clear once and for all that it’s time for TransCanada to give up on their Keystone XL pipe dream,” said Sierra Club Senior Attorney Doug Hayes in a statement. The lawsuit prompting Thursday’s order was brought by a collection of opponents, including the indigenous Environmental Network and the Northern Plains Resource Council, a conservation coalition based in Montana. “The Trump administration tried to force this dirty pipeline project on the American people, but they can’t ignore the threats it would pose to our clean water, our climate, and our communities,” Hayes said. Hayes told The Washington Post that the company had already been moving equipment into place in Montana and South Dakota with the intent of beginning construction in early 2019. “It’s clear that this decision tonight will delay the pipeline significantly,” said Hayes, who noted that a proper environmental impact statement of this scope usually takes about a year to complete. “TransCanada does not have an approved pipeline at this point.” Morris, a former clerk to the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama. His decision was one of scores of court rebukes to the Trump administration for decisions on the environment, immigration and transgender service in the military, among other issues, all made hastily and, in the opinions of dozens of judges, without the “reasoned consideration” required by federal law. Also on Thursday,


The Finance 202: Voters send mixed messages on Wall Street regulation

which also advocates stricter regulation, found 56 percent of voters believe deregulation threatens their jobs, savings and retirement — and roughly seven in ten believe weakening regulations on bailed-out banks is an example of Washington corruption. “These issues are going to be front and center,” in the 2020 presidential contest, Kelleher says. “There will be tons of noise, but we’ll have a lot more clarity than we did in this very fragmented election, where we had different candidates running on different issues and Trump barnstorming the country on immigration.” — Fed leaves rates untouched. “Data since officials last met in September ‘indicates that the labor market has continued to strengthen and that economic activity has been rising at a strong rate,’ the Fed’s rate-setting committee said in a statement Thursday. The only major change to the statement nodded to a recent pullback in business investment, which officials said had ‘moderated from its rapid pace earlier in the year.’ ” Wall Street worries about another Fed move. “The most vocal critics contend that if the Fed doesn’t slow or stop its unwind, it could end up draining too much money from the banking system, cause volatility to surge across financial markets and undermine its ability to control its rate-setting policy. All of which could eventually seep into the broader lending market and push up borrowing costs — even if just marginally — in an economy that some predict will start slowing next year.” Investors wonder whether profits are peaking. Tech stocks may struggle to recover. “One is higher interest rates, which raise corporate borrowing costs and boost the appeal of bonds relative to stocks. Another is the Trump-induced trade war, which threatens to reshape global supply chains and make investors rethink internet companies’ overseas ambitions. Low unemployment has added labor market pressure, as exemplified by Amazon.com Inc. increasing its minimum wage.” (Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.) TRADE FLY-AROUND: — U.S., China hold security talks. AP's Matthew Pennington: “Even as the United States and China butt heads over trade, their top diplomats and defense chiefs will be meeting in Washington Friday, looking to tamp down tensions on other issues that have put a chill on relations between the two world powers. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will meet with their counterparts Yang Jiechi and Wei Fenghe at the State Department.


Trump’s tariffs squeezed Canada. Now American beer is feeling the pinch.

to be too bothered by six-tenths of a cent?” The Beer Institute, a U.S. trade group, says brewers are bothered. It projects that over a year, tariffs on foreign aluminum could increase the cost of beer production by $347 million. (U.S. beer sales totaled $111.4 billion in 2017, according to the Brewers Association.) The industry has found common cause with Canadians and others, calling on the Trump administration to scrap the tariffs before the ceremonial signing of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal, which may come as early as the end of the month. “We’d like to see these tariffs repealed,” said Jim McGreevy, president and CEO of the Beer Institute. “We were hoping that the renegotiation of NAFTA would have taken the steel and aluminum tariffs off the table, but all indications are that the tariffs will continue,” he said. “And that does not bode well for American beer.” The impact is already being felt, said Ryan Krill, co-founder and CEO of Cape May Brewing Co., a small brewery in southern New Jersey. Krill, who started his business in 2011, says rising aluminum prices will cost him about $30,000 this year — a big sum for a small team. “We could get a lot of miles out of that,” he said. “It’s a bit of a bummer.” To understand why U.S. beer is having a bummer year, look to the aluminum market — and to Trump. After years of tough talk on trade, the president in March announced a 25 percent tariff on foreign steel and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum. The Trump administration argued that reliance on foreign metals is a threat to U.S. national security. The administration also wanted to put pressure on China, a leading producer of aluminum, to change its trade practices. Though many U.S. businesses support the idea of taking a tough line with Beijing, members of Trump’s Cabinet, economic advisers and industry groups warned that tariffs would create uncertainty and increase costs for U.S. companies that import goods. Initially, Canada, Mexico and the European Union were granted exemptions. But as the United States, Canada and Mexico negotiated this summer, Trump changed course, saying publicly that the move was meant to gain leverage over Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “The United States has been taken advantage of for many decades on trade,” Trump said in a May 31 statement. “Those days are over. Earlier today,


Filmmakers chronicle tuba player’s journey from Sandtown to the symphony

me up. Her foster parents took me in. I still don’t know all the story of my family. I’m searching for answers.” White’s return to the neighborhood provided rich material for the filmmakers. “What we witnessed was just a really beautiful, raw moment as the memories of his childhood came flooding back,” Larson, 35, says, “visiting the old water fountain where he would bathe, or [returning to] the streets where he grew up and running into a neighbor who remembered him as ‘baby Ricky.’ ” That experience proved critical in the process of making the documentary. “Richard remembers his stories with such clarity,” Durlach says. “But, as journalists, we were a little skeptical. When that neighbor came up, asking questions and telling stories just as Richard told them, that was extra-gratifying for us as filmmakers.” After White’s life smoothed out with the help of his foster parents, he found himself drawn to music — first the trumpet, then the tuba, which he learned partly with the help of a self-teaching tape. That gave him the confidence to go to the Baltimore School for the Arts, ready to audition for admission. There was just one problem. “I walked in and saw this guy,” White says. “I said, ‘Yo, I came to audition.’ He said, ‘Auditions were yesterday.’ ‘But I’m here today.’ ” That man was Chris Ford, who gave in and listened. White gained admission. “That proved to be a good decision on our part,” Ford says. “He was an incredible worker. Through sheer grit, he was pushing past everyone. And he was a delightful individual throughout. It was obvious he was on a path to a higher level, and we were there to help him along.” Upon graduating, White entered Peabody on a scholarship and studied tuba studies with David Fedderly, who was then principal tuba with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. “I left almost every lesson crying,” White says. “But I thought, this isn’t going to kill me. I could make money if I’m good at it.” And White was good at it. He performed with the Canadian Brass and several orchestras across the country before settling in New Mexico. He’s particularly passionate about baroque music (he has transcribed works of Bach for the tuba), along with the works of Wagner, Bruckner and Mahler. “I don’t think I’m exceptionally talented,” White says. “I just work my butt off. I still


American institutions should withdraw from the Saudi crown prince’s charity foundation

Last September, Jamal Khashoggi sent me an email. He was filing his first piece for The Washington Post. “I’m under so much pressure from family members and friends to stay silent, but this isn’t right, we have enough Arab failing states, I don’t want my country to (be) one too,” he told me. He was talking about Saudi Arabia. I never would have imagined that after only a year of us working together, Jamal would be dead, brutally killed and likely dismembered for speaking out against the dark forces that were taking over his beloved country. A month later, his depraved killers have deprived his family and friends of the chance to properly bury his remains. For the good of Saudi Arabia and regional stability, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s reign of abuses and impunity must end. Between kidnapping Lebanon’s prime minister, destroying diplomatic relations with Canada, turning Yemen into an oozing humanitarian disaster and being a prime suspect in the plot to lure, capture, kill and dismember a Post columnist, it should now be tragically obvious to see why Jamal feared that Saudi Arabia would fail under MBS’s impulsive iron fist. MBS’s personal charity organization, the MiSK Foundation, is scheduled to hold its global forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Wednesday and Thursday. According to the website, the foundation’s goal is “creating opportunities for the development of society and unlocking people’s potential.” Last year, CNN, Twitter, CNBC, Bloomberg, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation participated in the forum, just to name a few. Even the United Nations is in bed with MiSK: A few days before Khashoggi’s murder, the MiSK Foundation pledged to financially support the United Nations’s initiatives on global youth development. In the wake of Khashoggi’s killing, it was encouraging to see some Western organizations take a stand and quickly pull out of Saudi Arabia’s Future Investment Initiative in October. But there has been much less attention on the participants and sponsors of the MiSK Foundation and its upcoming global event. Still, the organizers must be feeling the heat — only a few days before the event, they have largely kept the program and participants secret. There is nothing to be found on the MiSK forum’s website about confirmed speakers or sponsors. (Another reason for organizations to be wary of associating with MiSK: According to some reports from Turkish media, the hit team that murdered Khashoggi


Northwood duo finishes on top in Maryland 4A boys’ state cross-country championship

PARKTON, Md. — Right around the two-mile mark of the Maryland 4A boys’ cross-country championship race, Northwood senior Eldad Mulugeta snuck a quick look around. “I looked at the shadows, and it was just [teammate Obsaa Feda],” he said. “So I figured everyone was right there behind us and I looked back and they weren’t there.” The two Gladiators tore through the course Saturday, finishing first and second. Feda (15:44.05) finished ahead of Mulugeta (15:44.29) by 0.24 seconds, with the rest of the pack at least 18 seconds behind. “It feels like a dream come true,” Feda said. “It doesn’t matter who goes first or second, as long as it’s one and two.” Mulugeta’s second-place time is all the more impressive considering he did it largely with one shoe. The senior said he had one of his shoes stepped on 800 meters in, and it started to slip off. Once he spotted one of his coaches standing alongside the course, he kicked it off and ran the rest of the way with one shoe on. South River sophomore Bronwyn Patterson won the 4A girls’ race with a time of 19:06:19. Richard Montgomery’s Charlotte Turesson (19:18.84) and Annapolis’s Anna Coffin (19:19.71) followed. Patterson finished 11th last year and said she was hoping for a top-five finish Saturday. But when she hit the two-mile mark and saw she was one of the top few runners, she got a lift from the possibility of a title. “Knowing I was close enough to be there gave me the boost that I needed,” she said. Asked about the task of defending her championship for the next two years, the sophomore laughed. “That’s a future-me problem,” she said. Severna Park won the boys’ and girls’ 4A team titles for the first sweep in school history. The girls finished with 102 points, with Howard (125) in second and Broadneck (128) third. “The dynamic of the team really helps when you’re competing,” said Severna Park senior Allysa Combs, who finished fourth in the girls’ race. “If you see a teammate, they’re like: ‘No, stay with me. You’ve got this.’” The Severna Park boys had 48 points on the day to defend their state title, with all seven runners finishing in the top 30. Northwood (105) and Dulaney (157) rounded out the top three. At the 3A level, Huntingtown’s Oakley Olson (18:59.60) won the girls’ individual title. Northern (56


Erdogan says he gave audio recording of journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s killing to U.S., Saudi Arabia, France, Germany and Britain

Turkish officials say the audio captures the killing of Post columnist Khashoggi by a Saudi hit squad in the country’s consulate in Istanbul last month. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke on his way to Paris for commemorations of World War I. He had previously said the order to kill Khashoggi “came from the highest levels of the Saudi government.”This is a developing story. It will be updated.


Amid a political minefield, the Army prepares at the border for a migrant caravan

The deployment has been panned by critics as a politically motivated stunt to rally Trump’s base for the midterm elections, even as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said late last month that “we don’t do political stunts” in the military. Less than a week later, the Pentagon stripped the operation of its name — Faithful Patriot — amid complaints that it was overtly political. Images of soldiers stretching out concertina wire at the border just before Election Day had just surfaced. Public attention has shifted away from the mission in recent days as the president has focused on other issues. But the military’s lumbering deployment from San Diego to Brownsville, Tex., has continued despite questions about its necessity. The caravan About 5,600 service members had been dispatched as of Friday, according to the Pentagon. About 2,800 are in Texas, including more than 1,000 in Task Force Griffin, an Army unit that set down temporary roots in the Rio Grande Valley and has a corps of leaders from the 89th Military Police Brigade of Fort Hood, Tex. Col. Richard Ball, the task force commander, sought in a news conference Friday at a border point in Hidalgo, Tex., to stress that the U.S. military will not have a law enforcement role in the operation. That is considered a sticking point because of the Posse Comitatus Act, which restricts active-duty troops from participating in such activities in most cases. U.S. troops are expected to have “very little to incidental contact” with migrants, he said, and will take the direction of CBP officials if it occurs. At the base camp in Donna, soldiers are counseled against discussing politics, a common refrain in any operation. But they also are careful in answering questions about how many soldiers live there, how long exactly they’ll remain or what they’ll be doing. At least two soldiers disagreed Saturday about whether their work should even be considered a deployment, considering they are still in the United States. News releases from the Pentagon continue to say that service members are deployed for border support. Capt. Lauren Blanton, an engineer officer stationed at Fort Knox, Ky., said she arrived in Donna more than a week ago with three other soldiers and found an open field. As “camp mayor,” she has since overseen the installation of a trailer with 16 shower stalls, tents for a facility meeting day-to-day medical needs, and a single,


Parisians brave the rain to protest Trump

Does Netanyahu work for peace when bombing Gaza? No!” Police detained two people, according to Reuters. On the other side of town, in the symbolic Place de la Republique, a bigger planned protest took place. Although nowhere close to the size of the London demonstrations in July against Trump, the group of hundreds of left-wing activists, students and neighborhood residents braved the cold November rain to voice anger over Trump’s policies. The U.S. president is deeply unpopular in France, where 65 percent of voters view him in a negative light, according to a poll by the Odoxa agency for Le Figaro newspaper that was released last week. Like the London event, however, the Paris protest featured the same giant balloon of Trump styled as a baby, wearing nothing but a diaper and clutching a smartphone. Some of those gathered in Paris expressed disgust with the White House’s policy of separating migrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border. “No human is illegal. No human should be illegal,” said Dario Fabejanac, 37, who said he works with people with disabilities. Trump has “made America and the world a less safe place than it was before he was elected. We don’t want him here,” Fabejanac said. Others shared those concerns, but, like Femen, were also sharply critical of French President Emmanuel Macron for having invited Trump, in addition to continuing to do business with Saudi Arabia. Ties with Saudi Arabia have become an increasingly pressing issue here in the aftermath of the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributing columnist, in early October. Khashoggi, a Saudi citizen and critic of the Saudi leadership, was killed after he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to obtain a document necessary for his coming marriage. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman stands accused of having personally ordered the killing of the journalist. Mohammed denies any role in it. In the aftermath of the affair, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced she would suspend German arms sales to Saudi Arabia. France, however, like other European countries, issued a sharp rebuke over Khashoggi’s killing but stopped short of halting arms sales. “We’re against Trump, but also against Macron’s international politics,” said Mihan, a 32-year-old Paris resident who would give only her first name. “Don’t forget it’s France that also sells arms to Saudi Arabia.” In Europe, Britain and France sell the largest amounts of arms to Saudi Arabia.


Erdogan says audio of Khashoggi killing has been given to U.S., Saudis, Europeans

ANKARA, Turkey — An audio recording tracking the dying moments of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul has been shared with Saudi Arabia, Britain, France and Germany in addition to the United States, the leader of Turkey said Saturday. “We gave it to Saudi Arabia,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at the Ankara airport before departing for Paris for commemorations to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. “We gave it to America. To the Germans, French, English, we gave it to all of them.” It was the first time that Erdogan has publicly acknowledged the existence of an audio recording that Turkish officials say backs the assertion that Khashoggi, a contributor to The Washington Post World Opinions section, was killed by a Saudi hit team after he entered the consulate on Oct. 2. Wider access to the recording could increase pressure on the Trump administration to take stronger measures against Saudi Arabia in response to Khashoggi’s killing. Although Erdogan said he “gave” the tapes to those countries, it was unclear whether he meant that he had physically passed them on. A senior German official said that the head of the Federal Intelligence Service received a briefing and listened to the audio recording during a trip to Ankara. “The recording was very convincing,” the official said. The White House and Elysee Palace did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The British foreign office said it was “not confirming or denying” Erdogan’s comments. U.S. officials have said that CIA Director Gina Haspel listened to the recording during a trip to Turkey last month. Two Turkish officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, said the audio makes clear that Khashoggi suffered a drawn-out death. He is choked for about seven minutes before he dies, they said. One said he had been told directly by Erdogan that the killers took 7.5 minutes to choke Khashoggi. The other said he had been briefed by someone who had listened to the recording. Neither said they had heard the tape themselves. Turkey has not said how it obtained a recording from inside the consulate. Wiretapping of foreign missions breaches the Vienna Convention. Turkish newspapers had published stories on how the recording was made by Khashoggi’s Apple watch, a scenario that was met with skepticism by experts. Saudi Arabia now


I’m a Saudi activist. Twitter put my life in danger.

declined to comment to the Times). Turki Aljasser, a columnist who was believed to be the owner of one such account, was arrested on March 15. I have been contacted in person by anonymous individuals who confirmed the disappearance of the man behind @Sama7ti, another account that refused to back down despite pressure from authorities. (I also know the man’s full identity.) When I followed Twitter trends in Saudi Arabia and worldwide in the weeks after Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance, things became clear. In the first week, while the rest of the world was using the #JamalKhashoggi hashtag, the trending hashtags in Saudi Arabia were #Kidnapping_Ant_and_Cockroach and #Aljamal_Jamal_Alrouh, which translates to “Beauty consists in the beauty of the soul.” There were so many tweets with these hashtags that they effectively drowned out any hashtag with the word Jamal, which translates to “beauty” in English. For two weeks, while the rest of the world was entering a frenzy about Khashoggi’s disappearance and possible murder, it felt as though the Saudis were living in a bubble. When Saudi officials finally cracked under pressure and acknowledged the murder in late October, the third-most trending hashtag worldwide was the Arabic phrase, “I am Arab and Mohammed bin Salman represents me.” That day, it became evident to me that we had lost these social media platforms to the dictators. Twitter, which was once a tool to change the discourse, give voice to the voiceless and push for social justice, is now becoming a trap — one that is used by our regimes to haunt and silence us. It is being used to propagate misinformation and spread regime propaganda on a greater scale than ever before. And although Twitter finally suspended 70 million fake and malicious accounts in May snf June of this year, this action is still not enough. I am pleading tech makers to build decentralized social media platforms that don’t store and sell our information, platforms that are built on the concept of fair use, and to reward authentic and organic content, instead of rewarding bots and fake accounts. They should not allow the powerful and wealthy to manipulate and dominate the conversation. Because freedom of speech safeguards all other freedoms, and it’s our responsibility to protect it. Read more: Jamal Khashoggi: What the Arab world needs most is freedom of expression Manal al-Sharif: Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance spreads fear, but we won’t be silenced


Why is Israel tossing a lifeline to Jamal Khashoggi’s killers?

As Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman tries to escape consequences for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, it has been revealing to see who has stepped forward to help him out. There have been fellow Arab dictators, such as Egypt’s Abdel Fatah al-Sissi. There have been cynical opportunists, like Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Then there’s Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of a nation whose right to exist has yet to be recognized by Saudi Arabia. You wouldn’t think Israel, in contrast to every Western democracy, would be explicitly endorsing a latter-day version of Saddam Hussein — a man so toxic that even K Street lobbyists are rejecting his money. And yet Netanyahu is emerging as Mohammed bin Salman’s friend-in-need. For a month after Khashoggi disappeared inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, the Israeli government was conspicuously silent. Then, a day or two after it was reported that Netanyahu had phoned the White House to lobby for Mohammed, he spoke up: While “what happened in the Istanbul consulate was horrendous, and should be duly dealt with,” he said, “it’s very important for the stability of the world . . . that Saudi Arabia remain stable.” In case there is some doubt what it means to “duly deal” with the strangling and dismemberment of a journalist by a team of 15 thugs, Israel’s ambassador in Washington, Ron Dermer, was more clear: It means, he said, that the United States should “not throw out the prince with the bathwater.” Why throw a lifeline to this killer? For Netanyahu, the Khashoggi crisis threatens to undo a carefully constructed regional strategy built around the 33-year-old Saudi crown prince — and President Trump. The idea is to forge a de facto alliance between Israel and the Middle East’s new generation of Sunni dictators, united against Iran — and to enlist the United States to provide muscle. As a side benefit, Mohammed would support a Trump Middle East peace plan that, while yet to be unveiled, seems to amount to coercing Palestinians into accepting Israel’s terms. Until Khashoggi’s disappearance, everything was going smoothly: Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal with Iran and restored economic sanctions; cut off U.S. aid to Palestinian refugees in Gaza while moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem; and resumed U.S. support for a Saudi bombing campaign against Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen that has killed tens of thousands of civilians. Netanyahu was meanwhile invited to visit


World Digest: Nov. 12, 2018

ETHIOPIA 63 suspected of graft, rights abuses arrested Ethiopia has arrested 63 intelligence officials, military personnel and businesspeople on allegations of rights violations and corruption, the attorney general announced Monday. The high-profile arrests carried out in recent days stem from Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s order for an investigation into misdoings under the previous government. Attorney General Berhanu Tsegaye said some of those arrested are suspected of abuses of prisoners, including “beatings, forced confessions, sodomy, rape, electrocution and even killings.” Others arrested are accused of mismanaging a state-owned military corporation that was looted in a multibillion-dollar corruption scheme, he said. Berhanu also said that Ethiopia’s former spy chief is suspected of involvement in a bid to assassinate Abiy. The former intelligence chief resides in northern Ethiopia and should turn himself in, Berhanu said. Since Abiy took office in April, his government has released political prisoners, allowed exiled opposition groups to return home, and let the media operate more freely. — Associated Press Kidnappers free last of the schoolboys taken in Cameroon: Assad approves changes to property law: Plane down in 2nd crash from U.S. carrier in month: Congo opposition parties quit deal in presidential contest: Separatists win vote in Ukraine rebel regions: — From news services


So far, the Trump administration is abetting a Saudi coverup of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. Will Congress go along?

PRESIDENT TRUMP suggested on Wednesday that he is close to reaching conclusions about the case of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist and Post contributing columnist who was murdered in Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. “I’ll have a much stronger opinion on that subject over the next week,” the president said at a White House news conference. “I’m forming a very strong opinion.” We hope that’s the case — because, so far, the administration’s reaction to the killing has consisted of little more than an attempt at damage control on behalf of the likely author of the operation, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Mr. Trump was briefed on the Khashoggi case more than two weeks ago by CIA Director Gina Haspel, who had just returned from meeting with Turkish investigators. As President Recep Tayyip Erdogan confirmed on Saturday, the Turks shared an audio recording of Mr. Khashoggi’s final moments, which reportedly indicates he was strangled and then dismembered by an autopsy specialist dispatched from Riyadh as a part of a 15-member hit team. Yet neither Mr. Trump, nor anyone else in his administration, has announced any conclusions about how Mr. Khashoggi died, or who bears responsibility for ordering the killing. Instead, they have pretended to be waiting for the results of a Saudi investigation. King Salman and the crown prince, said national security adviser John Bolton last week, have said “they’re both committed to getting to the bottom of it . . . and we take them at their word that they’re going to do that.” The obvious problem with that stance is it assumes that Mohammed bin Salman himself is not at the bottom of the Khashoggi plot — though abundant evidence points to the crown prince. In truth, as the administration surely knows, there is no Saudi investigation — only a coverup operation that has clumsily tried to disguise itself as an inquiry. Last week, Turkish officials revealed more evidence of that travesty: Two members of a Saudi delegation sent to Istanbul 10 days after the killing as part of a supposed investigative team actually spent their time cleansing the consulate of evidence before Turkish police were allowed in. Mr. Trump and other senior officials keep emphasizing their wish to preserve the United States’ strategic relationship with Saudi Arabia, which dates to the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. There is merit to those arguments — though


Senior Saudi diplomat in Istanbul when Khashoggi was killed drops out of sight

things about his incompetence . . . to the [Saudi] king,” Erdogan said, adding that Otaibi was recalled from Istanbul after Erdogan’s conversation with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman. Saudi officials have refused to discuss Otaibi, and the Saudi Foreign Ministry did not respond to requests for comment and clarification on Otaibi’s diplomatic status. Efforts to reach Otaibi through the ministry were unsuccessful. Erdogan’s comments about the consul general underscore Turkey’s frustration with how Saudi Arabia has handled the probe into the killing, with Turkish officials repeatedly accusing Riyadh of obstructing investigators and destroying evidence. Turkish officials have accused the Saudis of stalling searches of the consulate building and the consul general’s residence, which some members of the alleged hit squad visited after leaving the nearby consulate. By the time Turkish investigators were allowed in, the consulate and residence had been thoroughly cleaned. Turkey’s frustrations were compounded with the visit to Istanbul late last month of the chief Saudi prosecutor, who Turkish officials said was more interested in finding out what evidence Turkey had on the operation than in sharing any information about the 18 suspects detained in Saudi Arabia. The kingdom, meantime, has shifted its story multiple times since the initial denials from Otaibi and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who told Bloomberg News just a day after the killing that Khashoggi had left the consulate soon after he entered it. Otaibi, who was named consul general in Istanbul in late 2016 after postings in Nigeria and Indonesia, has emerged as a central figure in Turkey’s assessment that Khashoggi’s killing was premeditated and that an elaborate coverup was planned. Given his role as the senior diplomat in the consulate, Turkish authorities have been skeptical of the notion that Otaibi was an unwitting bystander to the killing. “If there is a murder planned in the consulate, he would be informed about that,” said an adviser to Erdogan who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. A senior Turkish official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, said: “If the consul disagreed with the plan, he could have called the Saudi ambassador in Ankara or taken the 45-minute flight there to meet in person. Our assessment is that he was certainly aware of what was going to happen to Jamal Khashoggi.” Turkish officials say Otaibi’s role as an accessory to the killing of Khashoggi has been firmly established


Man charged in fatal stabbing on Benning Road in Northeast D.C.

Police have arrested a suspect in the fatal stabbing last week of a 38-year-old man from Silver Spring who was killed in Northeast Washington, according to authorities. Dale Thomas, 28, of Northeast was charged with first-degree murder while armed. Police said he was arrested Friday in the stabbing of Jelani Mohammed, 38. Mohammed was killed about 9:30 a.m. on Thursday in the 1500 block of Benning Road NE, near the Hechinger Mall. Thomas has been ordered detained pending a preliminary hearing on Nov. 19. peter.hermann@washpost.com


Some states add more methadone clinics to fight opioid epidemic

A major driver of the recent expansion is millions in newly available Medicaid reimbursement dollars for methadone treatment in at least 37 states and the District. Among the most aggressive states in seeking methadone treatment expansion have been Indiana, Maryland and New York, which have strategically located dozens of new facilities in rural and suburban communities in the past two years. Ohio and Florida are planning major expansions this year and next. At the same time, laws and regulations in at least six other states — Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, West Virginia and Wyoming — still curtail licensing of new methadone clinics, even though people with opioid addictions in large swaths of those states live too far from the nearest methadone clinic to commute. Reimbursement for methadone treatment started becoming available in the past four years in many of the 33 states and the District where Medicaid has been expanded under the Affordable Care Act to cover low-income adults. As a result, the opioid treatment industry has the financial incentive to invest in new facilities. In January 2020, Medicare coverage of methadone treatment for people 65 and older is scheduled to begin under the recently enacted Opioid Crisis Response Act, further boosting potential revenue for opioid treatment providers. Methadone and buprenorphine are opioids that when taken orally eliminate withdrawal symptoms and drug cravings without producing euphoria in people who quit prescription painkillers or heroin. Vivitrol, a 30-day injection, blocks the effects of opioids and alcohol and is not a narcotic. With less research on its outcomes, the relatively new drug is considered effective for only certain people. The American Society of Addiction Medicine advises that all three medications be considered for any patients seeking treatment for an opioid addiction to determine which medicine will work best. For many, only methadone will sufficiently quiet drug cravings, particularly those who have used high doses of heroin for many years and those who have used the more potent synthetic opioid fentanyl. For others, buprenorphine or Vivitrol may be the best choice. To open a methadone clinic, companies and nonprofit groups must apply for a state license after demonstrating a need for the service. “It’s entirely up to states to determine whether they have sufficient opioid treatment capacity,” Parrino said. Most of the clinics were established with public money starting in the 1970s when an earlier heroin epidemic ravaged major urban centers. Others were


2018 Holiday Gift Guide: Food

Peanut Butter Co.: Nut Butters The New Jersey-based shop sells candy, jams, coffee and even dog treats, along with nut butters such as butterscotch, chocolate and plain ol’ natural. Spread them on toast, cake or cookies. Or add them to smoothies for a protein boost. Buy: Butter Scotch and Choc Choc, $8.49; Natural Peanut, $6.99 Diaspora Co.: Turmeric Powder The golden, organic spice is sustainably grown from heirloom seeds in Andhra Pradesh, a state in southeast India. Potent, vibrant and full of flavor, it is unlike any turmeric we’ve had before. The fact that it’s ethically sourced — and that the people growing it earn a living wage — is icing on the cake. Buy: $15 Z&Z: Za’atar The Middle Eastern spice blend of wild thyme, toasted sesame seeds and sumac comes from a family-owned, D.C.-based company. (The ingredients are grown in the Palestinian city of Jenin.) Scatter it on yogurt, pizza, roasted vegetables, burgers, kebabs or anywhere you want a tangy, herbal, savory boost. Buy: $9.99 Selected by The Lily: This versatile seasoning salt was first made by a woman named Peg in the 1970s. Her daughter finally got her to write down the recipe — it involves more than 20 common spices such as parsley, garlic and pepper. Thanks to Peg’s daughter, those of us who aren’t Peg’s family and friends can enjoy how the salt enhances food. Buy: Three-ounce bottle, $4.75 Lindera Farms: Vinegars The Delaplane, Va., company ferments a variety of vinegars from locally, sustainably sourced goods including cherry blossoms, paw-paws, raspberries and sorghum. Each is incredibly complex and so smooth you can sip it straight. If sipping vinegar isn’t your recipient’s thing, be sure to mention the trove of recipes available on Lindera’s website. Buy: $20 Floor 9: Flask with Drawstring Bag This is not a flask to drink furtively from — it’s one to show off, with its striking dual tones and cute rounded shape. The stainless steel flask holds five ounces and is available in six color pairings. Buy: $18 Menus: A Book for Your Meals and Memories By Jacques Pépin (Rux Martin/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) Part art book, part scrapbook, this is a different kind of cook’s book featuring cheerful illustrations by celebrated chef Jacques Pépin. The book of blank pages is meant for you to fill in with your own dinner menus, chronicling memories of an evening spent in good company, just


A new era in spaceflight: Back to the moon on the way to Mars

the United States had just launched its first manned spacecraft. Alan Shepard made a 15-minute suborbital flight, traveling 115 miles up and then returning to Earth. The Soviet Union had sent the first man into space several weeks earlier. Not only had Yuri Gagarin’s flight lasted longer — 108 minutes — but he also completed a single orbit of the Earth. The United States was embarrassed. It didn’t want the Soviets — the only other world superpower at the time — to get ahead in space exploration. “There was this battle for hearts and minds,” says Teasel Muir-Harmony, space history curator at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum. “Beating the Soviets in space was important for the United States’ place in the world.” The president had talked with NASA scientists about which achievement was within reach for the United States and perhaps further away for the Soviets. “The U.S. at the time was better at landings,” Muir-Harmony said. “The Soviet Union at the time was having trouble with landings.” So they chose landing on the moon, which is on average 240,000 miles away. (The distance changes because its orbit is not a circle.) At that point, Gagarin had traveled the farthest from Earth — 203 miles. Muir-Harmony said Kennedy purposely chose not to aim just one step ahead of the Soviets. “If we propose this program that’s really bold . . . they’d have to invest in new technologies,” Muir-Harmony said. Members of Congress would debate spending nearly $1.7 billion on the space program for the next year. That money and billions more approved in the 1960s paid not only for the Apollo missions but also rockets and other technology that NASA has used in the decades since then. That, too, was part of Kennedy’s pitch to Congress. “This gives promise of some day providing a means for even more exciting and ambitious exploration of space, perhaps beyond the moon, perhaps to the very end of the solar system itself,” he said. Back and forward NASA has sent spacecraft to explore the far reaches of our solar system and beyond, but none has included humans. Instead, astronauts have been studying the effects of living and working in space by orbiting Earth, first on Skylab and since 2000 on the International Space Station (ISS). The missions have become more collaborative than competitive. NASA has four international partners: space agencies in


America’s hypocrisy on Saudi Arabia

Although the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, took place more than a month ago, it continues to concern the United States and much of the world. Khashoggi was a Saudi citizen, and it seems increasingly clear that he was killed by Saudi operatives. Though the details are unconfirmed, Turkey has all but accused top Saudi authorities, possibly even leaders of the royal family, of being involved in the plot to harm him. In response, businesses from financial firms to tech companies have been rethinking their involvement with Saudi Arabia. Many high-profile CEOs and politicians pulled out of Saudi Arabia’s investment conference last month. The furor hasn’t actually scared away much business, but some of the shine has come off Saudi Arabia. Global businesses are trying to play down or minimize their association with the Saudi government. The highest-profile example of an institution abandoning its Saudi connections is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which decided to suspend work with the Misk Foundation, a charity chaired by the Saudi crown prince. But no one should have been surprised that Saudi Arabia brazenly flouts human rights and international norms. They would have seen this coming had they been familiar with Saudi Arabia’s history of human rights practices and America’s response to them — or lack thereof. The D.C. elite and Western intelligentsia, however, have been hoodwinked by Saudi Arabia’s recent public relations campaign highlighting its so-called reform agenda. In fact, the sustained vehemence of America’s outcry over Khashoggi’s murder is hypocritical when so much else has been, and continues to be, ignored. For decades, the Saudi government has routinely violated human rights — barring Jews, prohibiting free religious practice of Christians, permitting slavery, subjugating women, persecuting journalists, arresting clerics and princes, and locking up feminists for “treason” — with minimal pushback from the United States. A permanent U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia began in 1933, only a year after the country was formed. After World War II, with the oil business (in the form of the American-owned Aramco) booming, American businessmen and diplomats began accommodating practices and human rights violations in Saudi Arabia that were unacceptable in the United States and Europe. In 1946, J. Rives Childs became the first U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Like all non-Muslims in the country who were not involved in producing oil, he was forced to live in the hot


China makes a U-turn on legalizing tiger and rhino trade following international outcry

HONG KONG — China has halted a directive that partially legalized the domestic trade in farmed rhinoceros and tiger parts, two weeks after the move drew a torrent of criticism from conservation groups. A senior official in China’s cabinet said in a state media interview published Monday that implementation of an October directive reviving the market for the endangered animal parts has been “postponed after study.” The official, Ding Xuedong, did not specify how long the delay would last. But the interview, which was published in English and Chinese by the official Xinhua News Agency, was cheered by international conservation advocates who saw it as an acknowledgement by Chinese leaders that they made a misstep. “The Chinese government has long been dedicated to the cause of wildlife protection and has made achievements recognized by the world,” Xinhua quoted Ding, a top official in China’s State Council, as saying. China, Ding added, “has not changed its stance on wildlife protection and will not ease the crackdown on illegal trafficking and trade of rhinos, tigers and their byproducts.” The State Council unveiled a directive in late October ending a 25-year ban on trade for rhino and tiger parts — as long as they were sourced from farmed animals and used for traditional Chinese medicine. The announcement sparked an outcry from wildlife advocates, as well as the United Nations, which warned that a resumption of China’s market for tiger and rhino parts — no matter how narrowly proscribed — would fuel illegal poaching and devastate wild populations. Conservation groups applauded China’s latest reversal, saying it was more consistent with the position that Beijing has carved out in recent years as a leader on wildlife protection, environment and climate change. China was praised last year for banning the elephant ivory trade altogether. “It’s a positive sign that China has heard and responded to the overwhelming concerns from the international community,” said Leigh Henry, director of wildlife policy at the World Wildlife Fund. “It’s critical now that the ban remains permanent and is expanded to cover trade in all tiger parts and products, and that a commitment is made to phase out China’s tiger farms altogether.” Wildlife advocates speculated in October that China’s move to revive the animal parts market was driven by domestic politics. Some viewed it as a way to promote traditional Chinese medicine, while others saw the measure as the handiwork of


How Guatemala achieved what was once thought impossible: major reductions in homicides.

control.” The idea is to use pre-CICIG data from 2000-2006 to identify a set of neighboring countries, which together form a hypothetical control group that evinces similar trends to Guatemala — but countries in which CICIG did not intervene. We then can look at the period after the CICIG became operational to learn how the real Guatemala compares to the hypothetical one. The difference between these two (a “difference in differences”) gives us an estimate of the effect that the CICIG had on the country’s trajectory. The numbers bear out the relevance of the comparison. In the figure below, the homicide trend in Guatemala and in the control group parallel one another in the years before the CICIG became operational. But after the commission begins its work, Guatemala experiences a rapid decline in homicides, even as the control group — the hypothetical Guatemala without the CICIG — continues to rise. On average, Guatemala after the CICIG went into effect experienced nearly three fewer homicides per 100,000 each year than would have been expected. Extrapolating over the 2007 to 2017 period, the CICIG is associated with a net reduction of more than 4,500 homicides. To get a sense of the magnitude of that reduction, there were about 4,400 homicides in all of 2017 in Guatemala. Might the reduction in Guatemala’s homicide rate be attributable to a third, unrelated factor? It’s unlikely. Other important economic and social indicators — including GDP per capita, household consumption and infant mortality rates — have not changed in either Guatemala or the comparison group. Qualitative interviews discussed in the report confirm that the CICIG is widely seen as responsible for the changes in the capacity and conduct of prosecutors. What does this analysis suggest? The bottom line here is that the best available quantitative techniques, backed up by qualitative research, indicate that the CICIG has been associated with a sustained and dramatic reduction in Guatemala’s murder rate. That’s an uncommon achievement, one that stands in the commission’s favor at a time when public attention is being drawn to thousands of Central Americans fleeing violence in their homelands. Thinking beyond the Guatemalan case, changes that similarly boost the provision of justice could help Honduras and El Salvador. This could include supporting existing international institutions (such as the Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras, or MACCIH), or enacting new domestic policies. Renard Sexton


U.S. says audio recording of Khashoggi killing does not implicate Saudi crown prince

the matter. “Despite our multiple requests, the Turkish authorities have not provided us with the recordings. However, they allowed our intelligence services to hear recordings, and at no moment were there any references to the mentioned phrase in those recordings.” Saudi Arabia has not been entirely forthcoming with information about the role of its citizens in the killing, according to a Turkish official. Although Saudi Arabia sent its senior prosecutor to Turkey last month for what it called a “joint” investigation, the Saudis shared no information and appeared only interested in learning what the Turkish investigators knew, the official said. Since the prosecutor’s return to Saudi Arabia, the kingdom has not responded to Turkish requests for information on 18 Saudis arrested in the case, including the results of any interrogations of those detained. That includes information on the disposal of Khashoggi’s remains, which have not been found. Bolton’s comments playing down the phone call as a link to Mohammed reflect President Trump’s own resistance to blaming the crown prince for the journalist’s death. Trump has indicated to aides that he is inclined to accept the official Saudi explanation that rogue operative killed Khashoggi without Mohammed’s knowledge. The Saudi version of events has changed over time. Initially, the kingdom said that Khashoggi left the consulate on Oct. 2, after stopping in to obtain documents he needed for his marriage and that it had no knowledge about where he went subsequently. But as evidence from flight manifests and video surveillance mounted, including footage of personal security guards for the crown prince at the consulate, the Saudi government acknowledged the killing but blamed it on a group of outliers. Trump has repeatedly emphasized the importance of maintaining a close relationship with Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest purchaser of U.S. defense equipment. At a news conference last Wednesday, Trump declined to respond to a question on whether he considered the Saudi government responsible for the killing. He said he was consulting with Congress on how to respond and that “I’ll have a much stronger opinion on that subject over the next week. I’m forming a very strong opinion.” U.S. officials have said that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whom Trump sent to Riyadh and Ankara, the Saudi and Turkish capitals, respectively, for consultations two weeks after Khashoggi was killed, has pushed the Saudis hard for answers. In a telephone call Sunday with Mohammed, Pompeo


World Digest: Nov. 13, 2018

order until Dec. 7, after 13 political parties and individuals filed petitions. It said it would hold hearings starting Dec. 4. A few hours later, Sirisena announced that the legislature would return Wednesday. — Associated Press MYANMAR Malaysian leader slams Suu Kyi over Rohingya Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad sharply criticized Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday for her handling of an ethnic crisis that led to mass killings and the exodus of more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims from her country. Mahathir, a 93-year-old political veteran whose own past treatment of dissidents at times drew opprobrium, said Nobel Peace Prize laureate Suu Kyi was “trying to defend the indefensible” in justifying violence by Myanmar security forces against Rohingya in Rakhine state. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since August 2017. Asked about the issue on the sidelines of a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Singapore, Mahathir said that as a former political prisoner, Suu Kyi should understand suffering. Suu Kyi became an icon for democracy after spending about 15 years under house arrest for opposing Myanmar’s earlier military dictatorship. She and her Buddhist-majority government have been criticized for the way they have treated the Rohingya. In Geneva, the U.N. human rights chief said Tuesday that Bangladesh should halt plans to repatriate over 2,200 Rohingya refugees to Myanmar, saying such a move would endanger them. — Associated Press GREECE Lost ancient city found, culture authorities say Greece’s Culture Ministry said Tuesday that archaeologists have located the first tangible remains of a lost city that the ancient Greeks believed was first settled by Trojan captives of war after the sack of Troy. A ministry statement said excavations from September to early October in the southern Greek region of the Peloponnese turned up “proof of the existence of the ancient city” of Tenea. Finds included walls, marble or stone building floors, as well as household pottery, a bone gaming die and more than 200 coins dating to the 4th century B.C. to late Roman times. Not much was known about Tenea, apart from ancient references to the reputed link with Troy and to its citizens having formed the bulk of the Greek colonists who founded the city of Syracuse in Sicily. — Associated Press Russia accused of jamming GPS signal during NATO drill: Ethiopia jails former head of military company: — From news services


With newly-renovated campus, ASU joins schools planting their flags in D.C.

presence here. Plenty of colleges and universities, including Cornell University, the University of Texas and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, have programs and facilities in the D.C. area to provide their own students with internship and other learning opportunities. About 1,000 students from the University of California’s nine campuses come to the University of California’s Washington Center every year to intern in the city and take classes. “Our student body is incredibly diverse, so we like to think that we are diversifying the internship force in D.C. and providing some California input into offices around the city,” says Marc Sandalow, associate academic director of the UCDC program. While the University of California doesn’t offer any educational programming in D.C. for non-UC students, its Washington Center does host lectures and networking events attended by UC alums in the D.C. area. “They use it almost like a California embassy in D.C.,” says Sandalow. The University of Oklahoma has maintained a location Arlinton’s Crystal City for nearly two decades. It’s part of the university’s extended campus program, which began in the 1960s with a focus on serving military members. That made the D.C. area a natural fit for a location. Today, OU offers master’s degree programs in international relations, communication and human relations in Crystal City. Students are active-duty and former military along with local working professionals, and classes are taught by OU professors who come to Arlington to teach. “The curriculum that’s taught is the same as what’s taught on the main campus,” says Lauren Eichinger, assistant director for OU Extended Campus North America. “It’s just condensed for working adults.” In establishing a presence in the D.C. area, what all of these universities have in common is a desire to provide their students and staff with access to ideas, to the federal government and to organizations tackling complex global issues. “We don’t believe in the notion that universities are great because you exclude the majority of people who apply,” says ASU’s Crow. “New kinds of universities need to emerge. Our student body is representative of the socioeconomic diversity of our country. So we’re literally going to the seat of democracy with a much more democratic university.” More ways you can get ahead How to use recruiters in your next job search To be a trauma counselor, you need very specific training. These programs can get you there. Today’s cybersecurity programs aren’t just for engineers


Can we save the prized bluefin tuna, and its habitat, by growing it in a lab?

the nugget is plant-based,” says Josh Tetrick, co-founder and chief executive of Just, formerly known as Hampton Creek, a company with almost as many controversies as successes. “A chicken bite is much easier than bluefin tuna.” Then there’s taste. The flavor of the chicken you now eat occurs naturally, in part, from the animal’s diet. Tetrick and his team at Just say they have found a way to incorporate plant-based material into the food media so that when chicken cells are cultured into paste, they end up tasting like the real thing. In an experimental kitchen at Just’s headquarters in the Mission District, Chris Jones gets to play around with the plant-based materials and cultured meats that others in the company discover or create. A former chef de cuisine at Moto, the once-celebrated and now-closed restaurant in Chicago, Jones is vice president of product development for Just. Recently, he’s been dehydrating cultured chicken paste so that it resembles skin, presumably for those nuggets. “I actually think it tastes cleaner, and better, than real chicken skin,” Jones says. He hands me a golden sliver of the lab-based skin. It crackles under tooth, both salty and savory. Most people would never know it was developed in a lab. Over on the east side of the San Francisco Bay, Last year, Finless hosted a tasting of its first fish prototype, a cultured carp paste, which a local chef mixed with potato into a croquette. Selden and Wyrwas figured that, if they had produced a pound of this cultured carp, it would have cost $19,000, not including labor. A reporter for the Guardian sampled the croquettes and found them “both delicious and disappointing . . . I just about detect a pleasant aftertaste of the sea, though not fish as such.” Flavor profiles are just one obstacle. Fetal bovine serum, or FBS, is an essential ingredient in the culturing process. The serum stimulates cells to divide and grow outside the animal’s body. The problem is, as the name implies, FBS is derived from fetuses removed from pregnant cows during slaughter, which, as Tetrick notes, connects “clean” cellular agriculture to a sometimes inhumane system that the start-ups are trying to disavow. Just, Tetrick adds, has developed its own plant-based serum to replace FBS. Selden and Wyrwas with Finless say they’re working on their own alternative serum, too, which they plan to have ready in time


The Houthis have no right to talk about freedom of the press

my brother and forced them to disavow me as a “spy.” The story of Khashoggi’s brutal murder has rightly shocked Americans. Washington lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have criticized the Saudi government for its violations of human rights; I salute the exceptional spirit Washington’s lawmakers have shown in claiming no murderer or regime can get away with its crimes. But Khashoggi is just one of many victims of such policies. His tragic death should not be exploited in an appeal to the press, as Mohammed Ali al-Houthi has sought to do with his essay for The Post; instead, we should honor Khashoggi’s life by protecting the press. Justice for Khashoggi must also mean justice for those suffering in Yemen’s war, especially journalists. The tragedy of Khashoggi, whom I was proud to call a friend, has brought long-awaited attention to the war in Yemen and Saudi Arabia’s involvement. As a Yemeni, I felt relieved that the world has finally awakened, but as the debates continued, I felt that our voices as Yemenis were not represented. More than three years after the Saudi-led coalition intervened to back Yemen’s internationally recognized government against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, there is no end in sight to the war. Yemenis are beginning to lose hope for any sort of a return to normal life. The humanitarian and economic situation is nothing short of catastrophic, and social and political divisions are deepening. It is time for the world to take action. Some in Washington have called on the current administration to stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Though this is a vital first step, on its own it will not be enough to stop the war. The international community should remember that the Saudis are not the only ones responsible. The role of the United Arab Emirates is just as influential and controversial as Saudi Arabia’s, if not more. Yemen’s government has repeatedly called out the UAE for sponsoring armed militias and exacerbating the humanitarian crisis. Though the UAE claims it has helped Yemenis “liberate” their cities from the Houthis, no journalist on the ground dares write critically of UAE actions. The Houthis, meanwhile, continue to wage internal war, including a long and devastating siege of the city of Taiz, which hasn’t gotten as much media attention as other parts of Yemen crisis. The Houthis caused this war and bear primary responsibility for continuing it;


A not-so-fond farewell to Dana Rohrabacher, Putin’s best friend in Congress

human rights violators and kleptocrats from Russia and elsewhere with individual sanctions. At one point, he arranged to show an infamous Russian propaganda film, smearing the Magnitsky Act and its main promoter, Bill Browder, in Congress. When Rep. Edward R. Royce, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee, blocked him from doing so, Rohrabacher’s office instead promoted the film’s showing at the Newseum. But his position as the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe allowed Rohrabacher to go beyond Russian causes. Rohrabacher was famously photographed fishing with Nigel Farage, the leader of the pro-Brexit UK Independence Party, who has his own curious links to Moscow. I’ve been told that he kept in close contact with lobbyists for the illiberal Hungarian ruling party, Fidesz; he has also held hearings designed to promote their cause. He has visited Marine LePen — the far-right French politician whose presidential campaign received funding from Russia — to discuss “shared values” in the company of Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), the member of Congress most openly affiliated with white nationalism, who was sadly reelected. None of this was a secret, and at some level, congressional Republicans have long been uncomfortable about Rohrabacher’s role. Infamously, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the then-House majority leader, once told a group of congressman that “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” But they never stopped him. When the newly elected Democratic House opens for business, it might consider having a look at the role played by lobbyists for authoritarian politicians in Congress, with a particular emphasis on the role they played influencing Rohrabacher and his committee. Rohrabacher’s departure is good news for other reasons. For one, it means that an American politician who flacks for foreign authoritarians does, in the end, pay an electoral price. More importantly, these midterms also made way for others who can help undo some of the damage. Many of the new Democratic intake are veterans and national security professionals who were inspired to run, in part, by the Trump administration’s assault on Western institutions and by the corruption in Congress. Tom Malinowski, for example, a former director at Human Rights Watch who held the human rights portfolio in President Barack Obama’s State Department, has won a House seat in New Jersey. One of his new colleagues in the New Jersey delegation, Mikie Sherrill, is a former Navy helicopter pilot. Abigail Spanberger,


Caring about human rights beyond borders is not interventionism. It’s our global duty.

with the Islamic republic. Such political expediencies prompt other states to claim that valid condemnations of human rights abuses are somehow illegitimate — such as what happened recently with the vote on a U.N. resolution dealing with a trade embargo on Cuba, in which U.S. amendments concerning human rights were dismissed as out of place by the E.U. and others. If human rights concerns were always part of the fabric of these debates as a matter of principle, and if states consistently condemned the abuses of all human rights violators – including their allies – the argument for exclusion would have no merit. But ordinary citizens must seize the opportunity to call out governments when they are being inconsistent and demand human rights reforms, regardless of politics. While governments may wish to retain the old power model of top-down control, new models that thrive on participatory, decentralized structures invite the input of an online global community. That community, whose members include digital natives who increasingly count a friend in another country in their online network, sees itself as a stakeholder in global causes ranging from bringing the Turkish government to task for the Armenian genocide to defending free speech in Zimbabwe. That power and connection thrives online, irrespective of state lines. That external support is vital to the quest for human rights in many countries. In our native Iran, this is important because the government has systematically dismantled civil society for four decades now. Those who do manifest dissent are imprisoned, exiled or killed. Without an outside network of committed lawyers, advocates and activists engaging in human rights reporting, devising technology solutions and creating digital platforms to organize on human rights issues, operating within this closed society and pushing for progress would be far more challenging. Just as human rights are universal, attempts to protect those rights should also be seen as universal. Whether it’s Nicaragua, North Korea, Eritrea or beyond, caring about human rights and challenging injustice beyond our borders is not interventionism, it’s the duty of all supporters of freedom and democracy. Read more: The Post’s View: So far, the Trump administration is abetting a Saudi coverup of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. Will Congress go along? Manal al-Sharif: I’m a Saudi activist. Twitter put my life in danger. David Ignatius: Why was MBS so afraid of Jamal Khashoggi? Jamal Khashoggi: What the Arab world needs most is free expression


5 Minutes with: Milk Bar founder Christina Tosi

whether or not you mean it, and whether or not you have what it takes. Getting my butt kicked there and building myself up in those very treacherous kitchens is also what makes me as strong as I am today, and what allows me to be able to, I guess, speak both languages. I can walk into a fine dining kitchen and know how to speak the language and walk the walk and talk the talk, but the team that I built at Milk Bar is a funny mix of home bakers, career changers and profession-trained pastry chefs like me that are like, “I’m going to make cereal milk soft serve every day because I get that spirit and I have that spirit, too." Where do you find your inspiration? I grew up in this area, and my access to food was very simple. It was in the aisles of the grocery store. We did not go out to eat. When we went to Dairy Queen, that was like a big outing. As I started picking it apart, even in fine dining culture, the most successful dishes are the dishes that connect with people on an intellectual level but more than anything else on the guttural, like, “What does your tummy think?” level. Even people who don’t cook home-cooked meals often know what a home-cooked meal is, and those foods and flavors and ingredients are found in the aisles of the grocery store. So it’s kind of leveraging the flavors that are connected to your heartstrings, that you already know. And for me, it’s finding a way to re-create them and rediscover them. You were living and working in New York City for a long time. [Tosi eventually opened Milk Bar locations there and in other cities.] What made you come back to the D.C. area, and why open the flagship here? I remember the day I told my parents I was moving to New York to go to culinary school, and I knew they would not enjoy the message. But I knew that I had to go develop myself into this pastry chef, hoping that one day I would be able to bring it home. So bringing it back to D.C. and bringing everything I had learned home was really special. Building that store in Logan Circle was building the store that I probably dreamed about as a kid


Wildlife fled the sky and bees went silent during the 2017 total solar eclipse

1935 paper rounded up reactions from the general public in New England, the site of an eclipse in 1932. Several people described unusually noisy crickets. Beekeepers reported bees returning to hives in droves. Toads swarmed a New Hampshire garden. A Massachusetts woman blamed the eclipse for a sudden cockroach infestation in her pantry. Nearly a century later, ecologists can rely on more sophisticated tools than eyewitness accounts. Nilsson and her colleagues, as they report in a study published Tuesday in the journal Biology Letters, tracked birds and insects from 143 Doppler radar stations across the country. Eight of the stations were directly along the 2,500-mile path of totality. Using machine-learning programs, ecologists like Nilsson can pick out the animal signals collected in weather radar. “We try to clear out as much weather as possible because it messes up our bird data,” Nilsson said. (Meteorologists do the opposite.) Radar offered them an overview of anything in flight from low to the ground to about three miles high. They were not able identify individual organisms in this study, nor could they distinguish birds from large flying insects, but their data revealed the total number of objects in the air. For much of the day Aug. 21, the birds and bugs seemed as busy as usual. About 50 minutes before totality, though, animals began to vanish from high altitudes. “We were quite surprised to see this decrease of activity,” Nilsson said. Humans would struggle to notice the change in sunlight intensity so early. She suspects those birds and insects sought shelter. Perhaps they reacted to the impending eclipse as they would to a storm. “They might be thinking that it’s heavy cloud cover coming in, which would also explain them landing, taking shelter, trying to figure out what’s going on,” she said. At five of the sites, during the moment of totality, animals burst into action at low altitudes, only to settle down again. Though Nilsson was unsure how to interpret these bursts, she offered one hypothesis: Perhaps insects that feed at dusk rose into the air, thinking it was night, then became confused and landed. Birds might explain this plume, too; 70 percent of U.S. birds, including many songbirds, migrate under the cover of darkness. But Nilsson doesn’t think birds became so discombobulated as to disembark for a long flight. University of Missouri ecologist Candace Galen, who was not involved in the


involved in the radar report, applauded the authors for creating a “big-picture pattern of airborne biological signals.” This work, which included birds and bugs, captured “all the instruments in the orchestra,” Galen said. Galen’s own study focused on a single instrument: the bees. Galen enlisted elementary school students and others to monitor bees during the eclipse. They placed tiny thumb-drive microphones — “we call them USBees,” she said — in flower patches in Missouri, Idaho and Oregon. In late summer in those states, garden are typically alive with the sound of bees. The sounds they recorded are not for communication, Galen said, but flight. The pollinators' wings are noisy, in a similar way to a jet engine’s roar. The eclipse halted bees’ wings. Galen, in a study published last month in the Annals of the Entomological Society of America, found that bees abruptly stopped buzzing during the moment of totality. She had expected a gradual decline in bee activity. Instead it was a cliff. Just as soon as the sky brightened, they began to buzz again. An eclipse is a once-in-a-lifetime event for the typical critter, Nilsson said: “Most animals will never have experienced this before.” From an astronomical perspective, total solar eclipses aren’t all that rare, visible from Earth every 18 months or so. From a evolutionary one, however, it’s hard to see how organisms could have adapted to handle eclipses. Paths of totality cross the planet at all sorts of directions and angles; world maps of eclipses look as jumbled as knife marks on a cutting board. Scientists, though, can plan accordingly. Both of the researchers are anticipating the next total eclipse to pass through the U.S., which will cross from Texas to Maine in 2024. Nilsson wants to collect more precise radar data, which should allow her to determine the kinds of animals in the plumes. Galen will ready her tiny microphones. She hopes some of those same students will help her listen to the bees again, too. The Great American Eclipse united the country for a brief moment of wonder and memes. But it appears to have confounded the heck out of the nation’s animals. Read more: Do eclipses drive animals wild? Here’s how you can help scientists find out. 2017 solar eclipse was one of most-watched events in American history, survey finds ‘We are all just mind-boggled:’ scenes from the total solar eclipse of 2017


Diversity on stark display as House’s incoming freshmen gather in Washington

education,” Oklahoma’s Horn said. Other newly elected Democratic members will arrive in Congress already associated with certain policies. Rep.-elect Lucy McBath (Ga.), a gun-control activist whose son was fatally shot six years ago, flipped a longtime Republican congressional seat outside Atlanta last week. The younger bent of the incoming class was also on display, as Rep.-elect Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.) arrived at the hotel carrying his infant son. Ocasio-Cortez drew attention for joining a protest in the office of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) over climate change. “Should Leader Pelosi become the next speaker of the House, we need to tell her that we’ve got her back in showing and pursuing the most progressive energy agenda that this country has ever seen,” she said. More than a hundred activists with the Sunrise Movement had streamed into Pelosi’s office on Tuesday morning, delivering letters demanding that Pelosi commit to a Marshall Plan-size economic blueprint that would transition the country away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy. It was not enough, they said, to simply reestablish the select committee on climate change. Many protesters wore shirts that read “12 years,” a reference to estimates that by 2030, it will be impossible to wind back the effects of climate change. “Pelosi’s plan on climate change is the equivalent of bringing a squirt gun to a raging drought-induced wildfire killing Americans right now,” said Varshini Prakash, the Sunrise Movement’s co-founder. Ocasio-Cortez played down her own involvement. “This is not about me. This is not about the dynamics of any personalities,” she told reporters. “This is about uplifting the voice, and the message, of the fact that we need a green New Deal.” Pelosi followed with a statement supporting the protesters but declining to specifically address their key demand. “I have recommended to my House Democratic colleagues that we reinstate the select committee to address the climate crisis,” Pelosi stated. “House Democrats ran on and won on our bold campaign for a $1 trillion investment in our infrastructure that will make our communities more resilient to the climate crisis, while creating 16 million new good-paying jobs across the country.” Haaland, who described addressing climate change as her key priority, said she also wanted to focus on health care and the issue of missing and slain indigenous women. She left a gaggle of reporters to meet Rep.-elect Sharice Davids (D-Kan.), who is also Native American,


Will Brexit end not in tragedy but in farce?

This week, the hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts has been in London to talk about what the midterms mean for the Trump administration. Naturally, being in Britain, I have occasionally queried the locals about Brexit. The reactions to Trump and Brexit are pretty similar: People are simultaneously sick to death of talking about them, but the topics cannot be avoided. While I am on this side of the Atlantic, however, it seems appropriate to revisit Brexit. The last time I wrote about this subject was 18 months ago, when British Prime Minister Theresa May triggered Article 50, beginning her country’s two-year withdrawal process from the European Union. It was unclear how May’s government figured that it would be able to get all the things it wanted from the E.U. (sovereignty, customs-free, duty-free access to the E.U. market, autonomy over migration) without making some serious concessions (Northern Ireland, loss of influence over any E.U. decision). Back then I concluded: “So here we are. The European Union has an incentive to avoid a truly messy outcome, but the United Kingdom has an even bigger incentive. I’m not a politician, but I understand coercive bargaining a little bit; I simply cannot fathom how this doesn’t end in a bad way for the Brits.” Since then, the May government had plodded toward an agreement with the E.U., shedding numerous recalcitrant cabinet ministers along the way. First the leaders of the “Leave” campaign all left May’s government when it became clear that there was no chance in hell their maximalist demands would be met. Last week, May’s transport minister Jo Johnson stepped down, warning in a statement that the United Kingdom faced an unappetizing choice: Fast-forward to this week and, hey, it looks like May sure showed Johnson! She hammered out a tentative withdrawal agreement with the European Union. The Financial Times’s Alex Barker and Mehreen Khan provide the most detail I have seen of any news story about the agreement itself. Their article is worth reading in full, but the part on Northern Ireland stands out as an example of what May had to agree to in order to save face: That is just about Northern Ireland. On the overall “bare-bones” customs agreement between the U.K. and E.U., May agreed to “level playing field” conditions that meant, as Barker and Khan report, “some of the most severe restrictions placed on any country outside


U.N. lifts sanctions on Eritrea, ending nation’s decade of international isolation

government denied the allegation and primarily attributed the sanctions to U.S. opposition. It has been several years since the United Nations has offered any evidence to support the claim against Eritrea. And, recently, the nation has reconciled with neighbors with which it had engaged in conflicts for many years. In July, Eritrea and Ethiopia officially declared an end to two decades of hostilities. They agreed to open embassies and resume flights. A border dispute remains with Djibouti, where the United States maintains a military base. But the leaders of the two countries have met to discuss ways to settle their differences. Eritrea, which lies along the Red Sea, provides bases for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in their war against Shiite rebels in Yemen. It also has improved its relations with Europe, which is seeking to stanch the flow of migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Africa. But even as the sanctions were lifted, the government in the capital, Asmara, expressed bitterness. “The Government of Eritrea welcomes this belated decision to redress injustice, almost a decade after nefarious acts were taken inculcating indefensible harm on the country,” tweeted Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel. After thanking those who argued against the “ignominious sanction,” Gebremeskel added: “But even as we turn the page of this dark chapter and focus on the future, we must ponder on, and take stock of, what transpired; why Eritrea was needlessly victimized; what were the dynamics that underpinned a travesty of international justice on this scale? “In the event, the UNSC shoulders a responsibility of effecting amends to the wrongs done; above and beyond the lifting of the sanctions. The Government and people of Eritrea will not thus abandon their efforts for truth and justice with the mere lifting of the sanctions.” Eritrea also has demanded compensation for the economic harm caused by the sanctions. The Security Council vote to lift the sanctions marked a reversal by the United States and France, two permanent members that earlier insisted that Eritrea first needed to demonstrate that it was improving its human rights record. The State Department’s most recent human rights report on Eritrea expressed concern over several abuses. They included politically motivated killings; people dying or disappearing after being detained by government forces; and lingering reports of torture inflicted on army deserters, national-service evaders, those trying to flee the country without travel documents and some religious groups. carol.morello@washpost.com


Signs of a ‘super Earth’ discovered around a nearby star

Residents of the northern hemisphere, look up: In the faint light of the closest star in the night sky, astronomers have discovered evidence of an alien world. The proposed new planet is unlike anything in our own solar system, the researchers say — larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune, and far enough from its dim, red sun that any water on its surface is locked away in ice. But this frozen “super Earth,” the second-closest exoplanet known to science, is a tantalizing clue to what else might be out there. And in the not-so-distant someday when telescopes become capable of photographing planets around other stars, it may well be the first new world we see. “We’re moving from science fiction to science reality,” said Carnegie astronomer Johanna Teske, who contributed to a study of the new planet published Wednesday in the journal Nature. “There’s so much possibility there.” The exoplanet’s sun, a tiny body known as Barnard’s Star, is one of our solar system’s nearest neighbors. The only stars closer are the triplet stars of the Alpha Centauri system, which is mainly visible in the southern sky. One of those stars, Proxima Centauri, is orbited by a small planet, but the star’s tendency to spew flares of deadly radiation means its planet is unlikely to be habitable. Barnard’s Star has long been “the great white whale” of exoplanet hunting, said Carnegie astronomer Paul Butler, a co-author on the Nature paper. It’s just six light-years from our sun, and possibly twice as old. One of the main architects of exoplanet research, the astronomer Peter van de Kamp, proposed more than 50 years ago that this star could host a planet. In the 1970s, British astronomers studied the possibility of sending an uncrewed starship to probe the alien system — even though there wasn’t any evidence a planet existed to be explored. But it wasn’t until the first exoplanet discovery was confirmed in 1995 that the search for a world around Barnard’s Star began in earnest. This red dwarf is a 10th the mass of our sun and too faint to be seen with the naked eye. But its low mass makes it ideal for analysis using the radial velocity technique of exoplanet detection, which exploits the way a planet’s gravitational pull makes a star wobble as it orbits around it. A slew of telescopes on three continents have set their


A BBC reporter replaced his Brexit analysis with exasperated noises, and now he’s a hero

Morning swept across the globe Monday, and as reliable as the sunrise itself, out came all the talking heads with all their predictions on all the world’s problems. “The odds favor Rick Scott going to the U.S. Senate and Ron DeSantis being the next governor,” reporter Steve Bousquet told CNN from Tallahassee. “China would win a trade war versus the U.S.," investment expert Thanos Papasavvas confidently told Bloomberg. In Australia, market analyst Elizabeth Tian thought the Christmas retail season was looking grim. On the same morning, BBC political correspondent Chris Mason stood between a TV camera and the Palace of Westminster to opine on his specialty: Britain’s looming deadline to leave the European Union. It is a hot topic this week, as Prime Minister Theresa May races to shore up political support for her last-minute withdrawal plan, lest the country depart Europe in economic chaos. “So where are we in all of this Brexit process?” Mason asked, and answered moments later: “To be quite honest, looking at things right now, I haven’t got the foggiest idea what is going to happen in the coming weeks. ” He looked at the camera and waved a hand in the air. “Is the prime minister going to get a deal with the E.U.?" he asked. “Dunno!” “Is she going to be able to get it through the Commons? Don’t know about that, either, " he said, blowing an audible puff of air. “I think you might as well get Mr. Blobby back on to offer his analysis,” Mason concluded, “because, frankly, I suspect his is now as good as mine. ” Mr. Blobby is a polka-dot TV character who mostly runs around smashing things and shouting “Blobby! ” And Mason — once his morning spot hit the Internet — became a media hero. “Every time a U.S. colleague asks for the latest on Brexit I’m going to show them @ChrisMasonBBC’s honest and unimprovable analysis,” declared NBC News editor Alastair Jamieson, speaking for many. Where pundits had been trying and failing for months to project order on the lurching complexities of the Brexit process, Mason had simply and courageously given up, ceding the intellectual high ground to a costumed monster with a one-word vocabulary. “A journalist brave enough to say he hasn’t the foggiest idea where Brexit is going to go,” wrote journalist Brett Debritz. “We need honest uncertainty more than dishonest partisan punditry


Trump names retired general John Abizaid to be ambassador to Saudi Arabia

President Trump announced Tuesday that he will nominate retired Army Gen. John Abizaid to become the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, filling a vacancy that was spotlighted by the difficult diplomacy between the United States and Riyadh over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The post has been vacant throughout Trump’s presidency. Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have blamed Senate Democrats for holding up nominations, but no one had been nominated for the job until now. Turkey, where Washington Post contributing columnist Khashoggi was killed last month, also has no U.S. ambassador. Abizaid, best known from his time overseeing the Iraq War, is now a consultant and a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. His selection emphasizes the importance Trump has placed on the military partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia, a major customer for U.S. arms. Trump has said he does not want to disrupt arms sales in protest of Khashoggi’s death but has promised unspecified consequences for Saudi Arabia. Khashoggi was a U.S. resident. Saudi leaders initially denied any involvement by the kingdom in the death, but now acknowledge it was premeditated. King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman deny involvement. Pompeo and Trump’s adviser, the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have handled discussions with Riyadh directly, assuming some of the tasks that might have been done by a confirmed ambassador. Currently, a career State Department diplomat is in charge at the embassy. Last month, the Trump administration launched a public pressure campaign urging Saudi Arabia to end the conflict in Yemen amid growing opposition in Congress to U.S. military support for the kingdom’s war there. Pompeo and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis called for an end to more than three years of conflict between Houthi rebels and a government recognized by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the West. U.N. officials have warned that the war has left half the population of Yemen, one of the world’s poorest countries, on the precipice of famine. If confirmed, Abizaid would succeed Joseph Westphal, a former Pentagon official chosen by President Barack Obama. Under the Obama administration, Abizaid was tapped in 2016 to advise Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak. The Pentagon said at the time that the retired general would offer advice as Ukraine sought to reform and modernize its armed forces to more closely resemble Western militaries found in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Abizaid


The five best takeout dishes at Whole Foods stores, ranked

When I was a boy in Omaha, my parents used to take the family to dinner in a supermarket. The place was an honest-to-God restaurant inside the grocery store, a full-service operation with a host stand and booths and a menu that you could hold in your grimy little kid hands. I remember next to nothing about the food, except that the kitchen griddled up a good burger. Of course, back then, I thought any burger was a good burger. What I remember most about the restaurant was its design: It had no street entrance. To reach the host stand, you had to walk through the grocery store, with its florescent, interrogation-bright lights. It was sober lighting for the sober task of inspecting the meats, vegetables and boxes of Fruity Pebbles necessary for a growing family. (Hey, the cereal was necessary to me!) Once you safely navigated past the prison-guard floodlights of the supermarket, however, you could retreat to the relative shadows of the restaurant itself. Even this modest eatery, positioned near the refrigerator chill of the dairy section, understood the benefits of mood lighting: It allowed you to release your tight grip on life and indulge. Dining in supermarkets has changed significantly since the 1970s. The international menus available these days are far removed from my white-bread Midwestern youth. I’ve been spending a lot of time in Whole Foods Markets lately, and not because of the distant-cousin relationship between my employer and America’s favorite organic punching bag. Amazon bought Whole Foods last year, and the tech giant’s founder and chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, owns The Washington Post, in case you haven’t read that 10,000 times already in this paper. No, I’ve been visiting Whole Foods stores because they’ve become as much dining rooms as grocery stores. You can buy ramen, sushi, tacos, bubble tea, barbecue, Peruvian chicken, Neapolitan-style pizza, craft beers, wine, steamed buns and so much more inside these super-snob-markets. The stores even have places for you to sit, as long as you don’t mind dining in spaces that overlook grocery aisles or stare out onto suburban streets or seem like cut-rate sports bars that, simultaneously, are too good to serve Buffalo chicken tenders. You might notice that some dishes are conspicuously missing from my list, such as the smoked pork shoulder ramen from Paper Horse, chef Erik Bruner-Yang’s part-Chinese, part-Japanese concept at the Whole Foods stores


Britain and the E.U. reach a draft agreement on Brexit

the E.U.’s remaining 27 member states in Brussels later this month, with Nov. 24 and 25 penciled in as possible dates. Following approval by the European leaders, the treaty would go to the British Parliament, where it would face an uncertain fate. The Telegraph newspaper reported that there could be two cabinet meetings on Wednesday: “one to present the deal and another to approve or reject it.” Whatever happens, this deal is just the first stage of the lengthy process of ratifying Britain’s withdrawal from the E.U. To follow are negotiations over Britain’s future trade, security and economic relations with Europe — including side deals about immigration levels. For the past two years, the greatest debate over Brexit has not been waged between Brussels and London, but within May’s fractious Conservative Party, composed of “leavers” and “remainers.” Hard-line Brexiteers have pushed for a decisive split from European bureaucrats and courts, from E.U. rules and regulations, while others, led by May, have sought a softer Brexit, a bundle of compromises that keep Britain more closely aligned with Europe, to better protect the British economy. On Tuesday, arch-Brexiteer Boris Johnson, who quit his job as foreign secretary over May’s proposals in July, told the BBC that he hoped the cabinet would “chuck it out.” “It’s vassal state stuff. For the first time in 1,000 years, this place, this Parliament will not have a say over the laws that govern this country,” Johnson said. Johnson and his allies have said May’s Brexit would leave Britain “a rule taker” vs. “a rulemaker,” subject to following Brussels laws for trade, without having much say in how they are written. The leaders of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which helps prop up May’s minority government, sounded skeptical about the deal. Sammy Wilson, the DUP’s Brexit spokesman, told the BBC that they will be reading the agreement closely to ensure that Northern Ireland isn’t treated differently from the rest of Britain. “The rumors we are hearing so far would indicate that that’s not going to be the case,” he said. Details of the draft withdrawal were not released to the public Tuesday. How to avoid the return to a hard border between Northern Ireland, which will remain in Britain, and the Republic of Ireland, which is a member of the E.U., has been one of the toughest issues facing the negotiators. The Europeans have insisted that


3 rules for staying upright and sociable for the drinking marathon that is Thanksgiving

choices should evolve throughout the day. For wine, McIntyre says, it makes sense to progress by color: Enjoy the light Moscato d’Asti (more details below) in the morning. “Rosé will keep you fueled through lunch and the afternoon,” until you graduate to more substantial wines, such as Beaujolais and pinot noir with dinner. Another way to proceed is to watch the clock: For the first few hours, stick to beers below 5 percent alcohol by volume, such Port City’s Ways and Means Rye Session IPA (4.5 percent), or for something more seasonal, Devils Backbone’s tangy Cran-Gose (4 percent). Then ease your way up north to beers between 5 and 6.5 percent for a designated period before slipping into IPA or barrel-aged stout territory. [Perspective: I’d rather drink beer longer, not get drunk faster] The exception to these suggestions comes if there’s a fantastic bottle of wine, double IPA or rare whiskey that you (or, hopefully, a relative) really want to share. Palate fatigue is real, and if you save that New England IPA or medium-bodied Grenache until everyone has been eating and drinking for hours, it’s not going to taste the same. (And if you’re tipsy by that point, you might not remember a special treat.) 2. Socialize, don’t bartend Thanksgiving should be about spending time with friends and loved ones, not putting in an extended shift in the kitchen making cocktails each time someone’s glass is empty — yes, you actually are in the way — or being repeatedly pulled out of conversations with rarely seen relatives to go hunt down a bottle of tonic water for grandma’s G&T. The solution is to pre-batch your drinks. Allan says “making a nice big bowl of punch can keep a large group happy without forcing someone to play bartender,” especially when it’s something like the Lost Leaves Punch (recipe here), an autumnal creation starring apple brandy and apple cider. Another option: Keep it simple. Set out a bottle of sparkling wine and a carafe of orange juice to let guests make their own mimosas. McIntyre suggests using “an inexpensive Cava such as Segura Viudas or Jaume Serra Cristalino.” Allan also recommends opening bottles of Byrrh and Cocchi Americano, “aromatized bittersweet wines that make for great aperitifs to get people hungry before the big Thanksgiving meal.” Both can be sipped neat, over ice, or topped with club soda and enjoyed as a


Saudi Arabia releases findings of Khashoggi inquiry, seeks death penalty for five people it says who ordered the journalist’s death

The country’s public prosecutor said that 11 suspects had been indicted in the case. Turkish officials have said Jamal Khashoggi’s Oct. 2 killing, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, was ordered by the highest levels of the Saudi government.This is a developing story. It will be updated.