A NASA satellite just caught this awesome solar eclipse from space

There’s a satellite hovering over the tropical Pacific near South America whose only job is to monitor the sun. It sounds simple, but its mission is complex: to investigate how the sun’s magnetic field is generated, how it’s structured and what happens when it burps magnetic energy out into space — sometimes straight toward Earth. Our star is active, complex and sometimes threatening, and the Solar Dynamics Observatory is one of just a few ways scientists are able to monitor it. On Thursday afternoon, the SDO saw something much more simple than solar irradiance fluctuations or extreme ultraviolet variability — the moon blocking out the sun in a solar eclipse only visible from the satellite. “The lunar transit lasted almost an hour, between 2:24 and 3:17 p.m. EDT, with the moon covering about 89 percent of the sun at the peak of its journey across the sun’s face,” NASA wrote. “The moon’s crisp horizon can be seen from this view because the moon has no atmosphere to distort the sunlight.” Also neat: Because the images were taken with a very, very high-resolution camera, you can actually see the bumps and valleys in the outline of the moon, which it turns out is a pretty rugged place. Look closely at the edge of the moon and you can see the peaks and valleys of its rugged terrain. (NASA/SDO) You can always see what the sun looks like at this very moment, including sunspots and coronal holes, on the NASA SDO website. This story originally misstated the day the eclipse was seen.


Fingers crossed! Giant panda at National Zoo receives artificial insemination.

Giant panda mother Mei Xiang with cub Tai Shan in December 2005. (Jessie Cohen/AFP/Getty Images) The giant mama panda at the National Zoo in Washington has been artificially inseminated, authorities said. Now they’re crossing their fingers that she becomes pregnant. Mei Xiang, the 18-year-old giant panda, received two artificial inseminations Thursday, one starting around 2 p.m. and the other around 11:30 p.m. Reproductive scientists and veterinarians have been closely watching her hormone levels in her urine and her behaviors to see if she’s ready to breed. Giant female pandas have a very short window each year when they can breed so timing it is hard. In fact, they are only in heat for 24 to 72 hours each year. For the last few weeks, zoo experts have been closely watching Mei Xiang. Her estrogen levels peaked Wednesday — a sign that she was ovulating and “able to become pregnant,” according to a statement. She was inseminated with semen from the zoo’s 19-year-old male panda Tian Tian. Baby panda Bei Bei is held by his mother, Mei Xiang, at the National Zoo. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post) The zoo experts had tried to see if the two pandas would show signs of being interested in breeding, but they have not ever successfully bred. Again this time, they showed interest only at “incongruent times.” “Therefore,” the zoo said, “there was no natural breeding this season.” Pierre Comizzoli, a veterinarian at the zoo, said the two pandas “didn’t show any conclusive behavior” that they were “really interested in each other” so they decided to inseminate her before the window closed. Giant female pandas are typically pregnant for three to six months. But they can also have pseudopregnancies and show signs of being with cub when they are not. Ultrasounds will be eventually be performed to determine if she is pregnant. On Friday, zookeepers said Mei Xiang was doing well after the insemination procedure. “Everything went really well,” said Comizzoli. He said she has recovered and was eating well and in “great shape.”


Want to run around Fenway Park 112 times? Then this marathon is for you.

Fenway Marathon organizers say the race will be a home run. (Darren McCollester/Getty Images) Fenway Park is one of the most iconic sports centers in the United States, and maybe even the world. It’s on any baseball fan’s bucket list to watch a game there, but will it also be fun to run a marathon there? Fenway Marathon organizer Dave McGillivray thinks so. “It’s going to be a unique experience running with everyone else,” McGillivray, also race director for the Boston Marathon, told the Boston Globe on Friday. “It will be interesting to pass others and be passed and really get to know each other intimately.” To complete the full 26.2-mile race, runners will have to circle Fenway Park’s warning track roughly 112 times, which sounds like a lot, but for an enclosed marathon, it’s actually pretty reasonable. For example, at the second-ever New York City Indoor Marathon held on at the Armory in March, runners circled a 200-meter track 211 times. In that race, both men’s race winner Christopher Zablocki and women’s winner Lauren Manninem set indoor marathon records, Running Competitor reports. However, McGillivray said when the Fenway Marathon takes place on Sept. 15, when the Red Sox are away playing the Tampa Bay Rays, records aren’t likely to be broken. “It’s not about setting a personal best, it’s about the experience,” McGillivray told the Globe. “It’s more for people who have a fascination for doing something out of the ordinary, combined with a passion for the Red Sox.” In fact, besides promising to raise at least $5,000 for the Red Sox Foundation, which helps New England families in need, the only recommendation for Fenway Marathon runners is that they be fans of the hometown team. “As a Red Sox fan, it will be unique to run and then sit in the stands at a game and say, ‘I just ran at Fenway Park,’ ” McGillivray said. “That’s when the reality will really hit.” Prospective participants should act fast. Unlike the Boston Marathon, which hosts thousands of runners every year, the Fenway Marathon will be limited to just 50 participants. To register, go to the Red Sox Foundation’s website.


U.S. soldier who fought with Russian-backed militants has been discharged from the Army

recorded on websites, social media groups and in an online documentary. With Cuvelier’s easily searchable history, his enlistment raises questions about the Army’s recruitment process and whether applicants are thoroughly vetted. Kelli Bland, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Recruiting Command, did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Cuvelier. When it was first reported that Cuvelier was serving in the Army, Bland said that the military had “begun an inquiry to ensure the process used to enlist this individual followed all of the required standards and procedures.” The Army often forbids those who display “extremist views or actions” from entry, Lt. Col. Randy Taylor, a spokesman for the Army’s Department of Manpower and Reserve Affairs, said in an email in April. Taylor added that “if an Army official determines an applicant has the potential for meeting Army standards, the official may in exceptional cases allow those who have overcome mistakes and past conduct, made earlier in their lives, to serve their country. However, in many cases a history of gang or extremist activity is disqualifying.” In Cuvelier’s case, it appears his past was either overlooked by a recruiter or he was not forthcoming about it, a move that might have opened him up to fraudulent enlistment charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Cuvelier, when first confronted about his potentially problematic history in April, said that he had changed. “The Army is my only chance of moving on and cutting with my past,” Cuvelier said in a text message. “I realized I like this country, its way of life and its Constitution enough to defend it.” “By publishing a story on me, you are jeopardizing my career and rendering a great service to anyone trying to embarrass the Army. My former Russian comrades would love it. … so, I please ask you to reconsider using my name and/or photo.” As a U.S. citizen, Cuvelier’s time fighting in Ukraine for the Donestk People’s Republic could open him up to federal prosecution as the breakaway state is subject to U.S. government sanctions. A March 2014 executive order that was applied to the republic that June says that U.S. citizens are prohibited from assisting any of the sanctioned entities with “funds, goods or services.” Read more: Was this Ukrainian combat photo staged? Soldiers and photographers think so. Shelling around Ukrainian industrial facilities may trigger serious environmental consequences, report says


This is what Betsy DeVos thinks about people who oppose her school-choice vision

be held accountable, but they should be directly accountable to parents and communities, not to Washington, D.C., bureaucrats. In order to succeed, education must commit to excellence and innovation to better meet the needs of individual students. Defenders of our current system have regularly been resistant to any meaningful change. In resisting, these “flat-Earthers” have chilled creativity and stopped American kids from competing at the highest levels. Our current framework is a closed system that relies on one-size-fits-all solutions. We need an open system that envelopes choices and embraces the future. So if you think that her view of education in America is hurting public education or restricting opportunity for all students, then you are a flat-Earther. What’s that? Someone who believes the Earth is flat. There’s actually a Flat Earth Society, which is referred to in a piece on livescience.com that explains: First, a brief tour of the worldview of a flat-earther: While writing off buckets of concrete evidence that Earth is spherical, they readily accept a laundry list of propositions that some would call ludicrous. The leading flat-Earther theory holds that Earth is a disc with the Arctic Circle in the center and Antarctica, a 150-foot-tall wall of ice, around the rim. NASA employees, they say, guard this ice wall to prevent people from climbing over and falling off the disc. Earth’s day and night cycle is explained by positing that the sun and moon are spheres measuring 32 miles (51 kilometers) that move in circles 3,000 miles (4,828 km) above the plane of the Earth. (Stars, they say, move in a plane 3,100 miles up.) Like spotlights, these celestial spheres illuminate different portions of the planet in a 24-hour cycle. Flat-earthers believe there must also be an invisible “antimoon” that obscures the moon during lunar eclipses. Furthermore, Earth’s gravity is an illusion, they say. In other speeches, she has repeatedly attacked the traditional public education system, calling it a “dead end,” among other things, and made clear that she doesn’t think much of the people who support it. Incidentally, in her flat-Earther speech, she noted that Annette Polly Williams, a longtime Democratic state legislator in Wisconsin, was the author of the first school-choice legislation in the United States. Here’s what DeVos didn’t say: Williams changed her mind about school choice and accused voucher and other choice advocates of taking advantage of African Americans. Does DeVos know that?


The Savor week events that beer lovers should add to their calendars

Wednesday Country Boy Wild Ales Kentucky's Country Boy Brewing is known for bourbon barrel-aged stouts and hefty IPAs, but the brewery — which is only available in D.C. during Savor — is now experimenting with sour ales and wild yeasts. Try three offerings from the new “Living Proof” series at Meridian Pint alongside other beers, including the Alpha Experiment single-hop Nelson Sauvin IPA and Shotgun Wedding, a brown ale with vanilla beans, beginning at 5 p.m. Ocelot and J. Wakefield's Here Kitty Kitty Showdown Last year, Miami's J. Wakefield Brewing and Sterling's Ocelot Brewing collaborated on a huge 12 percent ABV imperial stout called Here Kitty Kitty. J. Wakefield released its version in December, and Ocelot released its own take in April. They'll be side-by-side on tap in Adams Morgan alongside a selection of other beers — think Ocelot IPAs and JWB's Taking My Talents to Miami, an impressive Berliner weiss made with the Bruery. Doors open at 5 p.m. Thursday The Oregon Total Tap Takeover at ChurchKey It's no secret that the Beaver State is home to some of the finest breweries in America. Six of them will be featured on all 50 of ChurchKey's draft lines, with an extra five available in bottles. You've probably heard of Deschutes and Ninkasi, who will bring some vintage rarities; don't overlook the sours and wild beers from Alesong, IPAs from Hopworks and Crux Fermentation Project, or the flavorful lagers and saisons from Pfriem, beginning at 4 p.m. Stone Tap Takeover Stone Brewing Company Orchard Funk Vol. 2 During the Craft Brewers Conference, Anxo hosted a party called Orchard Funk, featuring wild and sour ales fermented with fruit. It went so well that they're bringing it back with four different breweries: Allagash, Upland, Avery and Bullfrog. Among the 13 beers, you'll find Upland's Black Parade, a version of their sour Cursed Kettles ale aged on raspberries, and Allagash Avance, a sour ale aged in bourbon barrels for three years with strawberries. Taps start flowing at 3 p.m. D.C. Brewers Guild Savor Kickoff Party While it's great to have events packed with tap handles from breweries that aren't usually found in this area, it's also fun to be the host city. 3 Stars, Atlas, DC Brau, Hellbender and Right Proper take over Iron Horse's draft towers at the D.C. Brewers Guild's Savor Kickoff Party, with $2 off D.C. beers between 4 and 8


‘This country has been amazing for us’: From refugee camp, to Cornell, to a Rhodes Scholarship

moved six times. And he felt that expectations from teachers for minority students were low. But his mother kept telling him, “You can do anything you set your mind to.” When he was in seventh grade, his father fell ill on a trip to Africa and died — a death Ahmed felt could have been prevented with better medical treatment. When his mother injured her back at work, his sister, a senior in high school, got a job on a factory assembly line. She would work from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., take her siblings to school, then go to class. Seeing that kind of determination and sacrifice every day made Ahmed all the more committed to working hard, to learning more. When he was 16, he began working at a nursing home to help his family get by. He enjoyed the feeling of turning someone’s day around with a smile. Soon the work sparked an interest in biology and medicine, and he began to dream of becoming a doctor. His grades were top-notch, and he shadowed doctors at the Mayo Clinic, awed by their dedication to their patients and the discoveries they were making. With all of that behind him, and so much possibility ahead, facing the prospect of failure at Cornell was terrifying. After the tears that day in October 2013, he emailed the two professors and asked for help. In the writing seminar, he learned he hadn’t honed his thesis well enough to leave an indelible idea. After talking with the professor in his evolution class, he realized that the way he had studied — reading the textbook carefully, focusing on all the details that hadn’t been covered in lectures, memorizing everything — left him missing the big picture. In the exam, the professor manipulated variables, posing different scenarios and asking students what would happen with those changes. Suddenly, he understood: As a researcher, he would need that kind of mind-set, trying to discover new things, not just storing away information that was already known. He had to think hard, and creatively, with a true understanding of the ideas in the class. “That was my ‘Welcome to Cornell’ moment,” Ahmed said, laughing. He didn’t forget it. He took those unexpected grades to heart, using them not only as a spur to improve his own studies, but also as a lasting reminder to help others do the same.


Judge dismisses most of lawsuit against Purple Line, but ridership estimates must still be redone

continue to consider the project for federal aid while the lawsuit is pending. Congress has appropriated $325 million toward the Purple Line, but Maryland officials can’t access that money until a court reinstates the project’s federal environmental approval, which U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon revoked in August when he ordered the ridership update. In his final decision Tuesday, Leon let his previous ruling on the ridership issue stand. However, he said he agreed with the government that the Purple Line’s federally approved environmental review had sufficiently considered potential impacts on any endangered species and migratory birds. Leon did not explain his decision, saying he would do so “in the near future.” John M. Fitzgerald, an environmental lawyer and a plaintiff in the 2014 lawsuit, said the plaintiffs want to hear the judge’s reasoning. Asked whether they plan to appeal, Fitzgerald said, “We’re certainly reviewing all of our options.” Fitzgerald and other Purple Line opponents had argued that the state’s environmental study didn’t sufficiently consider harm that the line’s construction could cause to two rare, tiny crustaceans found near and downstream from the line’s planned alignment. One of the shrimplike creatures, the Hay’s Spring amphipod, has been listed as a federally protected species since 1982, and the Kenk’s amphipod is being considered for federal endangered-species listing. The Purple Line’s environmental impact study also didn’t consider ways to avoid or minimize impacts on federally protected migratory birds, the plaintiffs said. The Purple Line’s construction, they said in a court filing, “will likely lead to many [migratory bird] deaths” and cause other harm. Maryland transit officials have said state and federal studies did not turn up any endangered species along the planned rail alignment. State officials have said that a study did find Kenk’s amphipods in a spring but that it was too far from the Purple Line alignment to be harmed. Protections on migratory bird nests prohibit any Purple Line crews from cutting trees in “forested” areas during the nesting season, from April to September. Leon had been under pressure to issue a final ruling in the case since mid-May, when the Maryland Attorney General’s Office asked a federal appellate court to require him to decide the entire lawsuit so the state could appeal the ridership issue. The state has said legal delays have cost more than $13 million a month and could jeopardize a $5.6 billion, 36-year public-private partnership on


Whatever Trump decides on Paris, he’s already taken the U.S. out of the climate game

for instance, found that the current commitments under Paris “still imply a median warming of 2.6—3.1 degrees Celsius by 2100.” “The arm of the laws of physics is not so easily twisted,” said Joeri Rogelj, a researcher at the Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria, and a lead author on the study. “Whatever you delay now, you will have to make up later, and it’s obvious that limiting warming to 2 degrees or 1.5 as was mentioned in the Paris agreement is an incredible challenge which will require lots of innovation, new technologies, new ways of thinking, entrepreneurship.” Some scientists are already suggesting that the 2-degree goal may be lost to us. “There’s so many things that need to go right for 2 degrees. Essentially we’ve emitted too much, which makes the 2-degree challenge hard,” said Glen Peters, a senior researcher at the Center for International Climate Research in Oslo. If there’s any chance left, it’s clear that nations need to ramp up their ambitions to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius — something that Paris is designed to do, through regular meetings aimed at determining what adjustments need to be made to meet that goal. It may well be that the world will need to pioneer geoengineering policies to control temperature, or “negative emissions” technologies to extract carbon from the air to buy some time. 3. Trump, in the Paris agreement or out of the Paris agreement, is dulling the U.S. contribution to fighting global climate change and punting the problem to the rest of the world. Whether the United States stays in or out of the Paris agreement, the upshot is the Trump administration is delaying action on climate change, and is defining U.S. ambition downward rather than upward. Since climate change is a collective problem, that means that the slack must be made up some other way. “It is a global problem and it’s a cumulative problem,” Rogelj said. “Everything we are not doing today somewhere on the globe will have to be compensated somewhere else, or later.” Other countries may be able to make up the slack for the United States. The Climate Action Tracker analysis suggests, for instance, that progress in India and China could be enough to offset any U.S. backsliding. “If something happens in a positive direction in the rest of the world, that can completely offset what’s going on in


No, that wasn’t quite the ‘Americans’ finale (or season) we’d all hoped for

this season a lot. - This season’s longest con, which had Philip and Elizabeth posing as airline employees Brad and Dee Eckert, who, with their adopted teenage son Tuan (another spy, played by Ivan Mok) befriend a Soviet defector and his family. All it really accomplished was to lead us smack into “13 Reasons Why” territory, as Philip and Elizabeth rushed to prevent the defector’s teenage son from committing suicide. (They got there! Just in time! Big whoop!) - The idea that the smartest person in the Jennings household is, of all people, their younger child, Henry (Keidrich Sellati), who is begging to go away to boarding school. (Nyet was Philip’s final ruling.) Does Henry crave escape because he’s figured out the truth? Has he told his good buddy, Agent Stan, who feeds him instant Lipton noodles and pizza? Agonizingly, “The Americans” just would not go there. Keidrich Sellati as Henry Jennings in FX’s “The Americans.” (Jeffrey Neira/FX) Instead, the show would go to Moscow this season — a lot. Oleg Igorevich Burov (Costa Ronin) glumly accepted his new task of investigating corruption in Soviet grocery supply, which is about as exciting as it sounds. We also got to see Oleg’s mother stir a lot of borscht or whatever’s on the stove that night. Life in Moscow in 1984 looks a lot like that old Wendy’s commercial of the Soviet fashion show (“Is next — evening wear! Very nice!”), which could have been fascinating with a little more action. The added subtitles don’t bother me, but do make it tough for multitasking TV junkies to tweet and concentrate at the same time. (Does anyone tweet about #TheAmericans anymore?) The killer disease that caused so much stress in season 4 did get weaponized by the Soviets and used in Afghanistan. So that happened. And all those covert trips Philip and Elizabeth made to Oklahoma and Kansas to chase a killer strain of wheat — oh, never mind. Having former FBI secretary Martha Hanson (Alison Wright), a fan favorite, show up in a few glimpses as she struggles to assimilate to life as a Muscovite was satisfying — especially because viewers would have otherwise asked for all eternity: Whatever Happened to Martha? — but lacked added value. Alison Wright as Martha Hanson in FX’s “The Americans.” (Jeffrey Neira/FX) Part of “The Americans’” problem this season is also what makes it such an


How Trump’s tax reform push could make American liquor great again

An excise tax cut could help craft distillers such as Michael Lowe, co-owner of New Columbia Distillers in Washington. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post) America’s growing ranks of craft distillers think that an excise tax cut from Washington could spur unprecedented growth in their industry, putting their small-batch, traditionally made whiskeys, gins, vodkas, brandies and more into more hands and on more menus than ever. It’s not so much drunk talk. Just look at what happened with craft beer. In September 1976, Congress passed legislation that cut the federal excise tax on beer from $9 to $7 per barrel on the first 60,000 barrels produced, so long as a brewery produced no more than 2 million barrels annually (a 31-gallon barrel is equal to about two kegs). When President Gerald Ford signed the bill that same month, there were well under 100 breweries in the United States, and the number was shrinking fast amid industry consolidation and the high costs of doing business for smaller players. Analysts predicted perhaps two or three American breweries by the turn of the century — probably the big players such as Anheuser-Busch, Miller and Coors. A funny thing happened, though. The number of U.S. breweries rose steadily, crashing through 1,000 by the 1990s and then through 2,000 in the 21st century — about 1,997 more than analysts’ predictions. The number now stands at more than 5,000, the most breweries operating at any one time in the nation’s history. The vast majority of these operations are what are called craft breweries. They each make no more than a few million barrels annually, often much, much less than that for a local or a regional consumer base. And although they face challenges such as macro-breweries acquiring some of them, these craft breweries are by and large thriving. Together they have made America the delicious envy of the beer-making world in terms of style and experimentation. Craft distillers would love to follow in their footsteps. That is why a group representing smaller spirits producers is trying to get Congress and the Trump administration to cut the excise tax on smaller runs of whiskey, gin, vodka and more, like another government did for smaller amounts of beer 41 years ago. It would be a somewhat ironic role for President Trump to play — one of America’s few teetotaler presidents whose political hero nonetheless is early whiskey geek President Andrew


Hunting feral hogs and coyotes from a hot air balloon in Texas

How did I miss this news (AP)? Texas lawmakers have approved the hunting of feral hogs and coyotes from hot air balloons. Texas’ growing hog population [an estimated two million] causes millions of dollars’ worth of damage to crops every year…. The state already allows the shooting of feral hogs from helicopters, but that is expensive and has not been very unsuccessful because the aircraft often scare the animals away. Hot air balloons are quieter and offer a more stable shooting platform. The bill, passed unanimously in both houses, was sent to Gov. Greg Abbott (R) Wednesday; I suspect that the governor will sign it.


These 3 things help make sense of the dangerous Minnesota measles outbreak

Tahlil Wehlie speaks with his son Luqman, 3, at their apartment in Hopkins, Minn., April 27. Luqman and his sister got the measles during the current outbreak in Minneapolis and are now recovering at home. (Courtney Perry/For The Washington Post) It’s extremely contagious, and can lead to hospitalization, pneumonia, deafness and death. And though it was eradicated in the United States in 2000, it’s back with an increasing number of virulent outbreaks — most recently in Minnesota, where the number of documented cases recently rose to 69 and spread to a fourth Minnesota county. The disease, of course, is measles — and it’s spreading again because of anti-vaccination myths. In Minnesota, 65 of the cases are among people who haven’t been vaccinated. And 59 are among Somali immigrants, a group that in 2014 had a vaccination rate of only 42 percent, having been targeted with anti-vaccination propaganda. That’s a public health problem, and not just for the unvaccinated. When a critical percentage of the community has been vaccinated, everyone’s more protected from that disease. The problem is what we would now call “fake news”: the myth that vaccines cause autism. Unfortunately, that myth can get stronger after someone’s been educated about the facts. Let’s be clear here: The measles vaccine is undeniably safe. Scientific evidence overwhelmingly shows that the benefits of vaccines far outweigh the risks. Vaccines have no relationship at all to autism. And yet this remarkably persistent, even contagious, myth continues to endanger children’s health. We examined who supports school vaccination requirements. Here’s the traditional public health approach to preventing the spread of measles and similar childhood diseases: State and local governments have required children to be vaccinated before they can enter public school. About three-fourths of the country supports that approach, according to data from the 2016 American National Election Studies (ANES). So who does, and who doesn’t? 1. More education leads to more support for vaccinations — mostly Our research finds that education is a key variable in whether someone supports vaccine use and policies. The higher the degree someone has received, the less likely they are to believe the myth that vaccines and autism are linked. Those with more education are also more likely to support requiring parents to vaccinate their children. Why? Many academic studies show that education strengthens the ability to consider several sources of information, search out and possess factual information, and


We now know who cheats on their taxes. (Hint: it’s not the poor or middle class.)

the same direction, one can argue reasonably that they probably are pointing to something real. This kind of data doesn’t capture many forms of tax fiddling — e.g. people who decline to report their tips or occasional informal cash payments as income. It does capture the kinds of larger scale tax evasion that are plausibly more damaging. Rich people are far more likely to cheat on their taxes In Alstadsaeter, Johannesen and Zucman’s description, the data is unambiguous. The richer you are, the more likely you are to cheat big time on your taxes. As they put it, “the probability to hide assets rises very sharply with wealth, including within the very top groups.” Zucman has previously done work estimating the size of the offshore structures through which rich people hide their income. Combining his old data with the new information, the authors estimate that the top 0.01 percent of the wealth distribution own about 50 percent of all the wealth that is hidden offshore, and that this 0.01 percent hides approximately 25 percent of its wealth from the tax collector. The authors argue that these are conservative estimates — the actual rate of tax evasion is probably substantially higher in developing countries where tax enforcement is poor. This is likely driven by inequality and supply of tax evasion services The pattern of the data suggests that tax evasion is heavily concentrated among very rich people. Why might this be so? The authors hypothesize that it is driven by a combination of inequality and supply of tax evasion services by specialized banks, firms of lawyers and so on. If inequality is relatively high, then a relatively small number of rich people is going to own the lion’s share of taxable assets. The combination of low numbers of people and a high level of assets makes them attractive customers for these services, since they will provide high profits with a low risk of detection. However, moving down-market will be unattractive for such services. There are many more possible customers, but these customers are less profitable individually, and more likely to be caught en masse. Thus, you might expect to see an outcome like that which seems to have happened in real life — banks like HSBC that enable high levels of tax evasion among extremely rich people, but few firms, if any, willing to provide less wealthy people the same services.


8 things to do in the D.C. area the weekend of June 2-4

A visitor takes in a Rothko at the Phillips Collection. The museum, which normally charges admission, is one of five that will open its doors for free Saturday and Sunday. (Photo by Matt McClain/The Washington Post) Friday, June 2 Savor at National Building Museum: Caleb Stine and the Revelations at Gypsy Sally’s: Capital Jazz Fest at Merriweather Post Pavilion: Josh Johnson at Big Hunt: Saturday, June 3 DKMC Walk Weekend at multiple area locations: Brewers after-party and brunch at ChurchKey: Imagination Bethesda at Woodmont Avenue and Elm Street, Bethesda: Sunday, June 4 Chance the Rapper at Jiffy Lube Live: Read more: A new chef freshens up the Ashby Inn, just in time for road-trip season


Space geeks: Astronomy Night on the National Mall is tomorrow — and it’s free

(Geoff Chester) On Friday evening, you’ll have the opportunity to see a few of our neighboring planets as well as the moon and the sun on through the lens of 20 expensive telescopes that you and I cannot afford. Fortunately, the D.C. area astronomers are willing to share, as they do every year at the annual Astronomy Night on the Mall. The event is free Friday from 6 to 11 p.m. All you have to do is show up on the northeast grounds of the Washington Monument. You’ll see a lot of telescopes with lines of people trailing behind them. Each ‘scope is usually trained on a specific space object — another planet, the moon, maybe a nearby comet. The event will offer space geeks “hands-on activities, demonstrations, hand-outs, posters, banners, and videos; a planetarium show with a portable blow-up dome, speakers from scientific and educational organization, and a chance to mingle with astronomers.” Check out our neighboring planets at Astronomy Night. (NASA) The event is organized and hosted by Hofstra University along with volunteers from all of the big science organizations — the National Science Foundation, the Carnegie Institution for Science, the International Dark Sky Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Northern Virginia Astronomy Club and the American Geophysical Union. Scientists from these groups will be on hand to offer demonstrations and discussion. This is the eighth annual Mall event that organizer Don Lubowich, astronomy outreach coordinator at Hofstra University, Hempstead, N.Y., has assembled. Rain location:


The month of May in restaurant openings and closings

Q by Peter Chang opened in Bethesda with such dishes as Seafood Pearls, made with minced fish, shrimp, scallop and sticky rice. (Dayna Smith for The Washington Post) May was a pretty big month for restaurant debuts around Washington. But the city also lost some veteran spots, too. Here's a look at the most noteworthy developments. Openings Anxo Cidery and Tasting Room: Bar Bao Bibibop Asian Grill: Capo Deli: Diet Starts Monday: Falafel Inc.: The Good Silver: Halal Guys: Hen Quarter: Jrink: Q by Peter Chang: Slipstream: Sugar Factory in Pentagon City. (Joy Asico) Sugar Factory: Taylor Gourmet: Teas’n You: Closings Upper Crust: Arlington Diner: Mourayo: Pedro Vinny's: Read more: 9 new brunches to try around Washington The month of April in restaurant openings and closings The month of March in restaurant openings and closings The month of February in restaurant openings and closings


She’s paralyzed. He has no arms. Together, they’re a sleek athletic team.

Double amputee Hector Picard and Kelly Gruson, who is quadriplegic, completed a 50-mile race in the Florida Keys Wednesday. (Julio Mendez) Hector Picard and Kerry Gruson were each in their mid-20s when devastating events permanently changed their lives. As a young reporter heading to Vietnam to cover the war in 1974, Gruson was interviewing a veteran Green Beret who had a flashback, mistook her for a Viet Cong and strangled her, leaving her quadriplegic and neurologically disabled. Two decades later, Picard, an electrician, received 13,000 volts of electricity from a substation transformer, leaving him burned over nearly half his body and requiring the amputation of his entire right arm and half of his left one. On Wednesday, the two combined forces to achieve something many non-injured people would find daunting: a 50-mile bicycle race through the Florida Keys, with Picard, on a specially fitted bike, pulling Gruson in a specially designed trailer. It was not their first joint athletic undertaking; in January, the two completed a half-marathon, with Picard pushing Gruson in a racing wheelchair. The pair hope to do a triathlon in the future. Working as a team helps both get through the grueling races. “When I’m pulling her, I think of us both as athletes,” Picard said. “When we finish it, we finish it together.” Picard, 51, who lives in Fort Lauderdale, first noticed Gruson, 69, who lives in Miami, after he started racing nine years ago. He kept seeing her at races, a diminutive woman with her head cocked to one side, participating in various events by being pushed or pulled along. “It just inspired me to see this lady who’s been through so much out there, whether it’s hot, cold, raining, or whatever, and she’s enjoying it — and that’s my approach to life,” he said Tuesday as they prepared for the ride. “We definitely are major head-turners, and for us to do something together will definitely turn a lot of heads.” Double amputee Hector Picard and Kelly Gruson (second from left), who is quadriplegic, at the finish line Wednesday, assisted by members of the Key West Triathlon Club. (Julio Mendez) That’s what they’re hoping for. Both are involved with organizations that help people overcome barriers. Picard is a founder of DontStopLiving.org, an organization that supports people facing physical or other obstacles, and Gruson is co-founder of Thumbs Up! International, a nonprofit organization that connects people


Scientists detect gravitational waves from black holes colliding 3 billion light-years from Earth

detection also offered hints about the ways black holes spin with respect to their orbits. Georgia Tech astrophysicist Laura Cadonati on Wednesday likened the spinning black holes to a pair of tornadoes that dance around each other. Black holes can spin counterclockwise and clockwise, like tornadoes, but can also tilt at angles tornadoes could never achieve. “We opened a new window into the universe,” Cadonati said. “Before our discoveries we didn't even know for sure that these black holes existed.” It is possible that one of the black holes had a misaligned spin, which is to say that it was not spinning in the same direction as its overall spiral orbit. “We have an indication that at least one of the two spins is not aligned with the orbital angular momentum,” said B.S. Sathyaprakash, a cosmologist at Pennsylvania State University, during Wednesday's conference. If the two black holes are not spinning in the same way, that hints at the way they met. Broadly speaking, there are two ways that binary black hole systems form: They began as an isolated pair of stars (think the dual Tatooine sunset in “Star Wars”) that collapsed, or the black holes collapsed independently in a dense star cluster. Cadonati said “this finding lightly favors the theory” of a cluster of stars. And once again, Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity held up. Einstein's theory indicates that gravitational waves do not disperse through a physical medium, unlike light through a prism. “Even for this new event, which is about two times farther away than our first two detections, we could not find any evidence that gravitational waves disperse as they travel in the fabric of space-time,” Alessandra Buonanno, a University of Maryland physics professor and LIGO collaborator, said in a statement. The LIGO team continues to increase the detectors' sensitivity. In Louisiana, workers recently entered the vacuum envelope, clad in sterile bunny suits, to patch up areas where light could scatter in the tubes, cutting down on noise at low frequencies. In Washington, the observatory beefed up its laser to reduce high-frequency noise. With every improvement in clarity, LIGO can push its reach deeper into space. The two teams will swap notes to improve their systems' range for the next run, scheduled to start in 2018. Italy's Virgo detector, too, is close to completion, which will join in LIGO's hunt for gravitational waves. It is possible,


The other climate change Trump doesn’t understand: How the energy business climate has shifted

letting that heat escape into space. This is the greenhouse effect. Those gases — carbon dioxide, mostly, but also methane and some other things — can be identified as a key driver of increased temperatures, as demonstrated in this nice interactive by Bloomberg. President Trump, despite that data from his own government and despite the arguments of his own scientists, rejects that conclusion. Or, really, it’s not clear what position he holds on the subject; he has held basically every possible position on the subject at some point over the past decade. His disinterest in addressing the projected risks of climate change, though, mean that he’s on the brink of potentially backing out of the most significant climate agreement in world history, a pact signed in December 2015 in Paris. Nearly every country in the world has agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions as part of the deal, excluding Syria and Nicaragua. The United States is poised to join those two nations. Why? Because of politics. The emergence of climate change as a well-known scientific issue dovetailed with the emergence of staunch partisanship in American politics. The fight to address climate change, meaning the fight to cut emissions from automobiles and electricity production, became a fight between left and right. And in 2017, that means it became a win-at-all-costs battle, regardless of merits. To make his case, Trump has resorted to arguments that make clear he doesn’t understand another significant change in another realm: the business climate of energy use and production. Over the past 10 years, there has been a significant change in how energy is produced in the United States. The use of wind and solar energy for this purpose has increased exponentially — but exponential growth in small industries is easy over the short term. The real shift has been toward the use of natural gas in electricity generation, a function of plummeting prices thanks to the boom in production that resulted from innovations in hydraulic fracturing (better known as fracking). Natural gas burns much cleaner than coal. We don’t just mean the sort of difference you might see in a gas grill versus a charcoal grill, though the production of coal ash is itself an environmental problem. When coal is burned, it releases particulate matter and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Natural gas releases less than half as much carbon dioxide and none of the particulates.


‘It’s going to be grim, but there will still be coral’: Scientists call for realism about reefs

disappear and be replaced by hardier varieties. Additionally, some corals might be forced to migrate to cooler and more hospitable parts of the ocean. Instead of actively working to prevent these changes from happening, some scientists are now suggesting that allowing this transition process to happen — or even helping it along — may be for the best. “For people that want to be nostalgic and turn time backwards and go to the way things used to be, that’s not gonna happen,” Jackson said. “There’s going to be extinctions, these newly forming reefs are going to be dominated by species that are in some way preadapted to these new conditions. So it’s going to be grim, but there will still be coral and there will still be coral reefs and we should be embracing that rather than just voicing despair.” Actively managing reefs can make a big difference. Because reefs will likely have to change to survive, some experts have suggested that it might even be a good idea to help this process along, perhaps by selectively breeding certain resilient species of coral and helping them to spread. The authors of the new paper note that “management and governance frameworks need to specifically embrace changes in the species composition of ecosystems or they will fail.” In general, the authors suggest that more active strategies for management and conservation are key to the survival of coral reefs. Up to now, efforts to protect and manage reefs have been largely passive, the authors write, “relying on an implicit assumption that if reefs are protected from human impacts, they will return to their original condition following a disturbance.” But as it becomes increasingly clear that the environment will continue to change, potentially in some ways that may not be reversible, a new attitude approach may be in order. In addition to allowing or helping reefs adapt to the changing climate, the authors recommend a more hands-on approach to the various other local disturbances that can put stress on corals — enacting more stringent fishing guidelines or pollution control efforts, for instance. While climate change is believed to be the biggest single factor in the degradation of reefs worldwide, there are numerous other issues that factor in from one location to the next. A better understanding and response to these local impacts may be critical to the survival of any individual reef. On that


Emerging Threats


Walmart is asking employees to deliver packages on their way home from work

company also partners with ride-sharing services like Uber, Lyft and Deliv to deliver groceries in Phoenix, Denver and Miami. “We think crowdsourcing is a mechanism of the future, and frankly, as you think about the move to driverless [vehicles], that could also make the cost of delivery lower,” Scott Price, chief administrative officer of Walmart International, said Thursday. “The inefficiency of delivery can destroy profitability.” Thursday’s announcement comes as Walmart doubles down on its online business, where sales grew 63 percent in the first quarter of this year. The company — long the country’s largest retailer — has taken aggressive steps in the past year, beginning with its $3.3 billion purchase of Jet.com to compete with Amazon.com, which accounts for about 33 percent of the country’s online sales. (Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, owns The Washington Post.) Walmart has also been rapidly expanding its grocery pickup program, in which shoppers retrieve online orders in the parking lots of a nearby store. More recently, the company has begun offering discounts on certain digital purchases if customers opt to pick them up in-store. In that model, Walmart uses its own trucking fleet to deliver packages to stores, tapping into an existing transportation network. Amazon.com is also making similar efforts to speed up delivery. The Seattle-based company in recent months has leased a fleet of 40 cargo jets, and has developed an Amazon-branded trucking fleet. It also created Amazon Flex, an on-demand network of drivers, similar to Uber or Lyft. Walmart employees, Jariwala said, have delivered hundreds of packages during the past month, fulfilling orders placed on Jet.com, which Walmart acquired last year, as well as Walmart’s own website. Walmart employees can sign up for up to 10 deliveries per day using a company app, Jariwala said. They can also set size and weight limits on packages. If there are not enough employees to deliver packages, carriers like UPS and FedEx would fill in. “This is completely an opt-in program,” he said. “This is not something associates are required to do. They are, first and foremost, always going to finish their shift.” Sarah Halzack contributed to this report. Read more: Walmart’s plan to pull in customers: Light-up shoes and bacon-shaped pool floats Walmart’s plan to get you in and out of stores faster A man is suing Hershey for ‘under-filling’ his box of Whoppers Meet Marriott’s longest-standing employee: A 79-year-old omelet-maker


Scientists are gearing up to take the longest-ever video of a solar eclipse

swaths of the electrical grid. A recent report by the National Academies of Sciences estimated that the cost of a severe CME could exceed $2 trillion. “The corona is a mysterious object. … We don’t have a good understanding of where the solar wind gets its energy from,” Penn said. “Understanding the fundamental processes of the wind will help us understand these coronal mass ejections better.” Despite its tremendous heat, the corona doesn’t burn as brightly as the main part of the sun, called the photosphere. Scientists can view this dim halo by blocking out the glare of the photosphere with an instrument called a coronagraph, but the technique is still inexact. Only the moon blocks the photosphere perfectly, revealing even the innermost part of the corona in brilliant detail. That’s what makes solar eclipses so thrilling to scientists. And this eclipse is more thrilling than most. Because it moves across thousands of miles of mostly inhabited landscapes, rather than hard-to-reach wilderness or open seas, it will be within sight of scientists for almost the duration of totality. “Most eclipses last only from maybe a couple of minutes to seven minutes at the most, and that’s actually not a lot of time to see the dynamics,” said C. Alex Young, a heliophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “But because it’s going over land for roughly an hour and a half, we can follow the eclipse. We can’t actually send a camera in real time, because the shadow is traveling way too fast. But we can line up lots of specialized cameras and telescopes along the path, and it’s almost like following the eclipse itself.” Penn arranged for volunteers at every Citizen CATE site to get an identical telescope equipped with an identical camera, and a computer loaded up with identical software. Several times in the next few months, they’ll practice synchronizing their observations to make sure they’re ready for the big event. As the shadow crosses the continent, first in Oregon, then Idaho, then southeast to South Carolina, scientists at each site will switch on their cameras to catch the brief minutes of totality. Their videos, each about 2 minutes long, will be stitched together into a 90-minute film that scientists can watch for insight into the inner corona. “It’s the ultimate deadline,” Penn said. “You have to be ready when totality starts, because you can’t stop the moon.”


5 common financial struggles faced by people over 60

(iStock) Life after 60 can revolve around retirement – but that’s not the only financial challenge that’s likely to come up. Many older consumers also have problems coping with debt payments, understanding their loans and recovering from financial scams, among other issues, according to a new report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The federal consumer watchdog analyzed the complaints it has received from people 62 and older since the bureau was created in 2011 to highlight some of the most common issues. Here’s what they found, along with some feedback from financial experts on what people can do if they face these situations. Many struggle with debt. Some seniors turned to credit cards after facing an unexpected financial shock, such as a large medical bill, the CFPB report found. Others may still be paying off their mortgages or student loans, says Stacy Canan, of the office for older Americans for the CFPB. If consumers think they may start to fall behind on payments, they should contact their lenders to see if their loans can be adjusted, Sullivan says. A credit counselor may also be able to help them come up with a budget, he adds. They face complications with reverse mortgages. Some have difficulty recovering from scams or identity theft. There’s confusion over banking products and fees. There are challenges managing finances after the death of a spouse. Clarification: This story has been updated with a clearer explanation of a reverse mortgage Read more: Labor Department will avoid further delay of retirement savings rule Your credit score is about to become more forgiving Re-housing a struggling graduate doesn’t have to mean coddling an adult


It took Jeff Sessions just one month to turn Obama-era drug policy on its head

use the drug. Trump signals possible trouble ahead for medical marijuana For several years now, the Justice Department has been prevented from aggressively targeting medical marijuana operations in states where they’re legal due to a provision, known as the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, included in omnibus spending bills. The amendment states that the Justice Department cannot use federal funds to interfere with the operation of medical marijuana programs in places where they’re legal. That provision was recently renewed through Sept. 30. But in signing the spending bill it was attached to, Trump added a twist: a signing statement indicating he would “treat this provision consistently with my constitutional responsibility to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Prior presidents have used such statements to ignore or undermine policies they disagreed with. If Trump were to do so on medical marijuana, it could set up an awkward showdown with one of his staunchest allies in Congress: Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), co-author of the amendment. For his part, Rohrabacher doesn’t think that will happen: “It would be a huge waste of his time and money, and why would he do that?” he told the Orange County Register last month. The DEA continues to wage war on marijuana, regardless of what the research says At a speech at the Cleveland Clinic last week, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s acting chief, Chuck Rosenberg, reiterated his belief that “marijuana is not medicine.” This flies in the face of decades of research into the effects of marijuana use, most recently outlined in a massive report by the National Academies of Sciences, Medicine and Engineering. Rosenberg said that any potential medical application of marijuana should be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. But such approval is nearly impossible to obtain because of the drug’s strict regulation under federal law, creating a Catch-22: Marijuana is tightly regulated because it has no accepted medical use, and it has no accepted medical use because it’s so tightly regulated. A rhetorical escalation In the past month, leading law enforcement figures have been deploying some of the apocalyptic anti-drug rhetoric that characterized much of federal drug policy in the ’80s and ’90s. Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein recently gave a chest-thumping speech before DEA employees, calling them “warriors of freedom” who were fighting an epidemic that is laying waste to society. Demand for illegal drugs is creating “a cycle of death and


The Daily 202: Lawmakers baffled that immigration getting short shrift in Washington

trip. "There are at least 230 of these veterans we know about who have been deported, who have served the United States, who put their lives on the line for their country and who now find themselves in a strange land, many of them have never known Mexico as their home at all,” Castro added. “Whether Congress has the political will to do anything is an open question.” Despite Flake and Castro’s pleas, Washington is consumed by the “TRussia” investigations Castro will be joined on the trip by Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-N.M.), chairman of the CHC, and Reps. Lou Correa (D-Calif.), Juan Vargas (D-Calif.), Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.), Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Vicente Gonzalez (D-Tex.). Overall, 10,644 noncitizens were serving in the U.S. military as of last January and another 11,524 noncitizens were in the Reserves, according to Castro’s office. Most of them hail from the Philippines, Mexico, Jamaica, South Korea and the Dominican Republic. It’s unclear how many noncitizens may have been deported to other countries. Members of the CHC are pushing for passage of several bills to help the veterans. Grijalva’s “Veterans Visa and Protection Act” would require the Department of Homeland Security to stop deporting noncitizen veterans and allow deported veterans who didn’t commit violent crimes to return and obtain a green card. Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), a former Marine, has introduced similar legislation. Vargas has proposed the “Naturalization at Training Sites Act” that would require that noncitizen enlisted service members or reservists be informed of naturalization options available to them when they begin basic training. The Defense Department also would be required to establish naturalization offices at training sites. Barragan, a first-term Mexican-Mexican Americanr, said she is especially concerned that some immigrants enlisting in the military wrongly presume they can automatically obtain citizenship. “I don’t want to say that they’re misguided, but I don’t think they’re clearly told they’ll have to go through the regular process and that they don’t have citizenship automatically,” Barragan said. No Republicans are joining Castro and Barragan on the trip, “but my understanding is that there is bipartisan interest in making sure that we are taking care of our veterans,” she added. “I can’t see a better place to start than on this issue here.” Welcome to the Daily 202, PowerPost's morning newsletter.Sign up to receive the newsletter. Wondering whether the Russia investigations are expected to affect the markets? Or about


Olympics reportedly to add 3-on-3 basketball to 2020 program

One official said the sport could appeal to the young and urban demographic. (Jessica Griffin/The Philadelphia Inquirer via Associated Press) Olympics organizers are eager to get the ball rolling, or rather bouncing, as they look toward the 2020 program in Tokyo. According to the Associated Press, the International Olympic Committee is all but certain it will add 3-on-3 basketball to its ever-changing list of events. “It would certainly be a perfect fit,” Patrick Baumann, the secretary general of world basketball’s governing body, told the news service Friday. Baumann points to the addition of skateboarding and sport climbing to the 2020 Olympics as key factors in ushering in the additional basketball competition, which he said appeals to a demographic Olympic organizers are openly courting — the young and urban. “The best urban team sport is 3-on-3 street basketball,” Baumann continued, pointing specifically to the popular competitions held on the Rucker Park street court in Harlem, N.Y. The International Olympic Committee hasn’t publicly commented on which events it plans to add to the 2020 program (or which events it might drop to keep the events list at no more than 310), but it has been vocal about wanting to appeal to younger audiences more. The 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires will even feature a break-dancing competition, which it dubbed as one of the program’s “urban sports with a significant youth appeal.” It’s unclear exactly who would compose the 3-on-3 teams. However, it’s likely the competition wouldn’t feature just NBA stars. Not only might they be busy in the traditional team competition, but the traditional game and the 3-on-3 version require different sets of skills. “It’s really a 10-minute sprint, no coach, so you need to take the right decisions,” Baumann told the AP about the 3-on-3 competition. This would mean an addition of about 96 male and female athletes to the 2020 Games that the IOC has ideally capped to include no more than 10,500 athletes, although the organization leaves some wiggle room if the host city objects. (More than 11,000 athletes competed in Rio de Janeiro, for example.) FIBA, world basketball’s governing body, is acutely aware of that loose limitation as it was the reason the 3-on-3 event was not approved ahead of the 2016 Olympics in Rio. Baumann said last year, however, that he’s not against negotiating on the numbers to make sure the event gets approval this time


News quiz: A high-profile scuffle, bold claims and denials

Welcome back. We wrapped up the president’s first foreign trip last week, but we’ll head back overseas for a few questions this week. We also will check in on the former first family. Before we get started, here are some stats from the last quiz. - Nearly everyone — 90 percent — knew that Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus said the cancellation of the elephant show last year contributed to its demise. - A little more than half of players knew that while President Trump was in Brussels, former president Barack Obama was in Berlin for a democracy-themed event. Ready to play? As always, if the quiz does not appear below, please click here.


At 94, Harriette Thompson becomes the oldest woman to run a half-marathon

cancer, said in an email. “They had to take some skin from my thigh and graft it into my leg where I had a big scar from radiation. … My training started several months ago, when I could start walking again. I did a couple 5Ks and [an] 8K. My son Brenny and I went for eight miles the other day. I’m scared I won’t be able to last 13 miles, but I’ll make a stab.” 94 y/o Harriette Thompson ahead of #RNRSD: "I'm just amazed people are making a big deal out of this." Full Q&A:… https://t.co/gL5FTFHucJ Thompson, a widow who was a concert pianist, finished the 2015 marathon, accompanied by her son, in 7 hours, 24 minutes, 36 seconds two years ago and became a media darling, drawing attention from networks such as the BBC, ABC, ESPN and CBS in her bright purple running gear and red lipstick. Because of her health issues, she had been unable to race from August 2015 until this March and, although she told NBC that “I never thought I would still be here,” her attitude is far more positive than that would seem to insinuate. “I always say, I feel fine unless you want the details,” she said in the email. “I know I have limitations now I didn’t have before. At age 94, I feel like I did when I was 16, but I can’t move as fast. Overall, I feel fine.” Thompson, who took up running when she was 76 and decided “I can walk a marathon,” is also motivated by the knowledge that her efforts have raised over $100,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. This year her effort has raised $15,000. According to the Association of Road Running Statisticians, she topped the age record set by Gladys Burrill, who was 93 when she ran a half-marathon in Hawaii in 2012. Burrill had held the marathon record until Thompson’s race. Harriette Thompson, 94, w/ a big ol' Harriette Thompson banner today in San Diego. She goes for a WR Sunday. ICYMI:… https://t.co/cNxOzSg0Sq She did not run either San Diego event last year because of treatment on her leg, and this year she planned for her two sons to join her, along with her granddaughter, Angela. She expected to mostly walk the route and admitted she was “disappointed” that she couldn’t try for the marathon in the face of health


Will VA chief be voice of reason on climate change and medical marijuana in Trump administration?

“may cause flare-ups.” On the marijuana front, the American Legion, the largest veterans’ organization, is pressuring the Trump administration to make cannabis available for medical research. An article posted by the Legion on Defense One, just days before Shulkin’s speech, carried the headline “What Wounded Veterans Need: Medical Marijuana.” “Many Afghanistan and Iraq veterans have contacted the American Legion to relay their personal stories about the efficacy of cannabis in significantly improving their quality of life by enabling sleep, decreasing the prevalence of night terrors, mitigating hyper-alertness, reducing chronic pain, and more,” wrote Joe Plenzler and Lou Celli, two Legion officials. It also could help fight opioid abuse, they added. They cited a finding by the congressionally mandated National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that there is “conclusive or substantial evidence that cannabis or cannabinoids are effective for the treatment of chronic pain,” chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, and multiple sclerosis spasms. Medical marijuana could help “post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and traumatic brain injury, or TBI, as the ‘signature’ wounds” of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the “leading causes of death and disability within the veteran community,” Plenzler and Celli said. In a letter sent Friday to Shulkin, Rep. J. Luis Correa (D-Calif.), a member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said retired service members have “brought to my attention that veterans are denied treatment at VA facilities if they test positive for medical marijuana in states where it is legal and they have a doctor’s prescription. These veterans are not asking the VA for medical marijuana but just for medical services.” VA’s response: “Veterans will not be denied care for all appropriate conditions including medical, behavioral and substance abuse conditions. Veterans who are participating in state medical marijuana programs can continue getting the treatment based on the medically approved protocols as prescribed by the approved physicians in the respective states. Veterans can concurrently get care at the VA.” It’s good that Correa’s information was wrong. That leaves, however, this defining inquiry from the American Legion on medical cannabis. “The only question is will this administration lead? Our veterans suffering from PTSD and TBI lives depend on it.” This is not a question Shulkin alone can answer. But for the benefit of veterans, it is one he can be a leading voice on within the Trump administration – if he chooses to. Read more: [ [ [


The hottest planet ever discovered has an atmosphere as warm as a star’s

Cruz professor who creates computer models to determine what's in an exoplanet atmosphere. Fortney, who was not directly involved with this paper, was asked to model KELT-9b's atmosphere. He declined. “I can’t possibly do that. The planet’s way, way too hot,” he said. A planet's atmosphere is typically made up of molecules, which are made up of atoms bound together. Molecular hydrogen gas is common on Jupiter, for instance, as are water vapor and other gases on Earth. KELT-9b's dayside is an exception. The heat breaks molecules into its constituent atoms. “Almost all the elements are in atoms, not in molecules,” Fortney said. “It's essentially too hot for molecules to exist.” Gaudi and his colleagues hypothesize that KELT-9b may even have a tail, like a comet, as the massive star blasts away at the planet; it could expose naked rock, leaving behind something like Mercury. Deming emphasized that this hypothesis was unproven. “We don't know enough” to suggest that radiation is stripping KELT-9b's atmosphere, he said. Every planet's days are numbered, but KELT-9b is particularly precarious. As the KELT-9 star runs out of hydrogen, it will swell and cool to three times its current size, Gaudi said. “It will actually eat the planet. And then what happens — who knows?” But, given the millions of years in the meantime, this will not be the last we hear about KELT-9b. When asked what about the KELT-9 system Gaudi is looking forward to studying, he said, “Everything.” Astronomers are lobbying to point other instruments, such as the Hubble telescope, at the planet, to see if, in fact, it has a comet-like tail. They will also attempt to discern more precisely what makes up KELT-9b's atmosphere. Most exoplanet hunters are drawn to smaller, cooler stars, because that's where possibly habitable worlds could exist. But this means that very large, very hot stars are neglected, Gaudi said. Around these stars, though, nature becomes truly bizarre. “It follows the trend of things getting weirder and weirder the more you look.” Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that KELT-9b does not rotate on its axis. It does, but relative to its star it does not appear to do so. Read more: Scientists discover 7 ‘Earthlike’ planets orbiting a nearby star For the first time, scientists explore the atmosphere of an Earth-sized exoplanet Here’s what you should know about the newfound TRAPPIST-1 solar system


Maine sends a beer box to Iceland. It takes up a lot of the cargo hold.

international beer exchange. In the merry spirit of beer drinkers everywhere and a shameless bid for publicity, the group of Maine brewers transformed a 40-foot refrigerated shipping container into a floating beer keg. Inside are dozens of brands of Maine craft beer and 78 taps that will allow people to draw a beer from the side of the container. The brewers say the container, which was previously used to deep-freeze fish, is now the largest “kegerator” ever built. Upon arrival in Iceland, the beer box will be able to serve thirsty Icelanders at the June 24 BjórFestival, a craft beer festival. When the party’s over in Reykjavik, Icelandic craft brewers will refill the container with their brew and send it back to Maine for Portland’s Summer Session Beer Festival on July 29. Some folks from Maine’s 90 or so breweries are stowaways on the nine-day voyage, eager to exchange brewing craft and beers with their Icelandic counterparts. David Carlson of Marshall Wharf Brewing Co. pours the first beers from the Maine Beer Box. When it arrives in Reykjavik, it will serve more than 1,000 global beer lovers at BjorFestival. (Benjamin Moore) Sean Sullivan, executive director of the Maine Brewers Guild, said in an interview Monday that the idea for the Maine Beer Box grew out of a trade conference sometime back, when he heard it was cheaper to ship a container to Europe than to truck one to the southeast United States. With the U.S. market more and more saturated with craft beer, so to speak, Maine’s brewers were eager to find new customers in Europe, Sullivan said. Plus, Maine brewers already trade back and forth across international lines, using such ingredients as malts from Germany and hops from New Zealand and Australia. Iceland also happens to be one of Portland’s biggest international trade partners, and so the giant Beer Box exchange was born. Alas, no one smashed a ceremonial bottle of champagne or beer or anything across the front of the giant beer box at Saturday’s launch. “I was thinking we should take a bottle of Geary’s and smash it on a corner of [the container] in the ship christening vein,” Sullivan said. Read more of Tripping: Crowded airplanes increase aggression. Rats told us that From road cowboys to robots: Truckers are wary about autonomous rigs A roadside text for texting and driving? An anguished father thinks it’s time


Kobe Bryant viciously reminds Jalen Rose of 81-point game in promo for TV show

Kobe Bryant, right, torments Toronto’s Jalen Rose, left, and Chris Both en route to 81 points in a Jan. 22, 2006, game. (Matt A. Brown/Associated Press) The Black Mamba has rarely been more venomous. Kobe Bryant recently provided Jalen Rose with a rather vicious reminder that the latter was on the wrong end of his 81-point game, but not to worry, it was all in the name of comedy. Specifically, a comedy series, “Jalen vs. Everybody,” that was reportedly passed on by ABC, but the pilot of which will be shown Tuesday on ESPN. The network teased that airing with a clip Monday showing an awkward interaction between the former NBA players, one of whom, Rose, is now an ESPN basketball analyst. In the clip, Rose appears to kick off the references to that legendary, January 2006 outing by asking Kobe about “that thing on Twitter” regarding Bryant’s statue, presumably the one the Lakers are planning to install outside Staples Center. The full episode will likely reveal the context for Rose’s comment, but many have joked, on Twitter and elsewhere, that the statue should show Bryant in the midst of dropping his 81 points on the hapless Raptors, of whom Rose was a member. The kicker comes when Bryant orders a martini — with an impossibly large number of olives. Take a look: Kobe Bryant | Jalen vs. Everybody | ESPN Man, that martini has no chance of being served as chilled as that “joke for him.” Per The Hollywood Reporter, “Jalen vs. Everybody” was “designed as a ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’-esque single-camera vehicle built around a fictional version of Rose,” and there is, indeed, a distinct Larry David vibe in that clip. It’s entirely possible that, if the airing of the pilot is a success, ESPN or ABC might green-light more episodes. The show was meant to follow Rose “as he juggles his career responsibilities with the challenges of being a single dad,” according to Deadline. Rose has said in the past that Bryant scored “a healthy 19″ directly on him during that 81-point explosion, adding, “I just remember realizing at one point in the game, ‘This may be something historic happening right now.’ ” History was certainly made, with Bryant scoring the second-most points ever in an NBA game. Only Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 in 1962 topped the performance. Since that 2006 game, Rose has endured his share of unpleasant


The Persian Gulf crisis over Qatar, explained

Want smart analysis of the most important news in your inbox every weekday along with other global reads, interesting ideas and opinions to know? Sign up for the Today's WorldView newsletter. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain said they would cut air, sea and land links with Qatar. The Arab states of the Persian Gulf are in the grip of an unprecedented regional crisis. Qatar, with just over 300,000 citizens, has played an outsize role on the world stage because of its great wealth of oil and natural gas. Global oil prices wobbled Monday as both sides dug in their heels. Already, as my colleagues reported, panic over a Saudi blockade of Qatar's only land border prompted spooked residents to clean out supermarket shelves in Doha. The move is a reflection of long-running frustrations with the Qataris, who the Saudis and Emiratis claim are supporting terrorist groups as well as being far too cordial with Iran, their regional archrival. A complicated and uncertain state of affairs is playing out, with far-reaching stakes — Qatar, after all, is home to a crucial forward base for the U.S. Central Command. Here's our attempt at a quick primer on what you need to know. What's behind the dispute? For years now, officials in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have been angry over what they perceive to be Qatar's rogue, activist foreign policy. Unlike neighboring Bahrain, for example, which largely toes the Saudi line, Qatar has diverged from other members in the Gulf Cooperation Council, a bloc of six Arab monarchies, and used its vast coffers to project its own influence far and wide. After the political upheavals of the Arab Spring, for instance, Qatar aligned itself with Islamist political parties such as Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, believing it right to back movements with genuine popular support. Much to the ire of its neighbors, Qatar's state-funded news network Al Jazeera also seemed to take up the cause of these groups, often championing democracy and dissent in a region ruled by secular autocrats or unaccountable royals. And Qatar was among the most active backers of Islamist fighters in rebellions in Syria and Libya. Now, Qatar's critics say it has failed to rein in its support for certain Islamist militant groups — including Hamas and the main al-Qaeda-linked organization in Syria. The Qataris were also accused of backing Yemen's Houthi rebels, a startling claim given


A climate chain reaction: Major Greenland melting could devastate crops in Africa

journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, uses a climate change model to investigate the influence of different amounts of ice loss from Greenland, corresponding to different amounts of global sea level rise, on the western Sahel’s climate system. Prior studies have suggested that this region may be particularly vulnerable to climatic changes produced by disruptions in the ocean. The idea is that large volumes of meltwater from Greenland have the potential to slow down a major system of ocean currents known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC. Experts have described it as a kind of giant conveyor belt, which carries warm water from the equator to the Arctic and cooler water back down south. This transport of heat influences atmospheric processes and helps regulate climate and weather throughout the Atlantic region. As glaciers in Greenland melt, scientists think that the influx of cold, fresh water could disturb this conveyor belt, causing it to slow down. The resulting disruption in the transfer of heat could cause changes in atmospheric patterns throughout the Atlantic and alter weather patterns around the world. In fact, previous modeling studies indicate that ancient periods of ice melt may have caused the West African climate to become drier. The researchers were interested in finding out whether this might happen again. To investigate, they assumed a business-as-usual emissions trajectory, which suggests high levels of future global warming and an unclear amount of sea level rise and Greenland melt. The authors modeled scenarios ranging from half a meter to three meters of sea level rise (1.6 to 9.8 feet), admitting that “the scenario with three meters of sea-level rise is largely above the estimations [predicted] by the glaciologists,” as lead study author Dimitri Defrance, with the Institute Pierre Simon Laplace in France, puts it. The three-meter possibility was included as an extreme scenario in the study — but climate scientists now think sea level rise of one or two meters through the end of the century is in the realm of possibility under a high-emissions scenario. The model suggested that an influx of freshwater from Greenland does, indeed, slow the AMOC, with greater amounts of sea level rise corresponding to greater effects on the current’s flow throughout the century. And this slowdown has major consequences for Western Africa. Under a meter or more of sea level rise, the result is an immediate and significant decrease


An airline tried to get a musician to check her 17th-century violin. A ‘wrestling match’ ensued.

Yennifer Correia. (Courtesy of Attorney Phil MacNaughton) For the small fraternity of people who make their living coaxing musical notes out of vulnerable pieces of wood and metal, few things are more terrifying than seeing an expensive, defenseless instrument disappear on that little conveyor belt at the airport. Horror stories abound. A musician checked his $45,000, 75-year-old cello, which airport workers promptly placed beneath somebody’s golf clubs, snapping its neck. A noted German soloist said airport workers roughed up his cello case. After his flight, he found his $20,000 bow broken in half. A Florida State University music student on a flight to Tallahassee found splinters of wood where her cello used to be. Those stories and many, many more have converged into an unwritten musicians’ rule: Never trust an airline with your instrument. So when a Houston-based gate agent at United Airlines told Yennifer Correia that she would have to check her 17th-century violin, which costs more than her car, the first words out of her mouth were: “What are my other options?” The situation soured from there, her attorney says, resulting in what is becoming another black eye for an airline industry that dragged a bleeding man off a flight this spring and allegedly booted a family from a flight over a birthday cake. United Airlines said a man wouldn’t give up his spot on a flight. According to witnesses, he was pulled screaming from his seat by security and back to the terminal at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. Correia, a classical violinist on her way to play in the summer season at the Missouri Symphony Orchestra, asked for an airport supervisor. But the supervisor said there were no other options. The violin had to be checked. Her attorney, Phil MacNaughton, recounted what happened from there. Correia told the supervisor, “I can’t not take my violin on board. I’ll pay the money. I’ll take another flight. Just tell me what I can do.” As the altercation intensified, Correia told the agents that she would appeal to their bosses and asked the supervisor for her name, MacNaughton said. The supervisor said she wanted Correia’s name and reached for the tag on her luggage. “Without provocation, the supervisor for the Chicago-based carrier then lunged for Ms. Correia’s case and, incredibly, tried to wrestle it away from the musician,” said a statement written by MacNaughton. “I start screaming, ‘Help, help, help,


Were 2016 vote counts in Michigan and Wisconsin hacked? We double-checked.

the original count. For example, if one candidate lost votes while the other gained votes, we label that situation “lost-gained.” Our analysis examines whether it matters which candidate had which outcome. For example, is the relationship between technologies and the frequency of “lost-gained” outcomes the same as the relationship between technologies and the frequency of which candidate lost or gained — i.e., “Trump-lost-Clinton-gained” or “Clinton-lost-Trump-gained”? In other words, did the recount by the machines systematically give either Trump or Clinton more or fewer votes than the original count did? If not, then the technologies treated the candidates similarly, and we can conclude technology did not affect the election outcome. If it did, then perhaps hacks helped one candidate more than the other. We also checked for a variety of possible hacks. For example, was voting equipment from one vendor hacked, or only voting machines in one municipality? The election was so close that even a slight nudge might have changed the result. The analysis gets technical because we need to account for features of localities where the technologies are located. As the figures show, different technologies are clustered in different parts of the states. In Wisconsin accessibility technologies are similarly dispersed. If you’re interested in technical details about the statistical tests, please do check our working paper. Voting technologies in Michigan by city and town, 2016.
Data: Michigan Department of State, 2016 Bienniel Precinct Report.
Table: Walter R. Mebane, Jr. Voting technologies in Wisconsin by municipality, 2016.
Data: Wisconsin Elections Commission, Voting equipment use by Wisconsin municipalities.
Table: Walter R. Mebane, Jr. Here’s what we found In brief, we find no evidence that the voting technology favored one candidate more than the other. Nor could we find any statistical differences correlated with accessibility technologies or with different voting technology vendors. The tests uncovered nothing suspicious. That supports a conclusion that voting machines themselves were not hacked. We did run into a problem with the Wisconsin votes: We cannot be sure which technology was used to produce the record of each vote. We often do not know which votes are cast by hand on paper and which votes are cast using Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) technology. That makes it impossible to trace each vote from when and how it was cast to how it was counted — and therefore those votes are impossible to analyze precisely. We


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‘A decision that broke me’: American track star had abortion just before Olympics

Sanya Richards-Ross shared her experience in her new memoir in hopes of helping others. (Patrick Smith/Getty Images) Five-time Olympic medalist Sanya Richards-Ross was two weeks out from attending her second Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008 when she learned what would wind up to be life-changing news. She was pregnant. Instead of a feeling of joy when she learned the news, however, Richards-Ross immediately began to worry. “Everything I ever wanted seemed to be within reach,” she writes in her new book “Chasing Grace” (via Essence). “The culmination of a lifetime of work was right before me. In that moment, it seemed like no choice at all.” And so the day before she was set to fly to China, the Jamaican-American sprinter opted for an abortion. She said she made the decision in conjunction with her now-husband, New York Giants player Aaron Ross, who was at training camp when the couple found out they were expecting. “Over the phone, we didn’t go into details,” the 32-year-old writes about the conversation she and Ross had at the time about the procedure. “As if not saying it would alleviate some of the guilt and the shame.” Richards-Ross was able to push the motion and most of the physical pain away as she captured a gold medal in the women’s 4×100-meter relay and a bronze in the 400-meter dash, but it partly caught up with her. In that latter race, Richards-Ross led for 300 meters before falling behind two runners in the final 100 meters. Chalking it up to her hamstring at the time, the physical pain paled in comparison to her mental anguish. “I made a decision that broke me, and one from which I would not immediately heal,” she writes in her book. “Abortion would now forever be a part of my life. A scarlet letter I never thought I’d wear.” "I literally don't know another female track athlete who hasn't had an abortion." @SanyaRichiRoss shares her story… https://t.co/463aMOsVVg While discussing her story Tuesday, Richards-Ross told Sports Illustrated Now that her story is not that unique among women’s track and field athletes, which is one of the reasons she decided to write about her experience. “The truth is it’s an issue that’s not really talked about, especially in sports,” she said. A lot of young women have experienced this, like, I literally don’t know another female track athlete who hasn’t had


‘I want to please my family’: Julia Hawkins started running at 100. Now she’s going for the gold

that sprinting at 101 puts a strain on her body, no matter how healthy she may be. “The 50 dash isn’t going to be hard or anything. But you can always fall or have a heart attack or a stroke or something,” she said, matter-of -factly. “I hope not, but you got to figure it could happen at 101. Anything could happen.” It’s that very reason that her son doesn’t worry too much about his mom pounding the pavement. “She loves it and she loves the attention,” said Warren Hawkins, “and if it something happens, God forbid, there are worse ways to go.” Hawkins said she has more important things to consider as she gets ready to race. “It’s crossed my mind a few times, what should I eat, what should I not eat,” she said, remembering that she was told to eat spaghetti before bike races. “I’m going to have people who will give me advice.” The National Senior Games began in 1987 as a venue for older competitive athletes. This year, more than 10,500 athletes over the age of 50 will compete in 800 events. Hawkins is the oldest female competitor this year at the games, though the honor of the oldest competitor goes to 103-year-old retired cattle rancher John Zilverberg, who will be bowling, throwing discus and running short sprints. There are 43 female competitors over the age of 90, according to games officials, and nine of those are over the age of 95. Centenarians in the United States have increased dramatically — 43.6 percent since 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Worldwide, it is projected that 3.7 million centenarians will live across the globe by 2050. “Everybody wants to know how they can live longer and live healthier,” said Dr. Katalin Roth, a geriatrics specialist in Washington and an associate professor at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. “It’s not only about how long people live, but how long they can be active.” Competitive sprinter Julia Hawkins, 101, wearing a flower in her garden (Photo by Sarah Netter) Exercise, staying active, being social and addressing hearing and vision loss are key components to staying healthy, Roth said, listing everything Julia Hawkins does naturally. “It’s very unusual I think for people to take up new activities as they get older,” Roth said, “and so I really have to say


Don’t believe what Putin is saying about ‘patriotic’ Russian hackers

government, he might be trying to maintain plausible deniability while also identifying a potential scapegoat (that he might eventually be willing to sacrifice on the geopolitical altar). Has Russia tried in the past to take advantage of how hard it is to attribute hacks specifically to states or private actors? Yes, absolutely. For years, there have been rumors about how Moscow has created a permissive environment for hackers to operate as long as they would refrain from hitting targets in Russia. The Kremlin’s sanctioning of such activity in turn provides the government with the ability to mobilize such private actors when needed. For example, the March 2017 U.S. indictment of three Russian and one Canadian hackers is one of the most detailed accounts of how such relationships (allegedly) work. According to the indictment, a Russian national, sought by the FBI as one of its Cyber Most Wanted, was working with two agents of the Russian FSB to hack Yahoo accounts while also being allowed to make personal profit on the side through credit card fraud, spam, and redirecting search traffic. In your forthcoming book, you talk about three relationships that states can have with purportedly independent hackers — delegation, orchestration and sanctioning. What are the differences between these kinds of relationships? The difference is essentially the degree of detachment between the state and the hackers. Delegation describes relationships where the state keeps the private actor on a very tight leash. Think of conventional private military and security contractors. There is a growing market of private cybersecurity contractors offering defensive and offensive tools and services with such ties to governments. Orchestration describes murkier relationships. The private actor is not under the state’s effective control but rather orchestrated by the latter and supported through funding, tools or information. Iran is a good case study for such proxy relationships, which are not unique to cyberspace and hackers but emulate states’ conventional interactions with nonstate actors. Finally, sanctioning is about what counterterrorist experts have called passive support; a situation where a state is not actively supporting a nonstate actor but knows of its existence and activities, yet does not take action against to stop them or is willing to cooperate to stop them. Which of these relationships best describes interactions between the Russian state and non-state employed Russian hackers? Sanctioning, or passive support, best describes the environment in Russia. The Russian government is turning


Don’t be fooled by the U.K. election: There’s nothing democratic about Brexit

British Prime Minister Theresa May delivers a speech in Slough, west of London, on Tuesday. (Gerry Penny/European Pressphoto Agency) Mai’a K. Davis Cross is the Edward W. Brooke professor of political science at Northeastern University. She is also a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and author of “The Politics of Crisis in Europe.” It may seem that the June 8 general election in the United Kingdom puts Britain’s exit from the European Union on solid democratic ground. In fact, however, this is only the latest stage in a deeply problematic saga that has been anything but democratic. Beyond the fact that former prime minister David Cameron promised a Brexit vote only as a desperate measure to stay in power in 2015, relying on a popular referendum as the sole determinant of the U.K.’s status in the E.U. was a bad course of action. Political scientists have long acknowledged that referendums are a poor gauge of voters’ actual preferences. Electorates are especially vulnerable to manipulation when complex issues are reduced into a simple yes or no question. Results often come down to which side has more money and persuasive marketing. This was certainly true in the case of the Brexit vote. The “Leave” side mischaracterized and even lied about the nature of the E.U. and the U.K.’s role in it. And we now know that the same company that used personal data to individualize propaganda and fake news in President Trump’s campaign — Cambridge Analytica — was paid to work for the “Leave” side. The undemocratic nature of the process goes even deeper. First, there is no legal precedent in the U.K. system for making major, constitutional decisions in this way. With no single, written constitution, British governance since the 17th century has been based firmly in the supremacy of Parliament. Although Parliament did authorize the 2015 European Union Referendum Act, nothing in either the act or U.K. law stipulated that the referendum would be binding. Despite this, the referendum was used to circumvent Parliament, and it took a lawsuit for the Supreme Court to finally grant members of Parliament the right to vote on invoking Article 50. But by then, it was more than seven months after the fact, and it had become politically impossible for Parliament to vote against the already questionable referendum results. Second, there was the simple 50 percent threshold. It is hard to


Watch: Brilliant fireball darts across sky over Washington Tuesday night

What appeared to be a meteor streaked through the D.C. region on the night of June 6. In the video above, a dashboard camera captures a fireball in the night sky over the Washington area. Twitter user @LillianHwang says the vehicle was traveling on the Washington Beltway (I-495) one mile from the I-395 exit, heading east toward Washington around 9:58 p.m. Shortly before 10 p.m. Tuesday, a fireball streaked across the skies in the Washington area. It was a dazzling spectacle for those lucky enough to see it live while, in jest, you might say it carried some symbolic meaning given Washington’s explosive political scene. “It was huge!” said Travis Loop, who witnessed it from Annandale. Tenna Lambeth who saw it from South Riding called it “amazing.” The super bright meteor was seen over the eastern sky from the vantage point of the District, and was zipping northward. “I was heading eastbound on the toll road between the Reston Parkway and Wiehle exits,” said Facebook reader Christy Henderson. “It came from the south and seemed to have a low entry angle from my vantage point. It broke into pieces and fizzled quickly — saw it for maybe 3 seconds.” Other eyewitnesses described it as “neon green” with a tail that “looked like fireworks sparkles.” Facebook reader Mandrake Sumners said it looked like a “satellite burning up.” The American Meteor Society, which tracks fireballs, encourages eyewitnesses to log a report describing what they saw on its website. More than two dozen reports had already been filed as of Wednesday morning. Fireballs visible from our planet dash across the sky every day; this is not an uncommon event and we have documented fireballs in the D.C. sky many times before. The American Meteor Society offers some helpful background information on the phenomenon: A fireball is a meteor that is larger than normal. Most meteors are only the size of tiny pebbles. A meteor the size of a softball can produce light equivalent to the full moon for a short instant. The reason for this is the extreme velocity at which these objects strike the atmosphere. Even the slowest meteors are still traveling at 10 miles per SECOND, which is much faster than a speeding bullet. Here are some additional eyewitness reports of the fireball we received via Twitter: @xTheDarkChemist @capitalweather Never seen anything like it - at one point in was almost


Red Sox announcer apologizes for saying Yankees’ Masahiro Tanaka should learn ‘baseball language’

made known to me that my answer on a radio interview … was disrespectful to Herrera and Latin players in general. I’m very sorry that this misrepresentation of my answer occurred and may have offended someone.” After Yankees pitching coach Larry Rothschild spoke with Tanaka in the fourth inning of Tuesday’s game, Remy said to play-by-play man Dave O’Brien, “I forgot with Tanaka they take out a translator. I don’t think that should be legal.” When asked by O’Brien about his objection to the interpreter, Remy, who played for the Red Sox and is a member of the team’s Hall of Fame, said, “Learn baseball language. It’s pretty simple. You break it down pretty easy between pitching coach and pitcher after a long period of time.” O’Brien replied, “I would say that probably they’re concerned about nuance being lost in some of these conversations.” Remy, a popular figure among Red Sox fans, began working the team’s broadcasts in 1988. When asked about his remarks after Tuesday’s game, the 64-year-old Boston-area native told the Associated Press, “I’ve got no comment on that. Really.” According to the Institute for Ethics and Diversity in Sport, MLB’s Opening Day rosters this year featured a record-high percentage of players, 29.8, born outside of the United States. They hailed from 19 countries and territories, and while Latino players increased from 28.5 percent in 2016 to 31.9 percent, Asian players increased from 1.7 percent to 1.9 percent. MLB has been allowing on-field interpreters since 2013, and as of last year, it has required teams to employ full-time Spanish interpreters. On Tuesday, Remy’s assumption that Tanaka and others should learn “baseball language” irked some observers. Welp, Jerry Remy just got full on racist about Tanaka on the NESN broadcast. O'Brien trying hard to save it. Gah. Mike Schmidt: I'm going to sound like somebody's racist uncle today. Jerry Remy: Hold my beer. https://t.co/DCPQb9IqWo Obviously this problem isn’t limited to white men, Mike Schmidt and Jerry Remy, but what in the world is “baseball language” ? ? ? Ugh. Come on, @Jerry_Remy, gotta be smarter than that. Tanaka reportedly speaks English well enough to carry on informal discussions with his Yankee teammates, but according to a 2016 Associated Press story, the team relies on his interpreter, Shingo Horie, “for detailed baseball conversations.” Rothschild told the AP that Horie helps with “the little nuances of the language.” (H/T Yahoo Sports)