Planet is entering ‘new climate regime’ with ‘extraordinary’ heat waves intensified by global warming, study says

of records, including the country’s highest temperature ever recorded in the month (103.1 degrees, or 39.5 Celsius). The oppressive conditions were blamed for five deaths and nearly 600 hospitalizations. While some scientists hesitate to attribute individual heat spells to climate change, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles, tweeted that his research suggests that we’ve “reached the point where a majority (perhaps a vast majority) of unprecedented extreme heat events globally have a detectable human influence.” Last summer, exceptional heat affected 22 percent of the populated and agricultural areas of the Northern Hemisphere between the months of May and July, the Earth’s Future study said. The contiguous United States witnessed its hottest May on record, California endured its hottest July and numerous European cities notched their highest temperatures ever recorded, while cities in Asia, the Middle East and Africa also established new heat milestones. It remains to be seen whether heat waves this summer become as pervasive and intense as last summer. That said, the Earth’s Future study concluded we’ve entered “a new climate regime,” featuring “extraordinary” heat waves on a scale and ferocity not seen before. The study’s modeling analysis, conducted by researchers in Switzerland and the United Kingdom, found heat events like last summer’s do “not occur in historical simulations” and “were unprecedented prior to 2010.” As the climate warms, the study projects that the area affected by heat waves like last summer’s will increase 16 percent for every 1.8 degrees (1 Celsius) of warming. “Heat waves will likely reach highly dangerous levels for ecosystems and societies over the coming decades,” the study said. Heat events like those last summer are predicted to occur two every three years for global warming of 2.7 degrees (1.5 Celsius) and every year for warming of 3.6 degrees (2 Celsius). So far, Earth has warmed by approximately 1.9 degrees (1.05 Celsius) since 1880. The goal of the Paris agreement on climate change is keep the global temperature rise to 3.6 degrees (2 Celsius) or less. Last week, a study in the journal Science Advances found that keeping warming to 2.7 degrees (1.5 Celsius), compared with 5.4 degrees (3 Celsius), could avoid between 110 and 2,720 heat-related deaths annually in 15 different U.S. cities. “A strong reduction in fossil fuel emissions is paramount to reduce the risks of unprecedented global-scale heat-wave impacts,” the Earth’s Future study concluded.


Europe is starting to tackle disinformation. The U.S. is lagging.

increased funding to identify and expose disinformation and established a “rapid alert system” to do so in real time. Google, Facebook, Twitter and Mozilla have signed onto an E.U. voluntary Code of Practice, which tries to set some standards for fighting disinformation. Even though implementation has been slow, these are steps in the right direction and offer a solid basis for further action. From these efforts, it’s clear that democracies might not be able to halt all disinformation, but they can limit it — and, hearteningly, they can do so within democratic norms. The answer isn’t censorship or making governments arbitrators of truth, but rather developing standards of Internet transparency and integrity, limiting space for impersonators, pushing social media companies to develop common standards and — though this is especially hard — addressing algorithmic bias that rewards the sensational and lurid. As democracies learned during the Cold War, we need not become them to fight them. Now for the bad news. The United States lags behind the E.U. in terms of strategic framing of the challenge and policy actions to deal with it. At a basic level, it remains unclear who in the U.S. government owns this problem. For example, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center has been tasked with countering state-sponsored disinformation, and it has begun to fund research and development of counter-disinformation tools while supporting civil society groups and independent media on the front lines of the threat in Europe. The GEC, however, has no mandate in the United States — that’s the purview of the Department of Homeland Security. DHS has focused on protecting election infrastructure, such as updating or replacing electronic voting machines, hardening security around voter-data storage and harmonizing information-sharing among local, state, and federal election authorities. That’s all good, but it doesn’t address disinformation. So who is taking steps to ensure disinformation within the United States does not skew results? For its part, Congress has proposed legislation that would increase ad transparency, govern data use and establish an interagency “fusion” cell to coordinate U.S. government responses. Again, these are all good ideas but, so far, none has passed. Congress’s primary response has been to hold high-profile public hearings with the social media platforms. This has raised public awareness on algorithmic bias, online advertising and private data use. But they have also revealed the lack of knowledge among policymakers on digital technologies, and haven’t resulted


D.C.-area forecast: Steamy and stormy at times to start the week. Then a quieter weather pattern by Friday.

* Flash Flood Watch TODAY’S DAILY DIGIT A somewhat subjective rating of the day’s weather, on a scale of 0 to 10. 4/10: EXPRESS FORECAST Today: Tonight: Tomorrow: View the FORECAST IN DETAIL A very warm, humid weather pattern has replaced the refreshing conditions late last week. This mugginess fuels storms firing up along a cold front near the region for the first few days this week, especially in the afternoon and evening hours. Some of these storms could be heavy with strong winds and possibly some flooding. The front should finally clear the region late Thursday, setting up a nice Friday and Saturday. Get our daily forecasts on your Amazon Alexa device. Today (Monday): Tonight: Follow us on Tomorrow (Tuesday): Tomorrow night: A LOOK AHEAD Showers and storms may be a bit less numerous Wednesday as we’re between disturbances, but even so, scattered activity could develop — especially in the late afternoon and evening. It remains warm and humid, with highs in the low to mid-80s. After a small chance of evening showers and storms, it remains mostly cloudy with lows near 70. Confidence: Medium We’ll have our fourth straight warm and humid day Thursday as highs target the upper 80s. An approaching cool front probably serves a focus for yet another wave of showers and storms, which may be heavy late in the afternoon and into the early evening. Overnight, some cooler, drier air will try to start filtering into the region as lows fall into the 60s. Confidence: Medium We should step back to a less humid pattern Friday and Saturday, potentially free of rain. Under partly sunny skies, highs should range from 80 to 85, with overnight lows mostly in the 60s. Confidence: Medium We probably start to turn more humid by Sunday with a returning chance of some late-day showers or storms. Confidence: Low-Medium


Prominent Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong released from jail

HONG KONG — Joshua Wong, a young activist who rose to prominence as the face of 2014 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, was released from jail Monday amid a revival of the movement he helped foster, and he immediately called for the territory’s leader to resign. Upon his release, Wong, 22, rushed to a park around government buildings, where a group of protesters remained after a massive march Sunday to call for Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam to resign. Organizers said almost 2 million people showed up, despite a compromise offered by Lam over a bill that would allow extraditions to mainland China — the latest sign that anger over Beijing’s tightening grip here will not be quelled. Wearing the same clothes he was dressed in when he was jailed two months ago, Wong rallied a relatively small group of protesters camped outside government buildings, including the office of the chief executive. “I missed those critical moments and missed those actions [over the past week],” Wong said in an interview, as protesters chanted just a few feet away. “I couldn’t join the fight with them because I was in prison, so I wanted to show my support and thank [them for their] commitment.” Demonstrators on Monday morning began clearing out from main city arteries that they had occupied overnight, having stayed into the late hours of the day after the huge crowds marching around the city had dispersed. Unlike last week, when police and protesters fought violent street battles, the demonstrators were calm and orderly and yielded the streets back to police after negotiations. The protesters took to the streets to demand that Lam step down and fully withdraw a bill that would allow extraditions to mainland China. Hong Kong, a former British colony, was handed back to China in 1997 under the promise that it could keep its own legal and immigration systems, as well as other key freedoms, for 50 years as a semiautonomous territory. Critics say the bill, if enacted, would mark an end of a key “firewall” that has separated Hong Kong’s highly regarded legal system from the mainland, and they see it as the most blatant indication of encroaching Beijing rule over their city. There were no reports of scuffles Sunday. Even at the height of the demonstration — when thousands had taken over Harcourt Road, a major Hong Kong thoroughfare around government buildings


Dogs may have evolved ‘puppy-dog eyes’ to tug at our hearts

present in all the dogs dissected except one — the Siberian husky, an ancient breed that is more closely related to wolves. Three of four wolves dissected had it, but it was thinner and probably weaker, the study said. The eyebrow finding raises the possibility that puppy-dog eyes aren’t something humans chose, but instead are a byproduct of domestication. A long-running study on silver fox domestication has demonstrated that when people select the tamest animals for breeding, certain physical traits result — floppy ears, curly tails, mottled coat colors. Just why remains unclear. This is called the domestication syndrome, and it’s possible dogs’ eyebrow raise is a part of it, Burrows said. “Domestic dogs were created by humans, and clearly we selected species that weren’t going to bite us or bite our kids,” Burrows said. “So this whole domestication syndrome has features that all link together.” Clive Wynne, a behavioral scientist who directs the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University, called the study “very interesting, original and thought-provoking.” But to be more convinced, he said, he would want to see results from a larger sample that included more dog breeds and wolf subspecies, as well as wolves and dogs with varying levels of experience with humans. “Although evolution (domestication) has obviously led to crucial changes between dogs and their wolfy ancestors, how an individual behaves in any moment is also due to its individual life experiences,” Wynne wrote in an email. “A study that describes behavior between dogs or wolves and people has to explain the kinds of life experiences the individuals being tested have undergone.” Burrows said she and her co-authors plan to continue the research, including by looking at other dog breeds, coyotes and domesticated foxes. The shape of a pug’s face is nothing like a collie’s, she noted. “That’s going to potentially dictate how the face can move,” she said. “So as we expand the study and really focus on what the musculature looks like … I’m really interested to see what kinds of differences we can drill down into.” Read more: A Soviet-era experiment to tame foxes may help reveal genes behind social behavior Scientists still don’t know how dogs became dogs — but they might be close to finding out The TSA is getting more floppy-eared sniffer dogs. You still can’t pet them. Puppies’ cuteness peaks right when they need humans most, study finds


Domino’s will start delivering pizzas via an autonomous robot this fall

For months now, the robotics company Nuro has been using electric, self-driving vehicles to deliver groceries to Kroger customers in Phoenix and Houston. Now the Silicon Valley start-up’s autonomous, unmanned vehicles — which resemble a giant pill bug on wheels and can reach 25 mph as they operate on major roadways alongside cars — have announced plans for a new mission: delivering Domino’s pizzas to customers. Nuro’s latest challenge will be limited to customers who place online orders in Houston, a sprawling metropolis crisscrossed by traffic-clogged highways. The company deployed its grocery delivery service in Houston in March. Nuro’s partnership with Domino’s initially will be limited to a single location and will begin in the fall. With a narrow frame about half the width and half the weight of a typical car, Nuro’s vehicles lack seats, steering wheels or room for human occupants. The company claims the narrow frame gives the vehicle more space to navigate around obstructions and a few more feet of safety buffer to avoid a collision if someone pulls out of a driveway suddenly or steps out from between parked cars. “We are always looking for new ways to innovate and evolve the delivery experience for our customers,” Kevin Vasconi, Domino’s executive vice president and chief information officer, said in a statement released by the company. “Nuro’s vehicles are specially designed to optimize the food delivery experience, which makes them a valuable partner in our autonomous vehicle journey." "The opportunity to bring our customers the choice of an unmanned delivery experience, and our operators an additional delivery solution during a busy store rush, is an important part of our autonomous vehicle testing,” the statement added. The human delivery driver may soon become a relic of the past as technology companies rush to automate food-delivery, which remains a modern-day gold mine of sorts. On college campuses around the country, food deliveries via robot are becoming an increasingly common sight. After a fleet of 25 delivery robots from the Bay Area start-up Starship Technologies descended on George Mason University’s campus in January, campus officials recorded a spike in breakfast orders. During the first day of deliveries at GMU, the machines were flooded by so many dinner orders that school officials had to pull the plug, shutting off orders so that robots weren’t operating late into the night, far behind schedule. Last week, Uber announced plans to begin testing


The Daily 202: A senator from Michigan will propose a National Institute of Manufacturing modeled on NIH

said she would suspend the effort. -- Hong Kong police say they plan to clear the streets of protesters today. -- Joshua Wong, one of the city’s pro-democracy icons, was released from prison after serving one month of a two-month sentence related to 2014 protests. -- Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei said his company’s revenue will be $30 billion below earlier forecasts over the next two years. -- Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said Trump could still meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit. -- As the Trump administration seeks a space force, Beijing is developing weapons to use in orbit. MORE ON THE NEW WORLD ORDER: -- Boris Johnson, the front-runner in the race for British prime minister, skipped the first televised debate. Onstage, he was represented by an empty lectern. -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a special ceremony to dedicate a new town in the Golan Heights named “Trump Heights.” The town, however, doesn’t yet exist. -- A blackout in South America left tens of millions without power. THE IMMIGRATION WARS: -- A new wave of migrants is reaching the southern border, and this time they’re coming from Central Africa. -- Constantin Mutu is the youngest child we know about who was separated from his family at the border. He was just 4 months old when he was taken from his parents. They wouldn’t see him again for another five months. “Constantin was still in diapers when he appeared in federal immigration court in Detroit, four months to the day after he had arrived in Michigan, on June 14, 2018. During the five-minute proceeding, he babbled on his foster mother’s lap as she sat on the defendant’s bench. His pro bono legal representative requested that he be returned to Romania as soon as possible at government expense. A lawyer for the Department of Homeland Security argued against the request, stating that as an ‘arriving alien,’ Constantin was not eligible for such help. The judge quickly ruled against her, questioning the idea ‘that the respondent should be responsible for making his own way back to Romania as an 8-month-old.’” -- A new Fox poll shows that half of American voters believe the Trump administration has gone too far on immigration enforcement. -- International students are being left stranded by visa delays and backlogged immigration services. SOCIAL MEDIA SPEED READ: Trump asked Mick Mulvaney, his acting


Potent pot, vulnerable teens trigger concerns in first states to legalize marijuana

DENVER — The first two states to legalize recreational marijuana are starting to grapple with teenagers’ growing use of highly potent pot, even as both boost the industry and reap huge tax windfalls from its sales. Though the legal purchase age is 21 in Colorado and Washington, parents, educators and physicians say youths are easily getting hold of edibles infused with tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive component that causes a high, and concentrates such as “shatter,” a brittle, honey-colored substance that is heated and then inhaled through a special device. Each poses serious risks to adolescents’ physical and mental health. “Underage kids have unbelievable access to nuclear-strength weed,” said Andrew Brandt, a Boulder, Colo., software executive whose son got hooked while in high school. With some marijuana products averaging 68 percent THC — exponentially greater than the pot baby boomers once smoked — calls to poison control centers and visits to emergency rooms have risen. In the Denver area, visits to Children’s Hospital Colorado facilities for treatment of cyclic vomiting, paranoia, psychosis and other acute cannabis-related symptoms jumped to 777 in 2015, from 161 in 2005. The increase was most notable in the years following legalization of medical sales in 2009 and retail use in 2014, according to a study in the Journal of Adolescent Health published in 2018. “Horrible things are happening to kids,” said psychiatrist Libby Stuyt, who treats teens in southwestern Colorado and has studied the health impacts of high-potency marijuana. “I see increased problems with psychosis, with addiction, with suicide, with depression and anxiety.” It is unclear whether all of this means years of generally stagnant pot use among children are coming to an end. Surveys finding little change with pot since 2014 “may not reliably reflect the impact of legalization on adolescent health,” the authors of that 2018 study concluded. Washington’s latest Healthy Youth Survey showed 20 percent of eighth-graders and nearly half of seniors “perceive little risk of regular marijuana use.” Many teens consider it less risky than alcohol or cigarettes. As more than a dozen states from Hawaii to New Hampshire consider legalizing marijuana, doctors warn of an urgent need for better education — not just of teens but of parents and lawmakers — about how the products being marketed can significantly affect young people’s brain development. The limited scientific research to date shows that earlier and more frequent use of high-THC cannabis


At the Forever Mozart mini-festival, beloved composer makes everyone look good

Mozart in the summer seems to be a very good idea for orchestras. Critics may grouse about programming over-familiar works during the regular season, but having a focused concentration on a beloved composer in the guise of a festival makes sense — something sparkling, refreshing, familiar yet bracing. As proof of concept, the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York has been going strong for more than five decades now. This summer, to finish up its season, the National Symphony Orchestra is offering a not-quite-two-week, three-program mini-festival devoted entirely to Mozart, which began on Friday and runs through June 22, spotlighting some of the orchestra’s most beloved principals, in the hands of conductor Nathalie Stutzmann. Stutzmann belongs to a category of artist seldom seen on the conductor’s podium: She is a singer. For all of the violinists and pianists and brass players who have become conductors — pop quiz: name two in each category — it’s hard to think of many singers who have successfully established themselves at the heads of major orchestras. (Another pop quiz: prove me wrong on that.) Stutzmann seems to be making it fly, with prestigious guest appearances at a range of starry ensembles. I confess that when she last appeared with the NSO, I didn’t love her work unequivocally, but musicians and listeners alike were much more impressed than I was, responding to her personal collaborative flair, and the NSO had no problem putting her in charge of all three concerts of this year-end treat. Her light touch and empathetic approach worked well for this Mozart; she seemed more authoritative than she did to me in 2017, and at the same time was able to animate the orchestra with a glance, a whispered phrase, a gesture, keeping a sense that there was a dialogue going on between podium and instruments, rather than an austere will being imposed from one to the other. All three of the programs feature an overture, a symphony and a concerto — two concertos on the first program on Friday and Saturday, with three NSO principals. In practice, the performance was a reminder of how unfamiliar some familiar works can become; the sinfonia concertante for violin and viola was long something of a parade piece for Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman, who last did it here in 2008, but I haven’t often heard it otherwise; and according to the program the NSO


D.C. wrestles with symbol of past as drug kingpin seeks early release from prison

— between Gallaudet University and H Street NE — was nearly 95 percent African American, according to the census. Many residents were poor and working class and living in ramshackle rowhouses. By 2017, the same neighborhood was 66 percent white and 24 percent black, according to census estimates. Nearly 60 percent of the households earn more than $100,000. The two-story rowhouse where Edmond’s grandmother lived on M Street NE — and where he maintained his headquarters — is owned by a couple who paid $720,000 in 2017, according to property records. He’s an engineer; she’s a nurse. They have a toddler. A block away, a Trader Joe’s recently opened, along with a restaurant serving $190 steaks. Union Market, once frequented by blue-collar patrons, is now a Taj Mahal for foodies. “We like the changes in the neighborhood and hope it helps our property value,” the nurse, 31, who declined to be identified, said at her door last week. A couple of blocks over, on Orleans Place NE, Darin Milanesio, 27, an American University graduate student from California, said he knew nothing about Edmond when he and three housemates moved into a rowhouse a year ago. The place they rented for $4,800 a month was once a vacant stash house for Edmond’s gang. During a 1988 search, police found “100 $25 bags of cocaine in a plumbing pipe in the basement,” according to court records. Milanesio’s ignorance did not last long. “Every Uber driver who drops us off tells us about Rayful Edmond,” he said. “I enjoy hearing about it. It’s history.” Down the street, Adam Mausner, 38, a Pentagon policy adviser, said Orleans Place’s sordid lore is sometimes a topic of conversation among recent home buyers, as they linger on the sidewalk watching their children play. “I’ve heard there were dead bodies, literally on the street,” he said as he walked his golden doodle, Obi-Wan Kenobi. “It’s a whole new world today. The only thing they’re selling is Asian-Mexican fusion tacos around the corner and $15 avocado toast.” Mausner said he learns his Edmond history from Ali, who is a repository of details such as that Edmond’s dealers liked to stash drugs in the cracks of the massive ginkgo tree outside his house. The memories are so vivid that the idea of Edmond being free makes Ali anxious. “I never thought he would come out,” he said. Weighing in Since


Apollo 8: NASA’s first moonshot was a bold and terrifying improvisation

than sending astronauts directly from Earth to the moon’s surface, NASA’s engineers decided that the Apollo program should build a separate lunar lander, which greatly reduced the size of the rocket needed for the mission. This relatively lightweight vehicle would separate from the command module in lunar orbit and two astronauts would descend to the moon’s surface. They would then blast off and dock with the orbiting vehicle. Katherine Johnson, one of the NASA human “computers” made famous decades later by the movie “Hidden Figures,” said her greatest contribution to the space program was her calculations for the Apollo program, according to NASA. By early 1967, the United States appeared to be winning the race to the moon. Then came disaster. During a test of the command module on a launchpad at Cape Kennedy, during which the cabin was filled with pure oxygen, a fire broke out and killed the three Apollo 1 astronauts — Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Ed White. The tragedy threatened to ruin any chance of putting boots on the moon by the decade’s end. By late summer 1968, NASA was desperate to get back on schedule. The refashioned NASA schedule called for Apollo 7 to be an Earth-orbital flight that would test the re-engineered Apollo command module. Apollo 8, the first crewed flight of the Saturn V rocket, would also stay in Earth orbit and test the lunar lander. But the lunar lander wasn’t ready to fly. Meanwhile, the Soviets were building a giant moon rocket, the N1. The CIA circulated a report in the spring of 1968 saying that the Soviets could potentially send a human being on a mission around the moon before the end of the year. (And in September 1968, a pressurized spacecraft named Zond 5 zoomed around the moon with turtles aboard, clearly a precursor to a human mission.) George Low, the manager of the Apollo spacecraft program office in Houston, knew that his Apollo schedule was a mess. So he tore it up. He decided Apollo 8 should be a moonshot. His logic was simple: We have the hardware to fly around the moon. We have the Saturn V rocket, the Apollo command module and the service module. The one missing piece is the lunar lander, and we don’t need that for a mission that doesn’t try to land. On Aug. 7, Low presented the idea to Chris


launch, all eyes were focused on the towering Saturn V. Apollo 8 would be only the third launch of the giant rocket. The first test launch, with no crew, had gone beautifully (Cronkite had roared with glee about the “terrific” launch as the entire observation building shook). But the second launch, also without a crew, had suffered multiple technical failures. The engineers thought they had fixed the problems for Apollo 8. Now NASA was going to put human beings on top of this rocket that stood 363 feet tall and that had had one successful launch and one not-so-good launch. Apollo 8 lifted off beautifully. Aerospace engineer James Oberg was watching from the beach nearby. “No TV screen or movie screen can show how bright the flame is. It’s like a piece of the sun,” he recalled in an interview. The astronauts were soon in orbit, and just 2½ hours later, Michael Collins, the astronaut in Mission Control assigned to speak with his colleagues in space, said, “Apollo 8, you are go for T.L.I.” That meant Trans Lunar Injection. (These people were not poets.) The third stage of the Saturn V ignited, and they were off for the moon. Frank Borman got sick en route with vomiting and diarrhea. Bill Anders meticulously described how a floating bolus of vomit split apart in zero gravity and confirmed Newtonian physics. Jim Lovell peered into the eyepieces of the Apollo Guidance and Navigation System, which featured a telescope and a sextant, and navigated by the stars, the moon and the sun, as if a sailor on the high seas. NASA’s Deep Space Network tracked the spacecraft with giant radio antennas, and computers in Houston handled calculations. “How sure are you we’re going to miss the moon?” one of the top NASA officials demanded of engineer John Mayer in Houston as Apollo 8 cruised toward its destination. “I’m real sure,” he said, laughing, though he had an uneasy afterthought: Why aren’t they more worried about a miscalculation at reentry that burns up the spacecraft? The crew sent back images of Earth, and Earthlings were mesmerized. On CBS, the baritone commentator Eric Sevareid said, “Three creatures of frail flesh and blood are floating through the blackness of space in the neighborhood of the moon. It is staggering and we do not know what it means.” The spacecraft reached the moon after nearly three days of


Give the millions of Hong Kong protesters a Nobel Peace Prize

foreign reporter. Moved by the city of my birth, I took to Twitter and called on the Norwegian Nobel Committee to consider giving the collective people of Hong Kong the Nobel Peace Prize. It was a momentary thought, one meant to convey my feeling of pride and exhilaration. But the enthusiastic response on social media, together with traction in the territory’s local media, should encourage more serious thinking about this possibility. The committee would have to consider China’s ire. Beijing put diplomatic relations with Norway on ice for six years after the 2010 prize was given to now-deceased Chinese writer and rights activist, Liu Xiaobo. In a classically petty move, China even slowed Norwegian salmon imports in retaliation. At the time, Chinese officials also pointed out that Liu did not meet the stated requirement of the prize to promote, in Alfred Nobel’s own words, “fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses.” By those guidelines, Hongkongers would not meet the criteria either. But the Nobel committee has veered off Alfred Nobel’s instructions over the years for a more expansive interpretation of peace promotion, and former committee members have regarded Mohandas Gandhi as the Nobel’s greatest omission. The world’s most well-known proponent of nonviolent resistance, Gandhi would have recognized his legacy as practiced by the people of Hong Kong today. In 2000, I covered one of the earliest demonstrations. Like many, I considered Hong Kong a politically apathetic city. It was just three years after the British handover of Hong Kong to Chinese control, and I found myself stunned, staring at a crowd chanting, “We don’t want a Beijing puppet!” — referring to the chief executive of the territory at the time, Tung Chee-hwa. Only a few thousand protesters turned up. I could not have imagined that over the course of some 20 years, the discontented masses would turn into millions. Part of what explains the large-scale orderliness we’ve seen the past few days has to do with experience. Hongkongers have, unfortunately, felt the need to protest every year since the handover. In 2003, some 700,000 citizens took to the streets against another proposed law, Article 23. In 2014, the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement occupied the heart of the city for 79 days. Each time people turn out, it trains more of them on the best practices of protest. It also becomes


The Cybersecurity 202: China is poised to lead in 5G. That’s partly Washington’s fault, Sen. Warner says.

THE KEY The U.S. government has been too slow to respond to China’s technological rise and aggression in cyberspace — and it could pay a big price. That’s according to Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who blasted congressional dysfunction and mismanagement by both the Trump and Obama administrations for a complacency that allowed Chinese companies to get ahead in next-generation 5G wireless networks. The risks are big: Intelligence officials fret Beijing could use that position to spy on Americans or sabotage U.S. companies. And if things don’t change, China could also control artificial intelligence, quantum computing and a host of emerging technologies that are vital to U.S. cybersecurity, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee said. “China will not only lead, it will dominate,” Warner warned during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. To change this fate, Washington must take action, Warner said. He is calling for a slew of policy changes, including increasing government investing in cybersecurity and technology research and investing in digital protections that make U.S. innovations more difficult to steal. The executive branch must also throw its diplomatic weight into setting rules of the road in technology and cybersecurity that are a check on Chinese dominance, he said. And Warner has been urging the intelligence community to share more information about Chinese hacking threats with companies so they can better protect themselves, he said. “We are not doing our job if we don’t find ways to declassify more of this information and get it out to American business, American policymakers, American academia,” he said. But Warner also warned that those efforts could be derailed by partisan bickering that has made it difficult to pass major cybersecurity changes. “It didn’t start with Donald Trump, but it’s gotten even worse because Congress has become even more inefficient and the ability of this administration to build international coalitions has become greatly diminished,” he said. And Warner slammed Trump for suggesting last week he might walk back harsh restrictions aimed at reducing the role of the Chinese telecom Huawei in global 5G networks to gain an advantage in U.S.-China trade negotiations. That trial balloon came as U.S. officials were “finally starting to make some progress” after months trying to convince allies that Huawei-built 5G networks would create an unmanageable risk of Chinese government spying or sabotage, Warner said. “If that were to be traded away as a trading


The 25 best casual restaurants in the D.C. area

These spots offer delicious food from around the globe — and won’t break the bank, either.


[This story has been optimized for offline reading on our apps. For a richer experience, you can find the full version of this story here. An Internet connection is required.] More than six years ago, we launched a column to review some of the hundreds of mom-and-pop eateries that fly below the radar in Washington. As the years flew by, we occasionally wandered into places with more pedigree. But whether their restaurants were located in a strip mall or a downtown office building, these chefs and owners all had stories to share and, just as important, food to serve, often from the countries they used to call home. After all the miles and all the meals, we realized that it was time for a dedicated guide to the best of these places. But please, whatever you do, don’t call it a “cheap eats” guide. None of these restaurants deserve to be burdened with a label that could pigeonhole their business, and their food, for years to come. Restaurants, like you and I, deserve to grow and reach their potential. If the 25 restaurants, bars and taverns listed below have not yet realized their full potential, they’ve come awfully close. Note: Restaurants are not ranked; they are listed alphabetically. All-Purpose Pizzeria Navy Yard One bite into my Sicilian marinara — a cheeseless pizza topped with tomatoes, anchovies, garlic, capers and herbs — and I’m already smitten with the second location of All-Purpose, hard by the Anacostia River. Honestly, I’m surprised by my reaction, given it took me several visits to warm up to All-Purpose’s first pie spot in Shaw. But co-owner Mike Friedman isn’t shocked. Even though the recipes at both outlets are identical, he says the rounds at the Riverfront have a chewier, Neapolitan-type consistency, due in part to differences in deck ovens and dough handling. Whatever the reason, I’m convinced that chef de cuisine Vince Campaniello, a Jersey boy like Friedman, is producing some of the finest pizzas in Washington. Campaniello has also left well enough alone with the AP Caesar, a sharp, semi-pungent preparation that will restore your faith in this overworked salad. 79 Potomac Ave. SE 202-629-1894 allpurposedc.com Amoo's McLean Anyone who’s made Persian rice knows it’s a process, a painstaking, multistep process that results in saffron-tinted basmati grains that delight the eye and caress the palate. You could argue that one reason the rice is so


Low prices of some lifesaving drugs make them impossible to get

the muscle, the bladder often is removed. If it spreads to other organs, it can be deadly. Deborah Norris said her father, Cecil Northrup, 83, was diagnosed in 2010 with bladder cancer that returned in 2013 and again earlier this year. He got three years of BCG as “maintenance” treatment after the first time the cancer returned, but none after the second time. That makes the chance of another recurrence much higher, his doctor told him. Critical shortages of an array of therapies, including pediatric cancer drugs, painkillers, psychiatric medications, sodium bicarbonate and IV solutions, have occurred on and off for years. The number of new drug shortages rose to 186 last year, the highest number since 2012, said Erin Fox, senior pharmacy director of the University of Utah’s Drug Information Service. Ongoing shortages have exceeded 200 for the past several years. The Food and Drug Administration defines shortages differently, but said in a presentation last fall that shortages have become more prevalent in the past year and are lasting longer — sometimes more than eight years for a single drug. Hospital pharmacists often juggle supplies to keep treatments on track. But sometimes patients are harmed by shortages. During a cancer-drug shortage, young lymphoma patients who got a substitute treatment relapsed at higher rates and required more chemotherapy, which is linked to heart disease, infertility and malignancies later on, a 2012 study found. Shortages of “supportive care” drugs — for chemotherapy-induced nausea or to protect the kidneys — can delay cancer treatments, said Yoram Unguru, a pediatric oncologist at Children’s Hospital at Sinai in Baltimore. When he gets the hospital’s list of shortages, “I scream, I shout, I shake my head,” he said. Many of the most severe shortages affect generic, sterile medications that are injected or infused in hospitals or in outpatient clinics and doctors’ offices. Often, those drugs are complex and require special equipment to make. Hospitals push for the lowest possible prices because they receive lump sum payments by Medicare based on patients’ diagnoses, said Fox. In some cases, reimbursements should be increased, said former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb. “You want to have a reimbursement scheme with healthier [profit] margins” to encourage firms to stay in the market and invest in manufacturing, he said. While BCG is not a generic injectable — it is a live, weakened bacteria that spurs the immune system — it is vulnerable


Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam’s puzzling apology: Did Beijing blink? And, if so, why?

On Sunday, another massive protest in Hong Kong rallied against chief executive Carrie Lam, demanding her to withdraw a controversial extradition bill and step down. Neither of those demands were met on Tuesday, when Lam faced journalists. She said she would not resign, even though she offered a “very sincere apology” for causing “anxiety” over the proposed law to allow extraditions to mainland China. Lam said the bill is unlikely to go ahead in the near future, but it has not been fully withdrawn. “I have heard you loud and clear and have reflected deeply on all that has transpired,” she said. But what exactly did transpire over the last few weeks -- and what’s next for Hong Kong now? How much autonomy has Lam had in all of this? Lam has said the extradition bill was her idea, and not directed by Beijing. Authorities in Beijing, she said at a news conference Saturday announcing the suspension of the bill, have been “understanding” and “supportive,” but have not insisted on an outcome one way or another. Still, analysts say it is hard to really know. The position of the chief executive of Hong Kong is an almost impossible one. The job fundamentally reports to Beijing authorities, who pre-select a pool of candidates. And yet the chief executive has to serve the Hong Kong people. Often, the views of two are diametrically opposed. The last major Hong Kong protests, in 2014, sought to have voters pick Hong Kong’s leaders instead of Beijing. “Without Beijing’s backing she would not have pushed for the bill in this aggressive way,” said Ho-Fung Hung, a professor in Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University, who called Lam’s more recent remarks merely “face-saving" for Beijing. Did Beijing blink? Even though protesters did not appear to be satisfied with Lam’s concessions, the backtracking indicated a change in strategy. If Beijing initially supported or even initiated the bill, why did officials there later blink? Analysts said Tuesday that the backtracking by Lam and likely also by leaders in Beijing -- unusual for the increasingly assertive China -- may be due to a number of factors. First, Beijing and Lam may have miscalculated. Johns Hopkins professor Hung said that Beijing likely believed it had succeeded in dismantling the “most active core of Hong Kong civil society" in a crackdown following the so-called 2014 Umbrella Revolution. The scale of recent protests


Recent scorching temperatures in Kuwait and Pakistan confirmed as third and fourth hottest on Earth

Following years of tireless investigation, the World Meteorological Organization on Tuesday announced that two recent temperature readings have been accepted among the hottest recorded on Earth. One of the scorching marks came from the Middle East, the other from South Asia. It hit 129 degrees (53.9 Celsius, plus or minus 0.1 degrees uncertainty) in Mitribah, Kuwait, on July 21, 2016, and 128.7 degrees (53.7 Celsius, plus or minus 0.4 degrees uncertainty) in Turbat, Pakistan, on May 28, 2017. “The Mitribah, Kuwait temperature is now accepted by the WMO as the highest temperature ever recorded for the continental region of Asia,” the organization wrote in a statement. It continued, “The two observations are the third (tied within uncertainty limits) and fourth highest WMO-recognized temperature extremes.” These are the highest recognized temperatures in 76 years. Notably, the WMO list of highest global temperatures does not include a 129.2 degree temperature (54.0 Celsius) recorded in Furnace Creek at Death Valley, Calif., on June 30, 2013. But there is a reason. That location was even hotter in 1913 when it reportedly hit 134 degrees (56.7 Celsius). This temperature is recognized as the hottest recorded on Earth. But some experts question its validity. It was recently described as “essentially not possible from a meteorological perspective” in a detailed analysis. It is a similar story for the planet’s second-highest recognized temperature, which is 131 degrees (55.0 Celsius) from Kebili, Tunisia, set July 7, 1931, which also is Africa’s hottest temperature. This record has “serious credibility issues,” according to Christopher C. Burt, an expert on extreme weather data. We asked Randall Cerveny, chief rapporteur of the WMO committee for evaluating climate and weather extremes, why the Death Valley reading in 2013 is not officially considered among the hottest recorded temperatures. Even if you consider the 1913 Death Valley and 1931 Tunisia readings legitimate, the 2013 Death Valley reading should still rank third hottest. “The WMO does not verify a record through its extreme evaluation process unless it is a new global, hemispheric or continental extreme record,” Cerveny responded in an email. “ . . . the Death Valley 2013 temperature was not proposed to the WMO as an extreme at any of those categories,” given it was not as high as the 1913 record at that same location. Considering the questions that swirl around two hottest recorded temperatures (Death Valley in 1913 and Tunisia in 1931), the


What a way to manage forests

Regarding Dino Grandoni’s The Energy 202 column “U.S. government aims to streamline approval process for forest management” [PowerPost, June 14]: So an acting deputy chief of the Forest Service is citing fires because of climate change as a reason for reducing environmental reviews of tree-thinning projects and road building. What next? No doubt the Energy Department will tell us we need more fossil-fuel power plants because hotter temperatures will lead to more demand for air conditioning. Alan Miller


The Daily 202: Steve Bullock won’t be on the debate stage. But he’ll keep talking about his signature issue.

Wolf Blitzer shared a similar experience with the president: A 2020 Democrat quickly deleted a reference to one of his opponents: A Post contributing columnist noted this of the Hong Kong protests: The attorney general is overseas, per his spokeswoman: Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) explained, in a video, why she is supporting an impeachment investigation of the president. Porter narrowly defeated her Republican rival in last year’s midterms: A former aide to Hillary Clinton, noting Porter’s vulnerability, called on safer House Democrats to follow: An Atlantic correspondent compared Porter to another Californian: An MSNBC anchor remembered her mother’s role in broadcasting history: And plane passengers captured Mexico’s Popocatepetl spewing ashes: GOOD READS FROM ELSEWHERE: -- The Guardian, “Where does your plastic go? Global investigation reveals America's dirty secret,” by Erin McCormick, Bennett Murray, Carmela Fonbuena, Leonie Kijewski, Gökçe Saraçoğlu, Jamie Fullerton, Alastair Gee and Charlotte Simmonds: -- The New Yorker, “Is Sarah Huckabee Sanders the Future of the Republican Party?” by Paige Williams: DAYBOOK: Trump Pence NEWS YOU CAN USE IF YOU LIVE IN D.C.: -- Get ready for another round of storms and more humidity.The Capital Weather Gang forecasts: “Our week of mega-mugginess marches on with another warm and humid day today as we watch the potential for another round of strong to severe storms this afternoon into the evening. We must also tolerate higher humidity levels that make our air conditioners work even harder. Tomorrow and Thursday tell the same story before we finally break free for a nicer Friday and Saturday. Sunday may then revert more humid with a storm chance returning.” -- The Nationals' game against the Phillies was postponed, setting up a split doubleheader for Wednesday to make up for it. -- Jack Evans, the chairman of the Metro board, violated the panel’s ethics code multiple times, a law firm hired by the board found.  -- The D.C. Council will vote on a proposal to use about $47 million in excess cash generated by the Washington Convention and Sports Authority for priorities that include public housing repairs. -- D.C. is wrestling with a symbol of the past as notorious drug lord Rayful Edmond III seeks an early release from jail. -- The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra musicians are officially locked out — the orchestra will no longer pay them. VIDEOS OF THE DAY: Jon Stewart replied to Mitch McConnell’s claim that he was “bent out


An unintended consequence of more fencing at the border? It might make it harder to identify a new salamander species.

The chicken liver draws them in. Kline is an ecologist at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Brownsville, a city nestled against the southernmost border of Texas. The creatures in the traps are sirens: eel-like salamanders with big feathery gills, pairs of tiny forelimbs and slightly vacant expressions. Among the largest salamanders in the world, they can grow up to three feet and inhabit the bottom of ponds and blackwater swamps across the southeastern United States. Their behavior and ecology are poorly understood; sorting out the various species is a headache. Kline suspects that the sirens of the Texas borderland are an entirely new species. But proving that will take time, which the population might not have. Their habitat is under considerable ecological pressure: The taming of the wandering Rio Grande and its nourishing floods has left the seasonal marshes deeply parched. Outside the preserves, humans are pressing in. The Lower Rio Grande Valley is one of the fastest-growing areas in the nation, with an estimated population of 1 million. And then there is politics — specifically, the matter of the border fence. While President Trump’s attempts to force the construction of a border wall have often dominated headlines in recent months, Congress had, back in March 2018, already passed more than $600 million in funding for new fencing in the Rio Grande Valley. This will include a 150-foot “enforcement zone” — stretches of clear-cut ground — on the side facing Mexico, and will cut apart large swaths of Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park and the National Butterfly Center, whose seasonal resacas often hold sirens of their own. (Sabal Palm Sanctuary currently sits beside a line of border fencing, with a sign that assures people they’re still in the United States.) The fence’s fragmentation and barricading of vital pieces of habitat are disastrous for many creatures, Kline says, the siren among them. Unable to colonize and recolonize the resacas they once depended on, sirens are likely to face a grim future. “When the border fence went up there was habitat all along the Rio there, small ponds and things like that,” he says. “Those are now roads and fence. In Roma” — a town 120 miles away — “they’re talking about putting in a giant concrete embankment. ... A big barrier like that to water flow and pathways is not good. And I think it’s hard for people


Baltimore Symphony Orchestra musicians officially locked out

It’s official: It’s a lockout. On Sunday night, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra confirmed what it effectively announced on May 30: The musicians of the orchestra are locked out. On May 30, the orchestra announced that it would be canceling its summer season and ceasing to pay its musicians as of June 16. The musicians have been playing without a contract since September; still, the only way that the orchestra can legally stop paying them is to announce a lockout. The orchestra’s news release went out late Sunday night, only hours before the end of the last day the musicians were to draw pay, and only a short time after the players themselves had been informed, according to Peter Kjome, the orchestra’s president and CEO. Players and management are returning to the negotiating table Friday, in the presence of federal mediators, although the negotiations are not yet officially in mediation. Whatever the outcome, Kjome says that the lockout will end on Sept. 9, when the orchestra is scheduled to reconvene for the fall season. Musicians, however, are highly unlikely to resume work unless a contract agreement has been reached. “To be out for 12 weeks and then come back and take the 20 percent cut they wanted to give us in the first place, would you be willing to do that?” said Brian Prechtl, a percussionist and co-chair of the BSO’s orchestra committee. The lockout effectively achieves a goal that management announced it was seeking as early as October, when it proposed cutting the BSO’s season from 52 weeks to 40 weeks. On May 24, House Bill 1404, which included provisions for $3.2 million for the orchestra over two years, and which had passed both houses of Maryland’s state assembly, was not among the bills vetoed by Gov. Larry Hogan (R), and the orchestra breathed a sigh of relief. However, according to Kjome, the money was not immediately forthcoming; he could not get a letter of intent from the legislature to present to the bank for a short-term loan. The orchestra’s $60 million endowment, Kjome says, is already drawn to capacity, at a rate of 5.75 percent as well as a $5 million loan. “Our endowment trust,” he says, “views that further support without having significant changes to improve our business model is not fiduciarially responsible.” Kjome asserts that the orchestra has lost $16 million in the past decade, and blames


The Washington Post to serve as Primary Media Partner of the 2019 AFI DOCS Film Festival

The Washington Post today announced it will serve as a Primary Media Partner of AFI DOCS 2019, the American Film Institute’s annual documentary film festival, happening June 19-23. During the festival, The Washington Post Press Freedom Partnership, a public service initiative that aims to highlight organizations working to promote press freedom worldwide, will host a host a special presentation of films focused on journalism including “Mike Wallace is Here,” “Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins,” and The Post’s original mini-documentary “The Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi.” Screenings will be followed by panel discussions with filmmakers, Post journalists and leaders of Press Freedom Partnership organizations. Additionally, guests can attend other post-film screening discussions moderated by Post journalists throughout the festival. Screenings include: “Mike Wallace is Here” presented with The Post Press Freedom Partnership “Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins” presented with The Post Press Freedom Partnership “The Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi” presented with The Post Press Freedom Partnership “Ruth – Justice Ginsburg in her own words” “Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of my Voice” “Autonomy” “Who Killed Garrett Phillips?” For more information on The Washington Post Press Freedom Partnership, visit www.wapo.st/pressfreedom. To view a full list of film screenings at the 2019 AFI Docs Festival, visit https://www.afi.com/afidocs/.


Understanding the State Department’s updated travel advisories

an emergency. The bureau also includes details for people traveling internationally under various circumstances: those going on a cruise, leaving the country with pets, going to high-risk areas or embarking on a pilgrimage. There are also recommendations for people in specific groups — the LGBTQ community, travelers with disabilities — who could find themselves vulnerable on the road. Other countries issue their own advisories for international travel, but, Bradley said, it’s not necessary for a traveler to check several countries’ warnings. They should, however, be sure to pay attention to the advice of the country where they are a citizen. “Check the site of your citizenship because that is the one written specifically for you,” he says. “The risks won’t change, but the citizenship-specific advice could change, and that could be confusing.” The United States, for example, warns citizens not to travel to Iran — a country with which the U.S. government does not have diplomatic or consular relations — whereas Canada urges its citizens merely to use a high degree of caution. If all that sounds hard to follow, consider that the system actually got an overhaul last year that made it easier to decipher. Under the old version, low-risk countries didn’t have any kind of advice. Only those destinations with concerns were singled out with travel warnings or alerts — and the difference wasn’t necessarily obvious. “Frankly, I personally was tired of explaining the difference between a travel warning and a travel alert even to some of my colleagues,” Bernier-Toth said in a briefing about the new changes last year. She told The Washington Post recently that the new system treats countries consistently, uses plain language, puts the risk indicators front and center, and makes information on how to deal with threats much more clear. The department still puts out short-term alerts about security, weather or other issues, even if they don’t change an overall advisory. “We made the change because we found that the old system of travel warnings and travel alerts was not readily understood by people,” she says, “and we wanted to make our travel advisories — now that we have [one] for every country — clearer, more concise, more actionable and more accessible to people." Read more: Introducing By The Way, a new digital travel product from The Washington Post Airline group predicts another record for summer travel Follow By The Way on Instagram


How Saudi agents plotted to dismember Jamal Khashoggi and other chilling takeaways from a U.N. investigation

A special U.N. investigator released a new report Wednesday on her inquest into the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The 101-page report, compiled by special rapporteur Agnes Callamard, provides new details of Khashoggi’s murder inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October, and it calls for an investigation of the role of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Here are the key takeaways from the report: Audio recordings provide new details about Khashoggi’s killing Saudi agents discussed a plan to dismember Khashoggi’s body 13 minutes before Khashoggi entered the consulate on Oct. 2, according to the report. “Joints will be separated,” forensic expert Salah Tubaigy told Maher Mutreb, whom the report describes as a Saudi intelligence officer. The two discussed which type of bag to place the body in — leather, they suggested — and referred to Khashoggi as a “sacrificial animal.” These were among the new details revealed in Callamard’s report. Turkish authorities had previously determined that Khashoggi was strangled and dismembered inside the consulate. But Callamard’s report — based on a five-month investigation — provides the most complete picture of Khashoggi’s death to date. Turkish authorities allowed Callamard to listen to about 45 minutes of audio — out of seven hours’ worth — that they recorded in the consulate. Her report also reveals that Saudi agents initially told Khashoggi they planned to kidnap him to forcibly return him to Saudi Arabia. But shortly afterward, the report says, there were “sounds of a struggle.” Efforts by Saudi agents to cover up the killing The report also details the steps Saudi agents took to cover up Khashoggi’s killing. “The interception of Mr. Khashoggi was the result of a planned and elaborate mission involving extensive coordination and resources,” Callamard wrote. According to Turkish intelligence, the report says, a Saudi security team swept the Saudi Consulate for bugs on Sept. 27 — six days before Khashoggi’s death. Khashoggi first visited the consulate about obtaining a marriage license for his upcoming nuptials with Turkish fiancee Hatice Cengiz on Sept. 28, and officials told him he must return to the consulate on Oct. 2. Saudi officials relayed news to Riyadh of the journalist’s impending return to the consulate, according to the U.N. report, and a security attache said of Khashoggi, “It’s known that he is one of the people sought.” In a phone call later that day, Saudi Arabia’s consul general in Istanbul, Mohammed


The Technology 202: Big Tech’s legal shield is increasingly in jeopardy with this Republican bill

monthly users in the U.S., more than 300 million active monthly users worldwide or who have more than $500 million in global annual revenue. Companies of this size would have to prove to the FTC that they’re politically neutral, and they would only be granted legal immunity under a supermajority vote by the commissioners. The companies would be responsible for the costs of the audits, and they would be required to conduct such audits every two years. Some critics are wary that the bill could set the stage for the government to play an outsized role in policing speech online. Americans for Prosperity, the main political arm of the conservative Koch network, called lawmakers to reject Hawley’s proposal. “Senator Hawley’s misguided legislation sets the table for stricter government control over free expression online,” said Billy Easley, a policy analyst for Americans for Prosperity. “Eroding the crucial protections that exist under Section 230 creates a scenario where government has the ability to police your speech and determine what you can or cannot say online.” Hawley’s legislation comes as Democrats are also setting their sights on Section 230 — but for very different reasons. There’s a growing push for debate over whether the law should be changed to ensure the companies are taking greater responsibility for disinformation and other content on their sites. Earlier this week, Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) suggested it might be time to debate the future of Section 230 as the U.S. confronts new disinformation threats, like deepfakes, or videos manipulated with artificial intelligence to make it appear someone is doing something that never happened. “I think we should have a debate in this area,” Warner said at an event at the Council on Foreign Relations earlier this week. You are reading The Technology 202 , our guide to the intersection of technology and politics. BITS “With the announcement that it plans to create a cryptocurrency, Facebook is continuing its unchecked expansion and extending its reach into the lives of its users,” House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said in a Tuesday statement. She also called on Facebook executives to testify in front of her committee about the project. There’s bipartisan interest in calling a hearing. Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (N.C.), the committee’s top Republican, sent a letter yesterday asking Waters to host the hearing. Facebook is pushing into cryptocurrency after years of political headaches in


The Energy 202: This former EPA appointee wants to make climate change a winning issue for Trump

in Orlando. “We’ve ended the last administration’s cruel, and heartless war on American energy,” he told the crowd of supporters. “What they were doing to our energy should never be forgotten.” Gunasekara is hardly the first Trump figure to leverage her time in government into media appearances. But few have been talking specifically about energy and environmental policy. Now she and other Trump fans are gearing up to defend what is perhaps the EPA’s biggest new policy change yet: an overhaul of the Obama administration’s signature climate regulation for coal-fired power plants. Gunasekara’s former boss, EPA chief Andrew Wheeler, is expected to finalize on Wednesday a rule empowering states to establish their own emission standards for electric generation. The plan is projected to cut CO2 emissions roughly 34 percent below 2005 levels over the next decade-and-a-half, a pace that is likely slower than what the industry is already doing in the absence of any federal regulation. But Gunasekara already has her talking points ready: She cites data from the International Energy Agency that indicates the United States has seen some of the largest decreases in overall greenhouse gas emissions, driven in large part by cheaper natural gas replacing coal in power generation rather than regulations. The Obama administration, she said, “co-opted important agency missions as a means to expand the federal government.” Still, the United States is still reducing emissions too slowly to help stave off some of the worst effects of climate change as described in a recent landmark United Nations report. And Gunasekara is, unsurprisingly, also no fan for climate plans put forward by former vice president Joe Biden and other Democratic White House hopefuls, which she calls “different iterations of the Green New Deal.” “The Green New Deal is premised more on socialism than anything you would find historically within the governing approach of America,” she said. Gunasekara, who was also a former senior adviser to then-EPA chief Scott Pruitt and helped run the air and radiation office, was one of the architects of Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, under which nearly every nation agreed to voluntarily cut heat-trapping emissions. But she is perhaps best known for handing a snowball to another former boss, Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), to prove that climate change had not ended winters. At the time, in 2015, she was working as counsel on the Senate Environment


Here’s what we know about the four suspects charged with downing Flight MH17

that grew out of the Cold War-era KGB. Girkin also formerly fought with Serbian forces in Bosnia and Russian forces in Chechnya. Girkin commanded Russia-backed separatist forces during summer 2014 in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, where he functioned as the “so-called minister of defense,” according to investigators. In that role, Girkin implemented Stalin-era laws in the Ukrainian city of Slovyansk — and executed those who fell afoul of him. The U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on Girkin over his leadership in the separatist movement. A Russian social media page linked to Girkin’s forces posted a message — which was later deleted — bragging that they had shot down a Ukrainian military aircraft around the time MH17 was shot down, fueling speculation that the separatists had hit the Malaysian Airlines passenger plane by mistake. Families of 18 passengers aboard the MH17 sued Girkin for $900 million in a Chicago court, alleging that he masterminded the shooting down of the plane. Girkin, in keeping with previous denials that eastern Ukrainian separatists were involved in the incident, told a Russian news agency Wednesday that his forces “didn’t shoot the Boeing down.” Girkin is believed to be living in Moscow. Russia and Ukraine do not extradite their citizens to face charges abroad, so Girkin and the other three suspects will probably face trial in absentia. Sergey Dubinskiy, a.k.a. “Khmuriy,” and Oleg Pulatov, a.k.a. “Guirza” Dubinskiy, 56, works for the GRU, the Russian military intelligence service that has made headlines in recent years for allegedly interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, poisoning double agent Sergei Skripal and sowing disinformation in Ukraine. Dubinskiy was one of Girkin’s deputies and the head of the intelligence services in eastern Ukraine in July 2014, according to investigators. He apparently met Girkin while fighting in Chechnya in the mid-1990s. According to a background video Dutch prosecutors aired Wednesday, Dubinskiy was in “regular contact with officials in Russia.” Pulatov, 52, is a Russian national who served under Dubinskiy as deputy head of that intelligence service, according to the investigative team. He used to be a soldier with the Spetsnaz GRU, an elite military unit of the GRU. Investigators said they think Dubinskiy and Pulatov also reside in Russia. Leonid Kharchenko, a.k.a. “Krot” Kharchenko, 47, is the only Ukrainian among the four suspects charged with downing MH17. He commanded a combat unit in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine in July


Mines used in tanker attack look like those shown by Iranian military, explosives expert says

DUBAI — A Japanese tanker attacked last week near the Strait of Hormuz was targeted with mines resembling those previously displayed by the Iranian military, a U.S. Navy commander said Wednesday, adding to a string of remarks by U.S. officials blaming Iran for the assault. Cmdr. Sean Kido, a naval explosives expert, said debris and a magnet left behind on the ship bore “a striking resemblance” to limpet mines Iranian forces advertised , including Tehran’s elite Revolutionary Guard, news agencies reported. Iran has denied involvement in the twin attacks, which targeted a pair of commercial vessels in the Gulf of Oman and raised fears of a wider military conflagration in the Middle East. The two ships — including Japan’s Kokuka Courageous and a Norwegian-owned vessel, the Front Altair — are now docked at the Emirati port of Fujairah, close to a base for the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet. Iran’s defense minister said Wednesday that U.S. allegations of Iran’s culpability were “a lie” and an attempt to “tarnish Iran’s face,” the semiofficial Fars news agency reported. He said footage previously released by U.S. Central Command that appeared to show Iranian sailors removing an unexploded mine from the Japan-owned tanker has “not been authenticated.” Kido, who spoke to reporters near Fujairah, said authorities had recovered a handprint and fingerprints on the ship, which could “be used to build a criminal case to hold the individuals responsible accountable,” the Associated Press reported. He said the placement of the mines above the Japanese tanker’s water line, however, suggested the intent was not to sink the vessel. Kido did not discuss the attack on or any evidence gathered from the Front Altair. U.S. allies, including Japan and Germany, have urged the United States to provide further evidence that Iran was behind the attack and have called for both sides to exercise restraint. Iran this week announced plans to boost its stockpile of low-enriched uranium beyond limits set by a 2015 nuclear pact it struck with world powers, including the United States. President Trump’s decision last year to violate that deal and reimpose sanctions on Iran has crippled the Iranian economy and threatened the accord’s survival. Speaking at a security summit Wednesday in Russia, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, said that Iran will continue to gradually reduce its commitments under the deal, the Tasnim news agency reported. It is possible that


Trump administration rolls back key Obama climate rule that targeted coal plants

The Environmental Protection Agency’s new carbon reduction target requires less than half of what experts calculate is needed to avert catastrophic warming of the planet.This is a developing story. It will be updated.


Investigators in downing of jet over Ukraine charge 4 suspects with ties to Russian intelligence, pro-Moscow militia

MOSCOW — The Dutch-led investigation into the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in 2014 named its first suspects on Wednesday — among them three Russian nationals close to Moscow’s intelligence services. Investigators have long suspected a missile from Ukraine’s battle zones was responsible for bringing down the jetliner, killing all 298 passengers and crew on the flight from Amsterdam to Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur. But the charges against the four suspects bring a tighter focus on the alleged decision-making and suspected Russian involvement in the July 2014 disaster. Moscow denies any role. “We now have the information, the proof, that the Russian Federation is involved in this tragedy, in this crime, one way or the other,” said Dutch chief prosecutor Fred Westerbeke. The suspects are believed to be in Russia or separatist-held Ukraine, meaning they are out of the reach of Western law enforcement and unlikely to show up at a trial scheduled for March. But the announcement of the charges underscored the lingering tensions between Western Europe and Russia over the war in eastern Ukraine, which is in its sixth year and has claimed some 13,000 lives. “Their acts on and around July 2014 have led to the shooting of Flight MH17. Even though they have not pushed the button themselves, there is suspicion that they have closely cooperated” in obtaining and positioning the missile launcher that shot down the jet, Westerbeke said of the suspects to reporters in the Netherlands town of Nieuwegein. The suspects include Igor Girkin, also known as Igor Strelkov, a former colonel in Russia’s domestic intelligence service, FSB, who was a leader of Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine at the time the Boeing 777 was downed. Two others have links to Russia’s military intelligence unit, known as the GRU, which has taken a higher profile in suspected Russian operations in recent years. Western officials have tied the GRU to the nerve agent poisoning in Britain last year and the 2016 hacking of Democratic National Committee emails. One suspect, Sergey Dubinskiy, was an employee of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency. Another, Oleg Pulatov, was a former GRU special forces soldier, prosecutors said. The fourth, Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko, was described as having no official military background but having led a separatist combat unit in eastern Ukraine. The four men are charged with causing the crash of the passenger plane and killing the 298


Meet the New York couple donating millions to the anti-vax movement

Post Reports is the daily podcast from The Washington Post. Unparalleled reporting. Expert insight. Clear analysis. Everything you’ve come to expect from the newsroom of The Post. For your ears. Martine Powers is your host, asking the questions you didn’t know you wanted answered. Listen online. U.N. investigator calls for probing Saudi officials in Khashoggi killing Agnes Callamard, a human rights expert who is a special investigator for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, released a 101-page report on her months-long inquiry into Jamal Khashoggi’s killing at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. The report provides new, grisly details that Callamard gleaned from audio provided by Turkish authorities. The audio captured Saudi agents discussing the dismemberment of Khashoggi’s body before he arrived at the consulate, as well as his killing, the report said. Khashoggi was a contributing opinion columnist for The Washington Post. Callamard said Khashoggi’s death was an extrajudicial killing, possibly involving torture, for which the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is responsible -- violating norms but also international laws against human rights abuses. Carol Morello More on this topic: Two of the financiers of the anti-vaccine movement Hedge fund manager and philanthropist Bernard Selz and his wife, Lisa, have long donated to organizations focused on the arts, culture, education and the environment. But seven years ago, their private foundation embraced groups that question the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. Lena H. Sun More on this topic: Men who can’t change diapers, women who can’t park Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority announced it would enforce a ban on ads depicting “harmful” gender stereotypes. Post business reporter Rachel Siegel says while the move is well-intentioned, there are questions over how it will be applied. More on this topic: Get unlimited access to The Washington Post’s website and apps for less than $1 a week. Go to


Introducing Moonrise,The Washington Post’s podcast on the history of the space race

The Washington Post today announced the upcoming release of Moonrise, a narrative podcast miniseries investigating the real reasons why America decided to go to the moon during the Cold War. The podcast will launch July 2019 and will be hosted by Lillian Cunningham, host of The Post’s popular podcasts Presidential and Constitutional. “President Kennedy’s decision to go to the moon and the accomplishment of that lunar landing are iconic moments in American history, but as a culture we’ve been largely unaware of the wild origin story behind that decision,” said Cunningham. “This podcast will take listeners along on a twisting investigation into the Cold War nuclear arms race, closed-door meetings in the Oval Office and even the influence of science fiction writers on NASA.” Through 12 weekly episodes, full of vivid interviews and cinematic audio, Moonrise will unspool the complex web of motives that ultimately led to Apollo 11’s landing on the moon 50 years ago. Listen to the trailer on washingtonpost.com/moonrise or wherever you listen to podcasts. The Washington Post will also debut an innovative podcast experience when it offers an exclusive advance listen of Moonrise at the Adler Planetarium on Thursday, July 18. The first episode will premiere alongside a custom planetarium show inside the Adler’s 70-ft Grainger Sky Theater dome. A discussion moderated by Cunningham will follow the show. This event will take place as part of the Adler After Dark celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Get more details and purchase tickets here .


These gruesome new Khashoggi revelations reinforce the ugly bargain Trump has struck with Saudi Arabia

The Trump administration has made a calculated decision not to retaliate very much against Saudi Arabia for the assassination of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Citing the importance of its alliance with the Saudis and the economic benefit of selling arms to them, President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have also declined to judge Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman harshly — even though the CIA concluded he ordered the killing. A new report lays out in gruesome detail just what they are looking past. The report Here are a few key passages that drive home the nature of the bargain the Trump administration has struck: A previous visit to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Sept. 28 apparently left Khashoggi with a mistaken sense that he could return safely: Key parts are bolded: Just minutes before Khashoggi would arrive on Oct. 2, two Saudi agents — including a forensic doctor from the Saudi Ministry of Interior — discussed how they would dismember him: Once Khashoggi was in the consulate, an altercation quickly ensued, and Khashoggi apparently soon referenced “kidnapping” and then being given drugs. A Saudi person responds, “We will anesthetize you”: After a struggle, one man says, “Did he sleep?” — which the report and Turkish intelligence link to the possible injection of a sedative. Shortly after, the report references the sound of a saw — perhaps the bone saw the Saudis were reported to have brought with them: The next day, more burning: And then journalists were told the consulate’s cameras hadn’t recorded: The report emphasizes that its role is not to declare whether Mohammed is guilty of anything, but rather whether there is “credible evidence warranting further investigation.” It says there is and that the crown prince has condoned such actions previously: It also emphasizes that the Saudis’ “destruction of evidence could not have taken place without the Crown Prince’s awareness.” The report says such destruction of evidence was “in violation of the State obligations under international law.” Trump has declined to blame the crown prince. “Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!” Trump said in a bizarre statement. The statement came even after The Post reported the CIA had said the crown prince ordered the killing.


Could foreign aid help stop Central Americans from coming to the U.S.? Here’s what you need to know.

overall effort for placing too much emphasis on broader counternarcotics programs rather than these community-based projects. The link between violence and migration suggests that efforts to end local violence could also reduce immigration. U.S. government officials have pointed to evidence from El Salvador that is consistent with this possibility. Further, Northern Triangle countries cannot cope with challenges posed by globalization and climate change. Food insecurity in the region is high and forecast to increase. In Guatemala, 16 percent of the population faces chronic severe food insecurity and 22 percent lives with moderate insecurity; in El Salvador and Honduras, 20 percent and 23 percent of the population, respectively, lives with moderate or severe food insecurity. Funding the transition to new agricultural practices might help ameliorate these problems, and help reduce the pressure to leave. More than 40 percent of the population in Guatemala and Honduras live in rural areas; that’s true for 29 percent of El Salvador’s population. However, secure legal rights to land are lacking for many in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, particularly for vulnerable and indigenous groups. This can limit farmers’ ability or willingness to invest in the land. Of all the U.S. aid to Guatemala from 2015 to 2017, according to the OECD data set, only 16 percent went to agriculture; in Honduras, only 14 percent; and in El Salvador, less than 1 percent of U.S. aid was channeled to the agriculture sector. Foreign aid could facilitate investment in climate-resilient and high-value crops; improve farming techniques and irrigation; finance efforts to reform land rights; and connect rural areas with markets, including those for regional trade. Donors could finance efforts to ensure food availability in the meantime, reducing pressure to migrate. The problems driving migrants and asylum seekers from Central America are complex, and no aid program can eliminate them overnight. And in the long run, differences in economic opportunity will continue to provide incentives for migration that research suggests can benefit both sending and receiving countries. Research also demonstrates that foreign aid can reduce the drivers of forced migration, such as local violence and food insecurity. It further shows that previous aid flows have not always prioritized these areas. Targeting aid to local communities with high out-migration and tailoring projects to address area-specific drivers presents a possible pathway for improving the ability of foreign aid to decrease flows of migrants and asylum seekers from Central America. Sarah


BSO musicians try to keep summer schedule, without the orchestra

Fiddling while Rome burns: It’s used as an image of leaders ignoring serious problems for their own amusement. In the case of Baltimore Symphony Orchestra musicians, though, fiddling through a crisis represents an attempt to save their orchestra. Faced with a lockout that began June 17, weeks after management announced cancellation of the summer season, BSO musicians are trying to figure out how to pay mortgages, afford health insurance and make it through the summer. Some have already departed to substitute with other orchestras — Ivan Stefanovic, the associate principal second violin, left Monday morning for the Atlanta Symphony. But most are staying here and planning to perform at the annual Independence Day event July 3 — one of the events that the BSO announced it was canceling but which Baltimore County is going ahead with anyway. The orchestra members were going to pitch in free, but a grant from the Music Performance Trust Fund, an independent public service organization, and the Film Funds, will make it possible for them to be paid. The county is arranging the fireworks, food vendors, security and parking — using money that would otherwise have gone to the BSO. “We were in a position to use existing funding through a grant we provide the BSO,” said T.J. Smith, the press secretary for Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski. “Part of the grant is the Independence Day extravaganza. Considering that’s not happening, we were able to use the funding that already existed to put on a portion of it.” The concert will go off “essentially as planned,” Smith said, though “there are a few logistical things that will be different.” It will also be on a slightly smaller scale, with an audience of about 5,000. The Independence Day concert is usually a moneymaker for the orchestra, says Brian Prechtl, a percussionist and member of the orchestra committee. This year, for the first time, it will be free to the public, though it remains a ticketed event. The free tickets were all snapped up last week. The musicians are trying to maintain continuity in other ways. The popular Academy Week, which allows amateur musicians to play side by side with orchestra players, was among the canceled events, but players are trying to continue it in some modified form, emphasizing mainly chamber music, between July 12 and 21. What the musicians aren’t trying to replace are some of


Attention, Walmart executives: Amazon’s coming after your low-income shoppers

the firm released data on Prime members’ household income. “They are trying to pull the levers to boost that number,” Cowen analyst John Blackledge said. Amazon began offering discounted membership for $5.99 a month to its Prime frequent-shopper program last year to the roughly 20 percent of the U.S. population that is signed up for Medicaid. That’s in addition to the discount it already offered to people who obtain government assistance with cards typically used for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, often called food stamps. The company usually charges $12.99 a month for Prime memberships. Amazon — along with Walmart — is also part of a pilot program by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to allow SNAP participants to select and pay for groceries online. Amazon’s new card, called Amazon Credit Builder, is aimed at customers trying to establish or rebuild their credit. To obtain it, consumers need to deposit funds, and the amount they deposit becomes their credit limit. Cardholders who are members of Prime — which includes speedy shipping as well as video and music streaming — can earn 5 percent cash back on purchases. The card’s 28.2 percent interest rate is higher than the median for retail cards, 25 percent, according to Ted Rossman, an industry analyst for CreditCards.com. The online retailer has also added Amazon Cash, a reloadable prepaid card for customers who don’t have credit and want to shop on the site. Customers can reload their accounts at 7-Eleven and Coinstar machines, among thousands of other locations. Earlier this year, Amazon said it would begin accepting cash at its Amazon Go stores after mounting criticism that the cashier-less convenience stores discriminated against those without credit cards, bank accounts or smartphones. The cashier-less stores ask shoppers to pay using an app on their smartphones. As Amazon tries to grow its customer base, it faces increasing pressure from Walmart, which is in turn encroaching on the online retail giant’s turf by chasing upscale shoppers in more urban areas. Walmart acquired Jet.com for $3.3 billion in 2016 and subsequently bought up a number of higher-end niche brands, including ModCloth, and Bonobos. Walmart.com has become more upscale too, offering brands such as Brooks Brothers, Calvin Klein and Ray-Ban. Last year, Walmart introduced JetBlack, an invitation-only personal shopping service in New York that competes directly with Amazon by offering personal shopping services over text message. One year in, the company


Migrants say police in Mexico opened fire on their truck, killing a 19-year-old woman

MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities are investigating reports that police opened fire on a group of migrants from El Salvador last week, killing a 19-year-old woman and wounding two men. The confrontation in the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz on Friday comes as Mexico expands immigration enforcement at the behest of the United States, creating new checkpoints and deploying thousands of national guardsmen across the country. Human rights advocates have expressed concern that those actions could lead to violence against migrants. Reports of the shooting have circulated in local media for days. On Tuesday, the attorney general of Veracruz held a news conference to relate the accounts of the survivors. Attorney General Jorge Winckler Ortiz said 17 migrants bound for the United States were traveling in a white truck near a checkpoint in the town of Agua Dulce when they heard sirens. The driver of the truck, who officials said was likely a smuggler, sped up. A police patrol car gave chase and eventually reached the truck, according to the account shared by Winckler Ortiz. Then people wearing police uniforms “opened fire,” he said. On Wednesday, Mexico’s secretary of public security said his ministry’s own investigation indicated that the migrants sped through a checkpoint and shot at Mexican officials. “In this case, the first information indicates that not only did they not stop, but they fired and there were attacks against the personnel of the checkpoint,” Secretary Alfonso Durazo told reporters at a news conference. He said the investigation is ongoing, but “we would not be surprised if we ended up identifying elements of organized crime or those participating in human trafficking.” The accounts provided by Durazo and Winckler Ortiz were at odds. Durazo didn’t explain why police who fired in self-defense would have fled the scene after killing the migrant. And it would be unusual in Mexico for a truck full of migrants to attack security officials while passing a checkpoint. Winckler Ortiz referred to people “wearing police uniforms” and driving “a patrol car.” He did not say they were necessarily police, but other officials in Veracruz said there was no reason to doubt that they were. A municipal police unit arrived at the scene and found the 19-year-old dead in the passenger seat. Salvadoran authorities said the woman’s father and other close relatives were living in the United States. Winckler Ortiz said the assailants fled the scene and


Behnke’s closure is a reminder of the tight rope that many garden centers face

Still, it’s a tough business. The most obvious challenge is that the merchandise is alive and needs to look good to sell — that means employing enough knowledgeable people to nurture it seven days a week. The other market phenomenon is that most of the year’s takings occur in a 12-week period from mid-March to early June. Spring is the season most people shop for plants, for obvious practical reasons, but for emotional ones, too; nothing is more affirming after a long, dead winter than filling a pot with pansies or refreshing the herb garden. “The rest of the year, except for a week or two at Christmas or in the fall, we are basically losing money,” said Alfred Millard, Behnke’s president. (He started work at the nursery as a 13-year-old, 57 years ago.) But spring weather is unpredictable, and the rain-soaked weekends that seem to have become the norm can put a serious dent in sales. “If it rains on Mother’s Day,” Fleming said, “it’s awful.” Another dynamic that may not be obvious: Retail nurseries used to grow much of their own stock; at one point Behnke’s horticulturists were raising 200,000 perennials a year. But garden centers today source plants from a network of growers, some larger than others. Jonathan Pedersen, vice president of sales and business development for the nation’s largest wholesale grower, Monrovia, says his company supplies about 2,500 independent garden centers in North America. The number has shrunk by about 500 in recent years, but “the top 1,000 have gotten larger.” In addition to Monrovia, garden centers rely on a network of growers that also tend to be family-owned businesses, and though corporations have tried to consolidate the industry, “it hasn’t worked very well,” Pedersen said. “With seasonality, the weather, it’s very difficult for outside, very smart people to understand our industry. It’s complicated.” The company, based in Azusa, Calif., also supplies its annuals, perennials and, especially, its woody plants to Lowe’s stores and to a vast but little-known industry segment called re-wholesalers, which supply landscape contractors. I asked Pedersen whether he saw a rosy future for independent garden centers. “It’s a good future; rosy maybe too optimistic. They have to work hard. It isn’t easy,” he said. “I still see a good solid future for a strong individual able to offer a niche with product offerings and customer service. The business is there.” Behnke’s departure


This is what it looks like when galaxies are about to die

bodies glow bright enough to be beginning their death throes, Kirkpatrick said, but still contain cool clouds of dust, suggesting they have not yet lost the ability to birth new stars. They are right on the brink — hovering between the epoch of creation and the eon of waiting for death. “One of the biggest questions we have in astronomy is: How do galaxies die?” said Kirkpatrick, an assistant professor at the University of Kansas. “We know what they look like once they’re dead . . . but the rest of it is just pieces that we’ve guessed at.” Now, she continued, “we’ve found a population that we can study in detail and map out exactly how these galaxies move from their star formation phase of their life to their retirement phase." The discovery came during a survey of the brightest objects in the sky. Most such surveys examine X-rays produced by gas swooshing toward a black hole at close to the speed of light — exactly the kind of high-energy radiation you would associate with a monstrously massive quasar. But Kirkpatrick also looked at these objects using infrared light, which emanates from much cooler phenomena, farther from galaxies’ violent cores. “Infrared detections . . . suggest very, very cold dust. That’s not something you typically expect to see,” Kirkpatrick said. Her next step will be to attempt to measure the speed at which gas and dust are being blown out of the galaxy, which will let Kirkpatrick calculate how long galaxies spend in the “cold quasar” phase. She will continue to seek more of these objects, which offer a glimpse into a little-understood phase of galactic histories. “Astronomy is a unique science in that it’s passive,” she said. “We can’t watch any process in real time, so we are limited by snapshots of different galaxies we try to link together.” “The more we can fill in that picture with snapshots, the better we can tell this story,” she said. “And I think I found a new snapshot.” Correction: An initial version of this story improperly credited the illustration of a cold quasar. The image was created by Michelle Vigeant. Read more: Apollo rocks showed how the moon was made, and now they’re about to solve more mysteries Don’t panic: Scientists are practicing for a killer asteroid impact Listen to the eerie rumble of the first ‘Mars quake’ ever detected


Trump’s summit to build peace between Israelis and Palestinians is making things awkward for Arab allies

and is partially made-up of figures from Iranian-backed militias that helped Iraq fight the Islamic State. In Lebanon, Hezbollah — a Shiite political party and paramilitary organization supported by Iran — exerts significant influence over Lebanese politics. Beirut will play host to a rival conference to be held simultaneously as the Bahrain summit. Beyond its stance on Iran, regional experts say Saudi Arabia has additional reason to curry favor with the Trump administration: Trump has proved a reliable friend to the kingdom and its crown prince in the face of growing international condemnation of the monarchy after the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi, a Saudi critic of the monarchy who wrote columns for The Washington Post, was killed inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October by a Saudi hit team. International investigations and American intelligence assessments have concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman probably knew of the plan to murder Khashoggi. Portraying itself as a strong ally against Iran has helped Saudi Arabia withstand this firestorm and retain the Trump administration’s support, Miller said. Congress has moved to halt American arms sales to Saudi Arabia amid global outcry over Khashoggi’s death — and Trump has repeatedly sided with Saudi Arabia over Congress. In February, the White House refused to submit a report describing Mohammed role in Khashoggi’s killing to Congress. Saudi Arabia has insisted the crown prince, often known by his initials, MBS, did not order the killing. “When you ask me why those states are showing up here, it’s not because they think Jared Kushner has found the key to peace,” Miller said. “It’s largely, particularly in the Saudi case, driven by the debt that MBS owes, and continues to owe, to Trump for basically having his back in the case of his basically willing decision to eliminate Jamal Khashoggi.” Bahrain typically takes its cues from Saudi Arabia, Miller said. But Qatar, which is mired in a deep political and economic impasse with the Saudis, often donates money to the Palestinians. Miller speculated they may pledge funds at the summit next week. The calculus is a bit different for Jordan and Egypt, experts say. Both countries rely heavily on American aid; they each received more than $1 billion from the U.S. government in 2018. Jordan, which has seen sluggish economic growth in recent years, cannot jeopardize this much-needed cash boost, according to Fawaz Gerges, a