After a month of bad news, White House officials hype Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize nomination

Amid a flurry of bad news last week, President Trump got a brief reprieve Wednesday: a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on peace in the Middle East. White House officials were quick to laud it. “I don’t know if anyone else has a record similar, and so he should get the prize,” national security adviser Robert O’Brien said Wednesday. “This is a big deal and it’s well-deserved,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Wednesday. “You cannot deny what has happened on President Trump’s watch.” White House economic advisers Larry Kudlow and Peter Navarro even used the news to sidestep questions on other issues. “One of the things I’d like to do before we get started though, is I’d really like to congratulate President Trump on being nominated for the peace price, the Nobel Peace Prize,” Navarro said Sunday after briefly discussing the Trump administration’s coronavirus response. That White House officials touted the nomination is not surprising, especially given that much of Trump’s campaign rhetoric has failed to resonate with voters. But the context of the nomination is equally significant. Trump was nominated by the same far-right Norwegian politician who nominated him in 2018, and the Nobel Committee accepts all nominations from politicians serving at a national level. In years past, this has meant former presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson have been nominated for (and won) the prize, but has also led to peace prize nominations for Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. On Sunday, Trump referenced his nomination: “They nominated your president twice last week on two different subjects for a Nobel Prize, but the fake news media didn’t cover it,” Trump told rallygoers in Nevada. This was the same Trump who more than six years before asked the Nobel Committee to retract the peace prize awarded to his predecessor, Barack Obama.


All my takeout has delivered a mountain of trash. So I asked experts how to minimize it.

“Almost 80 percent of plastic ever produced is entombed in landfills, strewn across the world’s landscapes or drifting in the seas,” Bloomberg reported in March. The same story said that China, a major importer of used plastic until two years ago, stopping taking it, partly because much of it was contaminated. Consider this a call to ditch plastic utensils and use your own cutlery when you get takeout. Restaurants account for 78 percent of all disposable packaging, including an estimated 282 billion napkins, says David Henkes, senior principal at Technomic, a market research firm. “But once it leaves the restaurant, the operator has lost control of it.” About three-quarters of consumers say they’re concerned about the environmental impact of packaging, although the number dropped slightly during the pandemic, according to Technomic. “Health and safety trump everything” right now, Henkes says. During a recent visit to a fast-food establishment, he was bothered but not surprised when the cup, straw and lid for his order came in their own bag. To show they’re safe, “restaurants overcompensate.” Given that “takeout and off-premises business is here to stay,” for fast-food providers and Michelin-starred dining operations alike, he sees opportunity for restaurants to radically rethink their packaging. Sylvia Casares, the owner of Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen in Houston, switched from styrofoam to recyclable polypropylene containers this spring. The new packaging has separate compartments for the beans and rice and tight lids for clean transportation. Casares pays a dollar a carton — twice what she did before — but says the extra cost is worth it. “I want the experience to be as close to what it is in the restaurant,” the chef says. “Food that’s cooled off or has spilled doesn’t reflect that.” At home, she’s a collector of containers. “If you can get two or more uses, great,” she says. To that end, she has considered asking customers to return containers from her two restaurants for reuse. Darby Hoover is nodding her approval in San Francisco. “It’s a pipe dream of mine, to return containers” to restaurants from which she orders consistently, says the senior resource specialist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. She’s in a good place to see that happen. Upstream Solutions is already working with a company in the Bay Area, Dishcraft, to ramp up the sanitization and delivery of eco-friendly, reusable dishware. Regardless of where consumers live, there’s plenty we can


As floods, fires and temperatures worsen, these architects design homes to withstand climate change

be affected by global climate change. Which is to say, every city, town and homestead. “We’re not going to make it on climate change,” Duany says. “Sustainability is about mitigating and reducing emissions. Adaptation and resilience is about being ready for the changes that are being made.” This line of thinking is a startling, almost dystopian, evolution for two practitioners whose work typically operates in a sunnily utopian vein. (In addition to Seaside, their portfolio of planned communities includes the bucolic D.C. suburb of Kentlands.) But adaptation isn’t just a moral imperative for architects, the pair argue. It’s also simply where the business is heading. “In 2022, the next IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report comes out. And everyone knows it’s going to be disastrous,” Duany says. At that point, he predicts, there will be a shift in demand toward tougher, more climate adaptive architecture. (The IPCC has warned that even if humanity manages to cap emissions at 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels, the world will almost certainly see severe climate effects, including increased flooding, sea-level rise, heat waves, food insecurity and population displacement.) Plater-Zyberk is more academic when speaking on the subject of climate change adaptation. She spent 18 years as the dean of the University of Miami School of Architecture and now teaches a class there on climate resilience. But she shares her husband’s sense of urgency. She says that while her profession has begun to acknowledge the importance of adaptive architecture in theory — the American Institute of Architects endorsed the practice in 2018 — putting it into practice has been a muddled exercise. “About a year or so ago, when I started looking for the adaptation plans that municipalities and local governments were putting into place, I found that most of them were in fact about reducing emissions: You know, ‘Let’s make the government buy electrical vehicles!’ And so on. There was very little adaptation.” After two years spent studying climate change and drawing up plans for DPZ’s take on the “climate adaptive” town of the future, Duany — the salesman of the couple — started presenting the firm’s findings to potential clients, including city leaders in the eco-conscious states of California and Colorado. This first round of meetings was encouraging, Duany says. But government contracts aren’t his focus. “If I was in Sweden, we would work more with the


Covid-19 safety protocols for apartments and condos

on, turning on a faucet or opening a closet door as requested by the prospective tenant. Multiunit properties listed by an agent or an individual are offering the same viewing options. Everyone is required to wear face coverings in all circumstances in D.C., Maryland and Virginia. • Common-area cleaning in all types of multiunit properties is now done more frequently. There are cleaning and disinfecting protocols with a focus on high-touch surfaces. In common shared areas — such as gyms, conference rooms, roof decks, indoor and outdoor pools, and club rooms — furniture and equipment are spaced to allow six feet of social distancing. Fitness centers and pools have limits on capacity and the time an individual can be in the space. Hand sanitizer dispensers have been added to all shared spaces. Air filtration systems are being enhanced in some fitness centers and in leasing offices. Wellness checks are being done with all employees in rental properties daily. Enhanced safety protocols are in place when employees have to enter a resident’s unit. All apartments are being cleaned and disinfected before any new tenant moves in. • Some multiunit condos are requiring visitors to sign in at the front desk, to confirm they do not have covid-19 and have not been exposed to covid-19 in the past two weeks. They also must leave contact information. • Many multiunit condos have kept shared spaces, such as fitness centers, roof decks and community centers, closed. • Many multifamily properties have opted to have virtual happy hours, drink mixing classes and wine tastings instead of in-person functions. • Elevators are a bit tricky. This has brought on a new type of etiquette of letting another resident go up on the elevator by themselves and waiting for the next one. This does take more planning when coming or going or simply getting your mail, but that is the world today. • Some condos have left some hallway and common doors propped open to help residents reduce the amount of common surfaces they touch. Many of us have turned to disposable rubber gloves or using a towel to open the doors and press the elevator buttons to be extra cautious. Nancy Simmons Starrs is the founder and president of Read more: Avoid getting scammed by a fake apartment rental ad Planning a move during a pandemic How to save money when renting in an expensive city


End trading with China until it stops its ethnic cleansing of the Uighurs

Isaac Stone Fish rightly condemned Disney’s collaboration with China on its new production of “Mulan” [“Why Disney’s new ‘Mulan’ is a scandal,” op-ed, Sept. 8]. He pointed to Disney’s work in China’s “Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region,” which is also the location of Xi Jinping’s genocide against Indigenous East Turkistani peoples, mainly Uighurs. Indeed, this is a particularly distasteful juxtaposition and ugly scandal for Disney. Less obvious, however, is the fact that all trade with China funds the very government that is committing this atrocity. Thus, all countries and companies should work vigorously to end their trading relationships with China until Beijing abandons its ghastly project of ethnic cleansing. This may not be until Mr. Xi’s rule is ended permanently, and total decoupling from China’s economy may not be possible short-term. Still, let us deliver the most serious of messages to China that we cannot and will not tolerate its crimes. Ben Lowsen Read more letters to the editor.


The Middle East is changing. Will Palestinians be left behind?

to produce condemnation of the UAE’s action by the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation were rebuffed. Historically, any resolution that Palestinians pushed to condemn or criticize a move toward normalization with Israel would have been adopted almost reflexively. But not now. Why? What does this, and the Bahraini decision to also formalize peace with Israel, tell us about how the region is changing? The Palestinian issue has become far less of a priority for most Arab states. Their preoccupation is not with the Palestinians but with threats from Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, and they see Israel as a bulwark against both. They see benefits from cooperation with Israel on security. But it is not only on security that they see the value of cooperation. Covid-19 and worsening drought conditions are confronting states in the region with immense new challenges to meet health, water and food security needs. Israel, with its medical and research capabilities, its technical expertise on conservation, drip irrigation and use of waste water, and its development of drought resistant crops — among other things — looks increasingly like a natural partner for many of the states in the region. Like the UAE and Bahrain, others in the region are going to be driven by their own national interests. The risk for the Palestinians is that they will be left behind. The Palestinians need to adjust their behavior, but not by giving up on two states. Those who see Palestinians' weakness and isolation as an argument to forsake an independent Palestinian state and pursue instead equal rights in a binational Arab-Jewish state ignore the reality that we are not in a post-nationalism era. They overlook that those states in the Middle East that have more than one national, sectarian or tribal identity (such as Syria, Iraq, Libya and Lebanon) tend to be consumed by conflict or paralysis. One state for Israelis and Palestinians is not a prescription for peace between them but for endless conflict. And in any case, Israel is not about to surrender its national identity. Rather than embracing the chimera of one state, Palestinians should adjust and recognize that Arab outreach to Israel can actually build their leverage. Instead of insisting on a maximal position of no steps toward Israel without complete Israeli withdrawal — something that is not going to happen — why not engage Arab states in a discussion


Reservations, takeout and food tents: Dining traditions change as campuses attempt to curb virus

The days of packed dining halls are, for now, over. When close gatherings can spur an outbreak of a potentially life-threatening disease, dining on campus this semester will hardly be normal. The traditional breaking of bread in crowded dining rooms — before class, after a night out, in the middle of the day for lunchtime — is another college tradition students will miss this year as campuses enact measures to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. Buffet-style dining at the University of Maryland at College Park has been replaced with carryout meals. Students under a two-week quarantine at Catholic University in Northeast Washington picked their meals up from food tents pitched across campus. Freshmen at CU spent a recent afternoon sitting outside in Adirondack chairs — spaced about six feet apart — and eating cheeseburgers with pasta salad. Just like classrooms and dorms, dining halls are prone to crowding. They’re large and chaotic and encourage social interactions — precisely what campuses are trying to avoid. The American College Health Association, an organization for collegiate medical professionals, is advising schools to eliminate self-serve dining and look to other options, including takeout and food delivery. The results have been mixed. George Mason University is allowing students to eat in its dining halls, but they have to make a reservation first. Students use an app to make reservations, a system designed to cut down on crowding and give cleaning crews time to sanitize tables between diners. But many students, who have been on campus now for about two weeks, are “not the biggest fans,” said Dunni Oni, a sophomore and English major. There are no reservation times before 10 a.m., limiting students who want an early breakfast to “dine-and-go” meals, which are packaged entrees meant to be eaten outside the dining hall. It’s been an adjustment for students who are used to making last-minute trips to the dining hall, said Oni, who is the student government’s undersecretary for dining services. She acknowledged that the university is doing what it can to make dining as safe as possible. “This is the most organized and safe approach,” Oni said. Anna Bertino, 20, a GMU senior from Richmond, has been eating a combination of her own cooking and the school’s to-go meals. There are usually salads, sandwiches, chicken tenders and other hot entrees, she said. This semester, Bertino is living alone in an apartment on


What we can learn about this covid-19 time from a nonspeaking autistic teen

act unpredictably, what advice do you have about coping with the covid-19 situation, which feels completely out of our control? A: I often have to deal with the reality of having a significant loss of control over many various aspects of my life. Whether it be regarding personal body regulation issues, the continuous struggle for an academically based education or simply to be able to have greater independence in society’s eyes, we autistics are very used to meeting challenges and adversity head-on with determination and grit. My mother says it is essential to acknowledge and admit to your fears and anxieties, but to be sure to not “reside” in them. I also know from personal experience that actually applying it may take some time and practice. Q: What has the chaos surrounding covid-19 taught you? A: I’ve realized I am much more connected to people all over the U.S. and the world than I previously thought. I, myself, am so treasuring this extended time with my family, but also with many friends from a distance. I have been so enjoying being part of an online book club via Zoom for young people who use letter boards to communicate. Q: Have you felt like you have a voice during this global crisis? A: I have really valued my time spent discussing all types of topics with peers from around the world (United States, France, England, Ireland and Romania) on an online social forum for minimal and nonspeaking autistics. We have discussed concern for loved ones during covid-19, and shared poems written by members that use written words to help convey their fears and anxieties, but also their hopes. You know how being a member of a group like this helps? We listen to what each other has to say, acknowledging fears and anxieties. Q: Do you have any other advice for those struggling? A: I hope everyone in areas affected by covid-19 tries to remember to be patient with themselves during this time of severe struggle and a redefining of a temporary new “normal.” Together we can do this! Read more: Neurosurgeon famous for separating conjoined twins died of covid-19. His real legacy was his humanity. Newspaper deliveryman brings groceries to his older customers on morning route, no extra charge Here’s the good some are doing to combat the fear and isolation of the coronavirus Have a story for Inspired Life?


Mexico’s president keeps stoking a climate of intolerance and intimidation against the press

pattern of increasing intolerance and suppression of critical journalism and thought fostered directly by López Obrador himself. Two days before Taibo’s comments, Mexico’s president had used his morning news conference to personally reveal government advertising contracts Nexos and Letras Libres received in previous administrations. With the help of presidential spokesman Jesús Ramírez, López Obrador ran through 12 years of government advertising in both magazines. Neither the president nor his spokesman offered any further context. They did not produce proof of any pernicious effect the government’s advertising had on the magazines’ editorial independence. (There is none.) Conveniently, they also forgot to make clear that the contracts were all fully legal. While its merits can certainly be debated, government advertising is legal and legitimate in Mexico. López Obrador did find time to elaborate on the corrupt motivations of his critics. “[Krauze] was against real change,” he said. “He called me ‘the Tropical Messiah’ and now he is very angry because his magazine was subsidized by the government. For the record, neither magazine was ever “subsidized by the government.” Before López Obrador, government advertising was only a fraction of Letras Libres’s income. The magazine is published regularly to this day, as is Nexos, both devoid of any federal government advertising since 2018. The López Obrador administration, it should be noted, has not ended the practice of government advertising, investing handsomely in newspaper La Jornada, for example. What truly bothers López Obrador, and fellow travelers such as Taibo, is the frequent criticism of the president and his policies that Nexos, Letras Libres and others publish, in full exercise of their journalistic capacities and the country’s remaining freedom of expression. López Obrador’s rants against independent journalistic outlets extend beyond these magazines and their editors. Just two days after his tirade against Letras Libres and Nexos, López Obrador once again used his morning news conference to go after Reforma, one of Mexico’s most influential newspapers. “Look at Reforma,” López Obrador said. “Such a filthy rag.” López Obrador brought up the day’s front page. What bothered him was a story on alleged corruption in his home state of Tabasco, benefiting the president’s family. “This is a classic case of the journalistic mafia,” he said. Over the last couple of years, news outlets have frequently faced the president’s wrath, as have individual journalists. The reporter Carlos Loret de Mola (also a Washington Post Spanish-language opinion contributor) recently revealed


Britain’s government pretends it can do no wrong. Even in its official history.

many places, such as the partition of India in 1947 and the extrajudicial killings in the Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya from 1952 to 1960. These are not accidental mistakes. They are part of a consistent pattern of deliberate cuts and rewriting. Comparison with earlier editions published under the previous Labour governments shows that migrants used to be taught that enslaved people died in the Middle Passage. In the current version, they are only “traveling in horrible conditions,” an unfortunate wording given that about 400,000 of them died on board British ships. A previous description of the slave trade as “evil” was cut, as was the fact that Liverpool and Bristol profited handsomely from it. In the page on the American Revolution, the British Parliament no longer “refused” to compromise with the Americans (correct) but “tried to compromise” (false). Ireland falls victim to similar revisionism. Instead of colonizing Ulster by force in the early 17th century, James I now merely “encouraged” English and Scottish Protestants to settle there. The great famine of 1846 is still mentioned, but the fact that Britain might have done more to help the Irish has been excised. The deployment of the British army in Northern Ireland after 1969 vanishes altogether. This willful blindness to Ireland’s past might explain how the British government can play so casually today with its future. Any mistake or sign of national weakness is stripped from the record. Appeasement in 1938 cannot be mentioned — even though this means Winston Churchill can no longer be celebrated for opposing it. Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia becomes merely “testing Germany’s military strength in nearby countries.” Nor is there room for ambivalence or regret. When the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is mentioned, you are not told about the many civilian victims but that “scientists led by New Zealand-born Ernest Rutherford, working at Manchester and then Cambridge University, were the first to ‘split the atom.’ Some British scientists went on to take part in the Manhattan Project in the United States, which developed the atomic bomb. The war was finally over.” One can read this official history as an Anglo-Saxon fantasy of Britain after Brexit — one where, if people of non-European descent feature at all, they do so only as faceless migrants. They are almost never part of British society. Africans and people who escaped slavery and lived in 18th-century Britain have been


We can’t stop covid-19 if we don’t know where and why it’s spreading

those families been spared infection? Understanding the granular details of each outbreak by conducting an “epidemiological autopsy” for all confirmed cases is critical to begin characterizing and categorizing where and why transmission is happening. This information can then, in real-time and on an ongoing basis, be used to adjust our strategy and refine our response. We now know several ways to prevent covid-19’s spread, including wearing masks, physical distancing, testing and isolating people who may have been exposed or have symptoms, and avoiding settings that are indoors, poorly ventilated or crowded. If most people did most of these things most of the time, we would have vastly fewer cases and probably enough reduction in transmission for the epidemic to die out. But that is not what is happening. Transmission continues to plateau, wax, wane and periodically resurge. Part of the reason is that officials and public health experts continue to lack enough real-time data on where, why, how and to whom transmission is happening. Instead, we make assumptions based on a trickle of journal articles and media reports which, for all we know, may describe incidents that are the exception rather than representative of most of the virus’s spread. And we’re left repeating blanket messages to double down on the preventive measures we know work and sometimes speculatively suggest new ones — such as having people talk less in public, wear better masks or open more windows — that should reduce the chance of transmission, but without knowing if these interventions address the actual reasons the virus is still spreading. Investigating where and why each case happened would help to understand where the public health system’s gaps are and what we need to do better or differently. Are most cases propagating from a few “superspreading” scenarios in places such as nursing homes and jails? Or are cases happening randomly in the community? Are cases in a town happening in a particular store, or just from a particular person? We also need to know how transmission is happening. Is it bad ventilation? Poor hygiene? Improper mask use? Lack of distancing? Do we need better masks? Or is there something else? There’s also the question of who. Are cases mostly among essential workers? If so, which particular types of workers seem to be most affected? The answers to these questions and others lead to dramatically different conclusions on the corrective actions needed


of information. Insights on why transmission is persisting can underscore where different tactics may be needed. For example, if spread is mostly happening among essential workers, we then need to focus efforts on providing them with personal protective equipment, making it possible for them to stay home without losing income or similar measures. If transmission is persisting among undocumented groups, we need to then consider how to engage them in ways that build trust and assure them that getting tested or seeking care will not cause problems related to their immigration status. This data can help identify the subsets of the population who are most affected in each region or city and should be prioritized by health officials for further intervention. For example, if the rapid antigen tests now becoming available could be targeted to the groups or settings driving most new cases, they could help reduce transmission below the threshold of each infected person infecting one additional person needed to shrink the epidemic even potentially without deploying daily population-wide testing. This will also be important for eventual vaccine deployment. If transmission is primarily mediated by particular subsets of the population, “herd immunity” with vaccination will only work if sufficient coverage is achieved within these groups. In recent weeks, some health departments have begun listing tallies of where cases likely occurred, but this data needs to go a step further and also try to discern why transmission happened despite attempts to reduce spread. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issues investigation reports, but these are typically published months later, only cover a few outbreaks, and they appear to be at risk of tampering by Trump administration officials. Even if the final product isn’t as exhaustive as the CDC’s reports, this type of investigation needs to be done for every case in real-time so the results can immediately feed into location-specific adjustments in responding to the virus. Newly diagnosed people are already supposed to be interviewed in this manner as part of contact tracing efforts that have not been keeping pace with cases in some states. We need more people trained to carry out these investigations, and hospitals should also integrate them into the routine intake when covid-19 patients are admitted. Because the coronavirus spreads invisibly through the air, and often asymptomatically, it may not be possible to clearly establish the where and why in all cases. But for many,


The Health 202: The U.S. now has the capacity to carry out 40 to 50 million monthly coronavirus tests. But that's not happening

gyms and houses of worship, or in the use of public transportation. “You’re sitting there for a long time, everyone’s talking,” said Linsey Marr, an environmental engineer at Virginia Tech, told The Post. “And that’s just a recipe for spread.” A group of scientists sent a formal letter to the medical journal Lancet expressing doubts about the accuracy of early data on Russia’s covid-19 vaccine, which was published in the journal, Reuters’s Emilio Parodi reports. The move “highlights growing concern among scientists about the safety and efficacy of the Sputnik-V vaccine, which the government approved for use before completing full human trials,” Parodi writes. Reuters did not see the contents of the letter, which was signed by 15 scientists from five countries, according to one of the authors of the letter. Last week, a larger group of scientists signed an open letter to the international medical journal expressing similar concerns about the early-stage trial results from Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute, saying that some patterns in the data appeared “highly unlikely.” The Gamaleya Institute issued a statement in response to the open letter last week defending the accuracy of the data. Naor Bar-Zeev, deputy director at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who peer-reviewed the Russian vaccine study data, defended his analysis of the study and called the results “plausible.” “Shortly before President Trump took the stage on Sunday night in Henderson, Nev., for his first indoor rally in months, Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak blasted the president for flouting the state’s coronavirus restrictions by packing hundreds of supporters, many without masks, into a building,” Timothy Bella reports. Nevada, which has reported 73,500 cases of coronavirus and 1,450 deaths, has a ban on gatherings of 50 people or more. The Democratic governor tweeted that the rally at Xtreme Manufacturing was “reckless” and “an insult to every Nevadan who has followed the directives.” But that wasn't the only indoor campaign event held by Trump. “Trump’s speech appeared to be a gamble that his defiance would energize his most loyal supporters, even at the risk of alienating more moderate voters he needs to win. Many around the president are acutely aware that a potential surge in coronavirus cases and deaths close to the election could be disastrous, according to campaign and White House aides, but they are mostly bowing to Trump’s desire to pack the house.” Anne Gearan and Josh Dawsey reported of the


Fear in Northern Ireland, as Boris Johnson threatens the E.U. over Brexit

a political football,” said Powell, a lobbyist with the Women’s Resource and Development Agency in Belfast. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement brought peace to Ireland — and today the line marking the boundary between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is invisible. Powell said border communities are “horrified” over the uncertainties and brinkmanship of Brexit. In the past week, Johnson started to deploy martial language, asserting that the E.U. is plotting to “carve up our country” and to choke off food supplies with destabilizing new barriers between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. “Unless we agree to the E.U.’s terms, the E.U. will use an extreme interpretation of the Northern Ireland protocol to impose a full-scale trade border down the Irish Sea,” Johnson wrote in the Telegraph newspaper. Irish Foreign Affairs Secretary Simon Coveney dismissed Johnson’s claim that Europe wanted to “blockade” Northern Ireland as “totally bogus.” Europeans are livid that Johnson has introduced a bill before Parliament that would breach key parts of the Brexit withdrawal treaty, an agreement Johnson signed only nine months ago, calling the pact “historic” and “fantastic.” The deal seeks to finesse trade and customs issues to enable Northern Ireland to exit along with the rest of the United Kingdom but to preserve easy trade — and psychological ties — with the Republic of Ireland, which will remain part of the E.U. In the absence of a free-trade deal, there would probably have to be some kind of controls between north and south to levy tariffs and quotas. Chief E.U. negotiator Michel Barnier said the Northern Ireland protocol signed last year represents no threat to the integrity of the United Kingdom. He tweeted, “We agreed this delicate compromise with [Boris Johnson] & his gov in order to protect peace & stability on island of Ireland. We could not have been clearer about the consequences of #Brexit.” Martin O’Brien is a veteran peace-building activist from north Belfast, who worked to ensure that strong human rights were included in the Good Friday Agreement. “Brexit — and this government’s particular form of Brexit, a hard Brexit — was embarked on with no regard to the consequences for Northern Ireland,” he said. O’Brien called the withdrawal agreement signed by the U.K. and E.U. last year “a carefully constructed mechanism to try to minimize the worst consequences” of Brexit. “Now the government has decided to go back on the compromise


Venus may hold the answers about life we’ve been looking for

Jonathan Lunine is the David C. Duncan Professor in the Physical Sciences and chair of the Department of Astronomy at Cornell University. Is there life on Venus, Earth’s nearest planetary neighbor? This may seem like an absurd question, given that the surface temperature of Venus is above the melting point of lead. But that has not prevented 50 years of speculation that life might exist in the cool middle atmosphere of the planet, where a thick layer of sulfuric-acid droplets might provide a home. The discovery of phosphine in Venus’s atmosphere, announced in a study published on Monday, could be telling us those ideas are right. In 1967, the yet-to-be-famous Carl Sagan wrote that life might exist in the Venusian clouds. Collaborating with biologist Harold Morowitz, the two posited that life might have evolved to live in the liquid sulfuric acid cloud layer of Venus, where temperatures are Earth-like and small amounts of water would dissolve. That would be the beginning of many papers on this possibility, culminating in a detailed study this year on how microbes might surf waves in the atmosphere. MIT professor Sara Seager and colleagues imagined a cycle where microbes live in water-sulfuric acid droplets that would grow and then sink to the hotter lower atmosphere, only to evaporate. Freed from the evaporating droplets, the microbes would ride buoyancy waves back to the cooler upper atmosphere to burrow again into the relative safety of the sulfuric-acid and water droplets. How would we know such organisms might exist? Many chemical compounds that simple microbes produce are also made by non-biological processes. But one, phosphine or PH3, is difficult to produce on Earth abiotically (without life) and, as argued by Seager and her colleagues in another paper, could be a good “biosignature” or sign of life on planets around other stars. This isn’t always the case: The compound is found in the dense hydrogen-rich atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn, where it is understood to be an abiotic product of simple chemistry, and will likely be found on gas giants around other stars using the James Webb Space Telescope, planned for launch next year. But Venus — which has an atmosphere in which hydrogen is extremely scarce — is a place where phosphine is a plausible biosignature. The detection of sufficient quantities of phosphine in Venus’s atmosphere would be an intriguing pointer to the possibility of life in the


How the pandemic has boosted a green economy

estimate that global carbon-dioxide emissions could fall by an extraordinary 8 to 10 percent this year compared with 2019’s, thanks to the Covid Crash. The pain of this economic disruption is felt around the world. But the crash has been an eye-opener for climate-conscious businesses seeking to substantially cut their fossil-fuel consumption. [Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic] Consider the ecosystem of lucrative enterprises known as “professional services” firms. These are lawyers, accountants, bankers, consultants, architects, engineers, marketers and so on — white-collar workers who hire themselves out to help other institutions achieve their goals. Until March, it was almost unquestioned law, as if carved on stone tablets, that these professionals must do their work on airplanes, in meeting rooms, at hotels and over restaurant meals. When they weren’t meeting with clients, they were gathered together in the conference rooms of their well-appointed offices. The Covid Crash has smashed those stone tablets. Using digital-conferencing technologies such as Zoom, professional services firms have largely been able to continue their work without staff leaving home. The experience is better in some ways, worse in others. But it is unquestionably cheaper and consumes far less fuel. Given the savings to their bottom lines, and the virtuous green aura of reduced emissions, these firms will have no incentive to get back to the old ways. Post-pandemic (whenever that is), businesses will travel less, book fewer hotel rooms and rental cars, summon fewer Ubers and Lyfts, expense fewer meals and lease smaller offices. A recent survey by the consulting giant McKinsey & Co. found that 80 percent of businesses believe the structure and “cadence” of travel and meetings will be permanently altered by covid-19. Three out of four businesses will rely more on technology to perform “core processes.” Majorities believe their corporate cultures will change and that employees will need different skills to thrive. No individual business could have safely made these changes alone. Imagine telling potential clients that their services would be provided remotely, with limited face time, while competitors were offering near-constant hand-holding? But the virus instituted these cuts all at once across entire industries. The new economy will have big losers — hotels, airlines and expense-account restaurants come to mind. But there will be winners, too, including all those CEOs in designer ski parkas at Davos, who promised to go green without realizing they would need a pandemic to help them do


Andrew Gillum comes back to public life, starting with coming out as bisexual

issues and feelings he conveyed,” he said. “When we are forced by harmful societal expectations to operate in black and white, with no room to express the many gray areas of ourselves that make us who we are, we get hurt.” Among the conversations that have swept the country this past summer about racism in America were discussions about homophobia within the Black community and racism within the LGBT community. Gillum’s interview showcased a Black man in the LGBT community embracing and discussing his identities and how he and those close to them are attempting to understand them better and how they shape his worldview, including his politics. Katie Hill, who was California’s first openly bisexual person elected to Congress before conservative media outlets published nude photos suggesting an alleged affair between the lawmaker and a staffer, praised Gillum and his wife for their decision to go public with the former Tallahassee mayor’s sexuality. Although the 2018 election saw a record number of LGBT elected officials seek public office, some voters still feel uncomfortable supporting queer candidates, Andrew Reynolds, author of “The Children of Harvey Milk: How LGBTQ Politicians Changed the World,” previously co-wrote for The Post. “We found that voters still penalize candidates for being gay or lesbian,” he wrote. Much ignorance and stigma still exist about bisexuality, said R. Jai Gillum, Andrew’s wife. And it is not uncommon for people struggling to understand and accept their sexual identity to succumb to depression and substance abuse, according to American Addiction Centers, one of the country’s largest providers of addiction services. “So many people just don’t understand bisexuality,” R. Jai Gillum told Hall. “Bisexuality is just something different. I just believe that love and sexuality exist on a spectrum. All I care about is what’s between us and what agreement we make.” As some Americans look to political leaders to better reflect the diversity of the population that they represent, that will include a push to see people of varied sexual orientations — including bisexuality — in Washington and state capitals around the country. The details of Gillum’s coming out could present challenges for him among a voting population uncomfortable with backing queer politicians, but he made it clear that he doesn’t think his sexuality or past will make doing so impossible. When asked whether he could make a return to politics one day, Gillum replied: “Donald Trump is president.”


Faced with Russia crises, Trump and top aides strike different tones

banned nerve agent on its own territory against a Russian citizen. “It is unbelievable to us that this would happen on the territory of any country and the government would not react with the appropriate urgency to investigate and hold accountable those who committed the crime,” Biegun said. The Russian government has rejected allegations of Kremlin involvement in the poisoning. In Belarus, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets for the sixth week in a row last weekend to protest an Aug. 9 presidential election they believed was rigged by President Alexander Lukashenko, the former Soviet collective farm boss who has ruled the nation for 26 years. The protesters argue that Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the wife of a jailed opposition figure, prevailed in the flawed election and should become the nation’s next president. In Europe, Biegun met with Tikhanovskaya, who fled to neighboring Lithuania in the wake of the election amid pressure from Belarusian authorities. Biegun has committed to new sanctions on Belarusian officials in response to the human rights abuses against demonstrators but has said the leader of the nation is for the Belarusian people to decide. “The Belarusian people are entitled to a free and fair election in which they choose their own leaders, and they were denied that opportunity on August 9th. There is no legitimacy delivered to the ruler of Belarus by the August 9th election,” Biegun said in the call last week. He has urged authorities in Belarus to negotiate with the opposition and hold a new election under independent observation. Behind the scenes, Biegun and other senior State Department officials have pushed European allies to uniformly condemn the attack on Navalny and Lukashenko’s actions. Earlier this month, NATO’s principal decision-making body condemned Navalny’s poisoning in the “strongest possible terms” given the use of a “nerve agent from the banned Novichok group.” Some nations in the 30-member alliance opposed issuing a statement, and some sought softer language, including France, but the United States pushed members to approve the tougher wording, according to diplomats familiar with the internal deliberations. U.S. officials have also held a tough line with Moscow at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a multilateral organization in which Russia is a member, diplomats said. “Biegun is a godsend,” said a European diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic conversations. “While you’d normally hope to see a firm public


The mirage of Trump’s ‘peace’ deals

You’re reading an excerpt from the Today’s WorldView newsletter. For a leader who spends On Tuesday, he is scheduled to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and officials from the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain for a signing ceremony as the two Arab monarchies normalize ties with Israel. It follows a White House summit last week where Trump convened leaders from Kosovo and Serbia in the Oval Office, announcing a supposed major economic breakthrough between the Balkan neighbors. Trump and his lieutenants have branded both episodes as “historic” achievements inconceivable under previous administrations. On cue, two right-wing Scandinavian politicians nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. Leading U.S. right-wing media pundit Laura Ingraham declared it “obvious” that Trump be given the prize, though he is unlikely to receive it. Nor will he be able to do much of a victory lap over Afghanistan, whose government began negotiations with representatives of the Taliban this weekend after months of U.S. diplomatic legwork. But the prospects for a definitive agreement there are up in the air and Trump’s defining legacy in Afghanistan before the November election may remain his administration’s decision to intensify bombing operations across the country. The two big deals trumpeted by the White House this month are not the victories for “peace” that Trump claims they are Boosters of the normalization see Israel’s deepening ties with the Arab world as a positive development in the region. But there’s no indication of what sort of real “peace” Palestinians chafing under Israeli occupation may gain from a handful of Gulf states receiving Israeli ambassadors and new orders of U.S. military hardware. “It is hard to identify a single point of progress concerning Israeli-Palestinian peace that is the result of U.S. intervention,” noted Grace Wermenbol of the Middle East Institute. “Trump’s preternatural, pro-Israel policy has alienated the Palestinian Authority and challenged the U.S.' ability to act as an impartial mediator. Beyond a clear diplomatic re-evaluation of the Palestinian cause, the UAE’s normalization of ties with Israel is unlikely to offer much more.” Other experts also lament that the Trump administration is not using its leverage with the UAE for actual peace — that is, applying pressure to compel the Emiratis and Saudis to draw down their U.S.-backed war effort in Yemen. A recent New York Times report found mounting concerns among State Department officials over U.S. culpability in Yemeni civilian casualties at the


The Daily 202: Trump faces fresh criticism over coziness with Russia

a victim in this administration,” Vindman told the Atlantic. “I think it’s Orwellian. The ultimate goal of this president is to get you to disbelieve what you’ve seen and what you’ve heard. My goal now is to remind people of this.” Last Thursday, the U.S. Treasury Department placed sanctions on a member of Ukraine’s parliament for running an “influence campaign” against Biden “The Treasury Department said Derkach had ‘directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed or otherwise been complicit in foreign interference in an attempt to undermine the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election.’ In addition to Derkach, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on three individuals from the Internet Research Agency, the St. Petersburg-based troll factory that created fake accounts on social media during the 2016 campaign in attempt to influence the election. The sanctions come a day after a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security alleged in a whistleblower complaint that he was told to stop providing intelligence reports on the threat of Russian interference in the 2020 election in part because it ‘made the President look bad.’ “Derkach, a former member of Ukraine’s Russia-leaning Party of Regions, was educated at the Higher School of the KGB in Moscow … His father was a longtime KGB officer “In an interview with The Post earlier this year, Giuliani said that he knew Derkach ‘quite well’ and that the Ukrainian lawmaker ‘has been very helpful to me.’ Asked if Derkach, had provided him with materials, Giuliani said, ‘Oh, my God, yeah.’ Giuliani, who has been trying to spark Justice Department investigations into Biden, spoke extensively about the documents he received from Derkach. He said Derkach had reviewed and shared prosecutor files from Ukraine. Giuliani denied he was being used as pawn in a Russian influence campaign, saying Derkach didn’t seem pro-Russian.” William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said last month that Russia is “using a range of measures” to interfere in the 2020 election. Trump has pointed to the part of the same report that said China and Iran do not want to see him reelected. “Some U.S. officials criticized Evanina for appearing to equate the efforts of China and Russia when the Kremlin was interfering much more directly,” Shane Harris, Ellen Nakashima and Dawsey report. “In his statement, China is listed first, followed by Russia and then Iran, which he described as motivated to interfere


The Trailer: The First State goes last

appear on just 12 ballots, three of them in states where he needed only to pay a fee for access. He'll have been removed from nine state ballots that he applied for, with the reasons ranging from insufficient signatures to, in Arizona, his decision to register as a Republican in his adopted home state of Wyoming, voiding his attempt to appear on the ballot as an independent. Just two states where West made the ballot, Iowa and Minnesota, are being contested by both Trump and Biden. One of the last weeks before the presidential debates began with a fight over climate change, and continued today with something Democrats aren't actually fighting at all: the Trump administration-brokered “Abraham Accords,” under which two Arab nations that were not at war with Israel formalized their peaceful relations. “We’re here this afternoon to change the course of history,” Donald Trump said at a White House signing ceremony Tuesday afternoon. “After decades of division and conflict, we mark the dawn of a new Middle East.” Joe Biden's campaign has talked little about the accords since initially congratulating the administration for them; the Trump campaign has focused less on the specifics of the accords than on a Norwegian politician nominating the president for a Nobel Peace Prize. The day before, Trump visited California for a roundtable on the state's response to forest fires while Biden, in Delaware, delivered a speech warning that a second Trump term would lead to policies that make climate change worse. Democrats seized on an exchange between the president and Wade Crowfoot, California's secretary for natural resources. “If we ignore that science and sort of put our head in the sand and think it’s all about vegetation management, we’re not going to succeed together protecting Californians,” Crowfoot said. “Okay,” Trump said. “It’ll start getting cooler. You just watch.” “I wish science agreed with you,” Crowfoot said. “Well, I don’t think science knows, actually,” Trump said. The next morning, in a long interview with “Fox and Friends,” the president suggested that the lack of forest fires in wetter climates, like Austria's, suggested that climate change was not making fires any worse. Kamala D. Harris … three days until early voting begins in Minnesota … 14 days until the first presidential debate … 22 days until the vice-presidential debate … 49 days until the general election … 90 days until the Electoral College votes


Mapping the worldwide spread of the coronavirus

In less than a year, the novel coronavirus, which first surfaced in the Chinese city of Wuhan, has left a crisscross trail of carnage nearly everywhere on Earth. For much of the world, a return to normal life remains out of reach. Hundreds of thousands of people have died from covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The true case and death counts are probably far higher than the confirmed tally, due to the limitations on testing in many nations. Despite often draining restrictions put in place to fight the spread of the virus, global health officials say the road to recovery may be long. “No country can just pretend the pandemic is over,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in August. Some countries have had success with stringent shutdowns. In New Zealand, which closed its borders and ordered people to stay home, confirmed infections went down to zero for a time. Even some of the world’s worst-hit areas have seen reprieves. Wuhan ground to a standstill in January as the virus spiraled out of control. But after months without a confirmed case of domestic transmission, around 1.4 million children in the city returned to classrooms at the start of September, and crowded events have resumed. Other places are still struggling. In the United States, where testing efforts faltered early in the outbreak, cases and deaths are slowing in some states but rising in others. The total number of reported cases remains by far the highest in the world. In September, India overtook Brazil to become the country with the second-highest number of confirmed cases, having already surpassed Russia the month before. “The only question is whether India is going to catch up with the United States,” Bhramar Mukherjee, a biostatistician at the University of Michigan who developed a model to predict India’s outbreak, told The Washington Post. In the early months of the outbreak, China reported more cases than any other country. Its tally of new infections peaked in mid-February and approached zero by mid-March, although questions surround the accuracy of its data. As the disease waned in China, it began to surge in Italy and Spain. By May, more than 150,000 people had died throughout Europe. In June, a cluster of cases in Beijing linked to a large market raised alarm over another major outbreak in the country


The Washington Post expands covid-19 coverage with new section dedicated to recovery stories

The Washington Post today launched The Road to Recovery, a new section highlighting attempts to rebuild the nation’s economy, its communities and its spirit in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic. This coverage, supported by AT&T and JPMorgan Chase, will concentrate on stories of success and struggle as individuals and businesses seek to repair the damage caused by illness and an economic shutdown. “The Post is committed to being an informational resource during these uncertain times, recognizing the diverse set of challenges people are facing across the country, including their finances, children’s education, jobs and overall life,” said Renae Merle, Road to Recovery editor. “With this new section, we will bring awareness to the successes and struggles in collective efforts to recover during this pandemic.” The section will feature a multitude of topics, including individuals working to resume productive lives; businesses emerging to serve the public as the country emerges from the pandemic; major companies as they start rehiring and seek to restore normalcy; restaurants and other small businesses aiming to re-establish themselves; schools as they resume operations, endeavoring to give parents and students the stability they once had; and the resumption of sports, professional and amateur. As part of this expanded coverage, The Post is also producing an immersive video storytelling project that captures the effect the pandemic has had on two important industries that are scrambling to rebuild. “We are excited to bring readers the story of two supply chains in rural America that are working under unique circumstances during the pandemic,” said Elite Truong, deputy editor of strategic initiatives at The Washington Post. “We can quickly provide our readers with quality coverage as we document how affected communities are adapting in this era.” While reporting Road to Recovery stories, journalists used AT&T technology, including 5G-enabled mobile devices, to fly drones, capture streaming video, and collaborate. “AT&T has been working closely with The Post’s editorial team to integrate our 5G network and devices into its news gathering. Now that AT&T 5G is nationwide, The Post will have the opportunity to unlock new storytelling capabilities,” said Mo Katibeh, EVP – Chief Product and Platform Officer for AT&T Business. “Pair cutting edge technology with innovative storytelling and you’ve got powerful ways to inform, inspire, and connect.” As a supporter for Road to Recovery, JPMorgan Chase will work with WP BrandStudio to share stories and data highlighting the challenges that communities


Scientists want to predict covid-19’s long-term trajectory. Here’s why they can’t.

chance of there being fewer than 208,500 total deaths observed by then, and a 10 percent chance of more than 216,100. Overall, the collective forecast predicts that we will continue to see between 3,400 and 6,000 weekly deaths for the next month. (Deaths now stand at about 195,000, according to Johns Hopkins.) Precisely how many weeks into the future coronavirus forecast models are reliable is an open scientific question, yet it’s one we’re tackling. Since 2019, our researchers — at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Johns Hopkins University — have worked together to study the accuracy of forecasts first of influenza and subsequently of the coronavirus. Our conclusion so far is that forecasts beyond four weeks are either so inaccurate, or have such a wide range of possible outcomes, that they are useless for personal decision-making or policymaking. Just as you wouldn’t use a prediction of rain six weeks out to determine plans for a trip to the beach, neither ordinary citizens nor lawmakers should be looking at pandemic forecasts past four weeks into the future as they make personal decisions (about taking a vacation, say), let alone policy decisions (such as opening schools). It is important to distinguish between different types of outbreak models. “Forecast models” — the ones we aggregate on the CDC site — are typically designed with a single goal in mind: to make a specific, quantitative prediction about an event that will be observed in the future. If these models are reliable, they can be used to help decision-makers plan for staffing needs at health-care clinics, to inform vaccine manufacturers’ decisions about where to run vaccine trials and to guide officials on where to send additional diagnostic testing supplies. Other infectious-disease “scenario models” are designed to explore multiple “what if” hypothetical futures. These models can answer questions such as: How would the case rates change if nursing home staffers were tested twice a week compared with once a week, all else remaining equal? In such a model, the total number of cases is less important than the changes from a baseline. They can help determine what countermeasures might be effective at controlling the spread of a disease; this type of long-term forecast is less problematic. In the case of forecast models, however, accurate numbers, not just relative comparisons, are paramount. And in achieving the goal of maximum accuracy, research — involving forecasts for


distinguish between different types of outbreak models. “Forecast models” — the ones we aggregate on the CDC site — are typically designed with a single goal in mind: to make a specific, quantitative prediction about an event that will be observed in the future. If these models are reliable, they can be used to help decision-makers plan for staffing needs at health-care clinics, to inform vaccine manufacturers’ decisions about where to run vaccine trials and to guide officials on where to send additional diagnostic testing supplies. Other infectious-disease “scenario models” are designed to explore multiple “what if” hypothetical futures. These models can answer questions such as: How would the case rates change if nursing home staffers were tested twice a week compared with once a week, all else remaining equal? In such a model, the total number of cases is less important than the changes from a baseline. They can help determine what countermeasures might be effective at controlling the spread of a disease; this type of long-term forecast is less problematic. In the case of forecast models, however, accurate numbers, not just relative comparisons, are paramount. And in achieving the goal of maximum accuracy, research — involving forecasts for real-time outbreaks of influenza, dengue fever, Zika, Ebola and other diseases — has shown that aggregating multiple models is the right approach. We’re seeing that’s true for the coronavirus as well. By now we should know that long-term coronavirus forecasts leave much to be desired. In early April, for example, the United States had seen fewer than 5,000 deaths from covid-19. It was not clear to many just how disruptive the pandemic would become. The University of Washington’s IHME model — the same one that made news last week — became avidly watched. Depending on the day you checked in April, IHME said the total number of deaths would reach 60,000 to 80,000 in the United States. Other models cited by the White House Coronavirus Task Force showed much larger numbers — up to 240,000 total deaths. These fluctuations and variations in the models led top decision-makers, including President Trump, to offer alternatingly optimistic and pessimistic responses. After the IHME model’s number fell at one point, Surgeon General Jerome Adams said he “absolutely” expected the death total to be lower than anticipated. After the 240,000 figure came to light in late March, Trump said the United States would be in


This is a story all about how you can rent a room in the ‘Fresh Prince’ mansion

Smith himself listed a room in the fictional Banks’s family mansion on Airbnb for $30 per night. It will be up for grabs starting Sept. 29 at 11 a.m. Pacific time. Bookings for a night of nostalgia are extremely limited. “Will’s wing” of the mansion only will be available to Los Angeles County residents for five one-night stays: Oct. 2, Oct. 5, Oct. 8, Oct. 11 and Oct. 14. The mansion — not technically in Bel-Air, but in nearby Brentwood — has come a long way since the Philadelphia transplant moved in back in 1990. Today guests can take advantage of the mansion’s pool and surrounding lounge chairs, graffiti art, Will’s closet, a turntable, as well as Philly cheesesteaks served on silver platters. Guests will also be greeted virtually by DJ Jazzy Jeff. The Banks family won’t be on site to lay down the law, but you’re staying under their roof and following their rules. For example, pets aren’t allowed, and only two people can stay at the mansion per booking. “While I love a good soirée, friends cannot stop by during your stay,” Smith says in his listing. “While my uncle has a strict ‘no parties’ policy; don’t forget to have fun!” Because we’re still in a pandemic, there are coronavirus-specific rules, too. “While the city of Los Angeles is allowing travel, out of an abundance of caution, all guests who request to book must be Los Angeles County residents and currently live in the same household to minimize COVID-19 risk,” the listing says. “Prior to your arrival, all guests must confirm they have not traveled outside of California within the past 14 days, have not had recent exposure to people known to be diagnosed with COVID-19, and do not have a fever of 100.4F or more, a cough or shortness of breath.” Guests must also provide a negative coronavirus test dated within 72 hours of their stay and wear a face mask during check-in and check-out. And for those who can’t get a stay at the mansion, there’s an Airbnb Online Experience with DJ Jazzy Jeff taking place on Oct. 1, in which fans can learn how to spin and scratch records. Read more: Has your travel bucket list changed during the pandemic? You’re not alone. Your guide to safely and ethically visiting national parks this fall Museums are reopening to a new audience: Locals eager to ‘travel’


U-Md. begins in-person classes as virus caseload rises among university students

instruction and on-campus housing for our students, these areas must see improvement,” Pines wrote. “We must remain vigilant in our actions.” Other universities are also seeing more infections, with Georgetown University on Monday reporting 10 additional student cases — nine on campus and one in the neighborhood that surrounds the university in Northwest Washington. While the school is conducting the semester online, about 500 students with special circumstances have been given permission to live on campus, said university spokeswoman Meghan Dubyak. Three employees reported contracting the virus last week, according to data from the university. Georgetown has reported 22 positive cases among students and employees working or living on the main, medical and law school campuses since Aug 24. Georgetown, like many other universities in the nation’s capital, has reversed plans for in-person classes, citing concerns over a growing number of virus infections in the city and across the country. The return of some students to Maryland’s flagship campus comes as the average number of daily virus-related deaths in the state dropped Monday to its lowest level since the early days of the pandemic. Maryland has reported a daily death toll in the single digits for more than a week, sending its seven-day average number of deaths to five — the lowest since April 3. The state’s seven-day average number of fatalities peaked at 56 in early May. “Let’s continue to wear masks, wash our hands and practice physical distancing so that our state can remain on the road to recovery,” Gov. Larry Hogan (R) tweeted Monday. The number of patients hospitalized with coronavirus-related complications in Maryland stood Monday at 347, the lowest since March 31. The greater Washington region on Monday reported 1,323 new infections and 20 additional deaths. Virginia had 757 new cases and 19 deaths, Maryland had 536 cases and one death, while D.C. had 30 cases and no additional deaths. Asked Monday about the city’s struggle to reach goals of slowing the virus’s spread through identifying connected cases, D.C. Health Director LaQuandra Nesbitt called for individual responsibility rather than additional government action. She reminded residents to wear masks over their mouths and noses, to avoid frequent errands and socializing, and to stay home if they have even mild symptoms. “There’s nothing I can do as the individual health director,” she said. In another sign of a slow return to normalcy, the Smithsonian Institution announced Monday that


Americans who can afford to hoard cash are waiting for a vaccine to spend it

to fully reopen, we need a reliable vaccine.” In July, to better gauge and forecast the financial impact of the pandemic, Franklin Templeton and Gallup announced a partnership to look at the economic realities of the novel coronavirus. Each month, researchers are interviewing thousands of U.S. adults to understand their behaviors and attitudes toward resuming pre-virus behaviors, according to Stephanie Marken, executive director of education research at Gallup. “According to epidemiologists, the U.S. remains in its first wave of cases, and they warn that a second wave could hit in the fall of 2020, ensuring that reopening the economy will likely include many starts and stops as states grapple with public health concerns and the reality of continued disruptions to business operations,” Marken wrote in announcing the joint venture. In this latest study, they asked: What do you plan to do with your increased savings over the next six months? Among Americans who can afford to save: — 76 percent are planning to continue to add to their savings. — 28 percent will do some spending, purchasing basic goods and services. — 13 percent plan on paying for a vacation or personal travel. — 10 percent have targeted the savings to pay off debts. One interesting finding was what people were doing with their extra funds. Most — 79 percent — are squirreling the money away in their checking or savings accounts. Only 24 percent have increased their contributions to retirement accounts, 17 percent have invested in the stock or bond markets, 5 percent have put it into real estate and just 3 percent have invested in other assets, such as cryptocurrency. Rather than taking risks, people are keeping their money liquid, Buckles said. “There’s a lot of uncertainty,” he said. “For the time being, I think people want to make sure that they have money for necessities. I think those who are able to save will continue to keep those assets available. We will see more people dipping into those savings if the economy continues to tread water and we don’t see much improvement in the unemployment rate.” If you have a personal finance or retirement question, send it to colorofmoney@washpost.com. In the subject line, put “Question of the Week.” This week’s answers come from Erin Voisin, director of financial planning at California-based EP Wealth Advisors. Q: Voisin Q: Voisin: Additionally, according to the IRS, “A 403(b) contract owner


In person or online? Here are 100 public universities to watch during the pandemic.

The coronavirus pandemic has forced colleges and universities around the country to rethink how they are teaching as the fall semester gets under way. Some are primarily online, others primarily in person. Some have hybrid plans balanced between both methods. And some are still deciding. Adding to the uncertainty: A number of schools have said they will start online but maintain hopes of teaching in person after two or three weeks. Below is a list of 100 important public universities, their teaching strategies and their opening day for undergraduates. These schools are drawn from every state and the District of Columbia. (Wyoming has only one public four-year school.) As of Aug. 26, nearly half of these schools were teaching primarily or fully online. Just over a quarter were teaching primarily in person. But by mid-September, the share focused mainly on in-person teaching had declined to a little more than one fifth. That is a sign of the extraordinary disruption the pandemic has wreaked in education throughout the United States. Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, has so far killed at least 192,000 Americans. The source of this data is the College Crisis Initiative at Davidson College, which is tracking the pandemic response at schools around the country. The chart will be updated as information emerges about schools that have switched teaching methods. *Note: The College Crisis Initiative examines various data on courses and teaching methods to establish labels for the predominant instructional technique at a given school. Some universities will differ in how they describe their approach, and their methods can change rapidly.


The U.S.-India health-care partnership will be crucial in the battle against the coronavirus

Taranjit Singh Sandhu As both India and the United States combat a pandemic of unprecedented scale, we have drawn upon the strength of our long-standing health-care ties to help us better understand the novel coronavirus and find workable solutions. In India, the government and the private sector have worked together to ensure the integrity of medical supply chains, and essential medicines from India have continued to reach the United States and some 150 partner countries. But more urgently, the India-U.S. cooperation is proving crucial to confront health challenges posed by the pandemic, including future vaccine development and distribution. From therapeutics to diagnostics, the medical supply industry in India has ramped up production to meet domestic needs and also respond, where feasible, to global needs. Prime Minister Narendra Modi took the initiative of bringing together leaders of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to deliberate on collaborative efforts to combat the disease, including establishing a SAARC Emergency Response Fund. And as we move toward an effective vaccine for the novel coronavirus, India’s research laboratories and manufacturing facilities — which produce more than 60 percent of the world’s vaccines in a normal year — are integral to the effort. There are at least four ongoing vaccine development programs between Indian and U.S. firms and research institutions. Over the years, scientific cooperation has become a critical element of India’s expanding strategic ties with the United States. Last year India and the United States signed an agreement to promote scientific exchanges, cooperative research projects and the establishment of innovative public-private partnerships. U.S.-India scientific collaborations have expanded in fields ranging from health and energy to earth and ocean sciences, and from space to agriculture. Such collaborations have fostered innovation, empowered industry and economic growth. Further, under the bilateral Health Dialogue that commenced in 2015, supported by private-sector engagements, India’s partnership with the United States in the health sector has yielded significant results on a global scale. The collaboration under the Vaccine Action Program resulted in the development of the ROTAVAC vaccine against the rotavirus, which causes severe diarrhea in children. The rollout of an affordable vaccine by an Indian company has enabled its use in several developing countries. This success stands as a true testament to the benefits of the India-U.S. partnership for the greater good of humanity. Today there are more than 200 active collaborations between the U.S. National Institutes of Health


Maryland prepares for dual viruses as Arlington votes to end sidewalk crowding ordinance

reported more than 90 daily cases in five of the past seven days, up from figures in the 60s and 70s in August. The rise is partly because residents have become less diligent about wearing masks and observing physical distancing, said county health officer Travis Gayles, but also because residents gathered in large groups over the holiday weekend or traveled out of the county. “It does make it a challenge when folks are able to travel to other places with fewer restrictions,” he said, referencing the state’s decision to lift restrictions on nearly all businesses as part of its Phase 3 reopening — a move that D.C.’s immediate Maryland suburbs opted not to make. State health officials also said Wednesday that they are monitoring a slight rise in infections after the Labor Day holiday. Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich (D) announced Wednesday that the county has signed a contract with Maryland-based laboratory Cian Diagnostics, which supplied nasal swab tests to the local government after its previous vendor, AdvaGenix, was cited by federal inspectors. Cian already has a contract with the state Department of Health, which offered the county 5,000 tests a week for four weeks when officials ordered AdvaGenix to cease testing operations. During a radio interview Wednesday, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said that while he is sympathetic to restaurant and bar owners who “have suffered more than just about any other industry,” he is reluctant to move to a higher capacity for indoor dining. The Restaurant Association of Maryland has asked for statewide capacity of 75 percent — up from 50 percent. “I’m pushing to get more capacity . . . but our doctors, because our positivity has not gotten down — we’ve stayed flat — they’re really strongly against it,” Hogan said on WBAL radio. Hogan said he wanted to avoid Maryland mirroring other states that opened bars and restaurants to full capacity, only to have surges that forced them to shut down. The greater Washington region on Wednesday reported 1,544 new infections and 52 additional deaths. Virginia had 845 new cases and 45 deaths, Maryland had 643 new cases and six deaths, while D.C. had 56 new cases and one additional death. Virginia’s death toll was well above average for a second consecutive day, lifting its seven-day average number of fatalities to 27 — up from eight to start the week. The state reported a record


The Health 202: One million Americans lost health insurance last year

story about the staff meeting, pointed out additional details on Twitter, including that Caputo told his staff members to listen to the Grateful Dead: HHS head Azar "led an escalating pressure campaign against his own Food and Drug Administration this spring and summer, urging the agency to abandon its responsibility for ensuring the safety and accuracy of a range of coronavirus tests as the pandemic raged,” Politico's Adam Cancryn and Sarah Owermohle report. In August, Azar overrode objections from FDA chief Stephen Hahn and revoked the agency’s authority to regulate a broad swath of laboratory tests. The policy affected tests developed by labs for their own use, including university, commercial and public health labs. While some labs applauded the move, saying it could help bring innovative tests to market, many public health experts worried the lack of regulation could allow faulty and inaccurate tests to flood the market. Former FDA commissioner Steven Gottlieb raised concerns with the new policy on Twitter at the time: Based on interviews with nearly a dozen current and former Trump officials, Politico reports that the fight over testing drove a division between HHS and the FDA, with sources saying that disputes sometimes escalated “into screaming matches between Azar and Hahn.” “The coronavirus is killing Hispanic, Black and American Indian children at much higher numbers than their White peers, according to federal statistics released Tuesday,” William Wan reports. There were 391,814 known cases and 121 deaths among people under the age of 21 from February to July. Of those killed by the coronavirus, more than 75 percent have been Hispanic, Black and American Indian children, even though they represent 41 percent of the U.S. population. The disparities echo those seen in adult deaths from the virus, although the virus is much less deadly overall for children than for older adults. Blacks and Hispanics have higher rates of underlying health conditions, which make them more susceptable to serious illness or death from covid-19. “About 75 percent of those who died had at least one underlying condition, and the most frequent were asthma and obesity — two conditions that disproportionately occur in minority youths,” Wan writes. The CDC report also finds that children of color may be more likely than their White peers to lack access to health care, live in crowded conditions or have a parent who is an essential worker and unable to work from home.


Empty plazas, idle mariachis: For Mexico, a somber Independence Day

home and watch on TV as President Andrés Manuel López Obrador performed the Grito above the empty, echoing plaza, cordoned off by masked police and covered with a giant neon map of the country in green, red and white. Some said they were too depressed to tune in. "There was nothing to celebrate. I didn't even turn it on," said Victor Lozio, 50, who makes tacos and enchiladas at a lunch counter. He said that his uncle had died of covid-19 and that his business has plummeted with so many people out of work. Mexico's economy is expected to contract by 10 percent this year; the country ranks fourth in the world in coronavirus deaths. By Wednesday afternoon, souvenir vendors were packing up their holiday displays of giant flags, sombreros, guitars — and face masks. After the military parade, which included a moment of silence for the country’s coronavirus dead, the president’s only event was a visit to a hospital to thank health workers for their dedication during the country’s outbreak. Some commentators said Tuesday night’s display of fireworks and neon around the palace seemed a mockery of public suffering, or that the occasion called for a focus on the victims of covid-19 and a rethinking of public policy priorities. “Will the empty plaza make us reflect on the gravity of the health crisis?” columnist Fabiola Guarneros Saavedra asked in the newspaper Excelsior. “Will the night invite reflection, a review of the path we want the country to take?” Others said this year’s quiet observation of the country’s most beloved annual public ritual shouldn’t detract from the gains Mexico has made toward reducing poverty and inequality, expanding democratic participation and rising in international influence. “It is a strange time, but we have passed through tragic moments before,” said Sergio Aguayo, a political analyst. “Life goes on, even in emergencies. The Grito is not about the palace or the president. It is something we all carry around with us. If we look back 50 years, we can celebrate how lucky we are today, with more freedom, more democracy and a better chance to build our own destiny.” Still, the worry and weight of the moment here is palpable. At Garibaldi Plaza, where mariachi musicians in spangled uniforms wait to be hired for parties and events, dozens were slumped disconsolately on benches. They said business had fallen by half, due mostly to


Trump’s plan for managing forests won’t save us in a more flammable world, experts say

also be useful in the areas immediately surrounding communities, said Chris Dunn, a forester at Oregon State University who worked as a firefighter for eight years. The cleared-out space can keep forest fires from igniting homes and give firefighters room to mount a defense. But by analyzing satellite images of the southwestern part of the state, where the 2013 Douglas Complex burned on the wet side of the Cascades, Dunn found the most intensively managed industrial forests experienced more severe fire than untouched old growth — even when huge amounts of debris had accumulated on the “untreated” forest floor. This is because younger trees planted for harvest are less resilient and fire spreads easily between them, he said. “That’s the problem when people say ‘management’ or ‘no management,’ ” he said. “Management can mean a lot of things.” Dunn and others say one of the most powerful tools for reducing fire risk is fire itself. Natural fires can clear out a lot more forest than thinning crews, and if allowed to burn in uninhabited areas under mild weather, they are less likely to be dangerous and destructive, Dunn said. Later, if a more extreme fire roars through, the previously burned areas may slow the blaze or even stop it. But Trump has described timber removal as the single solution to combating fires out West and emphasized it during a Monday briefing on the fires in McClellan Park, Calif. When secretary for natural resources Wade Crowfoot asked Trump to recognize climate change played a role as well, Trump asserted — without evidence — that things would soon cool down. Earth is now about 1.15 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than in preindustrial times, and roughly 10 percent of Americans live somewhere that has already warmed by 2 degrees Celsius, a threshold often associated with the worst effects of climate change. That includes Los Angeles County, where the Bobcat Fire has burned tens of thousands of acres in the past week, and in western Colorado, where the Pine Gulch fire now ranks as the state’s largest in history. Unless people significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, average global temperatures can be expected to rise at least another 2 degrees Celsius before the century is over. Research also shows that climate change is making forests so hot and dry that almost no intervention can keep them from igniting. Just look at this year’s


Couples are still planning destination weddings — as long as they can get there

catch: No dancing allowed. A spokesperson for Il Salviatino says the venue is anticipating more weddings of European couples than North American ones, given the current restrictions preventing American tourists from entering the European Union. But even Americans, who are not yet allowed into many regions, are planning weddings abroad. Mandi Fleishman, an Austin-based American Airlines flight attendant, postponed her late-2020 wedding in South Africa to October 2021. She currently isn’t allowed to visit the country where her wedding is set to take place. “South Africa has very much gone on lockdown” she says. Fleishman has family in the destination that she was largely planning her 130-person event around. Her relatives don’t expect South Africa will reopen to any international visitors before February 2021. For American guests, being invited abroad is anxiety inducing, too. Valerie of Charleston, S.C., who asked that her last name not be used, was invited to a May micro-wedding in Ireland, but she said she is undecided on whether she’ll go to her lifelong friend’s ceremony. The couple invited her and her infant son after the pandemic began, she says. “I don’t know that there’s a mask policy at the wedding, and weddings seem like super-spreader events,” she told The Post in an email. “We would have to weigh the risk to both our family & the greater community. It’s a sacrifice no matter how you look at it … no matter what we decide.” Both Hill and Fleishman acknowledge that some guests who were planning to attend have said they might skip out if there’s no vaccine or slowing of coronavirus cases, regardless of travel restrictions. “Most of my friends coming are coming because they’re all airline crew members, so they’re used to traveling,” she says. Fleishman has not flown internationally since the beginning of the pandemic in March. Being based in the United States, the potential worst-case scenario for Fleishman is South Africa continuing to bar international travel through 2021. “If for some reason … we have to cancel altogether, it would be a significant monetary loss,” Fleishman says. Weddings and pre-wedding parties have been linked to outbreaks in the United States, most recently in Rhode Island, where 20 attendees were linked to a July cluster of coronavirus cases. A rural Maine wedding of 65 guests was also identified as super-spreader event in the region, causing 175 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and seven


Western journalists are getting squeezed out of China by superpower tensions

drive to limit Hong Kong’s autonomy, including the enactment of a sweeping new “security” law in June that targets pro-democracy factions. Chinese officials have refused to renew a work permit for Chris Buckley, the Times’s veteran China correspondent, prompting him to leave the mainland in May. Buckley has documented a number of stories that have angered government officials and made him the target of criticism in China’s state-run media, including China’s mistreatment of Muslims and the government’s bungled early response to the coronavirus outbreak. The Times still has two correspondents in Beijing and is “hopeful over time that we will be able to get our entire reporting staff back,” said Michael Slackman, the Times’s assistant managing editor for international news. Yet “we are clearly struggling to figure out how best to cover China when access is such a problem. But as you can see from our report we are continuing to try to cover the most important political, social and economic stories of the day. Of course, it would be a lot easier if more of our correspondents were permitted to live and work in China again.” The departure of Fifield has left The Post to cover China from afar, although its Beijing bureau will continue under two full-time Chinese researchers. Correspondent Gerry Shih was effectively expelled from China in March; a new correspondent, Eva Dou, has been unable to gain accreditation since March, nominally as a result of coronavirus restrictions. Despite the restrictions, The Post’s foreign editor, Douglas Jehl, said the news organization “will continue to vigorously cover China and its relations with the U.S.” Spokespeople for the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News declined to comment. The two Australian journalists, Bill Birtles of the Australian Broadcasting Corp. and Michael Smith of the Australian Financial Review, hastily departed from China earlier this month after Chinese officials questioned them. Authorities asked them about their association with Cheng Lei, a Chinese-born Australian who serves as a news anchor for Chinese state broadcaster CGTN. She was detained on Aug. 14 for reasons that remain unclear. The reporters spent four days holed up in the Australian Embassy in Beijing and the consulate in Shanghai while diplomats negotiated their departure. They were finally cleared to leave, eliminating the last Australian reporters in the country. The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China denounced what it called the use of “foreign journalists as pawns in wider diplomatic


Trump’s ‘Chinese virus’ slur makes some people blame Chinese Americans. But others blame Trump.

In March, as the pandemic began to affect the United States, President Trump gave a speech at which a photographer captured his notes. The photo showed that Trump had used a Sharpie pen to replace the term “Corona Virus” with “Chinese virus” — a phrase he has used frequently since, alternating it with variants like “kung flu.” We offer new evidence that such racialized language has prompted many Americans to blame Chinese Americans for covid-19. But it’s done more: Other Americans have reacted by turning against Trump, including some likely supporters. Blaming foreigners for disease is an old strategy Trump’s goal in using “Chinese virus” seems to be to avoid blame for the pandemic by redirecting anger toward China. Trying to avoid blame is nothing new in politics. Research often finds that politicians blame other politicians or public or private service providers when they want to escape blame. Foreigners are often blamed for new diseases. But framing the pandemic as a foreign problem violates international guidelines. The World Health Organization recommends against naming viruses after specific regions because it can lead people to unfairly stigmatize ethnic groups. In the United States, Asian Americans worry that such racialized language will make them the target of public ire. Along with our co-authors, political scientists Asmus Olsen and Jason Anastasopolous, we conducted a survey experiment on a sample of 1,500 U.S. residents in late June, shortly after the United States passed 120,000 deaths and 2.5 million confirmed cases of covid-19. Our sample was recruited using CloudResearch, a research platform that integrates with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, allowing greater selectivity for high-quality subjects. While we use an online convenience sample rather than a nationally representative poll, responses from such samples appear to be comparable to those obtained using more representative samples. After filtering out responses completed in an unusually short amount of time (less than 180 seconds) and multiple responses from the same IP address, 1,439 usable responses remained. We asked respondents to read a short description of the pandemic. Some respondents read a version in which the coronavirus was called “COVID-19;” for others, it was called the “Chinese virus.” We then asked people a number of closed- and open-ended questions about who they believed was most responsible for the spread of the virus in the United States. Conservatives and liberals had different views of the virus Not surprisingly, we found that conservatives and liberals


China’s third aircraft carrier takes shape, with ambitions to challenge U.S. naval dominance

feature. Still, “the Chinese are showing tremendous capability of designing and fitting out vessels,” Funaiole said. “It’s moving along on pace. It’s impressive the process they’re going through to position themselves at the forefront of carrier technology.” The progress of China’s third carrier has been of intense interest in rival capitals as well as inside China, where it is seen as a tangible symbol of the country’s development into a global power boasting a modern, world-class military. China has commissioned two carriers in the past decade: the Liaoning was a retrofit of an old Soviet model and the second, the Shandong, was Chinese-built but mostly a reverse-engineered copy of the Liaoning. The Shandong entered service in December, and the third carrier likely won’t be combat-ready until 2023, Funaiole said. After the hull of the third carrier is sealed, it could be put into water as soon as the end of this year to be fitted out, Chinese state media reported this week as similar photos surfaced on Chinese blogs and generated excitement among military hardware enthusiasts. The hawkish Global Times newspaper said the photos showed that the carrier’s construction appeared to be progressing “smoothly,” and cited an unnamed military expert as saying it would “likely” include electromagnetic catapults. Over the weekend, a well-known scholar affiliated with the Chinese navy, Li Jie, told a forum in Beijing that China was planning not only a third but also a fourth carrier group, according to Caixin, a financial news magazine. Most international scholars estimate that China intends to build out a fleet of at least six carriers. The U.S. Navy has 11 nuclear-powered carriers in service and plans to introduce several more. Collin Koh, an expert on the People’s Liberation Army Navy at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said there is still a lively debate in China over the utility of carriers in modern warfare and how they would stack up against the threat posed by U.S. submarines. And both Chinese and U.S. officials have acknowledged in recent years that China’s land-based power has already risen to the point where it may be able to keep U.S. forces out of what is known as the “first island chain” surrounding China, including Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines, in the event of war over Taiwan, for example. Geopolitical tensions in the region would suggest that any naval conflict involving China, such


Ask Amy: Lying fiance stole her heart, but hacker stole her $300

of future problems — from cyber intrusions, to identity theft, to extortion. Often, the only way to stop the cycle is through good cyber hygiene (changing passwords frequently, requiring two-factor authentication, etc.) and reporting the crime to law enforcement. More on cyber hygiene can be found on the FBI website: fbi.gov. The FBI is the lead investigative agency for cybercrimes, and victims are encouraged to file a report with the Internet Crime Complaints Center (IC3) at ic3.gov.” Now that you know you’ve been had, yes — it is illegal to solicit a phone hacking. No, I don’t think there is much enforcement recourse for you. The scammer might be working out of a cafe in Nigeria or Bogota. The scammer might be a 14-year-old named “Skippy,” or possibly your boyfriend, catfishing you. You should consider this $300 as an investment toward your own future. You do not trust your boyfriend enough to stay with him. Your judgment is quite flawed when it comes to him. If you turned over any of your (or his) personal information to the scammer (phone number, bank information, etc.), you should take steps to correct this. (And if the scammer could hack your boyfriend, couldn’t he also hack you?) If the scammer turns up the pressure or threatens you in any way, you should definitely go to the police. Dear Amy: I am having such a hard time accepting that he is gone. Now that I realize he has told ugly lies about things that are so untrue — I can't get any closure. I feel such a sense of betrayal, and I just don't understand his actions. His family believes everything he has said, and I feel snubbed by many of our friends. What do I do? Where do I go from here? — Betrayed Betrayed: Write down your thoughts. On paper, refute every single lie and misleading statement you are aware of. I also think that you should correct the record and defend yourself at every turn, if you have the energy (you might not). This is a terrible betrayal, and, unfortunately, you may not uncover his motivations for lying about you. Buddhist thinker Pema Chodron is my go-to sage and comfort. You can dip in and out of her book, “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times” (2016, Shambhala), and find wisdom, comfort and healing. Dear Amy: — Disappointed Disappointed:


A decade ago, the world agreed to 20 biodiversity targets. It did not meet any of them.

a Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Japan. The targets’s architects hoped to see a world, by 2020, in which “pressures on biodiversity are reduced, ecosystems are restored” and “biological resources are sustainably used,” among other goals. But as the deadline passes, only six of the 20 goals have been achieved even in part, the U.N. said in its Global Biodiversity Outlook report released Tuesday. The loss of biodiversity, the variety of living species on earth, continues. There has been some progress, according to the U.N., in expanding protected areas and eradicating some invasive species. Many countries have also taken new steps to reduce deforestation, and awareness of the importance of biodiversity is on the rise. The “number of extinctions of birds and mammals would likely have been at least two to four times higher without conservation actions over the past decade,” according to the report. But species “continue to move, on average, closer to extinction.” “1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades, more than ever before in human history,” the U.N. warned in a report last year. Progress, the authors found, has been insufficient and unequally distributed. Biodiversity-related funding has flatlined in many countries. The annual funding available for projects to work toward the Aichi targets — an estimated $78 to $91 billion — is far from what is needed, at least “hundreds of billions of dollars,” according to the report. At the same time, funding for projects harmful to biodiversity has not faltered. The setbacks have been many. Pollution levels are high. More than 60 percent of the world’s coral reefs are under threat. Only 66 percent of the stocks fished worldwide were at biologically sustainable levels in 2017, down from 71 percent seven years earlier. Climate change “threatens to undermine all efforts to conserve and sustainably manage biodiversity,” António Guterres, the U.N. secretary general, wrote in the report’s introduction. Yet the natural world Guterres wrote, “offers some of the most effective solutions to avert the worst impacts of a warming planet.” Experts warn ecosystem loss and the wildlife trade, which reduce biodiversity, can also increase the likelihood that novel pathogens will spread to humans. In a release, Inger Andersen, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, proposed that biodiversity projects should be included in coronavirus recovery packages, to “ensure a better future for our societies and the planet.”