We need justice for Yemen — and justice for Khashoggi

Tawakkol Karman is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. The government that orchestrated the brutal murder of Saudi journalist and Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi is now applying the same approach to my country. Just as Saudi Arabia reportedly sent a squad to execute and dismember Jamal, it has also sent forces — with its ally, the United Arab Emirates — on a mission to destroy and chop up Yemen. A year ago, the world was shocked by the murder of a Saudi journalist at his country’s consulate in Istanbul, in a heinous crime committed in flagrant disregard of the sanctity of diplomatic facilities and the basic rules of international law. The Saudi regime tried to deny any connection to the crime, but international pressure forced it to admit it happened — and that Saudi citizens were involved. Though Jamal’s killing shocked the world, few in Yemen were surprised. Saudi Arabia is committing crimes in Yemen with the same atrocity and recklessness. When confronted by the international community, it shrugs off responsibility and blames others. Sound familiar? For the past five years, a coalition led by the Saudi government has bombarded Yemen from the sky. It has targeted wedding and funeral halls, markets, residential neighborhoods, infrastructure and even archaeological sites, some dating back 4,000 years. More than 60,000 people have died in the conflict, and more than 3 million have been displaced. In early September, 135 people died from a single Saudi-led strike on a Houthi militia detention center. Despite this callousness, Yemen’s plight has often been forgotten around the world — and the responsibility for this, too, can be laid at Saudi Arabia’s doorstep. Cash is Saudi Arabia’s preferred foreign policy. It has used aid, arms transactions and oil money to silence the world from effectively pursuing Jamal’s killers, and it is using the same policy in relation to Yemen. Too few around the world have spoken up on our behalf as a result. Jamal was an exception. He was one of the rare voices in Saudi Arabia who welcomed the wave of democratic change that began in 2011 in the Middle East, eliciting the ire of the Saudi authorities. Jamal used his articles to support peace in Yemen, taking an early stance against further conflict and calling on Saudi Arabia to establish a historic reconciliation. Jamal also reached out to many Yemeni youths and journalists, and on every occasion,


Saudi authorities. Jamal used his articles to support peace in Yemen, taking an early stance against further conflict and calling on Saudi Arabia to establish a historic reconciliation. Jamal also reached out to many Yemeni youths and journalists, and on every occasion, he emphasized the importance of Yemenis finding local solutions. He stressed that this was contingent on the liberalization of Yemeni political decision-making, so decisions were not made in the interests of Saudi Arabia or Iran when both countries had divergent goals that did not necessarily coincide with those of the Yemeni people. Jamal’s arguments convinced many in Yemen, who no longer view Saudi Arabia as a champion simply seeking to restore their state. In my last meeting with Jamal in Istanbul two months before his death, we agreed to make a joint effort to stop the war under the slogan “Stop the war, stop the coup, stop the hunger.” I will not forget his words to me that day: “I will help you with all I can, if not for Yemen, then for my country, Saudi Arabia, which has lost so much because of the war economically and morally. " Jamal’s tragic, horrifying murder has contributed to a global awakening against Saudi abuses in the region and expanded the scope of the antiwar movement in Yemen and beyond. Thus, while the war in Yemen and murder of Jamal seem to be separate issues, the recklessness and cruelty of the leader behind both atrocities have made them inextricably linked. And so justice for both crimes is linked as well: Increased scrutiny of the real perpetrators of Jamal’s murder could galvanize the push to end the war in Yemen. And the prosecution of those involved in war crimes and violations in Yemen would add further impetus to the trial and punishment of Jamal’s assassins. Saudi atrocities in the Middle East are myriad. Real justice will involve justice for all its victims. Read more about Jamal Khashoggi: A missing voice, a growing chorus Robert Menendez: Trump betrayed U.S. moral leadership with Saudi Arabia. So Congress had to act. Ezzedine Fishere: Jamal Khashoggi symbolized the promise of reconciling political Islam and democracy Asli Aydintasbas: The liberal world order crumbled a year ago. We’re still reeling. Iyad el-Baghdadi: Saudi Arabia is suffocating the Arabic public sphere. We must fight back. David Von Drehle: Hollywood loves triumphant journalism stories. This isn’t one of them.


To David Chang, the ‘ethnic’ food aisle is racist. Others say it’s convenient.

ceiling” on some supermarket items: Italian products that were once marginalized, such as olive oils and vinegars, are now routinely integrated into grocery store aisles, while Chinese, Japanese and Latino foods remain stuck in their own sections. The ongoing segregation of these foods, Chang says, isn’t about acceptance among the mainstream. Asian and Latino cuisines have long been embraced by Americans of every stripe, he says. You can sometimes even see this acceptance play out in supermarkets: Instant ramen and tortilla soups may sit right next to boxes of chicken noodle and cream of chicken soups, those standards of mid-century America. Same for the produce section, where plantains and mangoes will be sold in the same area as apples and iceberg lettuce. Yet in supermarkets there are still aisles dedicated to soy sauce, duck sauce, oyster sauce, rice vinegar, coconut milk, rice crackers, stir-fry sauces, yum yum sauce, curry paste, corn flours, adobo seasoning, bagged tortillas, refried beans, salsas and hundreds of other products connected, sometimes tenuously, to Asian and Latin American countries. “All the foods in the ethnic food aisle are already accepted. So why do we even have them?” Chang asks. The aisles, he adds, are an echo of “1950s America, which was not a particularly good place to be, especially if you were Asian.” To Chang’s way of thinking, these aisles continue to exist because nobody wants to talk about them, which was certainly true about the publicists I contacted for this story. Representatives of Whole Foods Market, Giant Food, Kroger, Albertsons (which includes Safeway stores) and Harris Teeter either declined to comment or did not return multiple phone calls for comment. Phil Lempert is not connected to any supermarket chain. He’s the founder of supermarketguru.com, an independent source of food retail trends and industry analysis. For years, he was also the food trends editor for NBC’s “Today” show. He knows a lot about how supermarkets operate, past and present. Grocery stores began devoting shelf space to international products around the 1950s, Lempert says. The push came from independent distributors, known as rack jobbers, that specialized in foods then considered outside the American mainstream — Chinese, Jewish, Italian or of another origin — and were searching for places to sell them. Early on, rack jobbers would be responsible for their specific section of a store: They would stock the shelf, maintain its appearance and restock it as


do with sales and convenience. Jay Rosengarten, co-founder of the Food Emporium chain, the first grocery stores to mix regular and specialty items on the same shelves, says that supermarkets in predominantly white neighborhoods operate more efficiently when they offer international products all in the same area. The rationale is simple, he notes: Customers don’t want to search all over the supermarket — a massive space that can hold upward of 42,000 items — just for the handful of ingredients they might need to prepare, for example, Mexican enchiladas. They can pick up the tortillas, the seasoning blend and the salsa all in the same aisle. These aisles don’t have “anything to do with racism,” Rosengarten says. “It has everything to do with the way people buy food. That’s the way stores are organized.” Plus, as Goya’s Perez points out, absorbing international foods into the larger supermarket ecosystem can hurt the sales of those products. A few years ago, when William Rodriguez was building a new Billy’s Market Place in Ridgewood, N.Y., he considered ditching the international food aisle and integrating the Latino, Chinese, Indian and other products into the standard supermarket shelves. But he was discouraged from doing so — by some of the very companies that supply these foods. In the past, supermarkets that attempted such integration saw their sales drop on international products, says Rodriguez, who is also president of the National Supermarket Association. Shoppers apparently buy more of the same foods when they are lumped together, which is good for both supermarket and supplier. International aisles are “extremely profitable,” adds Perez. “It generates more dollars per food [product] by having it consolidated.” But more to the point, Perez says, the battle for hearts and minds has already been won. Over the decades, supermarkets have expanded their stock of international foods. Items that, back in the 1960s and 1970s, occupied just a few shelves by the dock doors have multiplied many times over and now consume whole aisles. These foods generate foot traffic into supermarkets, which see the fringe benefit of sales in other departments. The increased visibility for these foods is a statement in itself, Perez says. An aisle that, to David Chang, looks like an ugly remnant of segregation is, in fact, something else altogether, Perez says. It’s a destination. Correction: A previous version of this story mistakenly stated that Phil Lempert is food trends


Saudi Arabia is suffocating the Arabic public sphere. We must fight back.

Saudi Arabia’s plan seems to have involved two steps. In the months ahead of the arrests, dozens of verified accounts gradually became dedicated propaganda mouthpieces of the government. Some belonged to well-known personalities who seem to have joined the government’s propaganda efforts either willingly or under duress; others were previously unknown, gaining thousands of followers and a verified badge in record time. For each of these influencers, there were hundreds of smaller accounts, seemingly human-run, operating as foot soldiers in a well-coordinated online army. The mass arrests of independent voices soon followed. Once they were silenced, the state-controlled propaganda engine immediately cranked up its output to fill the vacuum. By the end of 2017, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his then-adviser Saud al-Qahtani had largely succeeded, and our primary tool of free expression became their primary tool of repression and social control. Few dissenting voices in Saudi Arabia dared share critical messages — and most of those who were outside Saudi Arabia chose silence, fearing for the safety of their families. There was a notable exception: Jamal. Not only was he still free to tweet, but he also quickly gained an even bigger and more prestigious platform at The Post. And he did more with his freedom than write op-eds and engage in debates on Twitter. From his position of relative safety, he started to think structurally about how to reclaim the public sphere that we had lost. This brings me back to his ideas. In private conversations among Jamal’s friends, perhaps one thing is discussed most bitterly: A lot has been said about the brutality of his murder, but not enough about his vision for the Arab world. To honor Jamal’s legacy is not only to ask for justice; it’s also to continue his work. Jamal, unfortunately, did not live long enough to watch most of his ideas see the light. But he inspired us enough to continue pushing for his vision. Read more about Jamal Khashoggi: A missing voice, a growing chorus Tawakkol Karman: We need justice for Yemen — and justice for Khashoggi David Von Drehle: Hollywood loves triumphant journalism stories. This isn’t one of them. Hala Al-Dosari: Saudi Arabia’s monarchy has left the country fragile and unbalanced Recep Tayyip Erdogan: Turkey will continue its efforts to shed light on Khashoggi’s murder Asli Aydintasbas: The liberal world order crumbled a year ago. We’re still reeling.


Why the world won’t forget the horror of Khashoggi’s murder

Fred Ryan is publisher and chief executive of The Post. He served as assistant to President Ronald Reagan. In our fast-paced digital news cycle, attention spans are short. After tomorrow’s outrage, people won’t remember today’s — let alone last week’s. Anyone looking to duck accountability for disgraceful actions can count on the relentless stream of new controversies for help. But no matter how severe the information overload, some actions are too heinous for the public to forget. One year ago, Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi was brutally murdered by a hit squad dispatched on the orders of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Evidence suggests the Saudis expected to dodge justice as Jamal’s case faded from memory. Initially, they stalled by denying any knowledge of Jamal’s whereabouts. When the international community still insisted on answers, they claimed Jamal was the victim of a “rogue" killing. Reports indicate that even months after the murder, Mohammed assured the plot’s ringleader that he would restore him to the royal inner circle as soon as the furor over Jamal’s death subsided. Mohammed should expect to wait a long time. The world’s horror over Jamal’s murder won’t simply blow over, for many reasons. Here are a few that should resonate with Americans of all political persuasions. The first is the diabolical nature of the crime. Jamal was lured into Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul to get a marriage license so that he could wed his Turkish fiancee. She waited for him at the consulate’s gate, unaware that 15 trained assassins were lurking inside. One of the attackers was armed with a bone saw. There was no pretense of a fair fight — at a 15-to-1 disadvantage, Jamal had no hope of self-defense. These macabre and infuriating details are seared into the public’s memory. Second, people won’t easily forget that the leader of a longtime U.S. ally — and the recipient of enormous amounts of U.S. aid — directed the killing of a U.S. resident working for a U.S. newspaper. This brazen aggression is part of a broader pattern of brutality on the part of Mohammed. As the 34-year-old crown prince consolidates power, he has waged a campaign to silence dissidents, held 200 business leaders prisoner inside a Ritz-Carlton, jailed and tortured female activists seeking basic freedoms, kidnapped the prime minister of a sovereign nation and fueled a devastating war in Yemen. That a U.S.


One year later, our murdered friend Jamal has been proved right

JAMAL KHASHOGGI never intended to be a dissident. For many years, he wrote for and edited newspapers in Saudi Arabia, and he served as an aide in Saudi embassies in Washington and London. What prompted him to leave the kingdom, and to begin writing columns for The Post, was the sharp increase in domestic repression under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — the “fear, intimidation, arrests and public shaming of intellectuals and religious leaders who dare to speak their minds,” as Khashoggi put it in his first Post op-ed, in September 2017. For the next year, the then-58-year-old journalist jousted with the then-32-year-old Saudi ruler in the pages of The Post and on the Internet, where Khashoggi was assailed by the troll army controlled by Mohammed bin Salman’s top aide. Khashoggi challenged the crown prince not just on his persecution of critics, which he described as bound to undermine the new regime’s ambitions to modernize and revitalize the country. His columns also argued against Mohammed bin Salman’s reckless regional agenda — especially the war in Yemen, which the crown prince had launched while serving as defense minister. Khashoggi denounced the attempt to suppress democracy and free expression throughout the Middle East and to exclude Islamist parties from politics — a drive that was largely sponsored by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Khashoggi’s ability to wage this debate ended on Oct. 2, 2018. On that day, our columnist walked into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, where he was quickly suffocated and his body dismembered by a team of 15 dispatched from Riyadh for that purpose. According to the CIA, Mohammed bin Salman almost certainly ordered the murder; a U.N. investigation also held him responsible. In one sense, he succeeded: Khashoggi’s trenchant columns no longer appear in The Post, while the crown prince and his closest aide, Saud al-Qahtani, who oversaw the operation, have escaped justice. President Trump, who embraced the young dictator as a close ally, quickly excused the crime, and Mr. Trump and his allies have blocked attempts in Congress to hold the regime accountable. During two interviews broadcast this week, Mohammed bin Salman disingenuously said he accepted full “responsibility” for the killing while denying any personal involvement in it — a lie that only those wishing to excuse him will accept. And yet, the story of Khashoggi and Mohammed bin Salman is not over. The warnings the


The night the soldiers came: Allegations of abuse surface in Kashmir

Nabi told The Post that soldiers beat him with sticks, rods and cables but did not take off his clothes. He said he received electric shocks in three places — on his thigh, chest and palms. He asked the soldiers what he had done but received no answer. Instead, they demanded the names of people who throw stones at security forces during protests, Nabi recalled, but he told them he did not know. Bhat and Nabi said they were not charged with a crime. Nabi shared a photo taken the day after the incident, which showed his lower legs covered with black bruises. Hospital records from Aug. 7 indicate he had abrasions on both legs and episodes of vomiting and loss of consciousness. Nabi said he was bedridden for a week. Afterward, he required help to walk and use a toilet. “If suicide was allowed in Islam, I would have done it,” said Nabi. Human rights activists say the communications crackdown and unpredictable restrictions on movement have complicated their ability to document accusations of abuse. “What we hear is very disturbing and alarming,” said Parvez Imroz, a lawyer and president of Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, an advocacy group that published the report on instances of torture. But “there is no way to visit [victims] and confirm.” The armed forces enjoy immunity from prosecution for their actions under a special act applicable in the state. The Indian army initiates internal investigations when it receives complaints of human rights violations. Since 1994, 70 army personnel have been punished, either by dismissal or imprisonment, the army said in its statement. Reyaz Ahmed Mir, a laborer from Gagren village in the Shopian district, said he was summoned to an army camp late last month. Mir said his brother was killed by security forces in 2018 after they accused him of shielding a militant in his home. On Aug. 26, soldiers interrogated Mir, asking him who had attended his brother’s funeral. When he said he did not know, Mir said, the soldiers began to beat him with batons and force water down his throat. He said they applied an electrical current to his genitals and right toe. Next, they hung him upside down from a T-shaped pole. As one soldier poured water on his face, he vomited his lunch. “The agony was unbearable,” said Mir, 45. “I was shouting and crying.” When he


Jamal Khashoggi is dead, but his political vision lives on

Want smart analysis of the most important news in your inbox every weekday, along with other global reads, interesting ideas and opinions? A year ago, Jamal Khashoggi — a Saudi commentator and dissident living in de facto exile — entered his nation’s consulate in Istanbul, never to return But the memory of Khashoggi’s life and work endures. To honor the anniversary of his chilling death, my colleagues at The Post’s Opinions section commissioned pieces on Khashoggi, his political views and the regime that sought to snuff them out. They underscore the legacy of a writer whose quest for freedom, democracy and tolerance didn’t end in the torture chamber of a consulate. Khashoggi was hardly a fringe figure. He was born into privilege and first became known to Western journalists as a prominent Saudi author and editor with connections to the kingdom’s princely elites. He was an insider, not a dissident. Over time, though, he came to espouse beliefs at odds with the court in Riyadh and those in most of the Arab world’s other monarchies: an embrace of political liberalization, a hope for the opening of space for democratic rights and an interest in the ideas of political Islam. The upheavals of the pro-democracy uprisings in 2011 — and the crackdowns and conflicts that followed — created a new generation of Arab exiles. Khashoggi’s relative fame in Saudi Arabia and desire for reform ultimately led him to join their ranks. “Jamal gave up on his government’s will to change later than many; but his insider knowledge of the Saudi regime made clear that speaking up required getting out,” wrote Tamara Cofman Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former State Department official. Khashoggi’s semiregular column at The Post, which often took aim at Mohammed, made him a target. “The Saudi monarchy might claim to be forward-thinking with its Vision 2030 modernization plan and efforts to court Western leaders,” wrote Hala Al-Dosari, a Saudi dissident and writer, who pointed also to the arrest of a number of female civil society activists under the crown prince’s watch. “In reality, however, it has simply institutionalized a centuries-old monarchic legacy of violence, disenfranchisement and repression. Jamal’s brutal murder and the torture of female activists have brought this all to light.” But Khashoggi wasn’t exactly a revolutionary. “For the dissident Arab communities in exile and in the region, he offered an integral


The Daily 202: Trumpism represents a repudiation of American exceptionalism

officials similarly restricted access to transcripts of the president’s calls with Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his father, the king, in the aftermath of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. After Khashoggi was killed – one year ago today – Trump never distanced himself from Mohammed. Instead, he helped rehabilitate him on the world stage. The CIA’s assessment that MBS ordered the assassination of the Washington Post contributing columnist has not changed, but for Trump it was never worth jeopardizing arms sales. -- The same month that Trump downplayed Russian election interference during his conversation with representatives of the Kremlin in the Oval Office, he dismissed concerns that Vladimir Putin is “a killer” during a Fox News interview. “We’ve got a lot of killers,” Trump said. “What do you think? Our country’s so innocent?” -- Michael Gerson, who was the chief speechwriter in George W. Bush’s White House, lamented in his column this week that we have “an American president who doesn’t understand the meaning of America.”: -- Following Trump’s lead, prominent figures in the Trumpist movement have also begun rejecting the concept of American exceptionalism. -- The Hobbesian worldview underlying Trumpism is the polar opposite of “the shining city upon a hill” that Ronald Reagan always talked about. -- Khashoggi was someone who had the will and heart to get here. -- “The Trump administration portrays Khashoggi’s killing as a crime that hasn’t been solved. … But the CIA has not changed its assessment from November that Mohammed ordered Khashoggi’s killing, according to two U.S. officials,” Shane Harris and John Hudson reported in Sunday’s newspaper: “A Saudi dissident living in the United States who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing a fear of retaliation, said the Saudi government weathered the furor over Khashoggi’s killing because the Trump administration stood by Mohammed. ‘I think they got away with murder,’ the dissident said. … “In April, Trump was forced to veto a bipartisan resolution to force an end to U.S. military involvement. It was a rare rebuke from Republicans who have stood by Trump through a seemingly endless stream of controversies. … A massive defense spending bill pending in Congress would restrict U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and require the administration to make a public report about Khashoggi’s death. If those provisions remain, Trump could be faced with having to veto military spending, one of his


At Istanbul memorial for Jamal Khashoggi, a moment’s silence, then shouts for justice

Saudi officials, convinced that Khashoggi’s words, written in columns for The Post, were a grave threat to the state. The officials worked for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who almost certainly authorized the killing, according to the CIA and other intelligence agencies, but who has steadfastly denied it. “Absolutely not,” was Mohammed’s answer when asked recently whether he had ordered Khashoggi’s death. None of Khashoggi’s Saudi relatives attended Wednesday, either, including his children, but that, too, was expected. Khashoggi’s killing aggravated arguments between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and to travel to the Istanbul memorial was to take a side in that argument, something no Saudi citizen could afford to do. A son, Salah Khashoggi, who lives in the kingdom, warned in a Twitter post Monday that Saudi Arabia’s “opponents and enemies” were exploiting his father’s killing and added that he had “absolute confidence” in the kingdom’s judiciary to prosecute the killers. With his immediate family absent, Jamal Khashoggi’s life and legacy were celebrated Wednesday by friends, colleagues and supporters, including Arab political exiles, whose ranks he had reluctantly joined. Among others in attendance were his fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, who had paced outside the consulate, waiting fruitlessly for him to emerge; Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Post; Frederick J. Ryan Jr., the paper’s publisher; and Agnès Callamard, a United Nations human rights investigator who wrote a report that provided the most thorough accounting to date of Khashoggi’s death. Callamard’s has been an unexpectedly loud voice in the year after Khashoggi’s death. With incessant demands for accountability, she has inserted herself into a conversation dominated by powerful governments, criticizing all of them, including Saudi Arabia, the United States and Turkey, for their conduct. “No one should get away with murder,” she said Wednesday, this time clearly focusing on the Saudi government and the crown prince, the kingdom’s young leader. “No matter who they are or how high their station in life.” Like other speakers, she also addressed what she said was a threat to the global news media that Khashoggi’s death had laid bare. “My call to you,” she said, speaking to journalists around the world, “persist, insist, expose — for Jamal and the other Jamals around the world.” The setting added resonance to Callamard’s plea. Turkey’s government, which has vigorously demanded that Saudi Arabia account for Khashoggi’s death, is itself one of the most prolific jailers of journalists around the


How the White House rehabilitated Saudi Arabia’s reputation after the death of Jamal Khashoggi

Saudi Arabia, one year after Jamal Khashoggi’s death On Oct. 2, 2018, Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and did not walk out. “Eventually, we came to learn that he was dismembered by a group of Saudi agents and his body was removed,” says national security reporter John Hudson. “To this day, we do not know where that body is.” The Washington Post contributing columnist had been a critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his regional agenda, attempts to suppress democracy and free expression, and exclusion of Islamist parties from politics. The CIA, U.S. allies and a U.N. investigator say Mohammed is culpable in the savage killing of Khashoggi. But one year out, world leaders have welcomed the crown prince back into the community of nations with major economic agreements and contracts. More on this topic: ‘His potential future looks more and more shaky’ Nearly six months after taking over as acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Kevin McAleenan feels he has lost some of the authority he was promised when he took the job, even as he has guided the United States out of a crisis at the southern border. McAleenan spoke candidly with immigration enforcement reporter Nick Miroff about his slipping grasp on the department and its messaging. “He has delivered on the one thing that mattered most to the president, which was to drive the border numbers down, even though he doesn’t talk about immigration or message on immigration the way that other officials in the Trump administration do,” Miroff says. More on this topic: Newly discovered audio from the D-Day invasion The sound from the scratchy audiotape is chilling. “You hear people yelling, and you hear these planes going over this incredible din of antiaircraft fire,” says history writer Mike Ruane. “The correspondent’s trying to narrate what’s going on, and his voice is drowned out in different parts by the racket of gunfire.” In the tape — sourced to D-Day, 1944 — radio correspondent George Hicks captures the raw sound of battle off the coast of Normandy. Among the best pieces of audio to come out of World War II, the tape has lived in a researcher’s basement for many years. Now, it’s coming to the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Va. “Who knows how important this could be in the end,” Ruane says. More on this topic:


Read remarks by Washington Post Publisher Fred Ryan and Jeff Bezos at Jamal Khashoggi’s one-year memorial ceremony

this tyranny—the only way to have free and independent lives—is to guarantee a free and independent press. After Jamal’s killing and the indifference some world leaders have shown, it may be tempting to become cynical or even defeatist. But it is worth remembering an important lesson from history. Sometimes, a single event can ignite a great movement. It can be a catalyst that brings about sweeping changes that endure for generations. Standing here, so close to the site of an act of pure evil, is not easy—because the sorrow we feel over Jamal’s killing is every bit as real today as it was one year ago. But, as we gather at this memorial to honor Jamal’s life, let’s commit—here, and now—to making this a catalyzing moment. Let Jamal’s life and its taking advance a movement that strengthens human rights and expands press freedom across the globe. All of us can start by remaining relentless in pursuit of the truth about Jamal’s killing. Just as he showed courage and resolve in his journalism, we must remain fearless and steadfast in demanding accountability for his murder. For journalists, carrying forward Jamal’s legacy means not being intimidated into silence. That is exactly what those behind Jamal’s assassination want. That is why they killed him. Instead, journalists must keep asking the next question. Keep digging into corruption. Keep demanding responsibility for crimes and abuses of power. Journalists put their lives at risk every day because of the conflict zones they cover, the powerful people they challenge, or the wrongdoing they reveal. One way we can honor Jamal is to stand up for these men and women—today, and every day from now on. Their safety must be protected. Their questions to the powerful must be answered. They must be supported and defended as they go about the work that safeguards our freedoms. We will never forget Jamal Khashoggi. His killing is an incalculable loss for those who knew him and loved him. But if we remain vigilant in defense of press freedom, the work for which he gave his life can leave a lasting contribution to the world—in the form of deeper respect for liberty, human rights, and the truth. Remarks by Jeff Bezos: Hatice, No one should ever have to endure what you have. Right here where you are today, you paced that street. For hours. Pacing. And waiting. And he never came out.


Prime Minister Boris Johnson offers a new Brexit plan, new suspension of Parliament

insisting that Northern Ireland should leave the E.U. customs union along with the rest of the U.K., meaning there would need to be some sort of customs checks. The E.U. has resisted such checks on the grounds that they could jeopardize the delicate peace established by the 1998 Good Friday agreement and become a target for renewed sectarian violence. And if the U.K. diverged from the E.U. on taxes and tariffs, as it almost certainly would, it could open a door to smuggling across the border — a major fear of E.U. governments and businesses. Johnson told the Conservative Party faithful that “under no circumstances” would there be “checks at or near the border in Northern Ireland.” But his written plan was vague on how and where checks would happen, saying they “should take place on a decentralised basis, with paperwork conducted electronically as goods move between the two countries, and with the very small number of physical checks needed conducted at traders’ premises or other points on the supply chain.” Johnson further proposed that the Northern Ireland assembly be able to vote every four years on whether to continue the arrangement. Northern Ireland has been without a government for years, though. And Johnson’s plan does not say what happens to that border if Northern Ireland opts out. In his speech to his fellow Tories, Johnson said the protracted Brexit debate was foiling the country’s ambition. He compared Britain to “a world-class athlete with a pebble in his shoe.” He blamed fractious lawmakers. “If Parliament were a computer, the screen would be stuck on the pizza wheel of doom,” Johnson said. “If Parliament were a reality TV show, the whole lot of us, I’m afraid, would have been voted out of the jungle by now. But at least we could have watched the speaker being forced to eat a kangaroo testicle.” “That is why we are coming out of E.U. on Oct. 31 come what may,” Johnson said, warning his European counterparts that Britain “was ready” to leave without a deal. And yet, a bill passed by Parliament last month requires Johnson to seek a three-month delay of Brexit unless a deal is struck by Oct. 19. Johnson has said that Britain will leave the bloc by the Halloween deadline and that he will obey the law, prompting many to wonder whether he is seeking a loophole. karla.adam@washpost.com michael.birnbaum@washpost.com william.booth@washpost.com


Mutant flies dine like kings

Most animals cannot eat milkweed, which contains a toxin that turns stomachs in small doses and can be lethal in larger ones. A few species, though, thrive on the plant. Young monarch butterflies, as caterpillars, only eat milkweed. This noxious diet makes their bodies unpalatable to birds, frogs and other predators. Milkweed should make fruit flies sick, too. But in the hands of a team of biologists, as a study out today in Nature shows, fruit flies can be engineered to eat the plant. The geneticists manipulated a fly gene at three locations to mirror the monarch version. This tweak allowed the flies to munch away on a milkweed diet. “Monarch flies,” as the scientists called them, tolerated the toxin as easily as their namesake butterflies. When the maggots transformed into adult flies, their bodies stored some of the milkweed toxin — as do the monarch caterpillars that go through metamorphosis. This is the first time, per the scientists, that a set of evolutionary mutations has been completely re-created in animals, giving them a new diet and a new defense mechanism. “All we did was change three sites, and we made these superflies,” said study author Noah Whiteman, an expert in integrative biology at the University of California at Berkeley, in a statement. “But to me, the most amazing thing is that we were able to test evolutionary hypotheses in a way that has never been possible outside of cell lines.” This technique allowed the scientists to pinpoint the three sites responsible for the monarch’s adaptation to milkweed. Other insect species can also tolerate milkweed, though not as well as the butterflies. These insects evolved mutations at the same three sites Whiteman and his colleagues studied. “It would have been difficult to discover this without having the ability to create mutations with CRISPR,” Whiteman said. That gene-editing tool has, in recent years, created all kinds of new mutants, such as albino lizards and butterflies with new wing patterns, and it altered cloned monkeys.


The Technology 202: A President Elizabeth Warren is starting to worry top tech titans

laws. The ruling could make it easier to pass net neutrality legislation in 29 states where such bills are pending. California, which put its net neutrality law on hold pending the outcome of yesterday’s trial, will now move forward with a court challenge from the Justice Department over whether its law conflicted with federal regulations. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) also pushed for states to keep leading the open Internet fight. Oregon passed its own net neutrality law in 2018. Author Tim Wu pointed out, however, that making California the face of net neutrality just adds to the laundry list of tech issues the state seems to be tackling before Congress. Net neutrality could still see its day in Washington, however. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and Communications and Technology Committee Chairman Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) reiterated their call for the Senate to take up legislation to restore net neutrality — which has languished since passing the House in April. BYTES: Amazon sellers and former employees allege that Amazon's dual role as marketplace and retailer has allowed it to profit off sellers while directing sales to its own products, Amazon made $42.7 billion off seller services last year, more than double than what it brought in two years ago. Sellers attribute part of the growth to increased costs of advertising. “If you don’t advertise, you lose organic sales,” Jason Boyce, a onetime merchant on Amazon who is now a consultant to those third-party sellers, told Jay. Moreover, sellers claim that Amazon prioritizes its growing collection of house-brand items over seller offerings. The company has also been accused by European Union regulators of using data collected from its sales to help its own brands, a potential violation of antitrust law U.S. regulators could drill into. Company spokesman Jack Evans denied the characterization and said that many seller fees are optional — and some have been recently lowered. (Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) — News from the private sector: — News from the public sector: — Tech news generating buzz around the Web: — Coming up: Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri tells the TODAY Show that breaking up Facebook’s properties would make it “much more difficult” for Instagram to do “meaningful work” when it comes to issues like election content. You are reading The Technology 202 , our guide to the intersection of technology and politics.


A mystery 32 stories up: Is a grandfather, 68, leaping off the D.C. area’s tallest buildings?

in Virginia, but Fairfax County police had been investigating a home contractor from Sterling for possible misdemeanor trespassing in connection with the jumps in Tysons, according to a search warrant. Authorities say they developed evidence that Chuck Moeser appears linked to one of the jumps, but the one-year window allowed by the statute of limitations closed as they built their case. That leaves a mystery. Is a man who quietly spends his days hammering together decks, laying patios and roofing homes in Northern Virginia also surreptitiously scaling its skyline at night? If Moeser is involved, he’s not saying. He did not respond to numerous requests for comment and posted a message on Facebook urging his family and friends not to speak to a reporter about him. “Why would anyone want to read a story about me . . . boring,” he wrote. But if he is, it would be a stomach-churning second act for an athlete who was once an elite local runner known as much for his fierce endurance late into life as for his brash, flamboyant style. Moeser cruised to age-class victories and top-10 finishes in races such as the Army Ten-Miler and the Marine Corps Marathon in the ’80s, ’90s and early 2000s, even edging out Olympic marathon champion Frank Shorter and four-time New York City Marathon winner Bill Rodgers in a 1995 race. He was known for a signature look — running shirtless even in the dead of winter. He told media outlets it was a tactic to intimidate other runners who did not share his six-pack physique. It’s a form he maintains even now. Stories about Moeser abound on local running forums, where fact seems to bleed into fiction. Moeser used to pound nails into his arms before marathons to deaden the pain, one post reads. Another reports a “legend” that Moeser carried his son out of the Grand Canyon after his son injured his leg during a run. “He was legendary,” said Ron Kulik, Moeser’s competitor and running partner in the ’90s. “It’s like Wyatt Earp. Is the legend of Wyatt Earp true or not? The answer is yes. How much? You really have to dig.” The calls began last summer. People phoned Fairfax County police to say they had seen someone jumping — or maybe paragliding — off buildings in the Tysons area. The action centered around the Lumen building, a luxury apartment


Protesters gather outside Saudi missions worldwide to remember Jamal Khashoggi’s brutal killing

Activists around the world marked the first anniversary of Jamal Khashoggi’s killing Wednesday with dramatic displays in front of Saudi diplomatic missions that were designed to draw attention to still-unanswered questions surrounding the journalist’s brutal death. In France, members of Reporters Without Borders stacked dismembered mannequins clothed in “press” jackets and armbands outside a Saudi Consulate as a poignant reminder of the gruesome manner in which Khashoggi was killed and allegedly dismembered by Saudi agents inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. The activists said they are demanding the full truth about Khashoggi’s killing. In Norway, activists marked the anniversary by wearing crime-scene jumpsuits and standing outside the Saudi Embassy in Oslo. On Twitter, Amnesty asked, “Who ordered the killing?” Outside the Saudi Consulate in Sydney, protesters held up posters of Khashoggi and a banner that read, “Anniversary of the assassination of free speech.” Khashoggi, who was in self-imposed exile after becoming a vocal critic of Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was a contributing opinions columnist at The Washington Post. In the months since his killing, those close to Khashoggi have fought tirelessly to hold the perpetrators accountable. Mohammed has denied having any foreknowledge of the operation to target the journalist, while the trial of the people implicated in Khashoggi’s killing has been shrouded in secrecy. A memorial service for Khashoggi was held Wednesday near the consulate in Istanbul where he was killed. The service was attended by Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Post, and Fred Ryan, the paper’s publisher. Khashoggi’s fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, who had been waiting for him outside the embassy on the day he was killed, also was in attendance. During the service, Cengiz described the past year as “the worst of her life” and paid tribute to Khashoggi, calling him the love of her life. Wiping away tears, she said she was “broken but proud.” “I want to know what happened to his body. I want that those in power are held accountable for their actions,” she added. She later wrote on Twitter: “One year since we last met. In one year, your assassination changed the World’s compass.” In the United States, the National Press Club observed a moment of silence in Khashoggi’s honor Wednesday morning. Evening vigils are planned in London and Washington.


Police identify woman whose burned body was found in Bowie in August

D.C. police on Tuesday released the identity of a woman who authorities said was killed in the District and whose burned body was found in August in a brush fire across from a shopping center in Prince George’s County. Police did not say how the victim, Marquita Lucas, 24, of Northwest Washington, had been killed. Authorities said in a statement she was killed inside a residence in the 3700 block of Horner Place SE, near Congress Heights. The crime has been classified as domestic violence. No arrest has been made and police declined to comment further. The statement from police says the homicide occurred Aug. 17, the same day firefighters found Lucas’s body while extinguishing a brush fire off Crain Highway in Bowie, Md. near U.S. 50, across from Bowie Town Center. Prince George’s County police later said the victim had been killed in the District and that they had turned the case over to D.C. police. D.C. police had declined to discuss the case until Tuesday, citing the investigation. Relatives for Lucas could not be reached on Tuesday. peter.hermann@washpost.com


One D.C. restaurant loses a Michelin star, while four others claim one

This post has been updated. The Michelin guide, now in its fourth year of awarding stars to Washington restaurants, is known for prizing stability over flash. And so there is nothing you could call seismic about the changes announced Tuesday for the 2020 list of D.C. establishments. No change at the top: the Inn at Little Washington retained its three-star status, and the two restaurants previously awarded two stars each — Pineapple and Pearls and Minibar — remained. The drama, such as it was, was all at the single-star level, with four eateries joining the elite club. The newcomers are Ivy City’s industrial-chic Gravitas, hearth-fired Middle Eastern hot spot Maydan, Capitol Hill cafe-cum-wine-bar Little Pearl, and Sushi Nakazawa, the New York import located in the Trump hotel. One venerable restaurant, Foggy Bottom new American staple Blue Duck Tavern, was bumped off the one-star list. (Another previously starred restaurant, Robert Wiedmaier’s Siren, closed.) For stargazers tracking the changes, the 2020 list might have contained a surprise: no Bad Saint, the tiny Filipino hot spot that has garnered national attention. Bad Saint had previously been included on the guidebook’s list of cheap eats (known as the Bib Gourmand designation) but was left off that 2020 list announced last week. The omission this year had some wondering if Bad Saint would graduate to the list of starred restaurants, but it did not. A Michelin inspector spoke with us over the phone about the changes, though the company’s hypersensitivity to the anonymity of its reviewers meant he spoke only on the condition that his name be withheld. First, a word about Michelin’s behind-the-scenes process, which has come under more scrutiny than ever since a famed French chef sued the company for demoting his restaurant from three stars to two, claiming that the guide violated its policy of multiple visits. Of Blue Duck, the inspector said, the decision to “suppress” a star is one the company takes seriously. If a meal at a starred restaurant is off, another inspector will go in for a visit. (Likewise, he says, if an inspector has a meal at an unstarred restaurant that suggests it is star-worthy, another inspector visits to weigh in.) On both visits to the Foggy Bottom restaurant, he said “the technique and quality weren’t there.” As for the additions, he praised Little Pearl’s “great value”; said that Maydan’s live-fire cooking “dazzled us”; praised “the quality


A 9-year-old boy missed his turn in a 5k run. He won the 10k race instead.

relative who was running in the 10k race, Heather Lovell said. That runner was reportedly blown away by a “cute boy who was doing really well.” Heather Lovell was initially upset when she realized the young runner in question was her son. “Now I’m mad — what the heck?” she said. “Why would he run the 10k? Why wouldn’t he tell me?” It turns out Kade had no idea, either. Volunteers had figured he was a willing participant in the 10k, which equates to a 6.2-mile run. It was also organized by the St. Francis Xavier Church and followed a near-identical route. When Kade approached the turn for the 5k, he said a woman instructed him to continue running straight. He obliged. After learning her son was okay, Heather Lovell returned to her previous vantage point to wait for him to finish. Still upset, she concluded he was in last when she saw him running by himself. The two reconvened at the finish line. As Kade tearfully explained to his mother that the mix-up was an accident, a race coordinator notified them that he had come in first place for the 10k. “I was like, ‘In his age group?’ ” Heather Lovell recalled. “She said: ‘No, out of all of them. No 10kers have finished yet.’ ” “We were all kind of in shock,” she added. Her son had finished in just over 48 minutes — about a minute faster than the 40-year-old woman who came in second, according to Heather Lovell. The coordinator told them the average age of the top 10 finishers was 38. Kade told The Washington Post that he was “tired and a little excited” upon learning of his first-place finish. But his mother recalled a slightly different version of events. “Once he found out he had won first, he was excited, then he was like, ‘No way!’ ” she said with a laugh. “He had no clue he was in the lead.” Heather Lovell said her son wants to continue running competitively. Kade said he plans to train for a marathon, eventually. He’s off to a blistering start. Read more: Raiders’ Vontaze Burfict banned for the rest of the season for helmet-to-helmet hit Boswell: Sharks are chomping at Nats Park, and I think we’re going to need a bigger bandwagon On one of his worst days, Patrick Mahomes shows why he is the NFL’s best


12 of the best things to see, drink and do in the D.C. area in October

feature a woman). Scottish synth-pop band CHVRCHES and electro-pop singer Melanie Martinez, respectively, top Saturday and Sunday’s lineups. The two days also include sets from the buzzy, all-caps bands LANY and COIN, Pride festival favorite Betty Who, and the mysterious singer Allie X. Noon at Union Market. $70-$159 single day, $99-$249 two-day pass. — Rudi Greenberg 29Rooms The creators of digital media juggernaut Refinery29 have concocted a pop-up exhibition that makes you feel as if you’re stepping inside the mind of an artist, “Being John Malkovich”-style. Each of 29Rooms’ imaginative installations offer widely different interactive and visual experiences. There’s “The Art Park,” composed of playful designs from five regional and national artists (including D.C.’s Trap Bob) and an “Alice in Wonderland”-esque installation called “Dream Doorways” from R&B/pop star and Alexandria native Kali Uchis. Sprinkled into the art menagerie is a “Dance Break” room and a space called “29 Questions,” where brave visitors are encouraged to sit and chat up a stranger. Various times at DC Armory. Find the full schedule at tickets.29rooms.com. $10-$34. — Stephanie Williams New Kitchens on the Block Vol. 6 In the world of restaurant journalism, it’s not unusual for food lovers to read about a star chef’s new restaurant months (or sometimes a year) before it opens. They may know where it will be located or have an idea about the concept, but no inkling of what the food will actually taste like. That’s where New Kitchens on the Block comes in. The semiregular pop-up event at Mess Hall allows chefs to offer tastes of forthcoming restaurants a few dishes at a time. The latest edition includes early looks at Pearl’s Bagels, coming to Mount Vernon Square this fall; Maialino Mare, the “Roman-style trattoria” opening at the Navy Yard this winter from New York restaurateur Danny Meyer; and Red Apron Butcher founder Nate Anda’s Hi/Fi Taco, scheduled to open in the food hall-ish the Roost concept on Capitol Hill in 2020. Tickets include two hours of food, beer and cocktails. Noon to 2 p.m. or 3 to 5 p.m. at Mess Hall. $85. — Fritz Hahn Bentzen Ball Brightest Young Things was just a scrappy hipster blog when it teamed with comedian Tig Notaro in 2009 to launch the Bentzen Ball comedy festival. It’s now been a decade since that inaugural festival, which, save for a brief hiatus, routinely brings the brightest names in comedy to


Elon Musk’s improbable Mars quest runs through a border town concerned with more than getting to space

intended to launch its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets from here. But as the concept for Starship began to form in his imagination, he decided to switch gears and make Boca Chica home to the new, massive rocket he hopes will take people deep into the solar system. “I think there will be a lot more buildings and a lot more stuff — way more stuff than is currently here,” he said. A sense of urgency to get Starship built led the company to do it in the ramshackle way it has — outside, without a factory in sight, in a barren setting fit for Star Wars that, as he wrote on Twitter earlier this month, could be labeled “Droid Junkyard, Tatooine.” “Since it was going to take too long to build the buildings we built [Starship] outside,” he said. “My new thing is management by rhyming: If the schedule is long, it’s wrong; if it’s tight, it’s right.” Most of the presentation focused on technical details, the benefits of stainless steel vs. carbon composites (“I’m in love with steel,” he said at one point), orbital mechanics, reentry vectors (“It’ll look totally nuts to see this thing land.”), the importance of orbital refueling and a future where humanity is “out among the stars.” “The critical breakthrough that’s needed for us to become a spacefaring civilization is to make space travel like air travel,” Musk said. The first flight of the test vehicle — which looks as if it were born from a collaboration between Wernher von Braun, the designer of the Saturn V Apollo-era rocket, and Frank Gehry, the modernist architect — would come within a couple of months, he said, a short, suborbital hop to about 12 miles high. Saturday’s presentation was the latest in a series of grand space talks that Musk’s fans have lauded as visionary and critics have derided as fantasy. But for all the hype SpaceX has received, and for the myriad times Musk has talked about making humanity a “multi-planet species,” it still has not flown a single human being anywhere, let alone the moon or to Mars. All the talk, then, of futuristic spaceships and deep space exploration rubbed NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine the wrong way. SpaceX is preparing to fly NASA astronauts to the International Space Station under a contract worth $2.6 billion. SpaceX, like Boeing, the other company hired to


Jamal Khashoggi’s death made the Saudi crown prince a pariah. Trump has helped rehabilitate him on the world stage.

drags on. Journalists and the public have been barred. Foreign diplomats have been allowed to attend, on the condition that they do not disclose details from the proceedings. They include representatives from the United States and other U.N. Security Council members, along with Turkey, according to Saudi officials. The Saudi government has not named the defendants. Agnes Callamard, a human rights expert at the United Nations, obtained a list from government sources that included Maher Mutreb, a Saudi intelligence officer, Salah al-Tubaigy, an autopsy specialist who is accused of dismembering Khashoggi’s body, and Ahmed al-Assiri, the former deputy chief of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency. Five of the defendants, including Mutreb and Tubaigy, are said to be facing the death penalty, according to Callamard’s report on Khashoggi’s killing, which was released in June. But Saud al-Qahtani, a former top aide to Mohammed who is accused of having helped plan the operation that led to Khashoggi’s killing and assuring the plot’s participants that the journalist was a great threat to the kingdom’s national security, is not a defendant in the trial, according to Callamard and other people familiar with the proceedings. The Saudi government has refused to answer questions about his status or whereabouts since announcing he had been fired from his job as the crown prince’s media adviser. His exclusion has led to accusations that the Saudi government is prosecuting lower-level enforcers to placate the kingdom’s international detractors. “The trial underway in Saudi Arabia will not deliver credible accountability,” Callamard wrote in her report. The Trump administration portrays Khashoggi’s killing as a crime that hasn’t been solved. “We continue the search for every fact and detail we can that might broaden our knowledge of those involved and their role in this brutal act,” the State Department official said. But the CIA has not changed its assessment from November that Mohammed ordered Khashoggi’s killing, according to two U.S. officials. That assessment, first reported by The Washington Post, is the U.S. government’s most definitive link between Mohammed and the murder. At the time the assessment was completed, Trump said erroneously that the CIA had not reached that conclusion, and he implied that the matter was still under investigation. Long before Khashoggi’s death, intelligence officials had been worried about Mohammed’s rapid ascent in Saudi leadership. Before he became the crown prince and heir to the throne, they saw him as a direct threat to


E.U. rejects Boris Johnson’s Brexit proposal, raising prospect of chaotic break within weeks

damaging to the European Union than the economic and political instability that could come with an abrupt “no-deal” Brexit without any transition period to buffer the way. “Safeguarding peace and stability on the island of Ireland, protection of citizens and E.U.’s legal order has to be the main focus of any deal,” read a statement from the European Parliament’s Brexit oversight committee. “The U.K. proposals do not match even remotely what was agreed as a sufficient compromise” by Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May. The European Parliament can veto any deal approved by the leaders of E.U. member states, who make up the European Council. Many European leaders appear to be deferring — for now — to Ireland because of how directly it would be affected by the terms of a Brexit withdrawal. “There are elements of this proposal that simply will not be part of any deal,” Irish deputy leader Simon Coveney said Thursday. European Council President Donald Tusk said he had spoken to both Ireland’s and Britain’s leaders Thursday. “We stand fully behind Ireland,” he tweeted. To Johnson, he said, “We remain open but still unconvinced.” There was similar skepticism from the European Commission, the European Union’s executive body. “There are problematic points in the U.K.’s proposal, and further work is needed,” said European Commission spokeswoman Natasha Bertaud. Although British Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay had admonished that the ball was in the European Union’s court, Bertaud emphasized, “This work is for the U.K. to do, not the other way around.” “We are not going to be the ones left holding the bag, the ball or any other kind of object,” she added — reflecting a fear on the European side that Johnson is setting them up to take the blame for a Brexit failure. The biggest disagreement centers on what to do about the border between Northern Ireland, which is leaving the European Union along with the rest of Britain, and the Republic of Ireland, which is staying. Since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended decades of sectarian violence, people and goods have been able to pass from one side of the border to the other without any checks. The European Union has maintained that keeping the border open and invisible is critical to ensuring that violence does not flare again. But Johnson’s proposal would lead to some form of customs controls, setting off nervousness on the island of


The Technology 202: Joe Biden is raising some money in Silicon Valley. But he’s losing the ideas primary there.

address antitrust issues, saying it’s something that’s important and that "we should take a hard look at." Biden's silence on these issues has led to less attention in Silicon Valley. While many don't agree with Warren's plans for tech, they're in the industry zeitgeist and it has forced people to take a closer look. “You don’t hear too much water cooler talk about [Biden’s] positions,” one tech company employee told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly. But while Biden might not be talking about net neutrality or encryption, he still could rally tech insiders' wallets and hearts for a key reason — His argument that he's well positioned to beat President Trump “I'm going to line up and support whichever candidate wins the nomination, and I've donated to several of them, including Biden,” said Hunter Walk, a Homebrew partner. “And while I'm incredibly respectful of his career in public service, right now it's candidates like Warren and Buttigieg who I see bringing new ideas and advocating for the evolution of our institutions, not just a return to stability post-Trump.” The Technology 202 will publish Oct. 8, 9 and 10 while Congress in recess. We will return to our normal schedule Oct. 14. BITS: Facebook reached a settlement with a New Zealand company that may have raked in millions selling fake likes on Instagram. Facebook has pending lawsuits against three other developers as a result of a review it launched into app developers after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, during which the political data-analytics firm harvested information from more 87 million Facebook users without their knowledge. That number could grow significantly: The company has discovered tens of thousands of apps that may have improperly handled users’ data, according to recently revealed court documents. Pending approval from a judge, the defendants in the New Zealand settlement will be banned from Facebook’s services and have to pay $500,000. Facebook’s legal team is “dedicated to furthering the company’s enforcement efforts,” Jessica Romero, a former prosecutor who oversees the team, told Tony. The company will target “anything that impacts our user safety whether it be because of privacy reasons, fraud or misleading information on our platforms,” she says. NIBBLES: A bipartisan pair of U.S. senators is calling on 11 top social media companies, including the Chinese-owned TikTok, to develop industry standards on labeling and limiting altered and faked media before foreign actors


Jamal Khashoggi remembered in Washington one year after journalist’s killing

“But as long as Jamal’s fellow reporters have anything to say about it, his inspirational life and his awful death at your bloody hands will never be forgotten.” Khashoggi, a veteran journalist and contributing columnist for The Washington Post, was killed in Istanbul after walking into the Saudi Consulate on Oct. 2, 2018, as he sought documents in preparation for his marriage. Khashoggi was never seen alive again, and his remains have never been recovered. The vigil in Washington was organized by the Committee to Protect Journalists, which is suing the U.S. government for the release of documents that could show whether the intelligence community had information on threats to Khashoggi, said Courtney Radsch, advocacy director for the group. Nine other journalism and human rights groups also sponsored the event in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood. Philippe Nassif, advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, said Khashoggi’s killing represented a pattern and practice by a regime that currently imprisons about 30 journalists and dissenters, who have reported being tortured and raped. In an interview that aired Sunday on the CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Mohammed denied ordering Khashoggi’s murder but said he accepted responsibility for the killing because Saudi government employees committed the crime. Dokhi Fassihian, executive director of Reporters Without Borders in North America, told dozens of vigilgoers in Washington that Khashoggi was a “deeply thoughtful, introspective and courageous man” who showed great care and love for his country and fellow Arabian citizens. “He raised his voice to criticize the Saudi government’s persecution of the media, of women and for those who fought for human rights and democracy in Saudi Arabia,” Fassihian said. “The murder of Jamal Khashoggi is an atrocity and deeply painful loss … to the larger Arab world who looked to him as a source of hope in dark times.” Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) quoted Maryland native Frederick Douglass, the 19th-century abolitionist and orator, telling the crowd that “there must be struggle” and that power “cedes nothing without a demand.” “This is going to be a long fight to get justice for the Khashoggi family and to end the tyranny in Saudi Arabia,” Raskin said. Also in attendance were journalists who have faced repression or were forced to flee their native countries. Nigerian television presenter Ohimai Amaize hosted a program that debuted in August 2018 that brought social media conversations to a broadcast


Stories of Venezuela’s suffering ignore U.S. sanctions

by Letters to the Editor The Post’s Oct. 1 special Outlook section, “Reversals of fortune,” dedicated exclusively to Venezuela, did a great disservice to readers in need of a balanced view of the situation. The places it profiled, Lake Maracaibo and La Gran Sabana, are indeed facing disasters caused by a declining oil industry and illegal mining, respectively. Yet the article failed to describe the devastating impact of U.S. sanctions. These sanctions do not just “mostly prevent the country from selling its oil.” They impede the government from importing food, medicine and manufacturing supplies (including replacement parts for the oil industry); from selling its gold (leading more people to engage in illegal mining); and from obtaining loans. The sanctions have impoverished Venezuelans, caused more than 40,000 deaths and amount to a collective punishment of the Venezuelan people. This is the second time in two weeks [“Even in death, indignity,” front page, Sept. 20] that The Post has engaged in poverty voyeurism and has failed to mention the death toll caused by the Trump administration sanctions. It is shameful that photographs of tragedy in Venezuela are being used in such an exploitative manner, with no discussion of what the United States could do to end the suffering. Lifting the sanctions and supporting negotiations among all Venezuelans ought to be the first steps, but these are antithetical to the Trump administration’s policy of attempting to overthrow the Venezuelan government, causing hardship and threatening military force. Leonardo Flores The writer is a coordinator for Codepink’s Latin America campaign. Read more letters to the editor.


Gene Weingarten: Taking ‘cultivated meat’ to another level?

The other day, as has become my biannual custom, I met with my good friend Bruce Friedrich so he could once again try to demonstrate to me that eating meat not only is ethically and environmentally indefensible, but that there are now plant-based alternatives that are nearly indistinguishable and equally succulent. These conversations, with their attendant blind-taste tests, have not gone well for Bruce in the past. This time we met at a Burger King, which is pioneering the highly touted Impossible Whopper, featuring a meatless meat. We ordered a Whopper and an Impossible Whopper. I left the table when the food arrived, so Bruce could unpackage the burgers — they come in different wrappers — and lay them out anonymously on a tray. Just to be sure, he took a photo of each, and labeled them in his phone, so there could be no doubt afterward which was which, given their advertised astounding similarity. Back at the table I lifted up the bun of each and told him I strongly suspected the burger on the left was the phony, because it had a ridiculously even circumference, as though it had been formed with a cookie cutter. Then I took a single bite out of each. “Definitely the phony is on the left,” I said, because, unlike the Whopper, which tasted like familiarly mediocre fast food, the phony tasted like processed cat doots. Bruce sighed. I had nailed it. So we were barely five minutes into our meeting, marinating in depression — we both want this plant thing to work; I, because I feel guilty about eating meat, and Bruce because he is one of the country’s most effective and dedicated advocates of meat alternatives. He runs the Good Food Institute, an international organization that is trying to get people out of the animal-torture, environmentally disastrous meat-eating habit, for good. With our experiment dismally over, Bruce and I got to talking philosophically, which is when things got really interesting. He explained that GFI is working on two fronts at the same time: plant-based meat alternatives like the Impossible Whopper, and “cultivated meat,” which is meat grown in a lab from animal cells, without harming any living things. The meat begins with a biopsy the size of a sesame seed. It’s not just theoretical. As of now, creating a chicken nugget, for example, is doable — in fact, it’s been done


Transcript: Cybersecurity Summit

Cybersecurity Summit: Threat Assessment 2019 Welcome MS. CORATTI: Hello, good morning. CROWD: Good morning. MS. CORATTI: Good morning. My name is Kris Coratti. I'm Vice President of Communications here at The Washington Post and General Manager of Washington Post Live. Really appreciate you all joining us here for our 9th Annual Cybersecurity Summit. Before we begin, I'd like to first acknowledge today as a really meaningful one for The Washington Post and for the cause of press freedom around the world. One year ago, this morning, journalist and Washington Post contributing columnist, Jamal Khashoggi, was brutally murdered in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. The Post has been paying tribute to Jamal throughout this week. And just moments ago, Post Publisher, Fred Ryan, and The Post's owner, Jeff Bezos, spoke at a memorial for him in Istanbul just steps from where Jamal was killed. Jamal's courage and his work will not be forgotten. For me, Jamal inevitably brings to mind the importance of a free press. But, more broadly, our ability to access information and communicate openly is the lifeblood of our democratic society. So much of our communication is done digitally, right, over texts or emails, on social media platforms. Our digital lives are encoded in data. They're ping-ponging around servers all over the country, on networks throughout the world. Securing these spaces is critical for free expression and for free enterprise. And understanding the threats we are facing is an important first step. But issues of cybersecurity are not always clear-cut. The same technology that keeps classified government information from getting into the wrong hands can be used to shield criminals in the darkest corners of the Web. The hacking tools used to track journalists and dissidents are similar to what law enforcement uses to track criminal and terrorists. Today, we're going to try to sort through these issues with experts on the front lines of cybersecurity innovation and governance, who are working to keep everything, from our elections to our smart phones and emails, safe. Before we get started, I'd like to thank our nonprofit sponsor, The Washington Institute; and our supporting sponsor, the University of Virginia. I'd especially like to thank our presenting sponsor, Raytheon, and welcome to the stage Jon Check, Senior Director of Cyber Protection Solutions at Raytheon. He's going to say a few words. Thank you. [Applause] MR. CHECK: Thank you, Kris. Good morning.


Transcript: Cybersecurity Summit

Alcoa, Westinghouse, and how this led to factory closings and lost jobs, and why we needed to care about this. MS. NAKASHIMA: So, Bill, expand on that. That was like 2014, was it? And now here we are five years later. It's not just steel and trade secrets that the Chinese are after. They're moving into biopharma and genetics. Can you talk a little bit about what you're seeing? MR. EVANINA: So publicly we talk about the span of influence and requirements that I would say the Ministry of State Security works with the Communist Party that developed to come here and actually steal our innovation. And it goes from biopharma to green energy to leading technology to future markets to gas, oil, shale, clean energy. And we saw a few years ago with the Monsanto case, stealing hybrid greens and sand, because they have to feed 1.4 billion people. So they would rather not create their own research and development arm when they can come over here to the West and take it. And they go first to market and their patent program is quicker, more effective than ours, and they immediately get gain of a local or international market at 30 cents on the dollar. MS. NAKASHIMA: Right. This idea of, then, stealing or working with genetic mapping companies in the U.S., I hadn't heard about that. What's going on there? MR. EVANINA: So it's complicated. So not only do they use their intelligence arms and their nontraditional collectors to steal our intellectual property and trade secrets. In a case recently with utilization of Duke and Yale's capability for genome mapping, sometimes we actually engage with them and do great collaborative work with their research and development and their academic work. And they take it anyway. So it's a not winning environment. But they took that technology on genome and DNA, and they used it to imprison over a million Uighurs, right? So even great technology that we utilize for great purposes sometimes is used nefariously by intelligence services of rogue nations. MS. NAKASHIMA: So this was done by the MSS, which is sort of their major intelligence service. MR. EVANTINA: Yeah. MS. NAKASHIMA: They took this through legitimate lawful research partnership. MR. EVANTINA: Some lawful, some unwitting, and some illegal, right? And I think that's the idea, that they utilize a whole of country approach to the


Hey, White Claw fans. You’ve got alcohol all wrong.

Derek Brown is the author of “ Humans love to drink, and we love to convince ourselves that there’s a way to make drinking healthy. We’ve shaken our martinis to get antioxidants, drunk wine heartily to lower cholesterol and tipped a few brews back to extend our lives. Perhaps that’s why they call it aqua vita, “the water of life.” Maybe it was inevitable that the current “wellness” trend would eventually claim a seat at the bar, but we should be honest with ourselves about what alcohol is and why we drink it. What is a healthy alcoholic drink? If you follow trends, you might have heard claims about White Claw, the sparkling seltzer that has caused a torrent over the summer, inspiring memes, bro-love and empty shelves in liquor stores where it’s experiencing shortages. Though White Claw has no discernible health-related attributes, the fact that it’s gluten-free, low-carb and doesn’t contain artificial sweeteners has purportedly made it “healthier” than higher-calorie, artificially flavored counterparts. Some beer and spirit brands are pushing alcoholic drinks as restoratives. Beers such as Sufferfest are targeted to runners after marathons. And a new brand of vodka infused with licorice root, mannitol and potassium sorbate claimed to provide a host of risk-reducing effects on the drinker ranging from providing “antioxidant support” to protecting our DNA from the effects of alcohol. Perhaps unsurprisingly, both the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau and the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found those claims wanting. This fad is showing up in cocktails, too. Kara Newman discussed the publicity onslaught of “wellness” cocktails such as the wheatgrass margarita this year in Wine Enthusiast magazine. It’s an idea she takes issue with. “I don’t care if there’s one shot of wheatgrass juice or 20 in there,” she wrote. “If it contains an ounce-and-a-half of Tequila, as this margarita recipe did, it’s not a ‘wellness’ tool.” Americans have been convinced of certain beverages’ healthful benefits before. Colonial Americans believed beer was nourishing, even healthy. They gave it to man, woman and child. They dipped toast in it. It was considered breakfast, and a shade healthier than contaminated water. A signer of the Declaration of Independence, and the father of American psychiatry, Dr. Benjamin Rush, spuriously set out a distinction between types of liquor and their resultant effects in his Moral and Physical Thermometer diagram from “An Inquiry into the


In an era of climate change, a phrase in the Jewish High Holidays liturgy takes on new meaning

chasm between us and success, to avert most of the severity of the decree of a warming planet. Make no mistake, some of the warming is already baked in, some of the decree is already upon us, and further severe consequences are likely no matter what we do. But the gates are not yet closed. If we do not act dramatically and in proportion to the enormous challenge we face, the consequences will continue to worsen; the decree will become increasingly severe. Climate scientists have given us convenient hash marks on the global thermometer: a warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius brings some damage, a warming of 2 degrees brings more. If we focus only on 1.5 or 2 degrees, it’s a lose-lose proposition, as our odds of holding there are not zero but painfully low. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a Pollyanna. But 2.5 degrees? A worse outcome. Four degrees? Way worse! The severity of those decrees are of biblical proportions. Will repentance, prayer and charity work? God, no. But, if “repentance” means assuming personal responsibility for your own carbon footprint and taking actions to reduce it, such as buying new home insulation, getting new energy-efficient appliances, driving less and driving cars that produce less emissions, then repent. If “prayer” means imploring higher authorities to act beneficently, such as telling your elected leaders — at all levels of government — to pledge to work toward net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, with major action starting immediately, then pray. If “charity” means not just donating to nongovernmental organizations that work toward reducing carbon (there are many deserving ones!) but also being willing to pay a little more for zero carbon energy, then give. Yes, of course, there are many opportunities for economic growth and job creation from new technologies, but, no, clean energy is not without cost and not always cheaper than fossil. Is that it? Buy a new air conditioning unit, send an email to your congressman and donate to the Natural Resources Defense Council, and you’re absolved? Nope. One of the more famous elements of modern Jewish thought is the concept of “tikkun olam,” or repairing the world. The concept usually refers to acts of justice, loving, kindness and righteousness. In the context of climate change, “world repair” becomes quite a bit more literal. Tikkun olam is never a one-off but rather a long process of continuous, concerted, intentional


On a D.C. rooftop, a scientist and his students look to solve bee mystery

W Discafani leads a student bee research team overseen by biology professor Hartmut Doebel. Their goal? To see whether neonicotinoids (pronounced NEE-o-NIC-o-teen-oyds), a type of chemical used to kill insects, are contributing to colony-collapse disorder. That is a deadly condition in which a colony of honeybees stops functioning. The disorder has caused more than 40 percent of the world’s honeybees to disappear. That’s a serious problem, and not just for people who like bees. The U.S. Agriculture Department estimates that bees pollinate about 30 percent of our nation’s food. “Bees are very, very important,” Doebel (DOE-bull) says. “If we don’t have pollinators, the flowers cannot grow from generation to generation, from year to year. We will lose the ability to grow many of our favorite fruits and vegetables.” Discafani has been interested in the problem since middle school. “When I was in sixth grade, my science teacher got upset when she first found out about the bees dying,” says Discafani, a 20-year-old student from New Jersey. “She asked us to write haiku poems about bees.” That moment stuck with Discafani. When she saw a flier at George Washington about an opportunity to help with the bee research project, she volunteered. Discafani helps run the program’s website, GWBuzz.com, which spreads awareness about the importance of honeybees. As a research assistant and senior beekeeper, she helps perform experiments and care for the bees. On this sunny April day, five floors up on the roof of Bell Hall, Discafani pumps the smoke and then watches Doebel lightly spray the bees with sugar water to distract them during the transition from travel box to hive. Then it’s up to Discafani and the dozen or so other students to transfer the bees into the rest of the hives. They spray the next set of bees and then gently shake them into a hive. They transfer the queen bee — who was kept in a small box — and then reassemble the hive and move on to the next one. Each hive can hold 60,000 bees. Last year, one experiment Doebel and his students performed examined how neonicotinoids can hurt a bee’s memory. “If they have above a certain level, the majority of the bees won’t ever find their way home,” says student research assistant Michelle Ahn, 19, who’s from Fairfax. If a bee is confused or lost, it becomes vulnerable to disease and loses efficiency.


MBS can’t take ‘responsibility’ for Khashoggi’s murder and also blame his minions

the crime, pointing instead to the layers of officials that stand between him and those who did the killing. He seems to suggest that this protects him from individual liability. But that’s not how it works. Not under international law. In fact, my investigation established credible evidence of a far closer relationship between those who performed the killing and the crown prince — far closer than he has admitted. The evidence shows that the operation that killed Khashoggi involved state planning, resources and assets. In the two weeks that followed the killing, Saudi officials went further — taking steps apparently to destroy evidence of the killing — even as they were denying his death. This could not have taken place without the crown prince’s say-so. Under international law, the crown prince’s criminal liability is not settled only as a question of whether he ordered the killing. His individual criminal liability is also engaged as a member of the state’s chain of command. Liability may be invoked if he disregarded information suggesting the likely future commission of the crime, or if he failed to act with diligence to prevent such a crime, or if he took steps to cover up the crime after its commission. Further, the operation against Khashoggi took place during an organized crackdown against dissent in Saudi Arabia, including through unlawful acts of torture and arbitrary detention. The crown prince presided over the repetition and escalation of those crimes too, taking no action to prevent those crimes. That, too, incurs criminal responsibility. The liability of the crown prince concerns his acts both of omission and commission. And justice for those acts cannot be self-served. Bespoke justice, justice at his convenience according to his personal judgment? That is not justice. That is not taking responsibility. Only a proper criminal investigation into the criminal liability of high-level officials in the chain of command behind the killing of Khashoggi will determine how far the crown prince’s personal responsibility goes. And only then he would have taken “all actions to avoid such a thing in the future.” Read more about Jamal Khashoggi: A missing voice, a growing chorus Fred Ry Ezzedine Fishere: Jamal Khashoggi symbolized the promise of reconciling political Islam and democracy Robert Menendez: Trump betrayed U.S. moral leadership with Saudi Arabia. So Congress had to act. Karen Mohamed Soltan: How Jamal Khashoggi gave Arab dissidents mentorship — and a community


Vaping lung injuries top 1,000 cases as deaths rise to 18

Hundreds more people in the U.S. have been sickened by a mysterious vaping-related lung disease, and the death toll has risen to 18, according to federal health data released Thursday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 1,080 cases have been reported, up from the 805 reported a week ago. Vaping-related injuries have now been reported in almost every state. Data released Thursday confirm earlier trends. Most patients had a history of vaping products containing THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. Most are male and young, with 80 percent of patients under 35 and more than one-third under 21. The confirmed deaths have occurred in 15 states: Alabama, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, Oregon and Virginia. More deaths are under investigation. State health departments have released very little information about the patients who died. But they have tended to be older. Anne Schuchat, the CDC’s principal deputy director, said in a briefing with reporters Thursday that the median age of the patients who died is about 50, with a range from people in their 20s to those in their 70s. Compared to those who have fallen ill, a higher proportion of the deaths have been in women, she said. She did not have details about their underlying medical conditions. But individuals with such conditions would probably not withstand this type of acute lung injury, she said. Schuchat said it is difficult to know how long this outbreak will continue. With hundreds of new cases being reported each week, CDC officials are intensifying their recommendation that people refrain from using e-cigarettes or vaping, particularly products containing THC, and especially THC products bought on the street. “We haven’t seen a measurable drop-off in the occurrence of new cases,” she said. “We don’t feel individuals have changed their behaviors or the products are gone. … I cannot stress enough the seriousness of these lung injuries.” The CDC is working with the Food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Administration to find the sources and causes of the outbreak and remove them from circulation. But Schuchat said that is likely to be difficult and time-consuming. “I’m not optimistic that tomorrow, we’ll be able to pull all the risky stuff off the market,” she said. Officials have said they suspect the cause of the lung disease to be some kind of chemical exposure but have


not identified a single e-cigarette or vaping product, brand or specific substance that has been definitively linked to the growing national outbreak. Among 578 patients with information on substances used in e-cigarette, or vaping, products in the three months before they had symptoms, about 78 percent said they used THC-containing products. Officials have said those products appear to play an important role in the outbreak. The mystery over the exact cause deepened this week with a letter published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) by pathologists from the Mayo Clinic who studied lung biopsies from 17 patients in the outbreak. Most had vaped marijuana or cannabis oils. Researchers found none of the patients had evidence of lipoid pneumonia, a rare form of pneumonia typically associated with elderly people accidentally inhaling oils into their lungs. Those findings were in conflict with a study of five patients in North Carolina, published last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the North Carolina patients, clinicians found immune cells filled with oil and diagnosed the patients with lipoid pneumonia. Clinicians at the University of Utah also found the same type of cells, known as lipid-laden macrophages, in the lungs of six patients. Their findings were also published last month in a letter in the NEJM. The Utah clinicians suggested that the presence of these same lipid-containing immune cells could be a marker for vaping-related lung injury. Kevin Davidson, a pulmonologist at WakeMed Health & Hospitals in Raleigh, N.C., and the senior author of the CDC study on lipoid pneumonia, said the discrepancy could be related to the way the most recent biopsies were processed. The routine way of processing tissues can remove lipids, and when that happens, it masks the characteristics of lipoid pneumonia. “You won’t be able to see the lipid” in the immune cells, he said. The need for special handling of biopsies was raised during a call between federal health officials and state officials and clinicians in late August, Davidson said. At that time, a pathologist from the FDA mentioned the need for special processing. The CDC’s website also states that if a lung biopsy is obtained, the routine pathology processing, which includes formalin-fixation and paraffin-embedding, “can remove lipids.” One particular oil is a key focus of investigators: vitamin E oil, also known as vitamin E acetate. Experts in the legal marijuana industry have said


At the Large Hadron Collider, a peek at the future of science

“Don’t lose sight of me.” Physicist Abhigyan Dasgupta — “Riju” to his family and friends — looks over his shoulder to caution our 12-member group as we prepare to descend 300 feet beneath the French countryside into the largest machine on Earth: the $4.7 billion Large Hadron Collider. Big Science doesn’t get much bigger than the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on the campus of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) facility outside Geneva. The LHC runs in a circular 16.7-mile underground tunnel that crisscrosses the Swiss and French border. More than 1,200 superconducting magnets, each 50 feet long and weighing 35 tons and joined end-to-end, make up the collider’s ring. Guided by the magnets, trillions of protons circulate at nearly light speed in opposite directions inside a pair of two-inch-diameter tubes. At four points along the ring, aiming magnets send the two counter-rotating beams crashing into each other. These collisions blast the protons into subatomic smithereens. Detectors weighing thousands of tons — think of them as giant cameras — positioned at the collision points record three-dimensional images of each of the 40 million proton mash-ups that occur every second. Aided by high-speed computers and algorithms of mind-bending complexity, scientists pore over the tracks left by these impacts for clues about the origins of our universe and the existence of extra dimensions, and for undiscovered particles that might usher in a new era of discovery in the physical sciences. Our gateway to the collider is the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) on the accelerator ring near Cessy, France, a half-hour car ride from downtown Geneva. The CMS detector is one of seven experiments on the collider’s ring and one of the three that visitors may tour. We enter a cavernous hangarlike room dominated by a 70-foot-high cross-sectional photograph of the CMS detector deep beneath our feet. When the accelerator is running, we are told, “this is as close as visitors would get to the CMS.” The Large Hadron Collider is in the first months of a two-year technical shutdown for maintenance and upgrades. During that time, visitors lucky enough to secure a place on a CERN guided tour can go deep underground to visit the cavern that houses the gigantic detectors. When researchers switch the collider back on in early 2021, visitors will receive a more limited underground tour until the next two-year stop in 2025. “You’re extremely lucky,” Dasgupta tells


Marines disciplined at San Diego boot camp for abuse and racism targeting recruits, documents show

in his report that it “makes sense” that the drill instructor’s sobriety was questioned, but that there was not enough evidence to prove he was intoxicated. The Marine was going through personal issues that included a divorce and an injury requiring pain medication at the time, the investigating officer wrote in his report. He recommended that the drill instructor be court-martialed for charges that include cruelty and maltreatment, according to the documents. “Given his actions with these recruits … there would likely be additional allegations of recruit maltreatment” if further investigated, the investigator determined. However, as with other cases detailed in the documents, the Marine Corps elected not to pursue a court-martial. Instead, the service punished the Marine administratively, keeping the case out of court and away from public scrutiny. He received a formal reprimand, a demotion in rank, forfeiture of two months of pay and permanently lost his job as a drill instructor, the service said in its statement to The Post. He left the service in September 2018. “The individual was held accountable for their actions, which were starkly incongruent to a Marine leader responsible for training recruits and Marines,” the service said in its written response. In another case, a sergeant who in 2017 worked around recruits as a military instructor and member of the Weapons and Field Training Battalion was reported for misconduct that included assault and using racist terms. In the first, the Marine asked a recruit who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent whether he was a terrorist, echoing a form of verbal abuse that preceded Siddiqui’s death at Parris Island just a few months prior. Some recruits interviewed by investigators said they believed the drill instructor’s comments were intended to be funny, but one noted that the recruit who had been singled out felt differently. The second incident followed a land-navigation exercise, after another recruit was asked his name, the documents say. The instructor, who identified himself as white in the documents, first referred to the recruit as “white boy,” but then asked, “Oh, so you’re a wetback?” after the recruit identified himself by name. “Wetback” is a racist term, disparaging to Hispanics. The Marine then kicked the recruit, according to the documents, causing him to stumbled backward. The accused Marine said the “racial” comments were not directed at the recruit, but a part of a conversation he was having with two


PM Update: Cloud cover increases overnight. Mild on Sunday with late-day showers.

Well, today’s weather didn’t quite pan out as planned, did it? A persistent flow off the ocean made for an ideal cloud-making environment across the region today. Unfortunately, that cloud cover will only thicken overnight and Sunday, with a better chance of some scattered showers developing by tomorrow afternoon. Listen to our daily D.C. forecasts: Apple Podcasts | Amazon Echo | More options Through tonight: View the Tomorrow (Sunday): See Ian Livingston’s forecast through next week. And if you haven’t already, join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram. For related traffic news, check out Gridlock. A hail of a record: Want our 5 a.m. forecast delivered to your email inbox?


Trump’s latest tariffs could mean higher food and drink prices — and not just for French wine

The list reads like something that could go under the header of “things that are delicious.” French, Spanish and German wine. Spanish olives. Parmesan. Stilton. Currant jelly. But this isn’t a menu at a Euro-chic bistro; it’s a government document out this week spelling out the products subject to a 25 percent increase in tariffs beginning Oct. 18. The expansive array of wines, cheeses, produce, meat and seafood imported to the United States from European Union countries is caught up in a trade war that has nothing to do with Irish butter or sweet biscuits from the United Kingdom. (They’re getting a 25 percent tariff increase, too). Their inclusion on the list, though, means that the price of that bottle of Cotes du Rhone you like to pick up at the grocery store or the cheese plate at your neighborhood bistro could go up. But price hikes on the foods covered by the new tariffs are only part of the story: Ripple effects could mean higher prices on other items at stores or in restaurants, as people up and down the food chain make up for the new costs, experts say. The vagaries of the marketplace mean the tariff increases won’t result in a uniform price bump. All of which this week sent wine and food buyers, distributors and restaurateurs into a fog of uncertainty that’s thicker than a creamy Greek yogurt (which is also on the list). After markups, retail prices for wine could go up as much as 40 percent on the shelves, predicts Guillaume Touton, who owns New York-based wine importer Monsieur Touton Selection. Touton says French wines made up almost half of the wine he sold last year, but he’s prepared to start looking at wines from other countries if people aren’t willing to pay higher prices. “I have 220 salespeople, and I have to feed them and find them something to sell,” he says. “If the customer does not follow the price, then I will buy more from Chile, or Argentina, or New Zealand.” For someone like Sebastian Zutant, co-owner and resident wine guy at Primrose in Washington’s Brookland neighborhood, the choices aren’t as vast. His bistro almost exclusively offers French varietals, many obscure, and often at really good prices, which means he operates on margins with little room to absorb price hikes. He joked this week with his colleagues about changing the restaurant’s concept