How Iran fights the Islamic State

soil or against Iranian citizens. The Iranian approach to countering the Islamic State is more hands-on than that of the U.S.-led coalition, because by virtue of proximity, Tehran feels the threat more acutely. Iran draws on its relatively strong and stable state, with its notoriously effective security services to implement its counterterror measures. Tehran targets the Islamic State directly to disrupt its operations. It sends advisers, military personnel and supplies and money to tackle the group in Syria and Iraq to avoid conflict within its own borders. It also conducts a messaging campaign to tackle the group’s ideology by highlighting unity among Muslims and signals its commitment to the fight by showcasing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) presence outside its borders. To lessen the sectarian aspect of the conflict — after all, Iran wants to lead all Muslims, not just the Shiite minority — Tehran engages with various political and religious groups fighting the Islamic State, including the Iraqi government and Army, Kurdish fighters and Sunni groups. Inside Iran Domestically, Iran undertook a number of anti-radicalization measures, in coordination with the minority Sunni community to tackle the Islamic State’s effort to recruit inside Iran. While somewhat successful to begin with, in 2016, Iranian official admitted that the Islamic State had tapped into Iran’s Sunni minority for recruits. It carried out extensive intelligence operations to thwart planned attacks. In July, for example, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry successfully defused an Islamic State plan to conduct a large-scale terrorist attack across Tehran, involving 50 targets using more than 200 pounds of explosives. But given that Iran was a major target, it was unlikely to escape attacks completely. Islamic State fighters increase focus on Iran By summer 2016, the Islamic State reportedly lost almost 50 percent of its territorial gains in Iraq. As the fight continues to make progress, the group is lashing out. In the past few months, it upped its anti-Iran propaganda and outlined its vision to conquer Iran to return it to Sunni rule. Iranian officials were quick to dismiss the threats, saying the Islamic State could not create insecurity in Iran. The group also published four issues of its online publication Rumiyah, in Persian. After a number of failed attacks, the Islamic State succeeded in simultaneously targeting Iran’s parliament and the shrine to Iran’s religious leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini; symbols of democracy and revolution in Iran. The attack will significantly


Why people are going crazy over bitcoin and other digital currencies

create new digital currencies. Similar to a company issuing stock for the first time through an initial public offering, investors can use ICOs to purchase tokens issued by the company. But instead of buying ownership in the company, investors are buying access to the company’s product or service, Hileman says. Tokens can become more valuable if a start-up — say a company trying to develop a new online storage system — is successful, he says. The tokens can also become worthless if the start-up fails. Where can I track their prices? There are several websites that track the price of cryptocurrencies, including CoinDesk.com and CoinMarketCap.com. What are the risks of these cryptocurrencies? Because the market for cryptocurrencies is still small when compared with traditional currencies, prices can be extremely volatile. That means people who own the currencies could face sudden losses. “There is no guarantee that the exchange rate for virtual currencies will be the same or higher the next day — or the next minute,” Lazarichev said. Because the currencies are virtual and unregulated, the transactions and exchanges can be vulnerable to hacks. The lack of government oversight also means that investors have no guarantee that they’ll get their money back if something happens, Lazarichev says. People storing money in a traditional bank account, however, have up to $250,000 of their deposits at each bank insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The latest run-up in prices also has many experts worried that some of the cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and ethereum, may be in a bubble that’s ready to pop. Don’t put any money into virtual currencies that you can’t afford to lose, Piscini says. And if you can, you should diversify by buying more than one currency, he says. Investors should also be skeptical of the start-ups trying to raise money through ICOs, experts say. If the creators don’t provide a detailed white paper explaining their plans that should be a red flag, Piscini says. How do you buy cryptocurrencies? Investors could soon have other ways to take part in the market. The Securities and Exchange Commission is reconsidering an application from the Winklevoss twins for an exchange-traded fund that invests in bitcoin. Such an ETF would track the price of bitcoin, but investors would be able to buy and sell the fund as easily as a stock. The regulator initially rejected the application in March, citing a


These banks are finally offering better deals on savings accounts

Robert Frick, a corporate economist with Navy Federal Credit Union. Some online banks are offering savings yields as high as 1.3 percent on accounts that are available nationwide, up from a high of 1.1 percent at the start of the year, according to Bankrate.com. Meanwhile, the average yield offered by traditional savings accounts has remained pretty much unchanged at 0.09 percent. Online banks have typically offered some of the most attractive deals for savers because they don’t have to pay for overhead business costs. But the banks have been sweetening their savings accounts as the Fed has raised rates as a way to attract more cash the firms can use to issue more loans, says Greg McBride, chief financial analyst for Bankrate. BankPurely, DollarSavingsDirect and ableBanking were all offering annual percentage yields of 1.3 percent on savings accounts as of Wednesday, the highest yield available, according to Bankrate. Goldman Sachs offered the next highest yield of 1.2 percent, followed by Synchrony Bank, which offered a yield of 1.15 percent. Some of the banks have been offering these yields for several months, but others, such as Goldman Sachs, have upped their yields in the past couple of weeks. Consumers still may not notice much of a change in the yields offered by most traditional savings accounts, analysts say. Big banks have generally been swimming in cash since the Great Recession and don’t feel pressure to bring in more deposits, says Ken Tumin, creator of DepositAccounts.com, a website that compares bank accounts. People thinking about opening an online savings account should make sure they understand the ins and outs of the accounts, including any fees they may be charged. Some of the banks may set limits on how much money consumers can transfer out of the accounts each day, Tumin says. Other banks may require a minimum amount of deposits. Consumers who may need immediate access to their savings should look for online savings accounts that offer debit cards or ATM access, Tumin says. Otherwise, it could take between one and four days for money to be transferred from an online savings account to your checking account, he says. Read more: Would you pay to make saving money easier? This app is about to find out. 5 ways you can trick yourself into becoming a better saver Tips for millennials who want to buy a house — and keep their avocado toast


Wawa is coming to Washington — but won’t be selling gas

expand into the area. Eatsa, Honeygrow and Halal Guys have all recently opened in the District, and supermarket chain Wegmans last month announced it would be opening its first D.C. store in 2022. Non-traditional retailers are getting into the grab-and-go food business, too, with new Walgreens and Rite Aid stores stocking everything from sushi and champagne to creme brulee and quiche. Executives were drawn to the location on 19th Street, Gheysens said, because of its concentration of hungry pedestrians. The area is not without stiff competition, though. Among the quick-service eateries within a one-block radius: Taylor Gourmet, McDonald’s, Pret A Manger, Corner Bakery Cafe, Potbelly, Sweetgreen, Chop’t and Dunkin Donuts. There is also a 7-Eleven a few doors down. (One advantage Wawa might have over its competitors: Price. The company, which is advertising an upcoming $4.99 hoagie special on its website, is considerably cheaper than many downtown eateries. At Taylor Gourmet, by comparison, hoagies start at $7.99, while salads at Chop’t can easily cost $11.) To compete with nearby restaurants, Wawa is experimenting with a new seating area dubbed Wild Goose Cafe. It will also have bar-style seating, as well as outdoor tables and chairs. “We recognized that not everybody wants to eat at their office desk,” Gheysens said. “We’re providing basic seating — not a tremendously comfortable experience, but one that provides them some room to take a break and then move on.” Wawa’s D.C. location will focus on grab-and-go food and drinks for nearby workers. (Interbrand Design Forum/courtesy of Wawa) In addition to its usual line-up, the new Wawa store will also sell custom salad and cold brew coffee. The company, which started as an iron foundry in 1803, has legions of die-hard fans, some of whom have the Wawa logo tattooed on their bodies. (Among them: the actor Johnny Knoxville, who has the company’s red letters etched onto his upper arm.) The company has its own dairy, where it produces milk and ice cream, and for years has allowed customers to place their orders using digital kiosks. The Wawa, Penn.-based company has long been focused on suburban markets, where it tends to have 5,500-square-foot stores with 16 fuel pumps and 50 or 60 parking spaces, Gheysens said. The company’s new urban model is a departure from its roots, but also an opportunity to reach new types of shoppers, he said. “D.C. has all of the important demographics


hoagie special on its website, is considerably cheaper than many downtown eateries. At Taylor Gourmet, by comparison, hoagies start at $7.99, while salads at Chop’t can easily cost $11.) To compete with nearby restaurants, Wawa is experimenting with a new seating area dubbed Wild Goose Cafe. It will also have bar-style seating, as well as outdoor tables and chairs. “We recognized that not everybody wants to eat at their office desk,” Gheysens said. “We’re providing basic seating — not a tremendously comfortable experience, but one that provides them some room to take a break and then move on.” Wawa’s D.C. location will focus on grab-and-go food and drinks for nearby workers. (Interbrand Design Forum/courtesy of Wawa) In addition to its usual line-up, the new Wawa store will also sell custom salad and cold brew coffee. The company, which started as an iron foundry in 1803, has legions of die-hard fans, some of whom have the Wawa logo tattooed on their bodies. (Among them: the actor Johnny Knoxville, who has the company’s red letters etched onto his upper arm.) The company has its own dairy, where it produces milk and ice cream, and for years has allowed customers to place their orders using digital kiosks. The Wawa, Penn.-based company has long been focused on suburban markets, where it tends to have 5,500-square-foot stores with 16 fuel pumps and 50 or 60 parking spaces, Gheysens said. The company’s new urban model is a departure from its roots, but also an opportunity to reach new types of shoppers, he said. “D.C. has all of the important demographics for us: Population growth, millennials and lot of foot traffic,” he said. “We are an East Coast brand that’s been around the Beltway for a long time, but a couple of years ago it became clear to us that Washington would be a good market for us long-term.” The company plans to open up to 10 stores in Washington by 2020, and is eyeing locations near George Washington and Georgetown Universities, Gheysens said. Eventually, he says the company will have “a few dozen” stores in the nation’s capital. Read more: Walmart’s answer to Aldi and Amazon: ‘designer cantaloupe’ This beloved grocery chain is the latest company to face Trump-related boycotts Walmart is asking employees to deliver packages on their way home from work Breitbart lost 90 percent of its advertisers in two months: Who’s still there?


The World Health Organization just picked a new leader. These are the challenges he faces.

emergency response staff. This left WHO slow to respond to the 2014 Ebola crisis, which ultimately claimed more than 11,000 lives in West Africa. WHO’s budget structure is another problem. In recent decades, the organization has relied overwhelmingly on voluntary contributions from member states and nonstate actors. Those funds tend to be earmarked for pet projects, potentially leaving core WHO functions like pandemic preparedness and response chronically underfunded. The World Health Assembly, the decision-making forum of WHO member states, recently approved a biennial budget of almost $4.4 billion, which includes an increase of 3 percent in “assessed” dues to member states for the first time in over a decade. Of this budget, $805 million is designated for communicable diseases. It remains to be seen whether all of the $4.4 billion ultimately will materialize. The Trump administration proposes to cut U.S. funding Adding to WHO’s financial pinch, the Trump administration proposed a $2.2 billion cut in U.S. global health spending. The United States contributes 16 percent of WHO’s budget, and is the largest single source of global health aid overall. While Congress may not follow the White House’s proposal, WHO could be in serious financial trouble. The polio eradication effort illustrates many of the problems WHO faces. This program, supported generously by the Gates Foundation and other donors, has cross-subsidized other health activities — including 74 percent of all WHO salaried workers in Africa and much of the immunization work in the region. Almost 25 percent of WHO’s budget goes to the polio campaign. With the wild polio virus now confined to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria, what happens to WHO funding if the polio eradication effort is successful? As Council on Foreign Relations analyst Laurie Garrett warns: “Polio eradication funds and, consequently, the salaries of one-seventh of its employees will dry up; everything from maternal mortality and cervical cancer screening programs will collapse.” Tom Frieden There are other challenges WHO faces a related challenge over how to define its core mission. In recent years, WHO has embarked on initiatives as diverse as tobacco control and obesity. In the wake of the Ebola crisis and emerging disease threats such as Zika, rich donor countries want the organization to focus on global health security and pandemic preparedness. During its 70-year history, WHO has performed core functions like coordination and information sharing to address infectious diseases. These roles remain as relevant as ever. Meanwhile,


Are sanctions pushing Russians to ‘rally around the flag’? Not exactly.

U.S. election. All respondents were asked, “To what extent do you support the Russian leadership (rukovodstvo) on a 5-point scale where 1 equals very negative and 5 equals very positive.” In the first, baseline group, respondents received no additional information before answering the question. This group’s average level of support for the Russian government was 3.52. Before answering the question, a second group was reminded that “since 2014 the U.S. had levied sanctions against Russia.” A third group was reminded that “since 2014 the E.U. had levied economic sanctions against Russia.” If the “rally around the flag” argument was correct, we would expect higher average support for the Russian government in these two groups than in the baseline group. Instead, the second and third groups’ level of support for the Russian government was 3.40 and 3.46, respectively — just a bit lower than the support in the control group. In other words, reminding people about the sanctions had no effect on their support for the Russian government. So what does cause Russians to ‘rally around the flag’? To test the robustness of the finding, I repeated the survey in January with 1,600 respondents across Russia. When respondents received no additional information, their average level of support for the Russian government was 3.59. Reminding respondents of the U.S. sanctions increased support for the Russian government to 3.71, a small increase, but not a statistically significant one (or to be technical, p=.24). Would the reason for the sanctions matter? To find out, in the January surveys, interviewers reminded another group that the United States had levied economic sanctions after Russia annexed Crimea. When reminded of this, respondents supported the Russian government by 36 percentage points more than the control group (3.95 versus 3.59, p = .00) — a statistically significant increase over those reminded just of U.S. sanctions (3.71 versus 3.59, p = .02). That’s hardly surprising. The annexation of Crimea has been extremely popular in Russia. In other words, Russians are indeed rallying around the flag, but because of the wildly popular annexation of Crimea — rather than because of the sanctions themselves. When asking what causes citizens to rally around the flag, researchers and observers may wish to be careful to consider whether such an effect comes from the sanctions — or from the government actions that brought those sanctions on. Simply comparing the presence of sanctions and observing approval


are indeed rallying around the flag, but because of the wildly popular annexation of Crimea — rather than because of the sanctions themselves. When asking what causes citizens to rally around the flag, researchers and observers may wish to be careful to consider whether such an effect comes from the sanctions — or from the government actions that brought those sanctions on. Simply comparing the presence of sanctions and observing approval ratings for the government is likely to produce misleading results. What about Russian opinion toward the United States and European Union for imposing sanctions? The Western sanctions have been narrowly targeted toward firms and individuals directly involved in the decision to annex Crimea or subvert Eastern Ukraine, thus minimizing the costs to the mass public. This may have made it harder for the Russian government to use the sanctions to mobilize public support. In this respect, “smart” sanctions may have worked as intended. Nevertheless, the sanctions may have turned public opinion against the U.S. government. In our January survey, we also asked respondents to rate their support for the United States on a comparable 1 through 5 scale. Reminding respondents that the United States levied sanctions on Russia reduced support for the United States by 20 percentage points — a statistically significant drop from those who got no information before hearing the question. However, when interviewers suggested to another group of respondents that Donald Trump might weaken the sanctions after taking office, that group supported the United States by 31 percentage points more than those in the baseline group. In sum, there is scant evidence that economic sanctions against Russia have induced citizens to support their government. But neither is there much evidence that economic sanctions have led Russians to turn against the Russian leadership. Economic sanctions may be successful in doing other things. They may be an important way that the United States and E.U. are signaling to the Kremlin their opposition to Russian actions in Ukraine. They may be changing the attitudes of Russian foreign policy elites. They may be hurting Russian corporations’ long-term financing options. But there is not much evidence that they are changing general public opinion toward the Russian government. Timothy Frye is the chair of the Columbia University political science department and author of “Property Rights and Property Wrongs: How Power, Institutions, and Norms Shape Economic Conflict in Russia” (Cambridge University Press, 2017)


It’s time to stop blaming poor people for the financial crisis

class. Among the 20 percent of households in the center of the distribution of income, the rate of homeownership among typical households rose just 1.6 percentage points in those five years. Meanwhile, homeownership in fact declined among the poor. Among the poorest 20 percent of households, the share owning homes fell 0.6 percentage points over that period. It was not just that wealthier households were better able to afford those new mortgages. On average, wealthier households borrow less relative to their incomes. As the boom accelerated, though, the rich began receiving riskier loans as well, Adelino, Schoar and Severino's paper shows. Average mortgage debt as a share of income increased in tandem for rich, poor and middle-class households alike during the boom. More affluent homeowners also started getting into trouble more. In 2003, just about 33 percent of all delinquent mortgage debt was owed on homes in the richest 40 percent of Zip codes. By 2006, that figure increased to 41 percent, the authors note. The problem with subprime Banks were taking bigger risks on affluent borrowers as well as on the poor. All the same, many observers argue that subprime loans along with other unconventional financial products might have been particularly problematic. Many prime loans were insured by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which absorbed the losses associated with those mortgages when they went bad. By contrast, subprime loans were issued by the private sector, which frequently resold them to other firms, sometimes without revealing all the risks involved. When those mortgages failed, those buyers found themselves in financial trouble. Worse, the complexity of the products made it difficult for the buyers to figure out just how deep in the red they were, said David Fiderer, a former investment banker at Crédit Agricole and an expert on housing policy. That uncertainty resulted in a panic, he said. “It’s hard to evaluate the mortgage crisis without really looking at the incidence of fraud,” Fiderer said, pointing to a series of legal actions brought by governments against financial institutions. “It was prevalent, almost ubiquitous.” Who's to blame Banks did not only issue subprime mortgages to the poor, however. Better-off borrowers used these products as well, along with other unconventional loans such as the so-called Alt-A mortgages, which were another source of instability. The debate over all these minutiae of the previous decade's housing market is not just about what caused the


NASA preemptively reschedules ‘artificial aurora’ rocket launch for tonight (June 18)

Improved Malemute will launch no earlier than 6/16, from 9:05 to 9:20 p.m. due to p… https://t.co/b6zjGREHrG There were many disappointed rocket watchers Tuesday evening, including the Capital Weather Gang. Our plan was to photograph the launch over the Jefferson Memorial. Kevin Ambrose, the Capital Weather Gang photographer, set up his camera facing southeast on the Tidal Basin on both Monday and Tuesday evenings hoping to photograph the rocket launch and the colorful, artificial clouds that would follow. While he waited for the launch, he photographed the Tidal Basin scenes at sunset and during the blue hour. There are 10 canisters of chemicals on board this rocket, which will begin to deploy about four minutes after launch. The chemicals will mix with the atmosphere to create artificially colored clouds so scientists can study the way air moves at very high altitudes. Cameras are set up at Wallops (on Virginia’s Eastern Shore about 150 miles from Washington) and in Duck, N.C., to track the color tracers through the air. Three chemicals will interact to form the color tracers — barium, strontium and cupric-oxide. None of these chemicals will be a hazard to anyone on the coast. Scroll below the graphic to read how to see it. This map shows when you can expect to see the launch. For everyone outside the immediate launch area, it will take about 220 seconds to appear. (NASA) Launch window: What you could see: How to see it: Approximately four minutes after the rocket launches, the canisters will be deployed. At this point, you should see colorful clouds or even an aurora-like glow. We’ve never seen something like this ourselves, so we don’t know exactly what to expect! If you get photos of the event, send them to us on Twitter or Facebook, or via email! Monday’s sunset view facing southeast toward the launch site at Wallops Island. The rocket launch was scrubbed due to the cloud deck visible in this photo near the horizon. (Kevin Ambrose) There was a repeat performance of clouds on Tuesday evening. This was the sunset view Tuesday facing southeast toward the launch site at Wallops Island. The rocket launch was scrubbed for the sixth time Tuesday, due to clouds. (Kevin Ambrose) This is Tuesday’s blue hour view of the Jefferson Memorial, shot 10 minutes before the scheduled rocket launch. The launch was scrubbed once again due to clouds. Will NASA’s


Scientists say the rapid sinking of Louisiana’s coast already counts as a ‘worst case scenario’

which has likely been occurring in the region for thousands of years. But scientists believe the process has been enhanced by a variety of human activities in the Mississippi Delta over the past century, including oil and gas extraction, as well as the building of levees and other actions affecting the flow of the Mississippi River, which carries mud and sediment down toward the Gulf and helped build up the delta in the first place. “When we started building levees along the river, we made it much harder for the sediment to disperse across the delta and beyond the delta,” Törnqvist said. The combination of subsidence and sea-level rise along the Gulf shore has made coastal Louisiana increasingly vulnerable to erosion in recent years. Last year, residents of the region’s rapidly sinking Isle de Jean Charles received a $48 million grant from the federal government to be used for relocation, giving them the grim title of the nation’s first “climate refugees.” And in the future, as sea levels continue to rise, the problem is only expected to worsen along the Louisiana shore. As a result, many researchers have attempted to quantify not only how quickly the seas are rising, but also how quickly the land is sinking. They’ve used a variety of methods to do so — one common technique involves tide gauges, which help measure changes in sea levels. But previous methods have not always accurately captured all the changes taking place along the shore, Törnqvist said. The new map relies on data, published earlier this year in another paper Törnqvist also co-authored, that was assembled using a novel approach that the authors say is more accurate than other methods. The new approach involves a combination of GPS data and special rods, driven deep into the sediment below the surface of the water, which help measure the land’s elevation. “This is definitely a very accurate way of doing it,” said Alex Kolker, an associate professor at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, who was not involved with the new paper. The new method “looks only at the land motions, whereas tide gauges can be influenced by both land movements and water movements.” Using the new data, Törnqvist and his colleagues created a map of subsidence in coastal Louisiana. They found that subsidence rates throughout the region averaged about nine millimeters per year, although the rate varies significantly from one location


Transcript: Transformers Food

and projections that the world as it develops increases meat consumption in really big ways—that’s going to have profound impacts on our planetary health, so what kinds of alternative plant-based proteins might be a substitute. I don’t know, clean labels. People are very concerned when they see all the scientific language that they—those big words on labels that they don’t understand, and so there’s a sense that they want fresh, they want as close as possible that connect to the farmer, to the table. There’s a lot more interest in flavor, a lot more interest in ethnic food as our country demographics change. Go ahead, Mary. There’s a few I could add. Bohman: Well, I think you bring up a lot of things that, while they’re a current interest, they draw on long-term trends in food and agriculture, and things that we’ve been monitoring at the Economic Research Service. One is that in 1970, about a quarter of the food Americans bought—a quarter of our food dollar went to food away from home. It’s now almost 50%. That’s a big transformation. Half of what we buy in the grocery store is food that’s almost ready to eat or ready to eat. So we’re really driven a lot by changing income, changing family structure, smaller families, that the way we eat is very different, and some of these trend—these newer things really play to this desire to have more novel foods, more ready-to-eat, things that make food more something that’s part of our experience. But we’re really a diverse country, and we monitor at ERS the food security of the nation, and about 13% of Americans are food insecure, and their purchasing is so different from people who are in the top 20% of income. They spend about three thousand a year on food; it’s 30% of their total income. People like me who are in the top 20%, we spend almost twelve thousand a year on food and it’s, what, about 10 or 11% of our income that we have. So it’s a really interesting picture that’s supporting these kind of trends. Casey: I’d like to follow up on that in just a moment, but I’d like to remind our audience that you can join this conversation if you’d like to weigh in; you can join us on Twitter. Use the hashtag #postlive, or you can post comments in our


Thanks for confirming the obstruction investigation, Mr. President

Here is the statement issued by President Trump's legal team, in response to The Washington Post's report that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is investigating Trump for possible obstruction of justice: “The FBI leak of information regarding the president is outrageous, inexcusable and illegal.” Translation: The report is true, and we're really mad that someone (actually five someones) made the obstruction investigation public. Trump followed with a tweet that seemed to further confirm that, yes, he is under investigation for possible obstruction. They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story. Nice And the official Republican talking points all rest on the premise that the report is accurate. Trump surrogates have been instructed to argue that leaks are the real problem and that there is no legal case for obstruction. A source sent me RNC/Trump talking points for Repubs seeking to discredit tonight’s WaPo scoop on Mueller investiga… https://t.co/YDX6LmFAS6 Update: Trump explicitly confirmed the investigation in a tweet on Friday morning. I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt Acknowledging the existence of an obstruction investigation is a remarkable concession by a president who spent much of the past week suggesting as strongly as possible that he was not personally under investigation. The special counsel overseeing the investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election is interviewing senior intelligence officials to determine whether President Trump attempted to obstruct justice, officials said. Former FBI director James B. Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that he told Trump three times between January and March that the agency was not investigating Trump, as an individual. Anyone paying attention understood that Trump's status could have changed since those conversations — indeed it did — but the president seized on Comey's testimony to give the impression that he was presently in the clear. After broadcasting the assurances he had received from Comey in a firing letter, on May 9, Trump claimed “total and complete vindication” following Comey's testimony. Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication...and WOW, Comey is a leaker! The Post reported Wednesday night that “the obstruction-of-justice investigation of the president began days after Comey was fired on May 9, according to people familiar with the matter.” In


Dangerous unproven treatments for ‘chronic Lyme disease’ are on the rise

some health-care providers use to describe patients with a variety of symptoms such as fatigue, generalized pain, and neurological symptoms. It’s a confusing term because it’s been used to mean many different things. Some practitioners have used the diagnosis to describe lingering symptoms after infection with the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi that causes Lyme disease. Others use the catchall term to describe patients with subjective symptoms but no evidence of ever having been infected with the tick-borne illness. Many of these patients have experienced significant debilitation from their symptoms and failed to find relief after seeing conventional medical practitioners. As a result, some turn to alternative medicine clinics or practitioners who sometimes identify themselves as Lyme disease specialists, or “Lyme literate” doctors, who may subject patients to a host of unproven treatments, the report said. Typical symptoms of true Lyme disease include fever, headache, fatigue and a skin rash that may have a characteristic bull’s eye shape. If left untreated, infection can spread to joints, the heart and nervous system. The recommended treatment is generally a two-to-four-week course of antibiotics. The CDC estimates about 300,000 people are diagnosed with Lyme each year, and the numbers have been on the rise. Federal health officials don’t know the number of people who undergo treatments for chronic Lyme disease or the complications that result from such treatments. But based on information received in the past three years from state and local health departments, and from clinicians who have treated patients who have become very sick as a result of these treatments, “we really have a sense that both the treatment and scope are broadening,” Nelson said. “Health-care providers are seeing the fallout,” she said. “These treatments are really dangerous. This is just the tip of a very large iceberg that no one is talking about.” One woman in her 50s with progressive weakness, swelling and tingling in her extremities was eventually diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. She sought a second evaluation and was told she had chronic Lyme disease. She received seven months of intensive antimicrobial treatment — including drugs that were antifungal agents not recommended for treating Lyme disease — but her weakness worsened. She developed an intractable C. difficile infection, with severe abdominal cramps and diarrhea that persisted for more than two years. The woman eventually died from complications related to ALS, said Nelson, who had spoken with the patient.


The Russia sanctions vote: Self-interest and good policy converge

that 97 senators voted in favor of this package and I hope that [House Speaker Paul] Ryan will move with haste to pass this package of sanctions through the House. I hope the president will sign it. The months-long effort to forge a bipartisan consensus on Russia sanctions — an issue that gets to the vital interests of our country, to the wellsprings of our democracy — gives me hope that Republicans and Democrats can come together and work together on a number of big issues this year. Certainly, foreign policy experts on both sides of the aisle expressed a certain degree of amazement that the bill was as strong as it was. Edward Fishman, who served in the Obama administration, writes: “Even if Trump persists in his pro-Russia rhetoric, the bill will provide much-needed clarity to US policy toward Russia. It will end worried speculation about the White House’s intentions on sanctions, and it will indicate once and for all that America remains committed to combating Russian aggression. That the US Senate was able to pass such a significant piece of legislation during a time of intense partisan division is no small achievement.” Meanwhile, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) relayed in a written statement that he “was honored to have Speaker of Ukraine Parliament Andriy Parubiy with me today as the Senate passed these important sanctions and policies that send a clear signal that Russia’s destabilizing and destructive actions must have consequences, and that the United States will stand up for its allies like Ukraine while holding Russia accountable for its bad behavior. The important sanctions and policies included in this legislation will also provide constructive guidance to the administration as it continues to formulate its policies and demonstrate the depth of the support in Congress for a firm and principled approach to Russia.” In this case, strong policy served both parties’ interests. Republicans who have been loath to criticize Trump for his pro-Russia rhetoric and may even have defended him in hearings on the investigation into potential collusion between Trump campaign members and Russian officials can say, “See, I’m no water-carrier for Trump when it comes to Russia!” Democrats, meanwhile, delight in taking authority away from Trump, highlighting how bad is the behavior of the autocrat for whom Trump only has praise and reminding us that this was the country that the Trump team spent so much time and


Quantum entanglement, science’s ‘spookiest’ phenomenon, achieved in space

A view of the Milky Way during the Perseid Meteor Shower. Also in space: a satellite where scientists are producing entangled photons and beaming them back to Earth. (Daniel Reinhardt/EPA) Imagine you are a photon, a packet of light. You are a tiny blip of energy, hurtling through the universe on your own. But you have a twin, another photon to whom you have been intimately connected since the day you were born. No matter what distance separates you, be it the width of a lab bench or the breadth of the universe, you mirror each other. Whatever happens to your twin instantaneously affects you, and vice versa. You are like the mouse siblings in “An American Tail”, wrenched apart by fate but feeling the same feelings and singing the same song beneath the same glowing moon. This is quantum entanglement. To non-physicists it sounds about as fantastical as singing mice, and indeed, plenty of physicists have problems with the phenomenon. Albert Einstein, whose own research helped give rise to quantum theory, derisively called the concept “spooky action at a distance.” Quantum entanglement seems to break some of the bedrock rules of standard physics: that nothing can travel faster than light, that objects are only influenced by their immediate surroundings. And scientists still can't explain how the particles are linked. Is it wormholes? An unknown dimension? The power of love? (That last one's a joke.) Luckily for quantum physicists, you don't always need to explain a phenomenon in order to use it. Ancient humans didn't know about friction before inventing the wheel; doctors in medieval China didn't know about antibodies when they began inoculating people against smallpox 600 years ago. Not knowing what's behind quantum entanglement didn't stop Jian-Wei Pan, a physicist at the University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai, from rocketing it into space. In a new study in the journal Science, Pan and his colleagues report that they were able to produce entangled photons on a satellite orbiting 300 miles above the planet and beam the particles to two different ground-based labs that were 750 miles apart, all without losing the particles' strange linkage. It is the first time anyone has ever generated entangled particles in space, and represents a 10-fold increase in the distance over which entanglement has been maintained. “It's a really stunning achievement, and I think it's going to be the first


absorbed in space, because there's nothing to do the absorbing. Space is empty. This means that entangled particles can be transmitted long distances across the vacuum and not lose information. Recognizing this, Pan proposed that entangled particles sent through space could vastly extend the distance across which entangled particles communicate. On board the Chinese satellite Micius, which launched last year, a high energy laser was fired through a special kind of crystal, generating entangled photon pairs. This in itself was a feat: the process is sensitive to turbulence, and before the experiment launched scientists weren't completely sure it would work. These photons were transmitted to ground stations in Delingha, a city on the Tibetan Plateau, and Lijiang, in China's far southwest. The cities are about 750 miles apart — a bit farther than New York and Chicago. For comparison, the fiber optic method for quantum teleportation couldn't get a New York photon much farther than Trenton, N.J. Multiple tests on the ground confirmed that the particles from the Micius satellite were indeed still entangled. Now Pan wants to try even more ambitious experiments: sending quantum particles from the ground to the satellite; setting up a distribution channel that will allow for transmission of tens of thousands of entangled pairs per second. " “Then the satellite can really be used for quantum communication,” he said. The Micius satellite can also be used to probe more fundamental questions, Pan added. The behavior of entangled particles in space and across vast distances offers insight into the nature of space-time and the validity of Einstein's theory of general relativity. Plus there's the whole issue of what is going on with these bizarre linked photons in the first place. “Mathematically we know exactly how to describe what happens,” Ghose said. “We know how to connect, physically, these particles in the lab, and we know what to expect when we generate and manipulate and transmit them.” But as for how it all happens, how entangled photons know what their partner is doing, “that is not part of the equation,” she continued. “That’s what makes it so mysterious and interesting.” Read more: Why don't birds get lost? They may have mastered quantum mechanics. Astronomers just achieved something Einstein said was impossible Jupiter is oldest planet in solar system, ancient meteorites show Why is the solar eclipse moving backward? Scientists just smashed the distance record for quantum teleportation


What is Lidl? 5 things the German grocer is bringing to America

Lidl opened its first 10 U.S. stores Thursday, including this one in Virginia Beach, Va. The German grocery chain plans to open 100 U.S. locations within the year. (Steve Helber/Associated Press) German grocery powerhouse Lidl arrived in the United States on Thursday, opening 10 new stores along the East Coast and putting big-name companies like Walmart, Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s on high alert. The company, which has 10,000 locations in 27 countries, is hoping to win over Americans with its sweeping discounts, modern stores and carefully-curated wines. Its newest supermarkets are concentrated in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, but 90 more East Coast locations are planned for the coming year. The company, which has its U.S. headquarters in Arlington, has been quietly testing its plans for the American market for over a year, using a prototype store in the Fredericksburg, Va., area in Spotsylvania County to understand its newest shoppers. (Among other things, executives say Americans expect chilled beer and free bakery samples, which Lidl is adding to its U.S. stores.) But what exactly is the Lidl (pronounced lee-duhl)? And what will its U.S. stores bring to America? 1. Even lower prices in an industry that is already offering huge markdowns In an industry marked by cutthroat competition and mounting markdowns, Lidl executives say they plans to offer even larger discounts, with prices that are up to 50 percent lower than at rival stores. This week’s offers, for example, include 99 cent red bell peppers, 89 cent pineapples and 39 cent butter croissants (which a spokesman says have twice as much butter as the typical croissant). The company’s circular is also touting jars of peanut butter for $1.19, chicken breasts for $1.29 per pound and frozen pizzas for $2.99. The grocery business is a notoriously tough one — nearly 20 U.S. grocers have filed for bankruptcy in the past three years — and the introduction of Lidl and fellow German discounter Aldi, which is investing $3.4 billion to open 900 U.S. stores, is set to intensify that battle. Roughly 90 percent of Lidl’s products are in-house brands. Brendan Proctor, the U.S. chief executive of Lidl, highlights the company’s selection on opening day. (Steve Helber/AP Photo) 2. Smaller stores that feature in-house brands Lidl’s first U.S. stores are about 21,000 square feet — about the size of many Trader Joe’s stores, but considerably smaller than grocers like Whole Foods,


The Washington Post announces the 2017 Top Workplaces

The Washington Post today announced the best places to work in the Washington D.C. area in its fourth annual Top Workplaces survey. In a survey conducted in partnership with survey firm WorkplaceDynamics, The Post asked people about their employers to identify 150 of the highest ranked organizations in the region. This year’s honorees include government contractors, law firms, nonprofits, schools, and businesses from D.C.’s growing service sector. More than 3,000 companies were invited to participate and 303 were surveyed. More than 52,000 employees participated in the survey questionnaires. The Washington Post hosted an awards ceremony on Thursday, June 15 to recognize the 150 top-ranked companies. The full list along with additional content is available on The Post site. This Sunday’s edition of The Washington Post will include a special Top Workplaces magazine, which includes profiles of the winning companies. Here are the top three organizations within the large, mid-size and small company categories: Large companies: - Great American Restaurants - Hitt Contracting - Keller Williams Capital Properties Mid-size companies: - Bates White Economic Consulting - St. Stephen’s & St. Agnes School - Halfaker and Associates Small companies: - FTS International - ThunderCat Technology - IntelliGenesis The Washington Post is now seeking nominations for 2017. Entries can be submitted here.


How to avoid clouds that could spoil the Great American Eclipse

A total solar eclipse in Belitung, Indonesia, on March 9, 2016. (AP) You’ll hear it again and again. The Aug. 21 total solar eclipse is a once in a lifetime celestial event, and a mind-blowing experience awaits those who witness it. It is being called the “Great American Eclipse;” the last comparable event occurred 99 years ago. But, depending where you go, clouds could play spoiler. Inevitably, some people who spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars to travel to view the spectacle could have their experience completely ruined by overcast skies. Fortunately, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has developed a website that provides detailed information about which locations have the best chance of skies clear enough to view the eclipse. Via NOAA: “The darker the dot, the greater the chance for cloudiness at the hour of peak viewing during the total solar eclipse on August 21, 2017. Dots represent automated weather stations that reported the cloudiness data and show the 10-year cloudiness average for August 21, 2001–2010. “ To get the full eclipse experience, you’ll want to head to a location along the path of totality, spanning from roughly Lincoln City, Ore., to Charleston, S.C. It’s here where the moon will completely block out the sun’s face for up to two to three minutes. Day will suddenly turn to twilight, and the sun’s stunning outer atmosphere known as its corona will radiate around the moon. Five state capitals lie along the path of totality in addition to several major cities. (NOAA) Below, we summarize which cities along the path of totality have the highest and lowest likelihood of viewable conditions, least obstructed by cloud cover. Cities most likely (more than 70 percent chance) to have viewable conditions - Casper, Wyo.: 88 percent chance - Carbondale, Ill.: 80 percent chance - Idaho Falls, Idaho: 78 percent chance - Lincoln, Neb.: 77 percent chance - Jefferson City, Mo.: 77 percent chance - Clemson, S.C.: 75 percent chance - Bowling Green, Ky.: 71 percent chance Cities somewhat likely (50-70 percent chance) to have viewable conditions - Salem, Ore.: 67 percent chance - St. Louis (Chesterfield, just to the west): 61 percent - Charleston, S.C.: 53 percent chance Cities where viewable conditions are more of a wild card (less than 50 percent) - Kansas City, Mo.: 49 percent - Nashville: 44 percent - Columbia, S.C.: 44 percent - Newport, Ore.: 44


Full text: Trump transition team memo on keeping documents on Russia and the election

laptops, tablet computers, smartphones, or other portable devices; calendar records and diary data. If information is in both electronic and paper forms, you should preserve both forms. Preservation may require you to disable any automatic archiving or deletion functions on your computer, smart phone, or other data system. Failure to follow these protocols could result in criminal or civil penalties, and could form the basis of legal claims, legal presumptions, or jury instructions relating to spoliation of evidence. Specifically, to the extent they exist, please preserve all such records that relate in any way to the following subject areas: 1. The Russian Federation, including its officials, agents or nationals. 2. Ukraine, including its officials, agents or nationals. 3. Investigations into the backgrounds of Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Carter Page, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, and/or Roger Stone. 4. Any foreign travel (whether official or unofficial) by any employees, contractors, consultants, advisors or volunteers for Trump for America, Inc. (also known as the Presidential Transition Team) and Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. 5. Investigations by the United States Department of Justice, the United States Senate, or the United States House of Representatives (or any office, division or committee of any of the foregoing) concerning any of the subject matters set forth in items 1 through 4 above. With this in mind, please immediately suspend any deletion, modification, overwriting, or other possible destruction of the information described above, including electronic information, and take all reasonable measures to preserve this information. Additionally, to the extent such materials or information were generated or obtained owing to your role on the Presidential Transition Team, please return the materials or information to the custody and control of the Presidential Transition Team at the following address: Trump for America, Inc. c/o Statecraft PLLC 649 North Fourth Avenue, Suite B Phoenix, Arizona 85003 There is no need for you to return to us any materials saved to your ptt.gov email account or network drive, or that were already turned in as part of the offboarding process. Rather, please return to us such materials, if any, that were not saved to the Presidential Transition Team email system or network and are in your personal files or on your personal devices. If you do not have any such materials in your personal files or on your personal devices, there is no need for you to respond to this notice.


McDonald’s ends four-decade Olympics sponsorship

priorities,” Managing Director of IOC Television and Marketing Services Timo Lumme said in a statement. “I would like to thank our friends at McDonald’s on behalf of the IOC for the commitment the company has shown to the Olympic Movement over many decades.” McDonald’s involvement in the Olympics began before it became an official sponsor. In 1968, the fast-food chain airlifted hamburgers to homesick U.S. Olympians at the Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France. In 1996, McDonald’s became what appeared to be a permanent fixture at the Games when it began installing its restaurants in the Olympic Village, where athletes reside during the Games. This led to many high-profile advertising opportunities, as fans got to see some of the world’s greatest athletes chowing down on Big Macs and McNuggets. For instance, eight-time gold medalist Usain Bolt, famously recalled consuming more than 1,000 McNuggets during the Beijing Olympics. “At first I ate a box of 20 for lunch, then another for dinner,” Bolt wrote in his 2013 book “Faster Than Lightning” (via the New York Post). “The next day I had two boxes for breakfast, one for lunch and then another couple in the evening. I even grabbed some fries and an apple pie to go with it.” He added: “Man, I should have gotten a gold medal for all that chowing down.” Bolt wasn’t the only athlete “lovin’ it” either. At last summer’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, athletes waited for hours in line to score some free grub. “People were literally playing beach volleyball around the line,” U.S. rugby player Jessica Javelet told the Post last year. Of course, one of the reasons for the long lines was the lack of palatable options at the cafeteria and other food stalls at the Games, according to athletes. With McDonald’s set to pull its restaurants out of Olympic Village ahead of the 2020 Games in Tokyo, it remains unclear whether another global food partner will pick up the slack. Right now, the IOC said it has no “immediate plans” to appoint a replacement. The loss of McDonald’s comes just months after Budweiser ended its three-decade sponsorship of Team USA. Other sponsors to drop their Olympic sponsorship deals include Citi, Hilton, TD Ameritrade and AT&T. Comcast, meanwhile, has signed on to become the U.S. Olympic Committee’s official communications partner through the 2020 Olympics. Next year’s Olympics in PyeongChang kick off on Feb. 9.


Wildfires used to be rare in the Great Plains. They’ve more than tripled in 30 years

fires around 1,000 acres or more in size. In other parts of the globe, such as Africa’s savannas, grassland fires are extremely common — and that used to be true for the Great Plains as well. But in the past century or more, Donovan explained, wildfire suppression techniques — such as rapidly catching fires and putting them out — had largely eradicated them from the region. However, they’ve begun to come back, a trend that has been consistent with not only climate change but also an incursion of more invasive plant species that could be providing additional fuel, Donovan said. However, the study merely documented the trend toward increased large wildfires, without formally attributing its cause. 2011 saw a particularly large surge of Great Plains wildfires, which accounted for half of the total acreage burned in the United States that year. By specific region, some of the largest wildfire increases occurred in the Cross Timbers region of Texas and Oklahoma (which saw a 2,200 percent increase in the total area burned), the Edwards Plateau of Texas (a 3,300 percent increase), and the Central Irregular Plains, encompassing parts of Iowa and northern Missouri, as well as parts of Kansas and Oklahoma (1,400 percent increase). Guido van der Werf, a scientist at VU Amsterdam who studies global forest fires and was not involved with the current study, said it was difficult to attribute causes behind the recent uptick in burning. “These grassland fires are somewhat different than the forest fires we are probably more used to, and follow-up research is needed to better understand what the drivers of the upward trends were,” he said by email. “Agricultural abandonment could be one, wetter conditions later in the record another one (leading to higher and more continuous fuel beds), climate change leading to warmer temperatures, etc.” Van der Werf said that in Africa, grassland fires have actually declined as more land has been converted to agricultural use. “Interesting to see that in other areas with other stages of development opposite trends are found,” he said. Max Moritz, a wildfire researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, who also was not involved in the study, said the new results are consistent with other work. But he added that he suspects that they reflect not so much human-caused climate change, but rather, changing human behavior. In particular, he cited a study from earlier this year


From the A&P to Amazon: The rise of the modern grocery store

grocery stores. “With it, the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, and many of its competitors, began a transition from being tea merchants to being grocers. It was a transition that would dramatically change Americans’ daily lives.” The branding of baking powder was important because most merchants back then were just essentially selling, as Levinson wrote, “generic products indistinguishable from what was for sale down the street.” And in selling their powder in a tin, the owners were ahead in another important way — packaging. The invention of the cardboard box changed everything. The company could now make, brand and sell its own condensed milk, butter, spices — just about any staple of the kitchen. “By the early 1890s,” Levinson wrote, “Great Atlantic & Pacific was making the shift from tea company to grocery chain.” Its name: A&P. There was difficult, transformative work ahead. The company needed to upend an entire culture of shopping built around neighborhood stores, a history detailed in a fascinating 2015 paper titled, “The Evolution of the Supermarket Industry: From A&P to Walmart,” by Paul B. Ellickson: Before 1900, American shoppers purchased their groceries through a wide array of specialty shops and general stores. Meat was purchased from a butcher, fish from a fishmonger, bread from a baker, and produce from a vegetable stand. Mostly sole proprietorships, these stores were often run in a haphazard manner with little use of modern accounting practices or scientific management principles. There were certainly many stores, likely well over half a million, although accurate historical statistics do not exist for this period. Because most people arrived on foot, grocers needed to be close to their customers, so the stores were small and ubiquitous. They often delivered what was purchased and sold many goods on credit. The small sales volume of these tiny shops led to high costs and sizable markups. A&P built big stores, stocking as many products as possible, many made in their own warehouses. Products were stored in shelves, not behind a counter for an employee to distribute. No credit — cash. Manufacturers liked the model, selling products directly to the company, not through wholesalers. This kept product costs down for A&P, which passed those savings on to shoppers. The company become obsessed with prices. In the early 1900s, its profit was 3 percent of revenue. This was too high. A new profit goal was set: 2.5 percent.


Drone-delivered kale, and 5 more things we might see at an Amazon-owned Whole Foods

Customers leave a Whole Foods Market in Boulder, Colo., on May 10. (Reuters/Rick Wilking/File Photo) Retail giant Amazon.com announced on Friday morning that it plans to buy your favorite place to buy asparagus water, Whole Foods Market, for $13.7 billion. The move stands to solve a huge problem for Amazon: the “last mile,” which is shorthand for the idea that, the closer you get to a product’s final destination, the more challenges you have in delivering it. With Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods, it essentially bought hundreds of distribution centers for fresh dairy, meat and produce — and dramatically expanded its offerings through its own grocery delivery service. (Mandatory disclosure: Amazon and The Washington Post share an owner, Jeffrey P. Bezos.) But expanding AmazonFresh isn’t the only thing that could come out of this deal. Amazon’s purchase could drastically change the way we shop for groceries. Here’s what we might see in the Whole Foods of the future: No more lines. Introducing Amazon Go and the world’s most advanced shopping technology Kale delivered by drone. An Amazon integration for everything. Introducing Amazon Dash Wand with Alexa Lower prices. Amazon buys Whole Foods for 13.7 billion, roughly equivalent to 11 shopping bags of their organic berries. The company has struggled in recent months, because consumers have flocked to such lower-price stores as Walmart that have expanded their selection of natural and organic foods. Whole Foods announced in April that it was planning to lower prices to win back customers, and it has also been opening 365 by Whole Foods stores, which feature its lower-cost house brand. Amazon has a house brand, too: AmazonBasics, whose products include bocce kits and puppy training pads. It’s unclear how much the branding of each company will mingle — especially because Whole Foods has pledged not to loosen its exacting standards on ingredients and packaging — but we could be seeing AmazonBasics dish towels and toilet paper at Whole Foods. At the same time, Amazon has patented technology to prevent people from doing online price checks in its own stores — which is one of store owners’ biggest complaints about Amazon. Amazon-owned restaurants. High-tech surprises.


So Congress is challenging the president about sanctions? That has a long history.

rather than veto, the legislative package. After Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, lawmakers proposed a broader set of sanctions on Russia. This time, Congress and Obama were not as sharply at odds; Obama had already used his executive authority to join European allies in imposing penalties on Russia. But Congress backed more far-reaching sanctions than Obama did. As the sanctions legislation advanced in Congress, Obama cautioned that it would be counterproductive for the United States to get out in front of its European allies, weakening the transatlantic coalition’s united front. But Congress passed the legislation with overwhelming bipartisan backing, making a veto unpalatable. Obama signed the measure into law. What does congressional bipartisanship on sanctions really mean? Most people usually think of bipartisanship as an occasion when Republican and Democratic lawmakers line up to support the president, as when Congress rallied around George W. Bush following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That’s the kind of unity implied by the adage that “politics stops at the water’s edge.” But sometimes bipartisanship means lawmakers work together across party lines against the president. And it doesn’t just happen over sanctions. For instance, leading lawmakers in both parties have sharply criticized Trump’s proposal to slash spending on diplomacy and foreign aid by about 30 percent. So what’s the effect of sanctions laws? Apart from the merits of any given presidential policy, congressional assertiveness on sanctions can have a cost. Critics argue that sanctions laws make it harder for the president to conduct an effective foreign policy, particularly because Congress is often unwilling to repeal sanctions even when the president achieves a diplomatic breakthrough with the targeted country. But sanctions laws can also carry important benefits. Scholars have shown that leaders, paradoxically enough, often enjoy stronger bargaining positions internationally when they face domestic constraints at home. The logic is straightforward: If leaders can make a strong case to their foreign counterparts that their hands are tied, those counterparts may offer concessions as a way to strike a deal or avoid unwanted punishment. When presidents want to hold foreign governments to account, legislation can give their sanction threats more credibility and bolster their leverage. What’s more, when presidents don’t want to pressure foreign governments, a sanctions law can force them to do so. Today’s Congress may view sanctions as a way to counteract Trump’s willingness to overlook, or even praise, foreign leaders whose actions are


People are worried Amazon will replace Whole Foods workers with robots

grocery workers said the merger puts those employees at risk. “Amazon’s brutal vision for retail is one where automation replaces good jobs,” Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, said in a statement Friday. “Sadly, the hard-working men and women who work at Whole Foods now face an uncertain future.” Whole Foods has endured a rough couple of years, dismissing Still, the company is the 30th largest retailer in the United States, with 431 stores nationwide. Whole Foods is known for paying better-than-average wages and extending generous benefits packages to its employees. Workers receive 20 percent off groceries at the store and, after 800 service hours, full-timers become eligible to pay insurance premiums between $0 and $20 per paycheck, depending on their years with the company, per the Whole Foods website. Elise Gould, a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., said cashier jobs represent an important part of the economy. They’re spread out across the country and employ workers of diverse backgrounds and ages. “These are jobs that can help support a family,” Gould said. The country’s retail jobs, though, have seen a recent slowdown in growth. From now through 2024, employment of cashiers is expected to grow 2 percent while the average for all occupations is projected to jump 7 percent. The number of cashier jobs in 2015, meanwhile, was the same as the number in 2005, though U.S. employment overall had increased by 7.6 million over that period, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Advances in technology, such as self-service checkout stands in retail stores and increasing online sales, will continue to limit the need for cashiers,” the BLS notes on its website. A Outside a Whole Foods in the nation’s capital Friday, John Casey, a 52-year-old real estate developer, explained why he visits the store nearly every other day. “I don’t shop online,” he said, sitting before a platter of rotisserie chicken. “I like to come in and see people. The cashiers know me as a regular.” Rebeka Ryvola, a 30-year-old World Bank employee, echoed his sentiment over a plate of vegan salad. “I just love interacting with people,” she said. “I get connections with people here, and I hope that doesn’t change.” Ryvola said that at the CVS next door, however, the automated kiosks tend to save her time in line.


Grocery stocks sink on news that Amazon is buying Whole Foods

whether Amazon could disrupt grocery stores the way it upended the bookstore business. The deal could put Whole Foods in a position to dominate two areas that grocery stores have been focusing on to gain new customers and increase revenue —convenience and high quality organic food, says J.P. Eggers, an associate professor at NYU Stern who focuses on tech and retail. Grocery stores are under more pressure to compete based on convenience, especially as more retailers and startups introduce food options such as meal kits, low-cost snacks and organic groceries, according to a report released earlier this year by Jones Lang LaSalle, a commercial real estate firm. Amazon is already playing with innovative ways to make grocery store runs more convenient. The online giant last year declared its plans to open a physical grocery store called Amazon Go, a market without cashiers where consumers would be automatically charged based on the items they placed into their shopping bags. But the opening of the first store, which was supposed to happen in March, was delayed because of technical issues, according to the Wall Street Journal. Grocery stores, which have low profit margins, have also been competing more intensely when it comes to price, especially of organic and natural foods. Whole Foods is courting the discount shopper with its lower cost brand 365. Target and Aldi have also been introducing more discounts to compete with chains such as Walmart, which are known for low prices. By coming under the Amazon umbrella, Whole Foods may develop new methods for distributing food that could also allow it to reach more customers, Eggers says. A strategy that lowers the prices on its high quality organic products could help it win more market share away from competitors, Eggers says. It could also put pressure on other stores to lower their prices as well, he says. Other stores are testing out tech-savvy approaches. For example, Walmart has a “Scan and Go” pilot at one store where consumers can use an app to scan items as they shop and then pay using their phones, according to the JLL report. At some of the Whole Foods 365 locations, the grocer’s discounted brand, consumers can use iPads to order food or find a bottle of wine. These tech solutions are likely to become more common this year, according to the JLL report. Several retailers have also been experimenting with ways


to a report released earlier this year by Jones Lang LaSalle, a commercial real estate firm. Amazon is already playing with innovative ways to make grocery store runs more convenient. The online giant last year declared its plans to open a physical grocery store called Amazon Go, a market without cashiers where consumers would be automatically charged based on the items they placed into their shopping bags. But the opening of the first store, which was supposed to happen in March, was delayed because of technical issues, according to the Wall Street Journal. Grocery stores, which have low profit margins, have also been competing more intensely when it comes to price, especially of organic and natural foods. Whole Foods is courting the discount shopper with its lower cost brand 365. Target and Aldi have also been introducing more discounts to compete with chains such as Walmart, which are known for low prices. By coming under the Amazon umbrella, Whole Foods may develop new methods for distributing food that could also allow it to reach more customers, Eggers says. A strategy that lowers the prices on its high quality organic products could help it win more market share away from competitors, Eggers says. It could also put pressure on other stores to lower their prices as well, he says. Other stores are testing out tech-savvy approaches. For example, Walmart has a “Scan and Go” pilot at one store where consumers can use an app to scan items as they shop and then pay using their phones, according to the JLL report. At some of the Whole Foods 365 locations, the grocer’s discounted brand, consumers can use iPads to order food or find a bottle of wine. These tech solutions are likely to become more common this year, according to the JLL report. Several retailers have also been experimenting with ways to get people to buy groceries online, a habit that still hasn’t fully taken off. Walmart, for instance, is trying to take advantage of its brick-and-mortar footprint through a service where people can buy groceries online and pick them up in the store. Read more: Whole Foods shakes up leadership to fix its struggling business What is Lidl? 5 things the German grocer is bringing to America Amazon will open a physical grocery store — and it won’t require going through checkout Amazon to open a (real-live physical) bookstore in D.C.


NASA finds 10 new potentially habitable, ‘Earth-like’ worlds

with thin atmospheres and nice, firm surfaces, contain relatively little of these elements. Perhaps they started off with less, or perhaps the light elements were burned or blown away. But if a planet can hold onto just a bit more of these gases, it “puffs up” like a balloon, Fulton said. Hydrogen and helium form vast, thick atmospheres around mini-Neptunes, making these worlds much bigger than their rocky counterparts. It's difficult to know for sure, because our own sun doesn't host a mini-Neptune — unless you count the hypothesized “Planet Nine” that some scientists think lurks at the outer edge of the solar system. (For the record, Fulton doesn't — not yet.) But researchers are bent on figuring out what leads a world to become rocky rather than gassy, because as far as we're aware life can only take shape on solid ground. Kepler's original mission ended in 2013 when one of the wheels that helped to keep the spacecraft pointed toward the Cygnus constellation failed, so it could no longer scan the same small slice of sky. But by using pressure from light particles from the sun to stay oriented, the telescope has been refashioned for a second exoplanet search project called K2. NASA estimates the telescope has enough fuel to remain active into 2018. By then, the space agency hopes to be ready to launch the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which will search for small planets around the brightest stars in the sky, and the James Webb Space Telescope, which is designed to detect atmospheres on other planets. The results from Kepler, that new satellite and the Webb will inform the next generation of telescopes — ones that can actually take pictures of planets in motion around distant stars. “It feels a bit like the end of an era,” Thompson said, “but actually I see it as a new beginning. It's amazing the things that Kepler has found. It has shown us these terrestrial worlds, and we still have all this work to do to really understand how common Earths are in the galaxy.” Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the size of exoplanet KOB 7711. It is 30 percent bigger than Earth, not 30 times as big. Read more: Quantum entanglement, science's 'spookiest' phenomenon, achieved in space Astronomers just achieved something Einstein said was impossible Jupiter is oldest planet in solar system, ancient meteorites show


This generation’s idiotic trade policy is about to be born

applied to Japanese automobiles. That move offered a temporary benefit to Detroit’s Big Three, but mostly imposed costs. Consumers had to pay higher prices. Furthermore, because the VERs were quota-based, they helped pave the way for Japanese automakers to move into the luxury brands. In other words, VERs generated a temporary benefit to Detroit manufacturers, hurt consumers, and paved the way for Japanese auto firms to eat into Detroit’s bread and butter. In the early 2000s, it was the idiocy that is this country’s approach to trade in sugar. As I wrote in U.S. Trade Policy: Free Versus Fair: U.S. import quotas limit the amount of sugar the United States imports. As a result, U.S. sugar prices are 350 percent higher than world market prices. Although this policy has preserved a few thousand sugar-producing jobs, it has also cost an estimated 7,500 and 10,000 jobs, as candy makers relocated production to countries with lower sugar prices. Well, it is 2017, and we are about to witness yet another really bad trade policy. The Trump administration has been weighing the use of Section 232 to assess whether steel imports negatively affect U.S. national security. Section 232 has not been invoked all that frequently, only 14 times since 1980. Yesterday, my Post colleagues Damian Paletta and Ana Swanson explained at greater length: The White House is on the cusp of a major decision about whether to impose new restrictions on steel imports, a choice that has divided President Trump’s administration while sparking global fears about a burgeoning trade war. The Commerce Department has for months been evaluating whether steel imports pose a threat to national security, and it is expected within days to present Trump with its finding and a recommendation, which Trump could quickly adopt or decide to take a different course. Based on its decision, the White House could impose new steel tariffs, import quotas or a combination of the two, said senior administration officials speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal divisions. In the Financial Times, Shawn Donnan points out that even though this trade measure is only supposed to be used for national security reasons, the actual effects do not seem to enhance U.S. national security: The U.S. is the world’s largest importer of steel. A series of targeted anti-dumping moves has reduced imports from China to a trickle in recent years with Canada, Brazil and


The Energy 202: Exxon, GM and Pepsi plan to back carbon tax floated by ex-GOP officials

will scrap plans to build more nuclear power plants and extend the life of existing ones. The decision, made as anti-nuclear sentiment spreads in South Korea following the Fukushima accident in nearby Japan, could have far-rippling effects. The nation, bereft of fossil fuels, has pioneered some of the most advanced nuclear reactors in the world, even selling them to other nations. But if that export stumbles as a result of Moon Jae-in's decision, it could stymie de-carbonization efforts abroad that rely on nuclear power to replace coal-fired plants. -- Once, it was assumed that Africa would be electrified the same way that North America and Europe were: THERMOMETER A man views solar panels on a roof at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, U.S., on June 18, 2007. REUTERS/Kimberly White -- Scientists are engaged in a bitter and personal feud over how much power the United States can get from renewable sources, reports my colleague Chris Mooney. On the one side is Stanford professor Mark Jacobson and colleagues who argued in a 2015 paper that between 2050 and 2055, the United States could be powered mainly by wind, solar and hydroelectric energy sources whereby “no natural gas, biofuels, nuclear power, or stationary batteries are needed.” On the other side is Christopher Clack of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who with 20 co-authors published a counter-study arguing that that paper “used invalid modeling tools, contained modeling errors, and made implausible and inadequately supported assumptions.” They argue that study fails to prove that such a dramatic energy transition can be accomplished affordably, given that energy storage technology that make wind and solar energy work when the wind isn't blowing or sun isn't shining may not arrived in time for Jacobson's projections. Jacobson fired back by writing in a letter that Clack’s critique is itself “riddled with errors” and “demonstrably false" and that his team is biased toward fossil fuels. -- Nearly one-third of the global population suffers deadly levels of heat for at least 20 days during the year, -- The good news: DAYBOOK Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) Today - Energy Secretary Rick Perry is scheduled to testify before the House Appropriations’ Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies on the department’s proposed budget. - The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources’ Subcommittee on Public Lands, Forests and Mining's will hold an oversight hearing on


The driver who died in a Tesla crash using Autopilot ignored at least 7 safety warnings

a final analysis or judgment because the investigation is ongoing. Included in the evidence are details about the highway where the crash occurred, both vehicles involved and, crucially, behavioral information from the Tesla that sheds light on Brown's activities immediately before the accident. The case is being closely watched, because the outcome of the investigation could affect consumer attitudes toward Tesla, automation and self-driving technology in particular. Brown's final drive in his Tesla lasted 41 minutes, according to the NTSB. Of those 41 minutes, 37 were spent with the autopilot enabled. Autopilot is Tesla's term for its high-end cruise control feature that can help a vehicle stay in its lane semi-autonomously. The company declined to comment on the report. Tesla requires its drivers to keep their hands on the wheel even when Autopilot is engaged. But Brown appears to have ignored those warnings, even as he manually increased the autopilot's speed 2 minutes before he crashed into the truck, according to the NTSB report. Earlier reports by NTSB on the crash have concluded that in addition to going hands-free for the majority of the trip, Brown also made no effort to brake, steer or otherwise avert the deadly accident. Since the crash, those reports have said, Tesla has updated its Autopilot feature to include a strikeout system, whereby drivers who repeatedly ignore safety warnings risk having their Autopilot disabled until the next time they start the car. At the time of the incident, Tesla said that it was the first crash involving Autopilot in roughly 130 million miles of driving in which the technology was in control. The United States suffers a death on the roads about once every 100 million vehicle miles traveled, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. But while autonomous or semiautonomous driving technology could help reduce collisions in general, questions about how and when to draw the line between manual and autonomous mode have yet to be fully resolved by engineers and researchers. Last year, for example, a study by Stanford University found that drivers often had trouble taking the wheel again after letting a computer drive, even momentarily. Drivers commonly over- or undercorrected with the steering wheel, even when they knew the handoff was coming, the research found. The effects were more pronounced if driving conditions had changed substantially since the last time the drivers were in control, according to a Stanford release.


Amazon is trying to chip away at brick-and-mortar clothing stores’ last big advantage

An image from an Amazon.com video about the company’s newest service, Prime Wardrobe. Clothing companies for years have struggled to curb costly online returns, as customers send back piles of ill-fitting jeans, too-tight dresses and shoes that don’t look quite as expected. Now Amazon.com is encouraging customers to try clothing — and return it — with abandon. The company’s newest feature, called Prime Wardrobe, allows Prime members to pick from more than 1 million pieces of apparel that they could order, try on and return free. Shoppers would pay for only what they keep and would receive discounts based on the number of items they hold onto. (For instance, customers would receive 10 percent off for keeping three or four items from their order, and 20 percent off for keeping five or more pieces of clothing.) The selection of clothing, shoes, handbags and other accessories would include Amazon’s private labels, as well as brands such as Calvin Klein, Theory, Hugo Boss, Lacoste and Carter’s. “Prime Wardrobe brings the fitting room to you,” Amazon said on its website Tuesday. Prime Wardrobe is currently in beta testing, but customers can sign up online to be notified when the service formally rolls out in their region. (Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive, owns The Washington Post.) The items would come in a resealable box, with a prepaid return shipping label. Customers could then drop off their returns at a UPS store or schedule a free pickup. Amazon’s foray into fashion could deal another round of bad news to an industry already dealing with turmoil. Clothing retailers such as Macy’s, Sears, Abercrombie & Fitch, and BCBG have been struggling with months of declining sales as customers increasingly shop online. Prime Wardrobe would also compete with subscription-style services such as Stitch Fix and Nordstrom’s Trunk Club, which send customized selections based on a shopper’s sizes and preferences. Read more: ‘The unfortunate thing about Macy’s’: Just about everything What is Lidl? 5 things the German grocer is bringing to America Why a big clothing retailer is trying an Amazon Prime-like subscription


Five telling things the Whole Foods CEO said about the Amazon deal in an employee town hall

gonna change our culture. I mean, it's the truth. It's inevitable. But it doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing." >>"Over time, there could be other formats that evolve that — that might — wouldn't be branded Whole Foods Market, potentially, wouldn't be our standards." An employee asked whether Whole Foods would keep its high quality standards in place after the deal, and Mackey assured the employee it would. "You know the pixie dust we were talkin' about?" Mackey said, referring to the potential he sees in the Amazon tie-up. Undercutting quality would be "the death dust," he said, saying "we've been assured" by Amazon that would not change. But he also went a bit further, saying that over time new “formats" that “wouldn't be our standards" and wouldn't carry the Whole Foods brand could emerge. The company already has a separate store known as 365 that carries its proprietary brand; another brand could be something Amazon adds to lower prices and “distance the chain from its 'Whole Paycheck' nickname," reported Reuters. >>"They’re at the forefront of technology. And we are — we’re a little behind there. So I think that we can expect that we’ll go to the front of the class, eventually, in the grocery business." Mackey compared the grocery chain to being the “class dunce" when it comes to technology, saying he hoped they'd end up as the industry's valedictorian." What exactly that means isn't known, but it's clear Mackey sees a real boost in the technology Amazon could bring to his stores. Speculation since the deal was announced has been rampant, from whether it could use technology to cut down on comparison shopping in its stores, cut cashier jobs — an Amazon grocery store in Seattle opened last year lets people buy food without talking to anyone — or provide launchpads for drone delivery. (Spokesmen for the two companies told The Post's Danielle Paquette that no layoffs would come as a result of the merger and that no job automation was planned.) >>"They have had the courage that almost no other public company has had the courage to, basically, resist the drumbeat of short-term, quarterly earnings that have had us trapped here for a couple of years, as our same-store sales came down." This comment, as well as other praise of Amazon's executives Mackey made during the town hall (“They’re so authentic. They say what’s on


New sanctions on Russia and Iran hit House roadblock

senators fear that the White House sees the House as a bottleneck where it can block the broader sanctions bill. Leaders there could refer the matter of sanctions to the four House committees that have jurisdiction over the bill. If that happens, many supporters of the stepped-up sanctions said they fear that the measure will, at best, be inordinately delayed, and at worst, be decimated as lawmakers attempt to put their own mark on the bill. The Russia sanctions are complicated by the fact that they were passed as part of a larger bill imposing new sanctions against Iran over their ballistic missile tests and the activities of the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The compromise legislation, which came together after months of negotiations, was able to command the support of 98 senators last week — but many in the House would like to take more extensive punitive measures. If the House committees each get an independent shot at the bill, “it’ll be a big mess,” said one senior Senate Democratic aide. It will also probably take longer than many lawmakers think they have to hold the president in check. Brady said that he would not insist his committee formally review the bill if the revenue provision is modified, calling the policy content “very strong.” But he declined to say Tuesday whether he expected the bill to reach the House floor before Congress breaks for its extended summer recess next month. “I think the Senate can move pretty quickly to correct that provision and send it back to us,” he said. “That would be my preference.” According to a person familiar with the negotiations, the only provision that Ways & Means had not been made privy to before the Senate passed the bill was a section specifying a 30-day review period for Congress to scrutinize any presidential requests to waive sanctions. The Trump administration has indicated that it is exploring giving Russia control over two compounds the Obama administration shuttered to Moscow late last year over suspicion they were used in intelligence-gathering. The Obama administration also expelled 35 Russian operatives from the country. The Senate-passed bill expressly prevents the administration from turning those facilities back over to Moscow. But a senior State Department official is heading to Russia this week for talk about “irritants” between the United States and Russia, according to news reports. Kelsey Snell contributed to this report.


How war brought cholera and polio back to the Middle East

that its doctors were witnessing cholera on an “unprecedented scale.” If left untreated, the illness causes fatal dehydration. The U.N. has recorded 166,976 suspected cases since mid-April. By Tuesday, the death toll had risen to at least 1,146. Cholera is not difficult to treat. Nor does it travel fast when water is clean and conditions sanitary. But Yemen’s crumbling economy — another byproduct of war — has halted the salaries of public servants, meaning that garbage collection has become irregular, and more than eight million people now lack access to safe drinking water. Those conditions have created “a perfect storm for disaster,” according to Mansour Rageh, the chief economist for the Beirut-based Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies. “Everything has knock-on consequences. The economy is in turmoil so civil servants don’t get their salaries. Civil servants don’t get their salaries so the waste doesn’t get cleared. Then cholera spreads, and Yemen doesn’t have the means to treat it. It’s a disaster,” he said. Much of Syria’s health system has also been crippled by war. In areas controlled by armed groups opposing President Bashar al-Assad’s government, hospitals and clinics have been bombed systematically. Hundreds of medical workers have also been killed, mostly by pro-government forces. Earlier this year, the Lancet medical journal described Syria as “the most dangerous place on Earth for healthcare providers.” Diseases have often spread along conflict lines as aid agencies struggle to consistently deliver vaccinations and other lifesaving medical services to millions of Syrians living in areas controlled by the opposition or Islamic State. The World Health Organization said this week that it had confirmed 15 new cases of polio, including a child who may have caught the disease in the Islamic State-held capital of Raqqa. “We are very worried, because obviously if there is already one case of polio of a kid that is paralyzed it’s already an outbreak. We know for example that for one kid that is paralyzed there are almost 200 asymptomatic so it means that virus circulating, so it is very serious,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said at a U.N. briefing on Tuesday. United Nations aid trucks are being prepared to ship polio vaccine into Deir al-Zour province, where U.S.-led coalition airstrikes have surged in recent months as Washington and Tehran-backed forces race to capture the area from the Islamic State. But health experts say the damage is already done. A disease might


clinics have been bombed systematically. Hundreds of medical workers have also been killed, mostly by pro-government forces. Earlier this year, the Lancet medical journal described Syria as “the most dangerous place on Earth for healthcare providers.” Diseases have often spread along conflict lines as aid agencies struggle to consistently deliver vaccinations and other lifesaving medical services to millions of Syrians living in areas controlled by the opposition or Islamic State. The World Health Organization said this week that it had confirmed 15 new cases of polio, including a child who may have caught the disease in the Islamic State-held capital of Raqqa. “We are very worried, because obviously if there is already one case of polio of a kid that is paralyzed it’s already an outbreak. We know for example that for one kid that is paralyzed there are almost 200 asymptomatic so it means that virus circulating, so it is very serious,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said at a U.N. briefing on Tuesday. United Nations aid trucks are being prepared to ship polio vaccine into Deir al-Zour province, where U.S.-led coalition airstrikes have surged in recent months as Washington and Tehran-backed forces race to capture the area from the Islamic State. But health experts say the damage is already done. A disease might be contained in one area but still pop up in another. The Syrian American Medical Society, a nonprofit, said this week that the vaccination gap has also caused measles to spread. In the rebel-held south, dozens of cases have been detected, even among children who had been vaccinated. In several cases, doctors said, the vaccinations may have failed because of storage problems that make it difficult to keep medicine cold. In others, the government-provided vaccines are believed to have been out of date. “When the war started, one of the first things to stop across huge parts of the country was the program of vaccinations. And with hospitals being bombed and health supplies largely being unable to cross the front-lines, there were many facilities that simply could not keep up,” Roberts said. For civilians across Yemen and Syria, displacement and hunger have also accelerated the spread of disease. “Malnutrition and cholera are interconnected. Weakened a “We're looking at a disaster,” Roberts said. Read more: In Yemen’s war, trapped families ask: Which child should we save? As ISIS retreats in Syria, U.S. and Iran scramble for control


I watched a total eclipse of the sun. You don’t want to miss the next one.

a wondrous experience, worthy of almost risking our lives, though the spectacle on the ground was equally mesmerizing on this occasion. The dual sights of the eclipse in the sky and the rituals in the desert reminded me of the enduring links between the celestial and the human realms. Two months from now, on Aug. 21, people across the United States, from Oregon to South Carolina, will have the opportunity to witness a total eclipse of the sun. The path of totality will sweep from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic for the first time in 99 years, prompting some to revive the moniker “the Great American Eclipse.” For the last such event, in 1918, the U.S. Naval Observatory, with a special $3,500 grant from Congress (the equivalent of approximately $60,000 now), dispatched a scientific expedition to Baker City, Ore. Researchers planned to measure the deflection of starlight by the sun’s gravity when the sky got dark and stars became visible during totality, thus testing a key prediction of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which had been published three years earlier. It was seen as a chance for American scientists to upstage their then-dominant European counterparts, representing an intellectual coup for a nation ascendant. Such hopes were dashed, however, because thin clouds covered the sun during the critical moments, obscuring faint background stars in its vicinity. Team member Howard Russell Butler, a physicist-cum-artist, did capture the corona and prominences of a moon-blocked sun in a historic painting. Stunning vindication of Einstein’s theory came a year later, from English scientists who traveled to the island of Principe, off the west coast of Africa, and to Brazil for the next total solar eclipse. This summer, the stakes are much lower, though a number of researchers aim to conduct studies of the sun and the Earth with support from NASA and the National Science Foundation. Besides, with dazzling images of intricate nebulae from Hubble and splendid portraits of ringed Saturn from Cassini popping up on our screens nearly every week, we have become quite blasé about celestial sights. Compared to those color-enhanced visuals, our glimpses of astronomical objects with the naked eye, or through binoculars or a backyard telescope, tend to leave us feeling underwhelmed. A total eclipse of the sun is different. No photograph can do it justice, in my opinion, because it is a truly immersive experience. Seeing a partial


Mountain lions are terrified by the voices of Rush Limbaugh and Rachel Maddow

of speakers. The lions were subjected to the strident tones of Maddow, Glenn Beck, Amy Goodman and Rush Limbaugh, as well as the less-upsetting sound of Pacific tree frogs croaking. Few mountain lions (which are also known by some Californians as pumas) reacted to the frog recordings. Yet the moment they heard a human voice, more than 80 percent of the big cats fled the scene, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. “It's fun to watch them bound away, tails flying,” said Justine Smith, who helped orchestrate the bizarre experiment. But Smith, a UCSC ecologist by day, didn't inflict the horrors of political commentary on defenseless animals for mere amusement. She was trying to understand a potent and profound new force in the lions' world: fear. A Santa Cruz mountain lion (Sebastian Kennerknecht/pumapix.com) Mountain lions are apex predators, positioned at the top of the food chain. Under normal circumstances, little frightens them. Rather, they are the ones who generate terror. Prey species — deer, raccoons, even coyotes — must keep their wits about them to avoid becoming a lion's next meal. Wariness of predators makes these other species spend less time eating and more time hiding, watching or scurrying out of view. The cascading effects of these behavioral changes can reshape an entire ecosystem: Plants that were once bitten down to stubs by grazing deer may rebound, small critters can find new homes and hiding spots in the restored foliage, the course of a stream may shift, the composition of the soil itself may change. Ecologists call this phenomenon the “landscape of fear,” noting that the simple possibility of predation plays an important role in how animals interact with their world. “Any predator is only ever going to eat some of its prey,” Justin Suraci, an ecologist at University of Western Ontario and a co-author on the mountain lion paper, told The Washington Post last year. “But it’s potentially going to scare all of its prey, and cause all of its prey to change its behavior all of the time.” This fear-infused landscape shifts when humans enter it. We are “superpredators,” Smith says, and she and her colleagues wanted to know whether humans have the same terror-inducing effect on mountain lions that these apex predators have on their prey? “We know they don’t like being around our developments, but it's hard