A tech expert now works to keep people from terrorizing themselves with toxic foods

author of several books about treating degenerative diseases with a low-fat, whole-food, plant-based vegan diet. She took cooking classes and became a master gardener. Then she found space in the Herndon Centre mall and hired a general manager, Pericles Silva, a world-class athlete from Brazil who had developed a healthful eating program for the Whole Foods store in Reston. She pledged to pay all her employees a living wage. Dishwashers make $15 an hour. There was a full house for the cooking demonstration I attended earlier in December. The cafe also hosts a nutrition lecture series and shows films about healthful eating, which also are well attended. Anyone interested in turning a whole-food meal into a lifestyle can sign up for a GreenFare 21-day "kick-start" program, which comes with three weeks of prepared meals, group support and shopping tips. A version of the meal plan without the food is available free. Neal Barnard, an adjunct associate professor of medicine at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences and a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, helped Whittaker set up the nutrition program. He called GreenFare "a restaurant on a mission." Whittaker, who practices what she preaches, said, "I feel better today than I did at 40. Sleep issues, gone. Anxiety issues, gone." For me, when it comes to restaurants, the proof of the pudding is in the taste. I had a GreenFare house salad, enchiladas, hibiscus tea, and "lava cake," a dessert made from red beans, sweet potatoes, dates, vanilla and cocoa powder. It was delicious. As an electrical engineer skilled in big-data computing, Whittaker had helped transform the nation's defenses against terrorist threats. Now, as an organic restaurateur and advocate for healthful eating, she wants people to stop terrorizing themselves with toxic foods. "It's really just going back to what we were intended to eat," Whittaker explained. "We don't have carnivore teeth. We have fingernails instead of claws. We are too slow to chase down animals. Our eyes are designed to pick up the colors of fruits and vegetables. So, it makes sense that we should be eating plants, not animals." An earlier version of this column incorrectly identified Neal Barnard as a cardiologist at George Washington University. He is an adjunct associate professor of medicine at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences and a fellow of the American College of Cardiology. courtland.milloy@washpost.com


10 ways ideas about healthy eating have changed, and why that’s good

. . a way of life The notion of dieting, with its obsessive calorie counting, weighing and measuring is out, and "lifestyling," with a focus on overall eating patterns and whole-life wellness, is in. Even longtime diet programs such as Weight Watchers have heeded the call with their new Freestyle program. Crash diets haven't totally disappeared — they have just been renamed detoxes and cleanses, and I recommend avoiding them — but the overall shift to healthy as a way of life has arrived and is a welcome bandwagon worth jumping on. . . . a vegetable celebration In print, on Instagram feeds and in restaurants from fine to fast-casual, vegetables have graduated from a sidelined afterthought to center stage, and there are more compelling vegan and vegetarian options available than ever before. Vegetables are given luxe treatment with decadent-tasting but good-for-you sauces such as tahini or pesto and spun into comfort foods such as potato nachos, Buffalo cauliflower and zucchini noodles. There has never been a better time to be, or try to become, a vegetable lover. . . . not afraid of fat Counting fat grams has gone the way of the Walkman. There is just no need for it. There is now a body of evidence that fats — especially those from whole foods such as nuts, seeds, avocado and fish and healthy oils — are good for our nutritional well-being, benefiting our heart health, blood sugar and weight, to name a few. Just ignore the rampant butter-is-back headlines. Even if saturated fat is not the demon it was once thought to be, it is still healthier to replace animal fat with that from plants. Hello, avocado toast. . . . protein powerful Protein is practically synonymous with healthy today, a trend that's inspiring a more balanced plate than that of the bagel-for-breakfast days of yore. Along with the movement toward plant-based foods, this new way of eating has led to a rediscovery of powerfully nutritious beans, lentils, peas, nuts and seeds, as chefs and home cooks interpret them with modern culinary prowess. Take advantage of all that but avoid getting ensnared in the more-is-better mentality and falling prey to marketing tactics that leverage grams of protein for health points. Include some protein at each meal or snack but remember: Protein-fortified cookies are still cookies. . . . sweetened smartly Refined sugar has never been billed as


The Islamic State’s toxic farewell: Environmental sabotage and chronic disease

the area. Children and the elderly rushed to the hospital with breathing problems, up to 600 in a three-hour period, said Ali Farraj, an internal medicine specialist. After the sulfur plant was burned, the cases became more severe, involving skin rashes, severe bronchitis and suffocation deaths, he said. For months, children playing outside or waiting for a handout from passing Iraqi troops had faces caked with soot. Dead sheep and cows littered fields and roadsides. "The level of disregard by the Islamic State was pure nihilism," said Wim Zwijnenburg, a Dutch researcher and co-author of "Living Under a Black Sky," a report on environmental destruction in Iraq, sponsored by Pax, a Netherlands-based nonprofit organization. "The burning of the sulfur factory was a real case of using environmental damage as a weapon of war." Ahmed was 13 when he awoke one humid September night choking from the toxic air. His face and legs were swollen, and he complained to his mother that he couldn't breathe. His mother rushed him to a nearby clinic run by Doctors Without Borders, the French aid group, where they discovered that fluid was collecting in his lungs. He was taken to a hospital in the Kurdish capital of Irbil, 65 miles to the north. After he arrived at the hospital, Ahmed suffered a stroke. In a handwritten report given to Ahmed's mother upon his release, doctors noted that he had suffered "severe heart failure," possibly a result of his lungs expanding and putting pressure on his heart. "He will live with this for the rest of his life," his mother said. Ahmed's prospects for proper treatment are not good, and his chances of receiving psychological care for his trauma are even worse. Qayyarah's main hospital is still being repaired from the damage it sustained during the battle to evict the militants. The closest hospitals equipped to deal with delicate cases such as Ahmed's are in Irbil and Baghdad — a lengthy and costly trip. Ahmed's father is a municipal employee who does not receive a regular salary. "We can only afford his heart medicine," his mother said, adding that psychological care is out of the question. A toxic legacy In the village of Ijhala, an hour's drive from Qayyarah's center, farmers have struggled to grow their traditional crops of okra, tomatoes, cucumber and watermelon. Herds of sheep that once numbered up to 50 are now limited


Sports car to get a ride on new SpaceX rocket

is basically constructed from three Falcon 9s bolted side-by-side, with the nose cone and payload capping the middle rocket. The spacecraft is set for liftoff from launch complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida — the same pad used by the Saturn 5 that carried Apollo 11's three-man crew on their historic 1969 mission, which ended in Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's first human steps on the lunar surface. The "passenger" riding atop the Falcon Heavy will be setting a record as the first car sent into solar orbit — a bit of cross-promotion dreamed up by Musk himself. "I love the thought of a car driving apparently endlessly through space and perhaps being discovered by an alien race millions of years in the future," the billionaire entrepreneur and SpaceX founder said in a Twitter post last month. Greater lift capacity The Falcon Heavy is actually designed to carry payloads much heavier than a sports car, with SpaceX boasting its ability to place roughly 70 tons into standard low Earth orbit at a cost of $90 million per launch. That is twice the lift capacity of the biggest existing rocket in America's space fleet — the Delta 4 Heavy of SpaceX rival United Launch Alliance (ULA) — for about one-fourth the cost. Arrival of the Falcon Heavy puts it in competition with the next big rocket under development by NASA as well, the heavy-lift Space Launch System, or SLS, which will be far more powerful than SpaceX's new jumbo rocket but also much more expensive to fly. The Trump administration recently signaled that NASA may contract with a commercial provider to launch the first component of its Deep Space Gateway, a lunar-orbiting research outpost planned as a successor to the International Space Station in the next decade and a jumping-off point for missions to Mars. SpaceX has lined up its first three paying missions for the Falcon Heavy, including the planned launch of two paying passengers on a tourist trip around the moon. Like the Falcon 9 that came before it, the Falcon Heavy is built to be used again. Each of the three main-stage boosters are designed to fly back to Earth after launch. The two side-boosters are supposed to touch down on landing pads at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, while the central booster should land on a drone ship in the Atlantic. kidspost@washpost.com


Man dies after being stabbed in residence in Northwest Washington

THE DISTRICT Man stabbed to death in Northwest home A 56-year-old D.C. man was stabbed to death Saturday at a residence in the 400 block of H Street NW, police said. Gregory Monroe had multiple stab wounds when officers arrived on the scene around 5:45 p.m., D.C. police said. He was rushed to a hospital but succumbed to his injuries. Police did not say whether there were any suspects in his death. — Michael S. Rosenwald Arrest in 3 robberies on a single block A teenager was arrested last week in connection with three separate robberies, all on the same block in Southeast Washington, the D.C. police said. Two of the robberies, in which a gun was shown, occurred on the same day, only five minutes apart, according to a police statement issued Sunday. The first of those two occurred about 7:55 p.m. on Oct. 16, the police said. The second, according, to the police, occurred about 8 p.m. In each case, the victims were walking in the 1400 block of Alabama Avenue SE. The third robbery occurred in that block about 7 p.m. Nov. 8. In that case, police said, two robbers assaulted the victim and took property, but no gun was reported. Police said a 14-year-old male who lived in Southeast was arrested Thursday in all of the robberies. They said the last one remained under investigation. — Martin Weil MARYLAND Two men killed in Montgomery crash Two Silver Spring men died after the car they were traveling in slammed into a utility pole early Sunday in Montgomery County, police said. Authorities said Leonel Osvaldo Gonzales, 24, was driving a black 2015 Lexus RX 350 SUV when he apparently lost control about 2:30 a.m. on University Boulevard West at Royalton Road in Silver Spring. Gonzales and his passenger, 28-year-old Hodimyr Gonzalez, died at the scene. Police said speed may have been a factor. — Michael S. Rosenwald VIRGINIA State highway worker struck, killed by car A 25-year-old contract worker for the Virginia Department of Transportation died Saturday after a car struck him as he set up a mobile work zone on Interstate 95 in Prince George County, south of Richmond, state police said Sunday. Dustin Michael Warden of Carson was working on the southbound side near Route 602 when he was hit by a 2015 Honda Civic, police said. The driver, 27-year-old Samantha C. Hughes of Wilmington, N.C.,


Quantum computers may be more of an imminent threat than AI

Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and others have been warning about runway artificial intelligence, but there may be a more imminent threat: quantum computing. It could pose a greater burden on businesses than the Y2K computer bug did toward the end of the ’90s. Quantum computers are straight out of science fiction. Take the “traveling salesman problem,” where a salesperson has to visit a specific set of cities, each only once, and return to the first city by the most efficient route possible. As the number of cities increases, the problem becomes exponentially complex. It would take a laptop computer 1,000 years to compute the most efficient route between 22 cities, for example. A quantum computer could do this within minutes, possibly seconds. Unlike classic computers, in which information is represented in 0’s and 1’s, quantum computers rely on particles called quantum bits, or qubits. These can hold a value of 0 or 1 or both values at the same time — a superposition denoted as “0+1.” They solve problems by laying out all of the possibilities simultaneously and measuring the results. It’s equivalent to opening a combination lock by trying every possible number and sequence simultaneously. Albert Einstein was so skeptical about entanglement, one of the other principles of quantum mechanics, that he called it “spooky action at a distance” and said it was not possible. “God does not play dice with the universe,” he argued. But, as Hawkings later wrote, God may have “a few tricks up his sleeve.” Crazy as it may seem, IBM, Google, Microsoft and Intel say that they are getting close to making quantum computers work. IBM is already offering early versions of quantum computing as a cloud service to select clients. There is a global race between technology companies, defense contractors, universities and governments to build advanced versions that hold the promise of solving some of the greatest mysteries of the universe — and enable the cracking open of practically every secured database in the world. Modern-day security systems are protected with a standard encryption algorithm called RSA (named after Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman, the inventors). It works by finding prime factors of very large numbers, a puzzle that needs to be solved. It is easy to reduce a small number such as 15 to its prime factors (3 x 5), but factorizing numbers with a few hundred digits is extremely


Daniel Bernard Roumain’s songs of protest at the National Gallery

Crossover violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain paired up with jazz pianist Yayoi Ikawa for a concert of many surprises Sunday afternoon at the National Gallery of Art. Roumain narrated the performance with a microphone, speaking in the often rambling manner of a nightclub act. He announced that he was going to change the program, informing us of the pieces before he played them. The selection was primarily compositions and arrangements by Roumain, and a spirit of political protest, leading up to Bob Marley's "Redemption Song," ran through the concert. "I woke up angry this morning," Roumain confided. The violin, Roumain later explained, is "my weapon of choice," and his arrangement of the Haitian national anthem he related to his identity as the "son of two immigrant parents from Haiti." As amplification of both instruments increased throughout the program, the volume level edged toward oppressive. In Roumain's piece "Filter," early in the concert, the violinist walked through the audience, eventually weaving in the tune of "The Star-Spangled Banner." At the point where the melody became unmistakable, Roumain knelt and kept playing on his knees by the fountain in the center of the West Garden Court. The allusion to the protests of professional sports players, on the day of the Super Bowl, was a powerful gesture in this place just a few blocks from the White House. Roumain was at his most effective when he let go of the polemics, especially in a piece offering a tribute to his father, who died in 2014. Capped by his singing of a wordless minor-mode melody, sometimes in duet with himself on the violin, the piece's simplicity and poignancy were devastating. style@washpost.com


Red wolves may be going extinct in the wild — again

to previous research showing that red wolves are genetically distinct and questioned the techniques used. But shortly after the study’s release, the agency declared that wild red wolves had to be captured and placed in zoos to shore up the declining genetic purity of captive red wolves, a claim that the scientists who wrote the analysis called backward. Within weeks, conservationists discovered that the agency granted a permit to a North Carolina private landowner to shoot a wolf he considered a nuisance. The wolf turned out to be a nursing female. The slaying left her pups to die. “That’s when we filed the lawsuit saying you’re violating the Endangered Species Act,” said Derb Carter, a Southern Environmental Law Center attorney who’s representing three conservation groups: the Red Wolf Coalition, Defenders of Wildlife and the Animal Welfare Institute. “The origin of the suit was the decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to basically abandon what we view as their responsibilities to protect and recover the red wolf in eastern North Carolina.” A judge issued an injunction against the removal of red wolves from the refuge and against shooting permits pending a court decision. The injunction added to a list of court victories the Southern Environmental Law Center has racked up on behalf of red wolves, including one in which the state was barred from allowing night hunts of coyotes in which hunters seemed certain to confuse the two canids. Carter expects the current case to continue at least until March. Even if conservationists prevail, the fate of the red wolves still hinges on the management of the program and the will of the federal government to save a species in peril. “I don’t think they’re standing up for a program that they themselves developed,” said Heather Clarkson, who monitors red wolves for a southeast office of the nonprofit group Defenders of Wildlife. “It’s about agency mismanagement and they’re not running the program the way that they should be.” One night in November, just after dusk, Clarkson joined Sutherland and a colleague at Defenders, Christian Hunt, on a trail at the refuge. The three of them howled at the moon and waited for the wolves to howl back. They quietly listened in the raven darkness after each howl. They thought they heard a call back, but shrugged because none of them were sure. It might have been an echo. darryl.fears@washpost.com


Budweiser’s Super Bowl ad is a plea to its fleeing customers

has changed, and consumers now want a more premium product.” Bud’s prolonged fall from grace was not exactly unexpected. The 142-year-old beer, concocted in St. Louis by two German immigrants in the 1870s, has been losing market share since 1990. In 2001, little brother Bud Light — also produced by the global mega-brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev — passed it as America’s top-selling beer. In 2011, Bud was again surpassed by Coors Light, which is made by Molson Coors. None of the three brands is growing, however: It's more a question of which are contracting the slowest. Between 2007 and 2017, even industry leader Bud Light saw sales fall by 9 million bottles. As Steinman and others explain it, America's top beer brands have been buffeted by a series of inconvenient trends. As a category, beer is shrinking year over year, the unwitting victim of the cocktail craze and the recent boom in liquors and spirits. To make matters worse, a growing slice of that shrinking pie goes to craft brewers. And even among the big beer brands, many consumers would rather drink a light beer or a Mexican import than a heavy, old-timey lager. “None of these trends are monocausal,” Steinman said. “But I think many consumers are looking for something new and different.” To that point, AB InBev has been looking to diversify in the United States. In May, the company announced a four-year, $2 billion capital investment plan that will add capacity at the 12 craft breweries it has snapped up here in recent years and expand its production of nonalcoholic beverages. AB InBev has also aggressively promoted several of its other core, mainstream beers. In addition to the Budweiser ad, the company purchased Super Bowl spots for Bud Light, Stella Artois, Busch and Michelob Ultra. That last beer, an American lager marketed as “low-cal/carb,” saw a 21 percent jump in sales last year — at the same time Budweiser fell by 6.8 percent. For Bud, Steinman said, the writing may be on the wall. “It's been in decline for 30 years now,” he said. “And that’s not an easy thing to fix.” Read more: Lots of 'craft' beer is brewed by Anheuser-Busch. Here’s how to spot the real stuff. The maker of Bud Light is investing $2 billion to make its beer ‘more sophisticated’ More bars are booting corporate beer from their taps and doubling down on craft


Concussions are serious, but would you let one ruin your Olympic dream?

Canadian skier Justin Dorey won't participate in this month's PyeongChang Olympics like he did in Sochi in 2014, when he finished 12th in the inaugural freestyle halfpipe event there. Though he was just 25 at the time, Dorey retired shortly after. He'd had enough concussions. Like athletes in all sports, winter Olympians are confronting the realities of traumatic brain injuries, and perhaps unsurprisingly in sports that reward the abandon necessary to go higher and faster, the risks they face are significant. Bobsled, luge and skeleton racers hurtle down slippery courses at 80 to 90 mph. Snowboarders and skiers fly a dozen feet in the air before crashing down to icy halfpipes unforgiving to mistakes, or wrestle for room on tight courses that seem made to spark collisions. Even seemingly benign winter sports — say, curling — carry a greater concussion risk than similarly contact-averse sports merely because they are played on ice. Canadian curler Brad Gushue, who won a gold medal at the 2006 Olympics, suffered a severe concussion when he slipped on the ice in a televised match. American Olympic cross-country skier Erik Bjornsen suffered a reported concussion in a collision in 2014. Of the 15 sports listed that will be contested in these Olympics, an American has suffered at least one publicly reported concussion in 12 of them. Complicating matters is the once-every-four-years nature of Olympic sports. When professional athletes in other sport suffer head injuries, they usually get paid while they recover. For aspiring Olympians, one ill-timed concussion can end a decades-long dream. Dorey remembered being reluctant to speak up about a head injury, and he knew his teammates were, too. While most governing bodies of Olympic sports have issued guidance or concussion protocols in recent years, awareness has not resolved the issue. "With how serious our team and everybody has gotten about concussions in the last few years, there's a chance if you mention or say something the wrong way that you'll be sidelined even if you shouldn't be, just because they want to protect you and also protect themselves from responsibility," Dorey said. "The associations can hold the athlete back, even if they're willing to take the risk. It creates a system in which athletes aren't always honest." Scary symptoms Dorey's first handful of concussions came from mountain biking as a kid. He used to black out for a few hours, ask people who he


Adapt or burn

among the first to grasp that industrial modernization, which sought to deliver society from necessity through the conquest of nature, might instead end up provoking doom. “Our common sense has begun searching for a language to speak about the shadow our future throws,” Illich intoned in his clipped Austrian-Croatian accent. “The warming atmosphere is making it intolerable to think of industrial growth as progress; now it appears to us as aggression against the human condition. Perhaps for the first time, we can now imagine that, as Samuel Beckett once put it, ‘This earth could be uninhabited.’” Illich’s radical views seem less far-fetched as the future gets closer. The fact that all other nations but the United States are committed to implementing the Paris climate accord aimed at decarbonizing the planet is at least an incipient move toward the species consciousness of which Lifton speaks. Acting on that new awareness, however, is a race with the interconnected cascade of consequences that are accelerating climate change. Alarmed scientists warn “we are now on a collision course with tipping points in the Earth system” that are irreversible. What stands between a changed mind and changing ways is the systemic inertia of the past. U.S. President Donald Trump may be the political face of that inertia, but it also resides in the ingrained habits of consumer societies that have industrialized their desires. Mitigating ourselves is the hardest task of all. This week The WorldPost looks at the ongoing consequences of climate change in some of the more remote zones across the planet and how some local communities are acting on their global awareness. In a video report from Inner Mongolia, China, Lu Liu shows how the spread of desertification due to overgrazing, industrialization and drought has severely degraded the region’s prairies and disrupted the herding culture that has existed there for millennia. In the Congo Basin, joined British and Congolese scientists investigating how the largest tropical peatland on the planet — larger than the size of England — acts as a gigantic sink absorbing carbon from the atmosphere. She also documents the advancing deforestation taking place in Congo that reduces the natural capacity to absorb carbon. As usual, the culprit is corruption and the invasion of outsider commercial avarice. “In recent years,” she writes, “studies have shown that forests are better protected by indigenous people whose ownership of their ancestral land has been recognized.


Souad Mekhennet wins the 2018 Ludwig Börne Prize

The Ludwig Börne Foundation honors outstanding achievements in essay, criticism and reportage. It selected television presenter Maybrit Ilner as a juror for this year’s prize. She said of her choice to award Mekhennet with this year’s honor: “Mekhennet combines great courage, clear reasoning and genuine passion. The child of immigrant workers became an investigative reporter of international acclaim. Discrimination, arrogance and hypocrisy make her just as angry as it once did Ludwig Börne.” Mekhennet will be presented with her award in Frankfurt on May 27.


Norovirus outbreak at PyeongChang Olympic venues leads to staff quarantine

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Olympic officials are scrambling to contain an outbreak of norovirus at the Winter Games, which open here Friday, after 41 security guards fell ill. More than 1,200 people have been quarantined while they are tested for the virus, which has caused vomiting and diarrhea among those affected, and hundreds of soldiers have been deployed to make up the shortfall in security staff. “An epidemiological survey is underway to understand the route of transmission,” the PyeongChang organizing committee said in a statement Tuesday. The outbreak, revealed just three days before Friday’s Opening Ceremonies, is particularly unwelcome given the security concerns surrounding these Games, which are taking place just 50 miles from the border with North Korea. Security has been tightened perceptibly, with travelers passing through train stations having to go through metal detectors. Soldiers in fatigues were manning entry points to skiing and snowboarding venues Tuesday. The security guards who came down with the virus were all staying at a youth center in the PyeongChang area, and reported experiencing headaches, stomach pain and diarrhea. They were treated and quarantined. More than 900 military personnel have been deployed to take over security at 20 Olympic venues until all the affected workers are able to return to duty, the organizing committee said in a statement. Provincial health authorities and the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating the cause of the virus. The youth center is located in the mountains, so health authorities are focusing on tap water, although tests of water used for cooking and general consumption so far have been negative for norovirus. They are also checking food and food preparation. Authorities also are beefing up hygiene inspections at food facilities across the Olympic venues. “They’re really making the ultimate possible effort to make sure that everybody is aware [of the virus] and where there are cases, that the right measures are taken,” Christophe Dubi, the Olympic Games executive director for the IOC, told reporters. Norovirus is highly contagious and commonly spread through contaminated food or water or contaminated surfaces, according to the Mayo Clinic. It also can be spread through close contact with an infected person. Symptoms usually begin 12 to 48 hours after exposure and last one to three days. There's no specific treatment for norovirus infection, the clinic says on its website. Norovirus infection occurs most frequently in closed and crowded environments


NTSB: Amtrak engineer sounded horn, applied emergency brake in S.C. crash

The engineer of an Amtrak train sounded his horn for three seconds and eventually hit the emergency brake, slowing the train to 50 mph before it slammed head-on into a freight train near Columbia, S.C., federal investigators said Monday. The impact of the crash early Sunday was so intense that it moved the empty CSX freight train 15 feet from where it was parked on tracks adjacent to the main rail line, according to Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the crash. The Amtrak train's conductor and engineer were killed, and 116 others were hospitalized. Sunday's crash in Cayce, S.C., about four miles south of Columbia, was the third high-profile incident involving an Amtrak train in less than two months. Last Wednesday, an Amtrak train carrying GOP lawmakers to their annual retreat in West Virginia hit a garbage truck outside Crozet, Va. No lawmakers were seriously injured, but a passenger in the truck was killed. The crashes have renewed concern about whether enough is being done to equip railroads with an automatic braking system known as positive train control, which Sumwalt and others say could have prevented Sunday's fatal crash and one that occurred in December, just outside Seattle. PTC originally was supposed to be in place by the end of 2015, but after a push by the rail industry, Congress postponed the deadline until the end of this year, with the possibility that it could be extended to the end of 2020. Last month, however, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao sent letters warning railroad industry leaders that they must meet the end-of-year deadline. On Monday, members of the Association of American Railroads, which lobbies for the freight industry, said its members will meet the deadline. "The railroads are very far along," said Michael J. Rush, senior vice president of the Association of American Railroads. "All of the (seven major railroads) are going to make it by (December) 2018." What "making it" means will vary. The law passed by Congress puts a December deadline on hardware installation, acquisition of the mandated radio spectrum and training of employees in its use. The law also requires that 50 percent of the system be switched on by December. If the railroads comply with that deadline they will then be required to complete the balance of the system by the end of 2020. In the briefing with reporters on


Monday, Sumwalt said the information about the Amtrak train's speed and the engineer's actions comes from the data recorder, which was retrieved from the wreckage. Investigators were hopeful that the front-facing video camera retrieved from the train's locomotive Sunday would offer them more insight into what happened before the crash. However, it was discovered that the recording ended a few seconds before the crash. A forensics team in Washington is working on the footage, he said. The train hit a top speed of 57 mph before the engineer began to slow it; the speed limit in the corridor is 59. About seven seconds before the end of the recording, the train's horn was activated for three seconds. "A lot has been done, and a lot needs to be done," Sumwalt said. "But I'm confident that our investigator will be able to piece this together." He said investigators are expected to remain in Cayce though the weekend. Amtrak 91, traveling on tracks owned and maintained by freight railway giant CSX, was supposed to pass over the switch to continue onto the main-line tracks. Instead, it was directed onto a portion of track known as "siding," which was occupied by the parked CSX train, Sumwalt said. Sumwalt said officials have confirmed that a signal outage along the rail corridor meant that trains had to be manually directed through the area. He said the outage occurred because of upgrades tied to the installation of PTC. Investigators also are focusing on why a railroad switch was locked in the wrong position, sending the Amtrak train off the main line and onto the side track. Sumwalt said NTSB investigators have also been able to interview four CSX crew members, including the engineer, conductor and the dispatcher who would have been responsible for directing the Amtrak train because of a signal outage along the rail line. Sumwalt could not say whether the Amtrak engineer's actions before the collision indicated that he knew the train had detoured off the main line and onto the side track. Amtrak trains have PTC equipment, but the freight railroads on which Amtrak trains travel, including the one involved in Sunday's crash, must install and activate transponders along their rail beds for the system to work. According to Sumwalt, the Amtrak train was headed south on the main track, as directed by dispatchers with CSX. The empty freight train, which had unloaded


Oh, what a night: Maryland musicians will raise money for ailing friend

in a scooter now,” Maria said. “But he’s healthy. I swear, the Italian boys. I told my brother: ‘It’s the faith and the pasta. It keeps them healthy.’ ” Alas, the same can’t be said for Demetri. He’s 75 now. Without insurance, he waited too long to have some health issues checked out. He’s suffering from heart and kidney ailments and recently was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. That’s why Demetri’s Maryland musical buddies are throwing a fundraising concert for him. It’s at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Frederick Elks Lodge 684, 289 Willowdale Dr. The Shades, a band Demetri played with, will provide the music. (Tickets are $20. For information, call Troy Remsburg at 301-748-3181.) Demetri has lived for years in Las Vegas, a good base for his musical excursions. He’s too ill to travel to the benefit, too ill to pick up a guitar even. Said Maria: “It’s heartbreaking to see this beautiful human being with this great charm, this ease of movement, the dexterity of his playing . . . to have that go, it’s hard.” His friends are trying to make it a little easier. Take your seat — please The big multiplex near us has totally transformed its theaters. They removed a bunch of seats so they could make the rows bigger. Each row is almost like a box at the theater. You can’t see the people sitting in front of you. (Or, thankfully, their cellphones.) The seats recline, too, not like the old seats, which simply had a kind of rocker action, but via buttons on the armrest that take you practically horizontal. One button deploys a big La-Z-Boyesque footrest. The seats are nice and everything, but when we went to see “Darkest Hour” the other night, they made me uncomfortable rather than comfortable. The reason: There’s something oddly intimate about reclining next to a complete stranger in a darkened room. The lady beside me blanketed her seat with her coat then stretched out, wriggling her body until she was nice and comfy. I started to put my seat back but just couldn’t do it. We hadn’t even been introduced. I was afraid she was going to flip over and ask me to rub sunblock on her back. So while everyone else was reclining as if they were at the dentist getting their teeth cleaned, I kept my feet firmly on the floor. john.kelly@washpost.com Twitter: @johnkelly


When covering your first Games, getting there is half the fun

the screen, too. He smiled, took a deep breath, put the van in drive and leaned forward as if his proximity would inspire the steering wheel to more obedience. I took a deep breath, leaned forward and braced myself against the front seat. Off we went down poorly lit twists and turns. He took them as carefully as he could — which wasn’t carefully enough to calm either of our nerves, though neither of us said so. From watching him navigate it all, I concluded that the center double yellow lines here must be more of a guideline than a hard-and-fast rule. I wondered what my parents would think if they saw the whole thing firsthand (and, frankly, what they will think to read about it). A complete stranger in a strange place had my life in his hands on a poorly lit road. But we were in it together. When we finally got to the bottom, he sat back and took a breath. I sat back and took a breath. Within a few minutes we were pulling in to the apartments in Gangneung, sharing silent relief … until a horde of Korean police officers clad in neon and hollering frantically surrounded the van and began knocking on the windows. In an effort to protect me from the bitter cold, he had tried to take me in a restricted entrance. Ten minutes of heated conversation later, he had talked his way to the closest possible entrance and unloaded my oversized bags onto the sidewalk. I shook his hand. He nodded to me. We laughed, having survived adventure without a word. When I got to my room, after 20 hours of traveling, the apartment was clean and warm, with all the amenities. The WiFI worked perfectly. Redskins beat writer Liz Clarke was there to greet me. My gift bag included a small lamp handmade by someone who lives nearly 7,000 miles from D.C. And the toilet had a traditional flushing mechanism. The Olympics had provided a small dose of redemption. I was right to believe. Read more about the 2018 Olympics: Coldest in history? PyeongChang organizers break out hats and blankets. Emergency appendectomy might not keep U.S. bobsledder Justin Olsen out of Olympics Mikaela Shiffrin is the world’s best woman skier — and worried that’s not enough Figure skater Adam Rippon on coming out: ‘I felt myself owning who I was’


Sen. Tammy Duckworth: I swore an oath to the Constitution, not to clap when Trump demands

the president or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.” Duckworth has been highly critical of Trump, particularly on issues involving the military and national security. In a Senate floor speech last month, Duckworth called Trump a “five-deferment draft dodger” who had no business accusing Democrats — such as herself — of not caring for the military. “Does he even know that there are service members who are in harm’s way right now, watching him, looking for their commander in chief to show leadership, rather than to try to deflect blame?” Duckworth said. The speech was prompted by a tweet in which Trump accused Democrats of “holding our Military hostage over their desire to have unchecked illegal immigration.” It was one of many partisan attacks Trump launched to blame Democrats for a congressional budget stalemate that had led to a partial federal government shutdown. The junior senator also accused Trump of trying to bait North Korea into a war by escalating his rhetoric against Kim Jong Un. “I have a message for ‘Cadet Bone Spurs,’ ” Duckworth said. “If you cared about our military, you’d stop baiting Kim Jong Un into a war that could put 85,000 American troops, and millions of innocent civilians, in danger.” During a speech about tax cuts Monday, Trump veered off script and accused Democrats of treason, a crime punishable by death, for not applauding even as he touted positive unemployment numbers during his State of the Union address. “Even on positive news like that, really positive news like that, they were like death and un-American,” Trump told a crowd in Blue Ash, Ohio. “Somebody said ‘treasonous.’ I mean, yeah, I guess, why not? Shall we call that treason? Why not? I mean, they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.” Responding to criticism Tuesday, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told NBC News that Trump was speaking “tongue in cheek” and was simply saying that all Americans, regardless of party, should celebrate positive news. Amy B Wang and John Wagner contributed to this post. Read more: Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who lost her legs in Iraq, calls Trump ‘a five-deferment draft dodger’ Trump calls Democratic lawmakers who didn’t applaud him ‘treasonous,’ ‘un-American’ Trump was speaking ‘tongue in cheek’ when he said Democrats were ‘treasonous,’ spokesman says


THE DISTRICT Man, 71, is fatally stabbed in Northwest A 71-year-old man was found fatally stabbed Monday morning in his apartment in Northwest Washington, according to D.C. police. Michael Mahoney was pronounced dead at the Garfield Terrace apartments in the 2300 block of 11th Street NW. Police were called to the scene about 11:30 a.m. Authorities did not say who called or who discovered the body. A police report says Mahoney was stabbed several times in the neck. Authorities did not disclose the stabbing until Tuesday. Police did not describe a weapon or a possible motive. — Peter Hermann Arrest is made in December slaying A 23-year-old has been arrested in the Dec. 29 shooting death of a man in an apartment hallway in Southeast Washington, D.C. police said. Ricardo Daquan Boston, of Southeast, was charged with second-degree murder while armed. The charges were filed after police said the suspect was extradited from Texas. Authorities did not say where Boston had been arrested. Boston is charged in the death of Dante Coleman, 20, in the 3900 block of First Street SE. — Peter Hermann MARYLAND Child dies of flu for first time this season The flu has killed a child in Maryland for the first time this season, Maryland Department of Health officials said. A spokeswoman for the health department said it could not release details about the victim, including age, gender or location. — Justin Wm. Moyer Police charge man in racial harassment case A Hagerstown man has been arrested and charged in what Montgomery County police said is a hate-based incident. Police said they charged Jerome Want, 69, with telephone misuse and harassment of a person because of race after reports of threatening calls using sexual remarks and racial epithets to the Montgomery County Housing Opportunities Commission in Kensington. Online court records did not indicate an attorney for Want. — Shira Stein


A likely change in Indiana’s liquor laws will allow Sunday sales. So why aren’t retailers happy?

In Indiana, you’re not allowed to buy alcohol on a Sunday. But that’s probably about to change. According to this report from the South Bend Tribune, both the House and Senate in Indiana have approved bills that lift the ban — erected during the prohibition era in the 20s and 30s — and final passage of the legislation is expected sometime in mid-March, with an effective date this summer. Sounds like great news for the sellers of wine and spirits, right? Actually, the response has been somewhat muted. For sure, the stores in neighboring Michigan aren’t thrilled. In Michigan, you can sell liquor on a Sunday and that has helped attract a fair share of Indianans looking to buy. Once the new law goes into effect, the motivation to cross state lines will likely go away for many, with stores across the border expecting a sizable hit to their sales. What may come as a surprise is the indifference from Indiana store owners. Why aren’t they jumping for joy at the prospect of an extra day a week of potential sales? Sundays are the second-biggest shopping day of the week at grocery stores and supermarkets. Independent liquor store owners fear that people will just buy their booze in the supermarket while they’re doing their shopping, instead of making an additional trip to their store. The fact that clerks in the smaller stores are required to get special training and that Indiana law prohibits anyone under the age of 21 from entering their stores (even though they can shop at a supermarket) certainly doesn’t help. This is why many owners of Indiana liquor stores are actually opposed to the rule change while operators of supermarket and chains have been in favor. So how will things eventually shakeout? It’s hard to guess. Independent store owners on both sides of the Michigan-Indiana are hoping to differentiate themselves through expanded hours, specialty items they sell, proximity to vacation spots and their ability to sell cold beer (the chains are not allowed). But like so many other small businesses fighting larger companies there’s one thing that will definitely set them apart: their people. “The helpfulness and knowledge of employees,” one store owner told the Tribune, “will be what separates us from the big retailers.”


Think you know what cider is? You’re probably wrong.

What do we mean when we talk about cider? It seems pretty straightforward: Cider is the fermented juice of crushed apples. Of course, things immediately get complicated in the United States, because we often have to clarify we're talking about hard cider, to distinguish it from the soft drink we buy at the farmers market for the family. But once we've established that we're talking about the alcoholic beverage, it should be easy enough to define, right? After spending several days here at the eighth annual CiderCon, along with more than 1,000 other cider enthusiasts and makers, I'm not so sure. Defining "cider" — and creating a language to talk about it — is very much on the agenda of the U.S. Association of Cider Makers, the trade group of more than 1,000 members that puts on CiderCon. Recently, the association released a new "Cider Style Guide" that delineates several categories of cider (including spiced, hopped, pear and other non-apple ciders). Most notably, there are now "modern" ciders, which are made from dessert apples commonly found in supermarkets, such as McIntosh, Jonagold, Gala or Granny Smith. And then there are "heritage" ciders that have "increased complexity" and "complex aromatics." Most significantly, heritage ciders use traditional bittersweet or bittersharp cider apples, older heirloom varieties or perhaps even crab apples or foraged wild varieties. Cider has always found itself betwixt and between. Some cidermakers have followed craft beer as their model, selling cider mostly in cans or on tap, with lots of experimentation, clever branding and nontraditional flavors. Others have followed the wine path, with close attention to apple varieties, orchard practices and fermentation techniques, and sell their ciders in 750-milliliter bottles. The cider association's style guide now formally recognizes this profound divide in approach. "We had to find a way to organize the messy world of cider," said Eric West, publisher of Cider Guide, who helped create the style guide. "We hear consumers say, 'I've had a cider. I don't like cider.' But they don't realize how vast the category is," said Michelle McGrath, the association's executive director. "You can have a hopped apricot cider made from dessert apples, and you can have a bone-dry sparkling cider made from cider or heirloom varieties. People value a wine grape, and we're trying to get people to value a cider apple." The presenters at CiderCon danced cautiously around the modern-vs.-heritage cider issue. It


Convicted Baltimore police detective testifies that he stole money with slain Detective Sean Suiter

in the head with his own gun in a vacant lot in West Baltimore, police have said. His death was ruled a homicide by the medical examiner's office, and remains unsolved despite a $215,000 reward. Colleagues have said Suiter was an honest and beloved cop. Suiter was shot one day before he was to have testified before a federal grand jury that was continuing to investigate claims involving the Gun Trace Task Force. Police have said that they do not believe there is a connection between Suiter's killing and his scheduled testimony, and the FBI declined a request by the former police commissioner to take over the investigation. The Baltimore Sun has reported that there was internal tension, with some investigators believing that Suiter's death could be a suicide or an accident. Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, the supervisor of the gun unit, was later hit with additional charges that he and Suiter had been involved in a 2010 incident in which drugs were planted on a man who fled and got into a serious crash. The indictment said Suiter did not know that the drugs had been planted, but had been the one who found them. Umar Burley, who served years in federal prison after pleading guilty in the case, said after his conviction was overturned in December that the officers were masked and pointed guns at him, and that he thought he was being robbed. His attorneys say he made the accusation at the time he was charged. Sherman "Pops" Basil, Suiter's 82-year-old uncle who helped raise him in Washington, dismissed the allegations against his nephew. "Sean has never done anything wrong in his life," said Basil, noting that Suiter joined the Army right out of high school, served two tours and then joined the police force. "People will say anything, so I don't pay no attention to what they say." Gondo was the final cooperating officer charged in the case to take the stand in the trial. It was Gondo's relationship with a Northeast Baltimore drug crew that first led investigators to the corrupt police unit. Gondo was picked up on a wiretap during a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation, which in 2015 was referred to the FBI to begin investigating the role of the officer. That expanded into an investigation into the Gun Trace Task Force, with a recording device being placed in one of its vehicles. Palmere has


Bowing to pressure from China, Mercedes-Benz apologizes for quoting the Dalai Lama in ad

Chinese government considers Tibet to be part of China. Not long after, Mercedes-Benz deleted the Instagram post in question — coupe, beach, Dalai Lama quote and all — and subsequently published an lengthy apology on Weibo, a Chinese microblogging site similar to Twitter. “This morning, we released a very incorrect message on international social media,” the apology began. The automaker said it had offended the feelings of its consumers and employees in China. “In light of this, we will immediately take measures to deepen our understanding of Chinese culture and values, including our overseas colleagues, to ensure this won't happen again.” The apology wasn't sufficient for some, Shanghaiist reported, with one Weibo user demanding that Mercedes-Benz give its fans free cars and another questioning why the company hadn't also apologized on its social media channels outside of Weibo. The uproar was the most recent in a string of missteps foreign companies have been accused of making while trying to appeal to a lucrative Chinese market — a response that's not new, given that the Chinese government has been extremely sensitive for years to any suggestions that Hong Kong, Tibet, Macau or Taiwan are independent countries. However, a greater number of international companies have begun bowing to the demands of Beijing to keep the door to that market open. Last month, the Chinese government criticized at least a dozen foreign corporations — including Marriott, Audi and Qantas Airways — for what it considered to be political slights. In the Qantas case, Taiwan was listed as a separate country option in a drop-down menu on the airlines' website and in its marketing materials. In another case, Beijing regulators forced Marriott to temporarily shut down its Chinese websites after a U.S.-based employee “liked” a tweet that was supportive of Tibetan independence. Both Qantas and Marriott deferred to Beijing's wishes, with one Marriott executive calling it “a huge mistake, probably one of the biggest in my career.” As The Washington Post reported last month, the willingness of companies to bend to China's will — as well as the nature of their apologies — has alarmed some China experts: The irony of Mercedes-Benz pulling an Instagram post with a quote encouraging people to keep an open mind — to appease China — was not lost on some. Instagram is banned in China, many pointed out. (That did not, however, stop images of the Instagram post


Scientists may have discovered the first planets outside the Milky Way

The truth is out there. And past that is a cluster of planets 3.8 billion light-years away, a recent discovery that if confirmed could extend the boundary of what we know about the universe. Using data from a NASA X-ray laboratory in space, Xinyu Dai, an astrophysicist and professor at the University of Oklahoma, detected, for the first time ever, a population of planets beyond the Milky Way galaxy. The planets range in size from Earth's moon to the massive Jupiter. There are few methods to determine the existence of distant planets. They are so far away that no telescope can observe them, Dai told The Washington Post. So Dai and postdoctoral researcher Eduardo Guerras relied on a scientific principle to make the discovery: Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. Einstein's theory suggests light bends when tugged by the force of gravity. In this case, the light is coming from a quasar — the nucleus of a galaxy with a swirling black hole — that emits powerful radiation in the distance. Between that quasar and the space-based laboratory is the galaxy of newly discovered planets. The gravitational force of the galaxy bends the light heading toward the Milky Way, illuminating the galaxy in an effect called microlensing. In that way, the galaxy acts as a magnifying glass of sorts, bringing a previously unseen celestial body into X-ray view. The technique was first used to first identify planets outside of our solar system but inside the galaxy, known as exoplanets. “Microlensing is probably the only way,” Dai said. In a university news release, Guerras had a less formal way to describe the complicated process: “This is very cool science.” The photo that emerged is a modest image of the extraordinary find that Dai said will advance the study of planetary science. The central elliptical object is the galaxy where the planets reside. The linked white dots at the top and solo white mark at the bottom are the lensed images of active radiation pulsating from a black hole. Dai estimated the distant galaxies contain 2,000 planets for every star. That means trillions of planets probably reside there, he said, consistent with the ratio of free-floating planets found in the Milky Way, which contains billions of planets. “This discovery, if the interpretation of the data holds up, looks very exciting indeed,” Priyamvada Natarajan, a theoretical astrophysicist at Yale University, told NBC. But other


A chemistry professor got his kids ready for school. Then ICE arrested him on his front lawn.

in Morgan County, Mo., about a three-hour drive from Lawrence. According to friends and relatives, the family has struggled with uncertainty ever since Jamal’s arrest, which two of his children witnessed. The oldest, 14-year-old Taseen, would later tell the Kansas City Star that ICE agents warned his mother she could be charged with interfering if she tried to hug Jamal goodbye on their front lawn. Jamal’s wife declined an interview request Sunday. Many media interviews have fallen to Taseen, who recently wrote a letter in support of his father that was included with the Change.org petition: “We are the children of Syed Ahmed Jamal, and we are requesting on behalf of our family for your kind help to get back our father,” the letter said in conclusion. “A home is not a home without a father.” Jamal’s brother, Syed Hussain Jamal of Phoenix, told The Post that, as a U.S.-educated, liberal, secular Muslim who is a member of the Biharis, an Urdu-speaking ethnic minority, his brother could face persecution or death at the hands of Islamist extremists if he were to be sent back to Bangladesh. Jamal was the only sibling who didn’t have citizenship, even though they all came to the United States from Bangladesh for school, his sibling said. “He was trying everything he could,” Syed Hussain Jamal said. “Sometimes it’s not as easy as people think to get a green card here. [My brother] had a job, an H1-B visa, then came back on a student visa, you know? And then he was trying to pursue a PhD program and that did not work out . . . and that’s when he kind of went out of status.” Bennett, the attorney, said the family’s case now rests in the hands of the Department of Homeland Security, the same department that arrested Jamal. “They are aware that this is a very difficult case to try to get a positive outcome because these stay-of-removal applications are rarely, rarely ever approved,” Bennett said. “But we’re giving it a shot, and this is the only thing that we can possibly do at this point to prevent an imminent deportation.” Read more: ICE has detained or deported prominent immigration activists Border Patrol agents were filmed dumping water left for migrants. Then came a ‘suspicious’ arrest. ICE detains a Polish doctor and green card holder who has lived in the U.S. for nearly


After a terrible head injury, a legendary ultra runner wills himself to race again

Head trauma can be life-threatening, particularly to older people. In 2015, Tom Green, then 65, faced such a threat as he clung to life in a Baltimore hospital after a freak accident. As he regained consciousness and began relearning simple movements, caregivers marveled at his grit and determination, according to his wife, Kay. She knew what they didn't: Tom Green was no ordinary patient. In 1986, Green cemented his spot in running history. He ran all four of the nation's 100-mile races in one season, becoming the first to complete ultra running's "grand slam." Only about 300 people have replicated that accomplishment. So while health-care workers might have been surprised by the sexagenarian's tenacity, friends and fellow runners knew Green would win the fight for his life. Green, from Columbia, Md., got his start in running much as many young men of his generation did, as a football player wannabe in high school in northern Illinois. "I was too small for football, but my brother told me about cross-country, and I decided to give it a try," he said. "I hated it at first, but eventually I began improving my times and learned to like it." Green had aspirations of running at Concord College in West Virginia. But he was told by the coach that his hair was too long and his mustache too radical, so he took a break from formal training. After college, he heard about a 10-kilometer event organized by the Howard County Striders running club and ran it. "Around 1983, I read about a 100-miler in a magazine," Green said. "All the pictures showed smiling, happy runners, so I thought, 'How hard can it be?' " Green registered for Virginia's Old Dominion 100-miler and quickly learned the answer: very hard. "It was my first time on trails, and I made it to Mile 60 before the race organizers made me drop out due to dehydration," he said. "I left there with no intention of ever trying that again, but I kept replaying the race in my mind and decided I had to go back." He did — and finished — the following year. Around that time, another article caught his attention — one about a fellow ultra runner attempting to run the four grand slam events, but over the course of several years. "It sounded like a nice adventure, so I decided to try all four


The unlikely pioneers fighting climate change

high enough to bring about a warming of more than 2 degrees after it has worked its way through the climate system, so if we want to save the Paris accord, we must either reduce our emissions to zero, which is not yet possible, or combine a significant emissions reduction with the physical removal of about 20 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere per year indefinitely.” The only answer, according to Wadhams, is new carbon capture technologies that reduce the stock of carbon, some of which are employed in innovative projects in Houston, Iceland and elsewhere. Marine ecologist John Bruno reports on innovative efforts to regenerate coral reefs — thus saving the “tropical forests” of the ocean — that are getting bleached to death by warming seas. Bruno documents several such projects, from a coral restoration nursery off the Florida coast where marine biologists are growing and replanting new coral on degraded reefs, to the experiments of molecular biologists using cutting-edge gene editing tools like CRISPR to alter the DNA of corals so they can better withstand rising temperatures. From the oil belt of California’s San Joaquin Valley, Bridget Huber reports that climate policies are not killing jobs, but creating them. Through the prism of on-the-job training and apprenticeship programs of the ironworkers’ and electrical workers’ unions in Fresno, she traces the return of robust job and wage growth to what had become a depressed economic zone. This is largely thanks to state mandates to meet requirements for renewable energy production. “Solar saved our bacon,” one veteran ironworker told her. Also contributing in a major way to high-wage employment, she reports, are the construction jobs associated with California’s massive high-speed rail project running through the region. Brian Barth Barth discusses Paul Hawken’s book “Natural Capitalism,” in which the environmentalist lays out the top 100 solutions to climate change. Of these, “11 are related to food systems, seven to energy systems and none to transportation systems. Electric vehicles are #26, while ‘tree intercropping’ — planting strips of apple trees throughout a corn field, for example — is #17. The top food-related practices — reducing food waste (#3) and switching to a plant-rich diet (#4) — are largely consumer-driven solutions.” Yet Barth’s reporting suggests that farmers and producers play a crucial part in reducing emissions as well. Barth also discusses silvopasture — a “mashup of forestry and grazing” — which


Why states should limit the potency of marijuana

Marijuana legalization states have taken no steps to limit the potency of marijuana, which has increased sharply in recent years. A new study suggests this could create public health problems down the road as more users become addicted or otherwise impaired. The study was conducted in the Netherlands, where marijuana is legally available through “coffee shops.” The researchers examined the level of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main intoxicant in marijuana, over a 16-year period. Marijuana potency more than doubled from 8.6 percent in 2000 to 20.3 percent in 2004, which was followed by a surge in the number of people seeking treatment for marijuana-related problems. When potency declined to 15.3 percent THC, marijuana treatment admissions fell thereafter. The researchers estimated that for every 3 percent increase in THC, roughly one more person per 100,000 in the population would seek marijuana use disorder treatment for the first time. The Dutch findings are relevant to the United States because high THC marijuana products have proliferated in the wake of legalization. The average potency of legal marijuana products sold in the state of Washington, for example, is 20 percent THC, with some products being significantly higher. Although some people believe prohibiting drugs is what makes their potency increase, the potency of marijuana under legalization has disproved that idea. Potency rises in both legal and illegal markets for the simple reason that it conveys advantages to sellers. More potent drugs have more potential to addict customers, thereby turning them into reliable profit centers. In other legal drug markets, regulators constrain potency. Legal alcohol beverage concentrations are regulated in a variety of ways, including through different levels of tax for products of different strengths as well as constraints on labeling and place of sale. In most states, for a beverage to be marketed and sold as “beer,” its alcohol content must fall within a specified range. Similarly, if wine is distilled to the point that its alcohol content rises too high, some states require it be sold as spirits (i.e., as “brandy”) and limit its sale locations. As states have legalized marijuana, they have put no comparable potency restrictions in place, for example capping THC content or levying higher taxes on more potent marijuana strains. Sellers are doing the economic rational thing in response: ramping up potency. The Dutch results suggest users and the public will suffer from this regulatory gap as more consumers of high-strength


Your primer to understanding Mid-Atlantic cold air damming and ‘the wedge’

connection between cold damming and heavy snowfall. Shown below is the evolution of a major East Coast snowstorm during February 1961. In the first panel, a classic cold air wedge promoted extensive ice (pink) and snow (blue) development across the Mid-Atlantic. The juxtaposition of the cold air with mild air over the western Atlantic also helped establish a coastal low pressure system, which rapidly intensified and tracked northward — maintaining the heavy snowfall from Virginia through Maine. Forecasting the wedge: A big challenge Because the cold air wedge is such a shallow air layer, and depends on details of the terrain for its establishment, only forecast models with high “grid” resolution i.e. fine spacing between computational cells — both in the horizontal and the vertical — come close to capturing the complete evolution of the wedge. During cold air damming situations, the high resolution NAM and HRRR models are our go-to models of choice, once it is clear that a wedge will become established. However, the global models (including GFS and ECMWF) are now operating with sufficient resolution to establish the general timing, geographical extent and intensity of cold air damming. Most models scour out the cold air too soon, by up to 6 to 12 hours. The wedge tends to erode in a complex manner; with strong, southerly winds (warmer air arriving from the south), the cold pool is eroded first on its southern and eastern flanks. The speed of the wind, its depth and temperature, and the relative thickness and intensity of the cold air dam, all determine how long it will take to eliminate the wedge. Weakening and/or eastward migration of the anchoring high pressure system (to the north) is also a key factor. If a cold air current or ongoing precipitation continues to chill the air, erosion is offset. Cloud breakup and warming of the surface can assist in “mixing out” the wedge. Additionally, a warm air layer aloft — with sufficient wind — can stir the top of the cold air layer, eroding it from above. The sequence of images below shows how a classic cold air dam disappears over many hours, given a strong southerly push of mild air. (Not relevant to the process is an approaching arctic front from the west). Note that while it has taken nearly 24 hours for 60-degree air to arrive over D.C., the core or remnant of the


As climate changes threaten California’s giant redwoods, the key to their salvation might be within them

California at Davis, the other at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore — began work on identifying the tree’s genetic makeup. The science is complex and time-consuming. A human has 3 million “base pairs” of DNA on its chromosomes; a redwood has 38 million. The lead scientist is David Neale, a professor of population biology and plant sciences at UC-Davis who has spent 40 years in the field developing and refining the technology being used in this project. While examining the initial redwood sample, Neale and his team have gathered genetic material from 10 other old-growth redwoods across a variety of climates and altitudes. This is the second stage of the project: expanding the genetic library available to forest managers. “It begins to give you an estimate of the kind of genetic variation that can be found in specific stands of these trees,” he said, describing how the information will be used in terms similar to how genetic material is applied in human health care. “Once the patient is determined to be at some genetic risk, you apply treatment and prescribe medicine.” [et_video xdesign="fullwidth" headline="JEB_2942″ uuid="55d66d8c-0b80-11e8-998c-96deb18cca19″ image_url="https://img.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2018/02/06/National-Enterprise/Videos/Images/201802/t_1517950631045_name_JEB_2942.jpg" autoplay="1″ showads="0″ video_caption="" methode="no" ] [et_photogrid xdesign="two" et_grid_photo_1_src="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2018/02/CarolynVanHouten_15.jpg" et_grid_photo_1_caption="SANTA CRUZ, CA – JANUARY 26: A blue spray paint line indicates a tree that Richard Campbell, Forestry Program Manager of the Save the Redwoods League, marked to be taken down in the Deadman’s Gulch in the San Vicente Redwoods on January 26, 2018 near Santa Cruz, California. Thinning specific Redwood trees helps improve the health of the Redwoods in proximity. (Photo by Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post) (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)" et_grid_photo_1_orig="https://img.washingtonpost.com/rw/WashingtonPost/Content/Health-Environment-Science/Images/CarolynVanHouten_15.JPG?uuid=dfc5c27c-0a36-11e8-998c-96deb18cca19″ et_grid_photo_1_uuid="dfc5c27c-0a36-11e8-998c-96deb18cca19″ et_grid_photo_2_src="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2018/02/CarolynVanHouten_52.jpg" et_grid_photo_2_caption="FELTON, CA – JANUARY 26: Coastal Redwood bark in the Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park on January 26, 2018 in Felton, California. (Photo by Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post) (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)" et_grid_photo_2_orig="https://img.washingtonpost.com/rw/WashingtonPost/Content/Health-Environment-Science/Images/CarolynVanHouten_52.JPG?uuid=1f450aae-0931-11e8-aa61-f3391373867e" et_grid_photo_2_uuid="1f450aae-0931-11e8-aa61-f3391373867e" et_grid_photo_3_src="" et_grid_photo_3_orig="" et_grid_photo_4_src="" et_grid_photo_4_orig="" methode="yes" ] The redwood’s genetic code can only be “read” in Neale’s lab 150 letters at a time (each piece of genetic information is assigned a letter.) At Steven Salzberg’s lab at Johns Hopkins, a more expensive process can read strings of up to 10,000 letters. Salzberg is a professor of biomedical engineering, computer science and biostatistics. Like Neale, he has mapped a tree’s genome before but never one the size of the redwood’s. The identification of the genome’s composition is one challenge. The sequencing and assembly — putting the


Venus flytraps give insects that pollinate their flowers a break. They don’t eat them.

Carnivorous Venus flytraps are an exceptional American species. They make captivating houseplants, but their greenhouse popularity obscures their true scarcity. Flytraps are native to a small region of the Carolinas. There they sprout like clover in areas where scattered pine trees give way to soggy open savannas. They grow nowhere else. Like their fellow Americans, Dionaea muscipula has an unusually meaty diet. (The typical American human eats more flesh per capita than almost anyone else on the planet.) Flytraps grow jawlike structures that snap closed around prey. They feed on invertebrates, mostly ants and spiders, which liquefy into nutrient mush within the traps. Of the 600 species of carnivorous plants, only flytraps have this mechanism, and recent studies suggest they even can track how frequently they are touched. Yet while famous for their snapping skill, much of flytrap life is unknown. For instance: What bug could pollinate an insect-eating plant? Flowering plants like Venus flytraps need visitors to collect and spread pollen. “Because it's a carnivorous plant, it has this special potential for conflict that ordinary plants don't,” said Elsa Youngsteadt, an entomologist at North Carolina State University and part of a team that conducted the first study of Venus flytrap pollinators. The scientists' report was published this week in the journal American Naturalist. Youngsteadt and her co-authors made four visits to Venus flytrap territory to collect flytrap visitors — the various bees, beetles, flies, spiders and other little things that alighted or crawled on the flowers. The scientists also gently tugged open the traps to observe what the plants were digesting. All told, Youngsteadt said Tuesday, they collected 400-odd flower visitors representing 100 species. They also tallied 200 prey animals caught by the plants. “We were surprised to see the variety of things that turned up on the flower,” she said. They placed flower visitors on dry ice, at which point the insects “went to sleep forever,” Youngsteadt said. Back in the lab, the researchers swabbed them with cubes of gelatin, which drew pollen grains from the bugs. They then counted the grains under a microscope to determine which visitors carried the most pollen from flower to flower. The entomologists discovered three species of repeat customer: sweat bees, as well as long-horned beetles and checkered beetles, all of which have wings. The bees, which carried about 20 pollen grains apiece, were the flytraps' most important pollinators. What is more,


Community deaths

Obituaries of residents from the District, Maryland and Northern Virginia. Jahangir Amuzegar, economist, diplomat Jahangir Amuzegar, 98, an economist and onetime Iranian government official who served as Iran’s ambassador at large to the United States, died Jan. 15 at a hospice facility in Washington. The cause was sepsis, said his brother, Kuros Amouzegar. Dr. Amuzegar was born into a cultured, politically prominent family in Tehran. After studying and teaching in the United States, he served as Iran’s minister of commerce and minister of finance in the early 1960s and as chairman of the National Iranian Oil Co. He was Iran’s ambassador at large in Washington from 1963 to 1979 and also was a member of the board of the International Monetary Fund. He was a special adviser to the IMF director from 1979 to 1984. Dr. Amuzegar wrote widely on Iranian political and economic matters and was the author of several books, including “The Islamic Republic of Iran: Reflections on an Emerging Economy” (2014), “Managing Oil Wealth” (1999), “Iran’s Economy Under the Islamic Republic” (1993) and “The Dynamics of the Iranian Revolution” (1991). In 2011, he and his wife established endowments at the Smithsonian Institution’s Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery to support an annual celebration of the Persian new year and to fund the purchase of contemporary Iranian art. — From staff reports


The Daily 202: Short-term spending bills epitomize congressional dysfunction and hurt the military

House deputies — and have largely steered clear of the explosive immigration issue,” Mike DeBonis and Erica Werner report. “House Democrats have nixed their annual policy retreat because negotiations on a budget framework and immigration proposals have hit a critical juncture and party officials wanted to avoid the appearance of leaving town for a resort on Maryland’s Eastern Shore,” Paul Kane reports. “Instead, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s caucus will hold its breakout sessions and meetings inside the Capitol complex, allowing the California Democrat to sneak away to any key bipartisan talks at the leadership level.” -- Defense Secretary Jim Mattis predicted yesterday that Congress will wind up passing another stopgap measure to avoid a shutdown. Mattis testified that a temporary extension of spending at current levels will mean that the military cannot recruit 15,000 soldiers and 4,000 airmen he says are needed to fill vacancies. Speaking before the contours of a possible two-year Senate deal emerged, he warned direly that he’ll need to ground aircraft, delay contracts and deplete ammunition supplies. “Let me be clear: as hard as the last 16 years of war have been, no enemy in the field has done more to harm the readiness of the U.S. military than the combined impact of the Budget Control Act’s defense spending caps, worsened by operating in 10 of the last 11 years under continuing resolutions of varied and unpredictable duration,” said Mattis, a former Marine general who came out of retirement to run the Pentagon. -- This problem long predates Trump. -- Everyone across the ideological spectrum agrees this is a terrible way to run the government, but the inability of congressional leaders to reach meaningful compromises has made it routine. “You know you’re eating a loaf of bread, yet you’re only being given the money to buy one slice at a time. It costs more when you buy things in small pieces,” said Max Stier, the president of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, in an interview. “Congress is really responsible for failing to operate the government in a way that’s fiduciarily responsible. … Everyone who runs an organization ought to understand this because no other organization could run this way. … You need a longer runway.” -- The flash points have been similar for years now. Defense hawks have pushed to bust the military spending caps put in place by sequestration, but more dovish Democrats say


Trump wants a grand military parade. Some veterans say that won’t fix their problems.

military is not Donald Trump's to use and abuse in this way. Our military is the very best in the world — they are not to be reduced to stagecraft to prop up Donald Trump's image. Any commander in chief who respects the traditions of the military would understand that. Unfortunately, we do not have a commander in chief, right now, as much as we have a wannabe banana republic strongman.” But unsurprisingly, some conservatives have expressed support for the parade. Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Democrats and the media will criticize the decision, but citizens will love it. “Ds and most media will decry this, objecting to the costs. When it happens, many Ds won’t like it because it’s militaristic. But most Americans will eat it up. They’ll love the pomp and will take pride in the show of force/honor of the troops,” he tweeted. Many lawmakers and veterans on both sides of the aisle would agree that America needs to put more of a spotlight on veterans and members of the military. When it comes to issues related to physical and mental health, homelessness, unemployment and sexual abuse, advocates say that the military is often underfunded and undersupported. A White House official familiar with the planning told The Post that the event is still in the “brainstorming” phase. But even if Trump did not require Americans to foot the bill and instead relied on the wealthy donors, critics are bound to ask why the president is choosing to fund pageantry instead of areas that could tangibly improve the lives of veterans. John Hoellwarth, communications director for American Veterans, a service organization, told The Fix that a parade “lionizing the military” could address the military's existing recruitment problems. “Burning the existing budget on a parade is probably a better idea than flying aircraft over a dome during the Super Bowl and is not a terrible idea provided that it doesn't come at the expense of other programs” like those related to providing adequate health care for severely injured troops, he said. Voters who served in the military (mostly veterans but also active duty) supported Trump by 60 percent over his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 presidential election. There's no polling showing what service members want most from their president, but the likelihood of a parade being at the top of the list is low.


SpaceX successfully launches the world’s most powerful rocket, the Falcon Heavy, as it sends a Tesla on a path near Mars

skies. A slight breeze. Warm weather that attracted space fans by the thousands who lined the beaches and causeways in anticipation. SpaceX topped off the launch by successfully landing two boosters on land, setting off twin sonic booms on their return. (A third first-stage, the so-called center core, crash landed at sea.) At SpaceX's headquarters, throngs of employees cheered wildly as the rocket soared out of the atmosphere. "I’m still trying to absorb everything that happened because it seemed surreal to me," Musk told reporters later. "I had an image of a giant explosion on the pad with a wheel bouncing down the road and the Tesla logo landing somewhere. But fortunately that’s not what happened. The mission seemed to have gone as well as possible." If SpaceX can fly the Falcon Heavy reliably, the rocket could prove useful to the Pentagon for lifting national security satellites and to NASA for helping its human exploration goals. SpaceX says the rocket is capable of hauling more mass farther than any existing rocket — an estimated 140,000 pounds to low Earth orbit, and nearly 40,000 pounds to Mars. But industry officials say there are some concerns about how big the market is for the Falcon Heavy. SpaceX had been planning to fly a pair of tourists around the moon as early as this year. But on Monday, Musk announced a reversal, saying the Falcon Heavy probably would never fly humans, as the company shifts its focus to its next-generation rocket, known as the “BFR,” or “Big Falcon Rocket.” Still, the Falcon Heavy’s successful launch represents a “revival of the exploring spirit,” said John Logsdon, a space historian who is a professor emeritus at George Washington University. NASA's space shuttle program, which ended in 2011, was limited to what’s known as low Earth orbit, where the International Space Station flies at about 250 miles above the surface of the earth. But the Falcon Heavy represents a chance to go beyond that, into deep space, to really “push the frontier,” Logsdon said. “This really gives us a capability that this country has not had since the last Saturn V flight, which was in 1973.” SpaceX’s launch comes as the Trump administration is focused on returning to the moon. While it has not released details of its plans or their cost, officials support having NASA partner with commercial companies such as SpaceX, which are striving


Gymnastics scandal casts a pall over these Olympics. That’s a good thing.

the price for athletic aspiration? The Olympics are often as messy as they are inspirational, and this time, the United States has the most hideous cloud over its head. The Russia doping saga has garnered the most attention, especially with the International Olympic Committee looking clueless again about how to govern. IOC members are barking at each other. It is classic Olympic drama — cheating and inconsistent consequences — a never-ending story. The scandal is more troubling because of how diabolical Russia’s state-sponsored doping program seems. But in general, that is a familiar disease, at least. Speaking of diseases, the PyeongChang Games may be on the verge of a major norovirus outbreak. And it’s so cold here that the local organizing committee president is demonstrating how to wear hats and blankets. And it feels like the forced unity between North and South Korea — the athletes will march together during the Opening Ceremonies under a unified flag, and the women’s hockey team is integrated — is a bad and naive idea, no matter how powerful the moment may seem Friday night. Still, out of all the messiness, the U.S.’s problem is the worst and most stigmatizing. The crisis also offers the most potential to learn, grow and change, even if it figures to be a slow process that lacks enough immediate punitive action against Nassar enablers to satisfy public outrage. But here’s the current good rising out of a horrible situation: It’s no longer taboo to challenge authoritative predators. The #MeToo reckoning is obliterating much of the silence. The past four months have been both remarkable and depressing. It’s wonderful to see women stand up and reclaim a level of respect that should have been a given. It’s also disturbing to realize the depth of the problem. It’s clear that we haven’t yet reached the bottom. Maybe there isn’t a bottom. But there’s awareness now. It’s one of the most important steps toward progress and reformation. For the first time, the Olympics will have trauma units for athletes. Local organizers have set up four counseling centers throughout the region here to provide medical and psychological help for athletes who have been harassed or abused. The PyeongChang Organizing Committee followed a recommendation by Susan Greinig, the IOC safeguarding officer. This is the second Olympics in which Greinig has had that role; she first provided support during the Rio Games two years


Federal safety officials blame engineer fatigue for two New York-area commuter train crashes

Two New York-area commuter rail crashes were caused by fatigued engineers suffering from undiagnosed severe sleep apnea, federal safety officials said Tuesday. A lack of adequate screening for the sleep disorder was cited by the National Transportation Safety Board in its determination of probable cause for the two serious wrecks, and the safety panel renewed its call for the Federal Railroad Administration to make such testing mandatory. On Sept. 29, 2016, a New Jersey Transit train crashed into the platform at the Hoboken Terminal, killing one person on the platform and injuring 110. The crash also severely damaged the terminal. On Jan. 4, 2017, a Long Island Rail Road train crashed in the Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn, injuring more than 100 people. In both incidents, the trains struck end-of-track bumping posts and ran into stations. If both railroads had had effective sleep apnea testing programs, “it would have been unlikely that these employees would have been operating trains with undiagnosed and untreated obstructive sleep apnea,” the NTSB report said. The FRA last year abandoned a proposal that would have required railroad engineers to be tested for the disorder that can cause people to fall asleep on the job. Advocates of the testing, including the NTSB, denounced the decision, which was part of President Trump’s effort to reduce federal regulations. “The failure of the Federal Railroad Administration to adequately address the issue of employee fatigue due to obstructive sleep apnea and other sleep disorders, most recently evidenced by the August 2017 withdrawal of the advance notice of proposed rulemaking, jeopardizes public safety,” the NTSB said in the report released Tuesday as part of its findings in the New York-area rail crashes. “The traveling public deserves alert operators,” NTSB Chairman Robert L. Sumwalt said in a statement. “That is not too much to ask.” An FRA spokeswoman said in a emailed statement that the agency “continues to work closely with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and will review their recommendations thoroughly.” The NTSB also recommended the use of technology, such as the automatic braking system known as positive train control (PTC), in terminal stations and improving the effectiveness of system safety program plans to improve terminal operations. PTC was originally mandated to be in place by the end of 2015, but after a push by the railroad industry, Congress postponed the deadline until the end of this year, with the possibility


Trump’s ‘marching orders’ to the Pentagon: Plan a grand military parade

gamesmanship. Tensions between North Korea and the United States have risen over the past year as Trump and Kim have taunted each other with playground nicknames and threats. After Kim warned last month that he had a “nuclear button” on his desk, Trump replied: “Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” The White House official said a parade would have nothing to do with Trump’s feuds with Kim but would be designed as a broad show of strength to send a warning to all of America’s adversaries. Then there are the domestic pitfalls. At a time when Mattis and his top generals have been complaining about the state of military readiness and lobbying Congress for more money, pulling equipment off line for a costly parade could send the wrong signal. There are personal risks for Trump, as well. Although he attended a military high school, Trump did not serve in the armed forces, avoiding the draft during the Vietnam War by claiming bone spurs. Critics have called Trump disingenuous for basking in the military’s glory. Honoring the troops without politicizing their service has long been a dilemma for presidents. President Barack Obama’s frequent focus on wounded troops fighting to resume their lives struck the wrong chord with some conservatives. One of George W. Bush’s biggest blunders as president came in 2003 when he landed on an aircraft carrier bearing a “Mission Accomplished” banner to claim victory in the Iraq War. Former aides say Bush would have loved a big parade, but they recognized a problem: The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan never ended. Such subtleties — the United States is now dropping bombs in seven countries — don’t seem to have factored into Trump’s calculations. With the midterm elections approaching and Trump’s approval ratings at historic lows, the lure of honoring the troops is powerful. “Who flipped the coin for the Super Bowl on Sunday?” asked Peter Feaver, a former Bush White House official and professor at Duke University. “It was Medal of Honor winners. Why? The military brings us together.” But Feaver also issued a warning for Trump, who is known for his excesses. “A military parade,” he said, “is the kind of thing that can easily be overdone.” greg.jaffe@washpost.com philip.rucker@washpost.com


You want to make good cocktails at home. Here’s what you need to get started.

“The idea was expansion — with this check, I’ll look for a nice bottle of gin. Next check, I need to explore daiquiris, so I’ll go look for a white rum.” These days, even his broom closet is filled with bottles. “The only places I have not stored it in my house are in the bathroom — that’s gross — and the kids’ rooms. Though I did think about that when they were littler and I was like, ‘Hmm, maybe on the top shelf …?’ ” (“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I told Clarke, eyeing the ever-expanding mass of bottles that threatens to become autonomous and roam, bloblike, through my home, absorbing the couch and the dog.) But if Clarke were to start over, he would reclaim his broom closet. I heard the same from several passionate cocktailers who went down the rabbit hole in the early days, acquired hundreds of bottles, then realized they didn’t really need all of them. Some have kept collecting, but they are more disciplined in curating what they acquire. Others have downsized. You don’t need 50 bottles of booze, and you don’t need hundreds of bitters, says Brian Robinson, a financial adviser who serves as the review editor for the Wormwood Society, a nonprofit group that provides education about absinthe. Robinson is a serious collector of spirits, but, he says, “you can build out a nice, versatile bar with 15 or 20 bottles.” In his bar area, he keeps a his go-to mixing spirits, and he can access a mini-fridge for perishables such as vermouth. You don’t need umpteen kinds of glassware, either, Duggins says. You probably need three kinds: a Collins glass, a rocks glass and a coupe. She’s built out her collection of glassware and cocktail tools amply over the years, “but before then, I would mix cocktails in a Mason jar. That was good for stirring and for shaking because you can just put a lid on it.” Lawyer and longtime cocktail blogger Marshall Fawley gave away a lot of his extraneous liqueurs when he and his family moved. The way he drinks now is a shift from the early days. “Once we were being as complicated and fancy as we could be, because we were excited that we could do the same things at home as these fancy bars were doing,” Fawley says. “But these days, I’m


The Russian flag won’t appear at the Olympics. Here’s why that matters.

from six of the successor states qualified for Albertville and formed the Unified Team, while athletes from 12 of the 15 former Soviet republics composed the Unified Team in Barcelona. These athletes marched behind the Olympic flag, and when they won gold medals — which they did more than any other country in Barcelona — they heard the Olympic hymn played. Meanwhile the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — whose declarations of independence from the Soviet Union set off its demise — competed in 1992 as independent teams for the first time since the 1920s. The Lithuanian basketball team, wearing Grateful Dead T-shirts, could not hide their joy at winning the bronze medal and seeing their flag raised. This victory was even more meaningful to the players and country because it came at the expense of the Unified Team. The controversies over national identity and representation continue today. Because the Olympic movement recognizes more countries than the United Nations, overseas territories such as the British Virgin Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guam and American Samoa all have their own Olympic teams. Marching behind their flags in the Opening and Closing Ceremonies at the Olympic Games becomes one of the few times these territories appear on the world’s radar. And when a country fails to meet international standards for conduct, the IOC uses this symbolism to punish countries. At the 2014 Sochi Olympics, athletes from India marched in the Opening Ceremonies behind the Olympic flag in a group of independent athletes because the IOC had suspended the Indian Olympic Association for mismanagement and corruption. Four days after the Sochi Games began, the IOC lifted India’s suspension and subsequently held a flag-raising ceremony in the Olympic Village for India’s three athletes. The message the IOC is sending to Russia — and the rest of the world — is quite mixed. Russian spectators in PyeongChang can still wave Russian flags, although the Olympic Athletes from Russia cannot accept them. However, if the IOC decides to lift the Russian Olympic Committee’s suspension before the end of the Games, the Russian team could march behind the Russian flag during the Closing Ceremonies. Officially the Russian flag may not fly at the 2018 Winter Olympics, but the OAR designation and potential for it to appear in the Closing Ceremonies ultimately fails to send a strong signal that international rules must be followed.


Chemistry professor arrested by ICE on his front lawn won’t be deported — for now

U.S. citizens and depend on him. All five of Jamal’s siblings are living in the United States as citizens. His wife, Angela Zaynaub Chowdhury, donated a kidney last year, making Jamal the sole provider for the family. He regularly volunteers in Lawrence public schools, where his children are enrolled, and recently put his name forth for a special election to fill an empty school board seat. “Not only does Mr. Jamal teach his children to contribute to society, but he models this belief as well,” according to an initial stay of removal request filed for Jamal. The ICE spokesman said federal immigration judges make final decisions “based on the merits of each individual case.” It was on the strength of those merits that Jamal’s family, friends and neighbors were hoping to persuade immigration officials to allow him to stay. Baker-Anderson said she was shocked when Jamal’s wife called her to say her husband could be deported. They are neighbors, and their children participate in the same engineering and “Future Cities” programs at school, she said. “I had no idea. I’ve never really asked anyone their status, their immigration status. I kind of think that’s rude,” Baker-Anderson said. “I talked to my friend who’s the kids’ gifted teacher and another friend . . . and we were like, ‘We’ve got to do something for the family,’ and that’s how the petition started.” Baker-Anderson also organized a letter-writing campaign at her church Feb. 3 in the hopes that notarized testimonials about Jamal from the community would help support a stay of removal. They expected about 50 people but 500 showed up, she said. “We’ve just had a huge response,” Baker-Anderson said. “It’s not like a liberal [vs.] non-liberal thing. This is just a bunch of people in this community that love this family. We have people from both sides of the aisle — people that voted for Trump, people that don’t like him — but it’s about the family.” Jamal’s brother Syed Hussain Jamal of Phoenix told The Post that, as a U.S.-educated, liberal, secular Muslim who is a member of the Biharis, an Urdu-speaking ethnic minority, his brother could face persecution or death at the hands of Islamist extremists if he were to be sent back to Bangladesh. Jamal is the only sibling who is not a U.S. citizen, even though they all came to the United States from Bangladesh for