Is the U.S. losing top tech talent — and global competitiveness?

Is America losing its competitive edge in critical technologies? The House Science Committee last week held the latest in a string of congressional hearings on this question, asking where the United States stands in fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum physics and biotechnology. A recurring theme in these hearings is that U.S. competitiveness depends on its workforce — and that a large part of the U.S. high-tech workforce comes from abroad. In artificial intelligence, for instance, international students account for two-thirds of all graduate students at U.S. universities. A perceived exodus of these international graduates has recently prompted fears about the United States’ ability to lead in technologies such as AI. Senior computer scientist Yolanda Gil wrote on behalf of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence that “international PhD graduates are leaving the US in larger numbers than before, in part due to immigration constraints but also due to the availability of attractive opportunities for AI overseas.” Others in academia, the private sector and government have also sounded the alarm over the loss of U.S.-educated talent to other countries, especially China. But is this perceived brain drain real? Research that my team and I conducted actually found very little evidence of increased U.S. talent loss. The Chinese Ministry of Education is the data source typically cited by those who fear declines — this includes an extensive recent Senate report on China’s threat to the U.S. research enterprise. Statistics published by this ministry show that 8 overseas students returned for every 10 students who went to study abroad in 2018, up from a ratio of just 1 in 10 in the early 2000s. Yet these numbers aren’t very helpful. The ministry’s data cover all Chinese students abroad, not just those in the United States, and don’t distinguish students by degree level or area of study. We also don’t have any documentation about how Chinese officials gathered or analyzed the data. Even taken at face value, an overall increase in the number of returnees would, at best, be an indirect and weak indicator of decreasing U.S. retention rates. Our newly published study analyzes data that we collected on the career histories of 2,000 recent U.S. AI PhD graduates. We also analyzed several existing data sets. In none of these data sets did we find evidence of a decline in the number of PhDs who remain in the United States. Despite


Chasing fireflies

Sara M. Lewis, a firefly expert at Tufts University, has studied attraction to the insects’ cold, chemical light — both the insects’ mates that flock to the glow and the humans who do, too. Lewis estimated that 200,000 tourists across the planet traveled to observe fireflies in 2016. Synchronous fireflies, species that blink by the hundreds in unison, are a big draw; in other places the beetles have cultural significance, such as Japan, where riverside parks hold summer firefly festivals. Ecotourism can bring positive attention to fireflies but can also threaten them, as Lewis told me for a story this week about the global threats to fireflies. Tourists in Thailand may wish to see Pteroptyx fireflies, unaware that the motorboat traffic erodes the mangrove river habitat, as Lewis and her study authors pointed out. In the Smoky Mountains, Lewis said, the National Park Service has had a “hard time” accommodating the 20,000 or more people who travel to a small area to watch fireflies each year. Because many species have ground-based larval stages, wayward footsteps from people watching the hovering bugs can hurt young insects. The service has instituted a lottery for spaces during the event and lists proper firefly “etiquette” on its website: Stick to the footpaths and don’t aim flashlights at the insects. There are ways to watch fireflies gently, Lewis said. The Fireflyers International Network (a group of scientists, conservationists and firefly fans) held its 2017 meeting in Taiwan, and the group visited a preserve designed for watching the insects. Raised walkways allowed people to walk above the habitat, guided by “interpretive signage.” Artificial lights were banned. “So they have a really safe way for people to walk through the habitat at night,” Lewis said, “see the fireflies and not disturb the courtship rituals.”


China’s economy, having weathered the trade war, is now jolted by coronavirus

BEIJING — The Lunar New Year holiday is usually one of the busiest weeks of the year for Niu Mangmang, a hot pot restaurant chain that specializes in beef slices dipped into communal cauldrons of bubbling oil or soup stock. But this year, as a new coronavirus spread from the city of Wuhan, Chinese families opted to stay home rather than celebrate over restaurant meals — and certainly not in restaurants where customers load up at buffets and slurp from the same pot. “Normally, we’d have a full house, with all 30 tables booked at least one week in advance and many more people queuing in front of the store,” said Liu Bo, manager of a branch on the Chunxi shopping street in Chengdu, 700 miles west of Wuhan. “But now, it’s almost empty.” Instead of the usual holiday turnover of $7,000 a day, Liu said he would be grateful for a fifth of that. He and other staff members are on half-pay as the restaurant battles through this period. Similar tales are emerging throughout China as coronavirus infections mount. The latest figures show 20,438 people, across every province and region of China, have been infected. The outbreak has sent a shudder through China’s already-slowing economy, with experts predicting annual growth could fall below 4 percent in the first quarter. “Tourism, travel and dining out are going to be hit the most,” said Tao Wang, chief China economist at investment bank UBS. The full extent of the impact will depend on how long the outbreak remains uncontained and how long the Communist Party enforces draconian shutdowns implemented throughout the country. Coronavirus fears have brought this nation of 1.4 billion almost to a standstill. From Beijing, where normally clogged ring roads are as clear as country lanes, to the barricaded hamlets that have shut themselves off to outsiders, China is hunkering down in the hopes of halting the pneumonia-like virus. The figures suggest a significant dent to private consumption, which accounts for more than a third of the economy. Movie theaters have had to refund presold tickets, amounting to $50 million just on Jan. 25, Lunar New Year’s Day. The number of holiday-related plane and train trips was 40 percent lower this year than in 2019, when domestic tourism spending during the seven-day break totaled $73 billion. Beijing and Shanghai have halted long-distance bus services, while cities far from Wuhan have


‘This is my dog’: Viral beer cans help pup lost for three years find her home more than 1,000 miles away

go as far as Minnesota as a possible match,” said Hans Wohlgefahrt, the outreach and event specialist at Manatee County Animal Services. “We were sort of at a dead end.” Hazel, called Day Day by the shelter, had waited 10 months to be adopted from the animal shelter in Manatee County, Fla. When she arrived in March, shelter employees tried to call the number stored in the golden terrier mix’s microchip. But Mathis had changed her name after a divorce, the Times reported, and she never updated the microchip with a new phone number after she moved to Minnesota. The shelter gave up and started looking to find the dog a new home. To help her chances, the shelter partnered with Motorworks Brewing, a local brewery, to advertise dogs looking for forever families. Day Day and three other smiling rescue pups graced the cans in a special four-pack promotional brew crafted by Motorworks. Motorworks Brewing printed photos of the four shelter dogs on beer cans to stir up publicity for the brewery and the local animal services division, which is raising money to build a new shelter. The ad campaign went viral, landing features on CNN, HuffPost, the New York Post and even a segment on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” When one of those stories popped up in Mathis’s Facebook news feed on Jan. 24, she stopped scrolling. “This is my dog,” she wrote in a comment on Motorworks Brewing’s Facebook page. To prove it, she shared photos of the pup, which she called Hazel, from years ago that she saved in her Facebook albums. The shelter asked her to send veterinary records and photos to prove she had seen the correct dog, even though she lived more than 1,000 miles away. “I was a little hysterical because I was scared someone was going to adopt her at that point or something,” Mathis told WWSB. “I was scared I was gonna lose her again. I was really nervous. I was, like, shaking. I was crying.” Wohlgefahrt said she provided everything the shelter needed to prove the dog belonged to Mathis. “Hazel found her pawrents!” the shelter posted on Facebook Thursday. Instead of finding a new forever family, Hazel will be headed back to her old one, now in Minnesota, later this week. Her owners can’t wait to pet her again. “She’s gonna be getting so much attention,” Mathis told WWSB.


Coronavirus outbreak sparks a wave of global uncertainty

on Monday night, and eight in Macao. The self-governing island of Taiwan reported 10 cases. The World Health Organization reported 146 confirmed cases in 23 countries outside China. The WHO declared the crisis an international public health emergency last week, but it has yet to deem its spread a “pandemic.” To meet that criteria, The Washington Post’s Miriam Berger reported, “a new disease generally needs to affect many people across international boundaries, either worldwide or throughout a very wide area.” It may be only a matter of time before public health experts invoke that designation. As fears rise, people have had their lives disrupted by emergency actions taken by governments In Hong Kong, the crisis has exacerbated long-standing feelings of hostility toward the mainland. On Monday, the local government closed all but three border crossings. Medical workers in Hong Kong, feeling overburdened and low on supplies, went on strike and called on authorities to close all checkpoints with the mainland. Nonetheless, the city’s Beijing-backed leader, Carrie Lam, chided the strikers and their calls for a full shutdown of the border. “If anyone thinks that by resorting to such extreme measures, the government will be made to do something that is not rational or will harm the public good, they will not get anywhere,” she said. Chinese authorities, meanwhile, criticized certain responses to the virus. On Monday, officials groused over the U.S. reaction to the outbreak, which included conspicuous comments from Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross that the virus in China could be a boon for job growth in the United States, as well as a temporary ban on most foreign nationals who have traveled to China in the past two weeks. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying warned against measures that “could only create and spread fear” and lamented the impulse to adopt a siege mentality. “It is precisely developed countries like the U.S. with strong epidemic prevention capabilities … that have taken the lead in imposing excessive restrictions contrary to WHO recommendations,” Hua said. Some public health experts concur. “Even if it were feasible to keep coronavirus out through travel bans, these measures can make us less safe,” wrote Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Travel bans can penalize countries that report cases, which may in turn reduce countries’ willingness to share information about their outbreaks.” Nuzzo added in her Washington Post column


Ireland may be about to see a historic election upset

military struggle. Its current leader has no direct connection to the IRA. Over the past two years, the Fine Gael government’s main concern has been to manage the economic and political fallout from Brexit. It is generally perceived as having done that well. However, now that Brexit is fading from the headlines, it is finding that voters are worried about more everyday issues, such as problems with housing and health care, and ready to punish it for its perceived failings. This has benefited Fine Gael’s main rival, Fianna Fail, which has traditionally seen itself as the natural party of government, but which suffered shattering losses in popularity after the financial crisis. It has benefited Sinn Fein even more. Fianna Fail was closely aligned with the government, which it effectively supported, allowing Sinn Fein to remake itself as the voice of opposition. Now, Sinn Fein is reaping the benefits. Even though Sinn Fein is ahead in the polls, it is extremely unlikely to be the main party of government. First of all, it is probably not running enough candidates. Second, it may suffer under Ireland’s complex electoral system, which allows voters not only to vote for their preferred candidates, but also to express second, third, fourth and fifth preferences, which may come into play as the count continues. Sinn Fein is still a highly divisive party, and it is possible that the supporters of other parties will be less likely to give it their preferences. Finally, other parties do not want to work together with Sinn Fein. Fine Gael is viscerally opposed to a party that it perceives as still organically linked to the IRA. Fianna Fail’s leader also does not want to work together with Sinn Fein, in part because of principle, and in part because Sinn Fein might eat Fianna Fail’s electoral base if it is perceived as a legitimate party of government. So the most likely outcome is one where Sinn Fein is not in government, but where it will be a very large opposition party, and perhaps the largest. This is likely a comfortable outcome for Sinn Fein, too, allowing it to criticize government policy and grow its base of support. It will be a sufficient victory for Sinn Fein if it becomes a major political party, which has to be accommodated by other parties and the Irish political and broadcasting establishment, rather than reviled or ignored.


Los caucus de Iowa. México y la muerte de un ambientalista. El coronavirus y la economía.

Caos al contar los votos en Iowa. ¿Quién podría haber atentado contra Homero Gómez? Efectos económicos del coronavirus.


The Health 202: Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg are the favorites among Iowa voters for whom health care is top issue

2016 Iowa caucuses. --Four in 10 called themselves “somewhat liberal,” while a quarter said they were “very liberal.” Around one-third said they were moderate or conservative. That’s similar to how Iowa Democrats self-identified four years ago. AHH This is in addition to $105 million the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is quickly spending. The CDC is using the funds on medical screening for travelers from China, sending teams to confirm cases in the United States and education, our colleagues write. The money the CDC is spending came from the Infectious Diseases Rapid Response Reserve Fund, which Congress created last year. Some of that was tapped to respond to an Ebola outbreak in Congo, but most is going toward the coronavirus response. — There are now20,438 confirmed cases in China and146 outside China, including 11 in the United States, the World Health Organizationreports. The first person in the United States who was confirmed to have coronavirus recovered and was discharged from a Seattle hospital on Monday, writes our Post colleague Derek Hawkins. — State officials are trying to figure out how to put the Trump administration Another question on their minds: Where to quarantine people coming from China? One option might be military bases. The Defense Department is offering four to house as many as 1,000 people, Derek reports. — The hospital was built in Wuhan, where the epidemic originated and other medical facilities have already had to turn away patients. China hopes to open another 1,600-bed hospital by Feb. 5. New York Times reporter Amy Qin tweeted Monday that the hospital still looked incomplete. Boxes of medical supplies were being unloaded on the sidewalk. Still, the Chinese are not setting any records for themselves. China previously constructed a hospital in seven days during the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). The hospital completed this week was modeled after that facility, Brice-Saddler wrote. — The coronavirus epidemic should not yet be called a pandemic, our Post colleague Miriam Berger However, the New York Times used the P-word, saying that while the virus isn’t at pandemic proportions yet, it’s more transmissible than SARS and MERS. “It almost certainly is going to be a pandemic,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, told the Times. OOF: Previously delayed liver transplant rules are going into effect, to the dismay of rural hospital administrators, the


It’s time for a ‘no regrets’ approach to coronavirus

before a worst-case outcome is certain. This must be the posture as the world confronts 2019-nCoV. Novel diseases can often surprise us, as the world learned starkly during the 2014 Ebola outbreak. Previous Ebola outbreaks had all topped out at several hundred cases, and few experts then believed the virus had the potential to reach dramatically larger scales. Because officials initially underestimated the worst-case potential of that outbreak, they made early misjudgments in response strategy that allowed the outbreak to spin out of control. Those misjudgments ultimately produced an Ebola outbreak 67 times as large as any previously seen. There are similar unknowns around the potential risks posed by 2019-nCoV. While we don’t yet know whether this will go from outbreak to pandemic, we should not discount the kind of low-probability, high-consequence outcome that we saw with Ebola. In the United States and other developed countries, an outbreak with Wuhan’s level of transmission and severity would badly strain hospitals and clinics (just two years ago, a bad seasonal flu cycle forced overstretched U.S. hospitals to treat patients in hallways and tents). It might lead to ruptures in medical supply chains, because U.S. hospital systems rarely maintain deep enough reserves of protective equipment to contend with such a large unexpected surge in cases (by the way, many of those supplies come from China). And there will be no miracle drug on the horizon: Development and production of new pharmaceutical countermeasures will be measured in years rather than months. In the developing world, the picture could look even grimmer, as WHO noted when issuing its emergency declaration. Baseline health conditions are worse, which would mean greater vulnerability to a disease that appears most severe in patients with other preexisting health problems. Infection prevention and control practices are almost universally weak in low- and lower-middle-income countries’ health systems, according to the Global Health Security Index rankings. This dramatically elevates the risk of infections among health-care workers and also risks turning health facilities into incubators of transmission. The world is far from ready for this kind of scenario. So what would a no-regrets approach to mitigating 2019-nCoV entail? It would mean prudent over-preparation, rather than reckless overreaction. Countries should avoid imposing the public health equivalent of “security theater” — sweeping measures that produce more disruption than actual public-health protection. Draconian travel and trade restrictions, for example, might at best briefly delay the inevitable spread


“security theater” — sweeping measures that produce more disruption than actual public-health protection. Draconian travel and trade restrictions, for example, might at best briefly delay the inevitable spread but cannot prevent it. Extreme actions such as banning travelers from China (as the United States has just announced) or sealing land borders (as Russia has done) will worsen panic and stigma but provide scant meaningful protection. A responsible no-regrets approach by public health authorities and global leaders would instead rapidly organize and finance a robust set of measures to dramatically accelerate health system preparedness, while also planning for policies that could be triggered if a worst-case scenario emerges. An important starting point is vigorous support to front-line health providers. In both developed and developing countries, a concerted effort is needed to equip them to effectively identify and handle a potential surge in cases. This should include urgent funding of material and training support for essential infection prevention and control practices. A vitally important part of this will be efforts to address supply-chain ruptures and accelerate production and availability of critical medical supplies. Countries should also plan for extreme contingency scenarios in which normal health facilities become overwhelmed. Health officials should be considering the conditions under which they would trigger crisis-care standards that could guide the prioritization of finite facilities, staff and resources. And they should be planning for scenarios in which isolation and care may have to take place outside overwhelmed official health systems — in community-managed centers or in people’s homes. Finally, countries should be ready to rapidly stand up an empowered global coordinating platform to lead international action. A clear lesson of Ebola in 2014 is that managing a complex global disease response is not just a matter of public health expertise — it also entails diplomatic outreach, security coordination, operational planning and a fair dose of politics. WHO has a central role to play in this, but the breadth of coordination and decision-making that will be required goes beyond what WHO on its own can cover. We are at a critical point with this outbreak. Conditions in China have not yet been replicated in other countries — but they soon could be, regardless of attempts to suppress international travel. Decisions taken now will determine whether those health systems are prepared for the wave that may be coming. Policymakers must focus on meaningful mitigation strategies, not symbolic public-health theater.


A coronavirus death in Hong Kong marks the second fatality outside mainland China as the outbreak continues to spread

as exactly how coronaviruses mutate from animals to humans, and how to stop it. Thanks to the fast work of scientists, experiments are underway to find a vaccine for the novel coronavirus: The development of vaccines takes months to years, but they are off to a promising start after researchers were able to quickly determine the novel virus’s genetic sequence. By: Miriam Berger 4:06 PM: Coronavirus appears to be spreading exponentially in Wuhan, scientists say BERLIN — The new cornovirus outbreak appears to be growing exponentially at its epicenter in Wuhan, China, according to scientists, who cautioned that only limited modeling is possible with current data. The term “exponential” is subject to some debate. In colloquial speech, it is often used to describe fast growth, but its real definition is more specific. An outbreak that grows exponentially grows at a rate proportional to its size. In other words, it grows faster and faster as its size increases. The growth profile is influenced by a number of factors. Among them are the mode of transmission and “the percentage of the population that is susceptible to the disease,” Gerardo Chowell, a Georgia State University School of Public Health professor, said in an email. Alessandro Vespignani, director of the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University, said that “the exponential increase is typical of the early growth of an epidemic with sustained human-to-human transmission.” Chowell added, “For instance, for the case of pandemic flu, we can expect early exponential growth since it involves a novel pathogen spreading through the air and via close contact in a population where most of the population is susceptible.” But once people begin to note the start of the flu season, their behavior changes: They may wash their hands more frequently or avoid exposure to potentially ill friends and colleagues. “Research on past outbreaks indicates that the exponential growth trend is short-lived and tends to slow down within the first few generation cycles once the effects of control interventions and behavior changes kick in,” Chowell said. By: Rick Noack 3:36 PM: Taiwan is frustrated that WHO keeps treating it as part of China The coronavirus outbreak has pushed the disputed status of the self-governing island of Taiwan to the global health forefront. Taiwan says it’s a self-functioning, independent country. China insists it’s not. Beijing says that, like Hong Kong and Macao, Taiwan’s 23 million people are part of China’s


in Wuhan are stepping up to help. The Wuhan Small Animal Protection Association is taking calls to rescue the pets of those unable to return to Wuhan. On WeChat, the animal welfare organization is offering free food and water deliveries for abandoned pets, according to China Global Television Network. The only catch: Homeowners will have to bear the cost of the volunteers forcing their way into a home if a key or code is not available. Then there’s Lao Mao, or “Old Cat,” as friends of the 43-year-old man going into homes to feed cats and dogs call him. Lao has been organizing animal rescues and feedings for distressed pet owners who have contacted him through social media. “The volunteers on our team, me included, have saved more than 1,000 pets since Jan. 25,” he told Reuters, declining to give his real name, so that his family wouldn’t know he was venturing around quarantined Wuhan. It has additionally been no walk in the park for pet owners trying to keep their pets (and themselves) safe as the lockdown drags on. Among the many misconceptions circulating about the novel coronavirus are false claims that the disease can be contracted by and spread through cats and dogs. Officials in the Chinese county of Suichang, in the second-most infection-hit province after Hubei province, on Friday ordered residents not to walk their dogs, according to Reuters. They even warned that dogs caught in public would be exterminated. By: Miriam Berger 2:01 PM: Chinese teenager with cerebral palsy dies after his father and sole caretaker is quarantined WASHINGTON — Sixteen-year-old Yan Cheng was found dead in his home in Hubei province Wednesday. The week before, his father was placed under quarantine for a suspected case of coronavirus, which has killed more than 300 people in China. But Cheng’s death stands out from the others because he had cerebral palsy and appears to have died from neglect, underscoring the extra burdens that people with disabilities bear during health crises such as this. Cerebral palsy is a condition that affects a person’s movement and muscles. Cheng’s father was his sole caretaker and was left in a bind when forced into quarantine, according to Reuters. The father sought help in making sure his son was cared for in his absence. Instead, Cheng had reportedly been fed just twice in the week leading up to his death. In the


the novel coronavirus is not being called a pandemic, yet WASHINGTON — It’s an outbreak. It’s an epidemic. But the novel coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, China, in December is not yet a pandemic, even though it has sickened more than 17,000 people in China and led to cases in 23 other countries. According to World Health Organization, “a pandemic is the worldwide spread of a new disease.” To meet the term’s criteria, a new disease generally needs to affect many people across international boundaries, either worldwide or throughout a very wide area. That, so far, is not the case with the novel coronavirus. Although it has spread throughout China, the transmission of the disease outside the country has been limited so far. Countries are consequently taking steps to prevent further outbreaks, such as quarantining or banning travelers from Wuhan and elsewhere in China. Public health officials are also frequently reassessing the situation to determine whether they need to adjust their definition — and as a result the recommendations and mechanisms at their disposal. In contrast, the WHO defines an epidemic as “the occurrence in a community or region of cases of an illness, specific health-related behavior, or other health-related events clearly in excess of normal expectancy. The number of cases indicating the presence of an epidemic varies according to the agent, size, and type of population exposed, previous experience or lack of exposure to the disease, and time and place of occurrence.” An outbreak, according to the WHO, is “the occurrence of disease cases in excess of normal expectancy.” By: Miriam Berger 8:09 AM: Czech Republic bans flights to and from China BERLIN — The Czech Republic became the latest country to schedule a ban on flights to and from China, joining a growing list of nations with flight restrictions, including Italy, Vietnam and Israel. The Czech suspension is set to take effect Feb. 9. A wide range of carriers worldwide have similarly suspended flights to and from mainland China. Air France, Lufthansa, American Airlines, United Airlines, British Airways, Qantas and Qatar Airways are among the biggest carriers to have taken such steps so far. Pakistan, however, resumed flights to and from China on Monday, according to Reuters news agency. Flightradar24, a flight-tracking site, showed a plane from Beijing heading toward Islamabad International Airport on Monday evening local time. By: Rick Noack 7:15 AM: World Health Organization chief cautions


events clearly in excess of normal expectancy. The number of cases indicating the presence of an epidemic varies according to the agent, size, and type of population exposed, previous experience or lack of exposure to the disease, and time and place of occurrence.” An outbreak, according to the WHO, is “the occurrence of disease cases in excess of normal expectancy.” By: Miriam Berger 8:09 AM: Czech Republic bans flights to and from China BERLIN — The Czech Republic became the latest country to schedule a ban on flights to and from China, joining a growing list of nations with flight restrictions, including Italy, Vietnam and Israel. The Czech suspension is set to take effect Feb. 9. A wide range of carriers worldwide have similarly suspended flights to and from mainland China. Air France, Lufthansa, American Airlines, United Airlines, British Airways, Qantas and Qatar Airways are among the biggest carriers to have taken such steps so far. Pakistan, however, resumed flights to and from China on Monday, according to Reuters news agency. Flightradar24, a flight-tracking site, showed a plane from Beijing heading toward Islamabad International Airport on Monday evening local time. By: Rick Noack 7:15 AM: World Health Organization chief cautions against ‘panic and fear’ DUBAI — The head of the World Health Organization warned Monday about succumbing to fear and panic over the coronavirus outbreak and lauded China’s efforts to contain it. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the executive board of the WHO that there were still very few cases outside China and “panic and fear” were the real challenges. “So the 146 [cases] means that it is very small; there is nothing to be scared of,” he said. “If we are going to take this in the right perspective, it should be used as a signal to prepare.” While more than 17,000 cases of the virus have been found inside China, the WHO has confirmed only 146 in the rest of the world — albeit in 23 countries. More will likely appear once the symptoms begin to manifest. Tedros, however, said that China was using the right strategy of focusing its efforts on the hardest-hit places and slowing the spread, which he described as “small.” China is “protecting the Chinese people and protecting the rest of the world,” he said. “It’s no reason to really panic now,” Tedros said. “The chances of getting this going to anywhere outside China is


Hong Kong resists full border closure with China; city reports its first coronavirus death

travel restrictions on Chinese nationals and foreign travelers who have passed through the country. China's neighbors, such as North Korea and Mongolia, have sealed their borders in an effort to halt the spread of the virus, which has reached more than 20 countries Lam said Monday that she would leave open only three of the financial center's 14 crossing points with mainland China, including the airport. Hong Kong had already closed six border checkpoints, but Lam said further steps are needed "because of the latest developments in the outbreak." She said she hoped the closure would make it inconvenient for people to travel to mainland China and provide a disincentive for people to cross. But a full border closure was untenable, she said, because of the "almost unique" situation between Hong Kong and mainland China, including a "very close relationship" between the people on both sides. There is "very legitimate and genuine cross-border traffic that we have to handle, otherwise we will end up with more troubles for this city and the 7 million people in Hong Kong," she said, citing cases of people who live in Hong Kong but work in the mainland, and vice versa. She added that her government is "not the enemies of the Hong Kong people" and is working in their best interest. Calls to shut the border have come from across the political spectrum. Her moves, however, were insufficient to appease thousands of medical workers, who on Monday began the first wave of a gradual strike designed to pressure the Hong Kong government to fully close the border. The striking doctors, nurses and others are from the Hospital Authority Employees Alliance, a union formed following anti-government protests that rocked Hong Kong last year over fears that the city has been losing autonomy and ceding control of its affairs to Beijing. The union on Monday said it will escalate the strike to involve more of its 18,000 members — including front-line medical workers — citing the government's unwillingness to cede to their demands and a breakdown in talks with the Hospital Authority, which manages the territory's government hospitals. "Our actions have forced the government to gradually close the border," said union chairwoman Winnie Yu, speaking after Lam's announcement. Yet, she added, the government "has not directly responded to our demands." "We cannot see [Lam's] sincerity to shut down all the borders and to cut off


Hard coffee, hard kombucha — experts say no beverage is safe from alcohol

boozy beverages and those with “functional” benefits and health halos. “The real interesting place to be is where these categories overlap or bump up against each other. Things get very blurry,” Colbert says. While these hard versions made their entry into the alcohol-based beverages market fairly recently, LatentView Analytics, a digital analytics firm, concluded that hard versions of health drinks such as alcohol-infused kombucha are here to stay. “Consumers seem to prefer these beverages because they are organic [which] helps them believe that it is still part of a ‘healthy lifestyle,’ a term that is not ordinarily associated with alcohol consumption,” says LatentView’s Midwest director Shalabh Shalabh. Some of these new mash-ups represent collaborations between brands. In September, MillerCoors teamed up with ready-to-drink cult coffee favorite La Colombe to debut La Colombe Hard Cold Brew Coffee. It doesn’t always work seamlessly, says Caleb Bryant, associate director of food and drink reports for market research firm Mintel, pointing to Pabst Blue Ribbon, which in July launched an 8 percent hard-coffee version of its signature beer, which experts such as Bryant say might confuse the brand’s identity: PBR experienced a dramatic renaissance between 2005 and 2010 for appealing to hipsters with its “retro chic.” The hard seltzers, he says, are unusual because they appeal to all ages and genders. “You don’t see that anymore, products that have near universal appeal,” Bryant says. “Growth in this area is only going to accelerate because it touches on the core consumer interest and unmet needs, especially with beer. There is this trend toward lower alcohol by volume, flavorful but lighter.” He says that a third of Generation Z spirits drinkers say they have taken an extended break from alcohol in the past six months, and that underage drinking has fallen dramatically from previous generations. But there’s another demographic change that may account for a shift away from higher-alcohol beverages: an aging population. Generally speaking, alcohol consumption and binge drinking decreases with age. All this temperateness flies in the face of some recent data, however. A study last month from the National Center for Health Statistics indicates deaths from alcohol-related problems have more than doubled over the past nearly 20 years. There were 73,000 deaths in the United States in 2017 because of liver disease and other alcohol-related illnesses, up from 36,000 deaths in 1999. Jenny Zegler, associate director of food and drink for Mintel, may


Are Republicans coming out of ‘the closet’ on climate change?

natural gas, nuclear and solar. Over Graves’s career, Koch Industries has also been a major contributor. Graves and other Republicans paint a bright line between their approach to climate change and Democrats’. They have sharply attacked the Green New Deal. “Democrats like sticks and we like carrots,” Graves said. “We’re not out there dreaming about unicorns. We’re talking about taking fact-based solutions.” Graves also opposes taking some measures when other countries are not acting in similar ways. “If you were to implement the Green New Deal, you would be playing into the hands of China,” he said. Instead, Graves said, Congress ought to promote U.S. technology, which is “all about U.S. competitiveness.” And spending on resilience to prevent costlier climate damage is “an awesome conservative fiscal argument,” he said. In the Senate, some lawmakers are seeking common ground, led by Sens. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) and Mike Braun (R-Ind.). “There have been a lot of Republicans in the closet on climate,” Braun, a freshman senator, told The Post in December. Coons and Braun each recruited three colleagues to their Senate Climate Solutions Caucus. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) has also managed to work with Republicans on specific parts of a climate policy. He joined with Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), a longtime climate denier, and Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who also represents a fossil-fuel-intensive state, to pass legislation that gives tax credits to companies that capture carbon dioxide from the air and store it. Still, some Republicans have paid a political price for urging action on climate change. Consider the swift downfall of California state legislator Chad Mayes. In July 2017, Mayes, then the State Assembly’s Republican leader, joined Democrats in supporting a climate-change program called cap-and-trade. “We lower taxes, we reduce costs, we reduce regulations, and at the same time we’re going to protect our environment,” Mayes said at a news conference. “I know for some they’re going to look at this and say: What in the world is going on? Why are Republicans talking about something like cap-and-trade? Well I’ll tell you. We believe that markets are better than Soviet-style command and control. We believe that markets are better than government coercing people into doing things that they don’t want to do. We believe that businesses in California want to do the right thing.” A month later, Republican activists in the assembly’s 25-member caucus stripped Mayes of his leadership


China’s rigid governance system means local health problems can easily go national

the emergence of a mysterious disease to the Wuhan Health Commission in early December — to no avail. Minimizing occurs when officials see a situation as affecting only a small group of individuals and then disregard it as unlikely to be serious. This worsens when local governments internalize and rationalize these problems as unimportant in relation to higher-level directives. This means local officials often do not recognize how the problem they are observing at a smaller scale may be a part of a broader pattern. Government reports snake their way through China’s labyrinthine bureaucracy, with each level of government seeking approval from a higher authority to declare an emergency. Determining who is best equipped to solve an emerging problem is far from straightforward in China’s fragmented system of governance. In some cases, local officials may insist that policies should be conceived and implemented based on the perspectives of regulators with on-the-ground knowledge. Or provincial government officials may seek to gain control of an emerging problem in a form of soft centralization, whereby higher levels of government take back control from problematic local officials. The central government often takes a wait-and-see approach, enabling it to develop a coherent response. This also creates political distance from the failings of local government. By the time China crafts a national response to a crisis like the coronavirus, regulators must then coordinate across multiple bureaucratic levels — each with different managerial workflows, time horizons, knowledge-generating processes and standard-setting mechanisms. How do scientists and investigators operating across these levels agree on which types of data are useful? How will investigators aggregate critical information for higher-level officials to use to identify broader patterns? Experts have already criticized the lack of useful epidemiological data on how the current crisis has spread. It’s inherently difficult to disaggregate a national strategy into the day-to-day managerial tasks to be implemented at lower levels of government. This is particularly challenging in China, with its stretched regulatory capacity, mismatched standards between political subunits and divergent central-local interests. Scholars note that higher-level government officials in China often set inflexible targets, make funding decisions and launch campaigns that provide little implementation guidance to local officials. Reports from Wuhan Unlike the European Union and the United States, China lacks a federal or multilevel framework with a clearer template for regulatory integration. Instead, China goes through frequent cycles of centralization followed by decentralization to address regulatory problems


creates political distance from the failings of local government. By the time China crafts a national response to a crisis like the coronavirus, regulators must then coordinate across multiple bureaucratic levels — each with different managerial workflows, time horizons, knowledge-generating processes and standard-setting mechanisms. How do scientists and investigators operating across these levels agree on which types of data are useful? How will investigators aggregate critical information for higher-level officials to use to identify broader patterns? Experts have already criticized the lack of useful epidemiological data on how the current crisis has spread. It’s inherently difficult to disaggregate a national strategy into the day-to-day managerial tasks to be implemented at lower levels of government. This is particularly challenging in China, with its stretched regulatory capacity, mismatched standards between political subunits and divergent central-local interests. Scholars note that higher-level government officials in China often set inflexible targets, make funding decisions and launch campaigns that provide little implementation guidance to local officials. Reports from Wuhan Unlike the European Union and the United States, China lacks a federal or multilevel framework with a clearer template for regulatory integration. Instead, China goes through frequent cycles of centralization followed by decentralization to address regulatory problems This central-local cycle is problematic for standardization, predictability and multilevel coordination in a large-scale political system like China’s. As a matter of standardization, central officials write directives in broad terms to permit local governments to implement laws in line with local conditions. But this can lead to uneven policy implementation throughout the system. And the lack of predictability from these constant shifts in power between central and local governments can make local officials reluctant to take initiatives to address emerging problems, for fear of operating out of step with the central leadership. Before resigning, the mayor of Wuhan explained that his initial reluctance to release information was because of unclear signals from Beijing. When the central government does take control, it’s often a unilateral top-down approach that largely disregards local-level capacities. As in past crises, the central government has removed local officials from office, added new administrative structures and channeled resources toward major projects. The approach, however, can create poorly conceived policies or exacerbate problems. Experts have already begun to question the effectiveness of China’s massive quarantine, arguing that it may have led to increased panic. Others suggest that quickly building two new hospitals will do little to help without


World’s fireflies threatened by habitat loss and light pollution, experts warn

Nearly 2,000 species of fireflies flit, crawl and sparkle across the planet. Some of these lightning bugs are doing fine. Others are not. A survey of 49 of the world’s firefly experts, published Monday in the journal BioScience, has identified the most serious threats to the animals. Habitat loss, in almost all of the regions surveyed, is a problem. Other threats include artificial light, which disturbs their mating rituals; pesticides, which can harm the insects or their invertebrate prey; and water pollution, for species that have an aquatic stage. The report is not a census of the world’s firefly population. But it is “the very first time that we’ve gathered information — this is based on expert opinion — about what the most prominent threats are to the fireflies in different parts of the world,” said study author Sara M. Lewis, a biologist at Tufts University. “For the last decade or more, people have been anecdotally reporting that they’re not seeing fireflies where they used to,” Lewis said. “Good census data over the past few decades” exists for some species, such as Malaysia’s synchronous fireflies and the common European glowworm, Lewis said. “We know that those populations are, in fact, declining.” Elsewhere, however, firefly literature remains “kind of obscure,” she said, and the research community is relatively small. This poll of firefly experts was the “next best thing” to traveling back in time to count firefly populations, said University of Florida entomologist Marc Branham, who was not a member of the research team. He has been told many anecdotes of missing fireflies. And often, he said, they’re believable. Fields once full of flashing insects “are so obvious, in a sort of a sad sense,” when the light vanishes, he said. “One of the things we’ve kind of taken for granted is that fireflies will always be here,” said naturalist Ben Pfeiffer, founder of the nonprofit Firefly Conservation & Research organization and one of the firefly experts who was surveyed. “And we’ve been terribly wrong about that.” In 2018, the International Union for Conservation of Nature created the Firefly Specialist Group, co-chaired by Lewis, to determine whether certain firefly species should be listed as threatened or endangered. “That’s something we’ve never seen happen for a firefly species,” Fitchburg State University biologist Christopher Cratsley said. Cratsley was not a member of the study team. The survey, Lewis said, represents a first step


Some athletes’ rivals include the weather. Here’s how to beat the cold (or heat).

When Julia Roman-Duval, an astrophysicist from Columbia, Md., ran in the U.S. Olympic marathon trials in Los Angeles four years ago, the sweltering weather held her back. Last year, she won Washington’s Rock ‘n’ Roll half-marathon on a cool March day. Roman-Duval is a self-described “cold-weather athlete” — someone who excels in the cold but suffers in the heat. I empathize: As a tennis player, I ride my own climactic roller coaster. My outdoor record in winter is outstanding, at least compared with my annual August losing streak. I talked with experts to understand why these fluctuations occur and what can be done about them. We hominids have a proud history of protecting ourselves from the elements; anthropologists believe the oldest known building may be a windbreak found in Tanzania. Back then, we braved extreme weather for necessity, to hunt for survival. Now, we often do it for fitness and sport. But our athletic performance suffers as conditions diverge from our happy place: about 60 degrees with low humidity. As the chill creeps in, blood flow to muscles decreases, causing weaker contractions — a 4.2 percent decline in muscle power for every 1.8 degrees lost in body warmth, according to a 2016 research review in the journal Comprehensive Physiology; in freezing weather, aerobic performance can dip 5 percent. Intense heat is even tougher on us; most people’s brains seem hardwired to shut down physical activity as their cores near 104 degrees. We’re all affected, but certain attributes can increase or decrease susceptibility to the elements. In the summer, for example, my above-average resting core temperature can make a tennis court feel like a magma flow. I seem to sweat more profusely than other people. And with my compact build, I have less skin surface area to shed heat. “What likely makes you feel better [in the winter] is just that you’re not warming up as rapidly,” explained Ira Jacobs, professor of exercise physiology at the University of Toronto. On the other hand, there’s Green Bay Packers legend Brett Favre, who flourished in the cold like a penguin — if penguins came from Mississippi. NFL coaches might say it’s Favre’s hands that gave him an edge over other quarterbacks. They’re large for his frame, letting him grip the ball better in icy conditions. Lacking such a trait shouldn’t cause despair, though. Weather-challenged individuals of all shapes and sizes can excel with


cold. “It comes down to confidence in your abilities,” Salazar said. In fact, the USTA and NFL teams are often reluctant to analyze negative effects of weather. “If you bring it up too much, it starts getting in players’ heads.” Research demonstrates that the reverse can also be true. In 2017, Stephen Cheung, a kinesiology professor at Brock University, found motivational self-talk was a major plus for performance in 95-degree heat. When experienced cyclists spent two weeks learning to substitute negative thoughts such as, “It’s so hot in here,” with upbeat messages such as, “You’re doing well,” their endurance increased 27 percent compared with previous workouts. “It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Nicole Detling, mental performance coach for Team USA at the 2010 and 2014 Olympics. “You really can convince yourself that you’re better in certain circumstances. And over time, your body does respond.” Detling recommends mentally rehearsing resilience — both to adverse conditions and one’s own anxiety. It has worked for Korir. “When I visualize, I think, ‘Wesley, you were able to run in Canada with that freezing weather. This is nothing.’ I’ve learned to always react positive. Whenever it’s cold out, I tell my coach, ‘It’s the best day ever. Let’s go get it.’ ” That swagger has helped Korir win more than races: He secured a seat in Kenya’s parliament in 2013. In politics, “Sometimes the people don’t see the positive of what you do. So you change your attitude and say, ‘I’m still going to do my best.’ Same with the weather. You can change how you react.” Back in 2016, Roman-Duval, an associate astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute who has three children, tried both mental and physical approaches in preparing for that hot Los Angeles marathon. She trained for months, acclimated by running in her heated gym wrapped in tights and long sleeves, and visualized competing in the Los Angeles warmth. She imagined the mental alarm bells telling her to stop — and pictured herself overcoming them. “Doing the work gives you confidence you can do this.” In a field of 198 runners, she placed 50th, a respectable result for a cold-weather athlete. Realistically, making the Olympics had never been in the cards, but she finished strong in the heat for herself and for her kids. “I teach them by example,” Roman-Duval said. “Take what you have and make the most of it.” localliving@washpost.com


Most detailed close-ups of sun reveal massive, turbulent solar plasma

All is not calm on the sun. New images released last week, which the National Science Foundation says are the star’s most detailed close-ups, show turbulent solar plasma: Charged particles that rise to the surface of the star, forming convection cells the size of Texas, which cool and descend back into the sun’s depths. The images, from the nearly complete Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, are the most zoomed-in examinations of that turbulence. They reveal structures as small as 18.6 miles on the surface of the sun. Those details are five times smaller than any solar image had captured before, Thomas Rimmele, the telescope’s director, told reporters recently. (The sun is nearly 870,000 miles in diameter.) The Inouye telescope, a $344 million tool built on the peak of Haleakala on Maui, took these images on its first day of operation in December. This is the “largest, most powerful solar telescope in the world,” Rimmele said. The telescope will help astronomers understand the sun’s magnetic field and its atmosphere, known as its corona, more fully. From its violent atmosphere, the sun belches energetic particles that move so swiftly that they are able to hit Earth in minutes. Such solar storms are capable of overwhelming electric grids and disturbing radio communications. “We still do not understand how the corona is heated to millions of degrees when the surface of the sun is only 6,000 degrees,” Rimmele said. (If that phenomenon sounds counterintuitive, well, it is. Solar experts often describe the effect like this: Imagine pulling your hand away from a hot plate, only for your palm to heat up even more.) “The Inouye telescope has the unique resolution and sensitivity required to perform the most precise measurements of the sun’s magnetic field, especially in the corona,” he said. The telescope is a marvel of engineering. A mirror within the telescope adjusts 2,000 times per second, to compensate for distortions introduced by Earth’s atmosphere. As the telescope focuses on the sun, it generates heat — in the manner of a magnifying glass, except it gets hot enough to melt metal, Rimmele said. Coolant fed through 7.5 miles of pipe keeps the telescope chilled. “We make the equivalent of a swimming pool full of ice every night to provide cooling for the optics and structures during the day,” he said. The construction at Haleakala was the target of protesters, who said the telescope was


President Trump’s 2020 State of the Union address, annotated

tortured, and enslaved by ISIS, and kept as a prisoner of al-Baghdadi himself. After more than 500 horrifying days of captivity, al-Baghdadi murdered young, beautiful Kayla. She was just 26 years old. On the night that U.S. Special Forces Operators ended al-Baghdadi’s miserable life, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, received a call in the Situation Room. He was told that the brave men of the elite Special Forces team, that so perfectly carried out the operation, had given their mission a name, “Task Force 8-14.” It was a reference to a special day, August 14th, Kayla’s birthday. Carl and Marsha, America's warriors never forgot Kayla, and neither will we. Thank you. (APPLAUSE) Every day, America's men and women in uniform demonstrate the infinite depth of love that dwells in the human heart. One of these American heroes was Army Staff Sergeant Christopher Hake. On his second deployment to Iraq in 2008, Sergeant Hake wrote a letter to his 1-year-old son, Gage: "I will be with you again,” he wrote to Gage. “I will teach you to ride your first bike, build your first sand box, watch you play sports, and see you have kids, also. I love you, son. Take care of your mother. I am always with you. Daddy.” On Easter Sunday of 2008, Chris was out on patrol in Baghdad when his Bradley Fighting Vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb. That night, he made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. Sergeant Hake now rests in eternal glory in Arlington, and his wife, Kelli, is in the gallery tonight, joined by their son, who is now a 13 years old and doing very, very well. To Kelli and Gage, Chris will live in our hearts forever. He is looking down on you now. Thank you. (APPLAUSE) Thank you very much. Thank you both very much. The terrorist responsible for killing Sergeant Hake was Qasem Soleimani, who provided the deadly roadside bomb that took Chris's life. Soleimani was the Iranian regime's most ruthless butcher, a monster who murdered or wounded thousands of American servicemembers in Iraq. As the world’s top terrorist, Soleimani orchestrated the deaths of countless men, women, and children. TRUMP: He directed the December assault and went on to assault U.S. forces in Iraq, was actively planning new attacks when we hit him very hard. And that's why, last month, at


Donald Trump’s Potemkin foreign policy

President Trump has rarely had anything resembling political momentum while in office, but he has it this week. Today, the Senate is expected to vote to acquit him despite a majority of senators (including plenty of Republicans) acknowledging that he did something wrong in his approach to Ukraine. A Gallup poll showed his approval rating at 49 percent, an all-time high. Meanwhile, the Democrats found a new and truly innovative way to make themselves look incompetent, and network news anchors seem pretty chill about the White House capriciously blackballing one of their own. Little wonder that Trump, in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, crowed about the “great American comeback.” If there is anything we have learned from the Trump presidency, it is that a) Donald Trump equates his own standing with America’s standing, and b) Alan Dershowitz is the only lawyer who says this is totes legal. Vox’s Alex Ward interviewed me before Trump’s speech about what to expect on the international front, and I told him, “It’s sort of a Potemkin foreign policy.” Today the hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts would like to elaborate on that metaphor a bit. A Potemkin village refers to any construct whose sole purpose is to put an attractive external appearance on something not so attractive, in an effort to hoodwink outside observers. All people want to put the best spin on reality, but using “Potemkin” as an adjective means there is no substance, just artifice. Is this a fair characterization of Trump’s foreign policy accomplishments? Pretty much, yeah. The primary credit Trump gets on foreign policy is that he did not destroy the tail winds he received from the Obama administration. The Islamic State’s control over territory ended, continuing an Obama administration initiative. Defense spending by NATO allies continued to rise, a trend that started in the Obama administration. Even on the economy, Trump’s strongest calling card, the striking thing is how almost every important indicator looks like an unbroken trend line from the Obama era. The success of Trump’s foreign policy initiatives run the gamut from small but real to splashy but bad. The foreign policy looks like a Potemkin village because a lot of the negotiations between the Trump administration and other countries also have a Potemkin quality. In a lot of cases — the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the renegotiated Korea deal, the “phase one” trade agreement with China


News literacy lessons: How a pandemic of misinformation about coronavirus has far outpaced the disease’s spread

the role of a free press. The following material comes from the project’s newsletter, the Sift, which takes the most recent viral rumors, conspiracy theories, hoaxes and journalistic ethics issues and turns them into timely lessons with discussion prompts and links. The Sift, which publishes weekly during the school year, has more than 10,000 subscribers, most of them educators. Here are lessons from the Feb. 3 edition of the Sift, as provided by the News Literacy Project. Misinformation pandemic As rapidly as the coronavirus has spread in recent weeks, viral misinformation about the disease has far outpaced it, reaching millions of people on every continent even more quickly. Dozens of photos and videos In short, while the outbreak itself is close to being classified as a pandemic, the misinformation about the 2019 novel coronavirus has achieved that status many times over. As worrisome as this is, coronavirus misinformation patterns can be used as a case study with students. Just as epidemiologists can glean valuable insights from outbreaks of disease, students can analyze the plethora of coronavirus rumors to refine their understanding of why and how falsehoods spread. The two phenomena share some factors. As Charles Seife, a journalism professor at New York University, points out in the opening chapter of his 2014 book “Virtual Unreality,” the three epidemiological factors that determine how a disease spreads — transmissibility, persistence and interconnectedness — can also be used to explain the ways misinformation spreads online. Digital information is highly transmissible (easy to replicate) and highly persistent (easy to store and search for) — and it circulates in the most interconnected information environment the world has ever known. But coronavirus rumors and other types of alarming medical misinformation have a specific potential for virality because they tap into extremely strong emotions. Rumors about infectious diseases incite fear, causing people to react emotionally and share those rumors with loved ones out of a strong desire to protect them. Medical information is also highly specialized, which increases the likelihood that people — perhaps especially conspiracy theorists — will misunderstand information they have dug up themselves (such as the results of a mock pandemic exercise, or old patents for different strains of the coronavirus). Finally, while photos and video related to many topics are easy to persuasively present in false contexts, images and footage of people suffering from medical conditions are among the easiest to shift to


The Georgetown student who became justice minister of Sudan

journalism is what safeguards a democratic society,” he told them. “Don’t worry about a press release. Just get me a draft law, and we’ll work on passing it.” At the conclusion of the meeting, he went to escort them to the door. “Dr. Abdulbari — may we get a photograph with you before we leave?” Ahmed asked. Abdulbari posed for the same shot six times, to satisfy each person’s desire to get a photo on their own phone. “Everyone here calls me ‘doctor,’ ” he told me sheepishly, as the journalists left. There was already another group in the reception area. Abdulbari welcomed them, and they took turns speaking to him as if he were the only person in the room. “I am asking you, Dr. Abdulbari, to make sure that Omar al-Bashir is handed over to the ICC,” implored the first man. An older woman with an easy laugh said, “I feel you are a brave man and will do justice.” She added, “I am a poet, and I will be writing a poem about you!” Abdulbari blushed. The last to speak was a slight man in a sky-blue suit that looked as though it belonged to someone larger. “People in my community have heard that I was coming to your office, and they ask me to find out what you will be able to do,” he said. He spoke of people he knew in Atbara, where the protests began. “Nine people I know killed in the street,” he explained. Tears streamed down his face. Abdulbari paused his pen and just listened. The weight of the man’s grief, and the expectations he had of what Abdulbari could deliver, were palpable. As he closed the door behind the last of the attendees, Abdulbari let out a heavy sigh. “So much sadness,” he said. Abdulbari’s office at the Ministry of Justice, a recently constructed building, overlooks the Blue Nile River. From his window, the sprawling development of the capital spans out. For all of Sudan’s history, the beneficiaries of the state’s resources have largely fallen within this view. People from Darfur, or other peripheral areas like the Nuba Mountains, have never seen investment in their areas and have largely been excluded from the governance of the country. In Abdulbari, and other atypical members of the transitional cabinet, the revolution has brought people from the periphery to the center of power for


is an affront to Sudanese culture. “I respond by asking, which Sudanese culture? We have more than one. Sudan is a very diverse country.” In discussing the formation of his views on the role of women in Sudanese society, Abdulbari described his mother to me as “the bedrock of my life.” So I traveled to the home where she raised him and his siblings, on the outskirts of Khartoum. There were festivities underway the day I arrived. Some two dozen relatives gathered under a makeshift awning to celebrate the birth of Abdulbari’s nephew. I asked what the baby’s name was. “Nasredeen!” replied Abdulbari’s brother Sabri with a laugh. “Actually, I had no choice. He was born when Nasredeen was named the minister of justice, and my mom insisted he could have no other name.” Abdulbari’s mother, Kalthoum Ismail, was approaching 80 years old. Though stooping slightly, she was a tall woman whose height seemed amplified by the amount of respect given to her by everyone present. The traditional markings carved down her cheeks gave the impression of a permanent stream of tears. Like Abdulbari, her repose was serious, almost stern, but her face lit up as she ushered me inside the house to speak about her famous son. The ground was covered in brightly colored woven mats, and a flat-screen television playing on mute provided light to the otherwise unlit room. The room was, I learned, one of the many improvements that had been made to the house over time as Abdulbari sent back all he could from his student stipends in the United States. Ismail explained that before Abdulbari was born, she farmed nuts for oil in a lush area of Darfur. She was married to Abdulbari’s father, an Islamic religious scholar, and the land provided everything they needed. But Darfur offered limited educational opportunities for their children. The family moved to Khartoum; however, Abdulbari’s father missed life in Darfur and decided to return, leaving Ismail to raise Abdulbari and his six siblings. It was a struggle to support the family, but Abdulbari and his siblings helped out. “We call her our mother and our father,” explained Sabri, looking at his mother with pride. In periods when feeding all seven children was impossible, Ismail sent Abdulbari and his brothers to stay with an uncle. Her recollections of Abdulbari as a child matched his persona in adulthood. “He was just


Travel restrictions tied to the coronavirus stall travel to U.S.

citizens and green-card holders who have been in that region in the past 14 days are allowed to enter the United States but are required to be quarantined for two weeks. Tourism Economics modeled its estimates on data from the 2003 SARS epidemic to estimate the impact the coronavirus could have on U.S. tourism. It noted that SARS, like the coronavirus, was also first diagnosed in China and spurred tighter visa restrictions and entry procedures as countries around the world sought to contain its spread. The United States has become a popular destination for Chinese tourists. Visits from China to the United States have increased nearly 13-fold since 2002. As a result, the company said, the coronavirus’s impact could be far more significant than that of SARS. Tourism Economics found that last year an estimated 2.8 million people from China came to the United States. The report estimated that the country could lose roughly 1.6 million visits from China as a result of the coronavirus, with more than half — 56 percent — occurring in 2020. The number of visits will probably rebound in the latter part of 2020 and accelerate in 2021, but it could take as long as four years for a full recovery. States most hurt by the drop in Chinese tourism are California and New York, the report said. In California, nearly 20 percent of overseas visitors come from China. Utah and Oregon are also popular destinations, the report found. A separate report from Hopper, a travel booking app, found a significant drop in interest in travel between the United States and China. The analysis noted that since the start of the outbreak, search demand for travel from the United States to China dropped more than 58 percent, compared with the same time period in 2019. Hopper analyzed airfare prices and flight searches to determine the impact of the coronavirus. Before the outbreak, an estimated 4,000 seats were available on flights between the United States and China each day for the next two months, the report found. Roughly 20 percent of those seats were on flights operated by Cathay Pacific; 18 percent were on flights operated by United Airlines. In all, Hopper estimated that more than 175,500 travelers from China were expected to visit the United States over the Lunar New Year holiday. Nearly 30 percent of those visitors were expected to arrive in Los Angeles.


Eco-anxiety is overwhelming kids. Where’s the line between education and alarmism?

abuse and neglect. If climate change will harm his students and is causing them anguish, isn’t silence on the issue a violation of that duty? Guthrie has taken his views national as the co-founder of the nonprofit Schools for Climate Action (S4CA), which asks schools and other educational groups to pass resolutions highlighting the effects of climate change on children. Since December 2017, more than 100 resolutions have been passed, 66 by school boards and 29 by student councils. Many set sustainability goals or call on Congress to take climate action. Most are shepherded by students, who write the resolutions with the help of administrators and school board members. Though they don’t commit organizations to any specific action, the resolutions send a signal that there are support networks for students struggling with climate change. They also bolster the idea that students can at least make a difference by raising awareness: Jordyn Bauer, a 20-year-old sophomore at California’s Sonoma State University who worked to pass a resolution in her California school district in 2018, said it helped validate her ability to do something. “Too many people are just standing by,” she says. “I felt like it was my responsibility to take charge.” Not everyone, however, is on board with Guthrie’s agenda. Last spring, Guthrie and a number of S4CA partners — including several students — lobbied the National Association of School Psychologists to adopt a resolution stating that climate change is a children’s issue, as the group’s California chapter had done. But the organization declined. The group’s executive director, Kathleen Minke, responded in an email to Guthrie that her group focuses on “issues that have a very direct impact on schools, student learning and children’s mental and behavioral health.” Climate change, she said, “falls outside this professional focus.” When I interviewed her later, Minke told me that her organization isn’t ignoring climate change and has dedicated resources to help school psychologists deal with kids affected by natural disasters. But when it comes to managing anxiety, their focus is on coping, not causes. “You’re not going to develop an entire curriculum around anxiety related to ‘x,’ ” she says. “There are too many x’s for that to be efficient.” Likewise, S4CA’s efforts to get national school board groups to lobby on climate change have come up short. Chris Ungar has been a school board member for 20 years in California’s San Luis


Voyagers to the ‘epicenter of global warming’ struggle with bears, storms and thin ice

Not long after the Arctic sun set for the final time last year, a ferocious storm descended on the isolated, icebound crew of the research vessel Polarstern. The polar night filled with the gunshot cracks of fracturing ice and the howls of 60 mph winds. The ship heaved, power cables snapped and a 100-foot meteorology tower toppled. A tremendous fissure opened in the floe to which the Polarstern was fixed, exposing the ocean waves. Researchers scrambled onto the ice to retrieve and restore their instruments. Hundreds of miles from the nearest source of help, the scientists were both unnerved and utterly exhilarated. This was exactly the sort of drama they were seeking when they set out to document climate change at the top of the world. The Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC), which began in late September, is the biggest Arctic research expedition in history. A rotating cast of more than 300 researchers will spend a year stuck in the sea ice aboard the Polarstern, moving only at the speed of the ice’s natural drift. Their goal is to understand the complex and rapidly changing Arctic system before it collapses. What they discover could help forecast the future of the entire globe. Participants in the first leg of the voyage recently returned to land, bringing backstories of bears, brittle ice and a polar landscape that was even more unstable than anticipated. In some of their first interviews since leaving the ship, they said they were stunned and occasionally stymied by the very melting they hope to understand. “The Arctic is the epicenter of global warming,” said Markus Rex, an atmospheric scientist at Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute and leader of the 17-nation, $134 million expedition. “We have had to constantly adapt to the changing ice environment, and we will continue to do so. But it is hard to predict what is going to happen next.” For millennia, the constant cap of ice that covers the North Pole has provided vital protection for the planet. Sea ice reflects at least two-thirds of light back into the atmosphere, whereas open ocean absorbs almost all of the sun’s heat. But the sea ice is shrinking. The amount of ice in summertime — when its reflective powers are most vital — is about 3 million square miles smaller than it was in 1980. At the current rate of decline, year-round


Bumblebees are dying across North America and Europe as the climate warms, scientists say

Bumblebee populations in North America and Europe have plummeted as a result of extreme temperatures, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science. The number of areas populated by bumblebees has fallen 46 percent in North America and 17 percent in Europe, and the new research found that regions with sharp bee declines also experienced strong variations in climate — and especially higher temperatures and worse heat waves. It’s yet another major piece of bad news for bee populations. Declining colonies of commercial honeybees have been blamed on a strange phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder but also probably spring from a bevy of other causes. Now, the new research suggests that bumblebees in the wild are suffering, too. “Where temperatures are getting more extreme, bees tend to be disappearing more often,” said Peter Soroye, a researcher at the University of Ottawa and one of the study’s authors. The loss of bumblebee populations is alarming because they play a central role in pollinating many plants, including key crops such as tomatoes and cranberries. “Unlike honeybees in North America, which have been brought over from Europe and kept in these colonies, bumblebees are native and evolved with these plants," Soroye said. "So when it comes to these natural landscapes, bumblebees are pretty irreplaceable.” The study, which Soroye conducted with colleagues from the University of Ottawa and University College London, compared the observed locations for 66 species of bumblebees between 1901 and 1974 with places where they could be found between 2000 and 2014. They found that nearly half of all regions in North America where bumblebees had been recorded in the earlier period no longer registered bees in the later period. It’s unclear whether the bees might recover. Franklin’s bumblebee is a species once found in a narrow region where California and Oregon meet. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently proposed an endangered-species listing for the bee but noted that the listing may not actually happen because it’s unclear whether there are any bees left to protect. “Based on the lack of observations of Franklin’s over the last 13 years it is possible that the species is extinct," the agency wrote. The study combined observations (or lack thereof) of bumblebees, such as Franklin’s, with a map of changing temperatures and precipitation extremes over the same periods. And it found a strong link between the regions where bumblebees had declined


Maryland open houses Feb. 8-9

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Nike unveils Team USA uniforms for basketball and other Olympic athletes

An early February day brought a taste of things to come this summer, as Nike unveiled some of its Team USA uniforms for the Tokyo Games. Among the looks presented Wednesday were basketball uniforms that had a few more flourishes than their minimalist 2016 versions but went for a clean, classic style. The same could not quite be said for the uniforms to be worn by athletes in skateboarding, which makes its Olympic debut this year. As in 2016, these Team USA basketball uniforms feature a slightly thinner font than in previous decades, and they have a nice touch in the 50 stars incorporated into the waistbands. Both the men’s and women’s teams will have a white uniform, but the men’s alternates will be blue while the women’s will be red, as shown above. There are a few more details in the red women’s uniform, including a laurel design in the neckline meant to recall the jerseys worn by the 1996 team, which defeated Brazil for the gold medal in Atlanta. According to Nike, six stars on each side of this year’s red jersey symbolize the 12 players on the team, and a hidden panel in the side vent of the shorts reveals the numbers 84 (for the total amount of players over the course of the federation’s history), 10 (for the total number of Olympic appearances by the U.S. women’s team) and 8 (for the gold medals win by the U.S. women). As with previous Olympic gear, Nike says it is aiming for sustainability in its 2020 apparel, including making extensive use of recycled materials. According to the company, its U.S. medal stand jackets will be made from 100 percent recycled polyester, and other elements will incorporate recycled nylon and rubber. “Athletes expect us to be committed in this space,” Nike’s chief sustainability officer, Noel Kinder, told CNBC. “They want [what they wear] to perform, and they expect it to be sustainable.” For its skateboarding designs, Nike teamed up with the Dutch artist Pieter “Parra” Janssen, a former professional skateboarder. Outfits designed for the American, French and Brazilian teams will use recycled polyester and what Nike described as “pattern efficiency for minimal waste.” “Skating has been such an individual thing, it’s all personal preference and your style, the clothing matches the style of your skating,” Sean Malto, who hopes to make the U.S. skateboarding team, told Dezeen. “So having


NSO decision to cancel tour to China hits home for this clarinetist

For National Symphony Orchestra principal clarinet Lin Ma, next month’s planned tour to Japan and China was more than a business trip. A native of China, Ma studied clarinet in Beijing before coming to the United States at age 17. Now 30 and in his second year with the NSO, Ma was anticipating a joyous homecoming and the chance to perform — as a principal in a major American orchestra no less — for family and friends he had left behind. But the school reunion and a vacation with his parents, whom he hasn’t seen since last year, won’t happen. The NSO decided to cancel three concerts in China because of the coronavirus outbreak, leaving it with five performances in Japan from March 6 to 11. “It is disappointing,” said Ma, who was to meet his clarinet teachers and friends from the middle and high school attached to the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. “I was going to have a great time in China. My parents were planning to go to Shanghai for the last performance of the tour, and after we were planning to do a small trip to cities around Shanghai. “For me, it’s unfortunate, but it’s bigger than the tour,” he said. “I hope the virus can be contained as soon as possible.” The coronavirus outbreak continues to grow. Cultural institutions in China, including museums and concert halls, have been closed, and travel within the country is limited. Meanwhile, major airlines have canceled flights through March. As a result, arts organizations have had to abandon or revise performances that have been in the works for years. “Our top priority is the health and well-being of our musicians and artists,” said NSO Executive Director Gary Ginstling. “In some ways the decision was made for us. Our flights were canceled. There was no way to get there and no way to get home.” Ginstling said the NSO sees no risk in traveling to Japan for the first, and longest, part of the tour — the orchestra’s first international trip with music director Gianandrea Noseda. “We have five concerts in Japan,” he said. “We’ll be there for eight or nine days. Based on the information we have, we feel confident there’s no increased risk there.” The Richmond Ballet had to replace Xu Yan and Li Wentao of the National Ballet of China, who were set to star in two


The Daily 202: A reluctant Romney tried to give Trump an out on impeachment. The White House wouldn’t take it.

confinement is unwelcome, passengers said, but people seem to be taking it in stride. ‘Most people were just glad to be getting out of there,’ Xu said from her hotel room at Miramar. … Each flight appeared to have at least one sick person aboard. On [one] plane, officials said, a small child with a fever was isolated in the rear of the craft in an area blocked off with plastic sheeting. Xu said she saw a woman in a similar place on her flight. The woman did not appear to be aboard for the final leg to Miramar. … This is the first quarantine ordered by federal health officials in more than 50 years, and the CDC is having to improvise. Each family has a private room but is being told to keep some distance — at least six feet — from other families. The children will be told not to share toys.” -- A U.S. plane will evacuate a “few dozen” Canadians in Wuhan. -- Several lawmakers confronted Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and other officials about the Trump administration’s response to the virus. -- A 30-hour-old infant became the youngest person diagnosed with coronavirus. -- Africa has 1.2 billion people, but only six labs there can test for coronavirus. -- China’s conspicuously absent leader reemerged amid the coronavirus crisis — but only for an audience with a friendly autocrat. -- The world’s oceans are speeding up, and, yes, this is another mega-scale consequence of climate change. -- Astronaut Christina Koch has returned to Earth after a record-breaking stay on the International Space Station. -- At least 38 people were killed, including rescue workers, in two avalanches in Turkey. -- A plane skidded off the runway and broke apart at Istanbul’s Sabiha International Airport, killing three and injuring scores of other passengers. -- Trump met with Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó for the first time, but his interest in the country’s presidential crisis has waned. -- The surprises at Trump’s State of the Union were carefully planned. Trump took great pains to keep Guaido’s attendance a secret until the last minute, “despite Guaidó’s clear interest in recent weeks for a public sign of support from Trump. “Another beneficiary of Trump’s stagecraft was Janiyah Davis, the fourth-grader. She and her mother were invited to the House chamber to represent thousands of children on waiting lists for taxpayer-supported


The Health 202: How Pete Buttigieg’s health-care strategy helped him gain traction in the Iowa caucus

on Wednesday. In a heated closed-door briefing yesterday, members of Congress confronted Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and other Trump administration officials about their response to the outbreak, Yet the administration has drastically stepped up its response to the growing coronavirus outbreak. “Last week, the administration declared the virus a public health emergency; began on Sunday barring non-U.S. citizens who recently visited China from entering the United States, subject to a few exemptions; said it would quarantine any Americans who had visited China’s Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak, within the last 14 days; and would require screening and self quarantines for Americans who had recently visited other parts of China,” Erica and Yasmeen write. Azar is leading an administration task force overseeing the coronavirus response that is composed of top officials from the White House and other agencies. And federal health officials have worked closely with states, even shipping coronavirus test kits to more than 100 state labs on Wednesday, the Post’s Lena H. Sun reports. — “One flight delivered 178 people to Travis Air Force Base outside Sacramento. The other landed there, then went on to Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego, where about 170 people exited. Two more flights are leaving Wuhan and arriving in the United States on Thursday. An additional 195 people who arrived Jan. 28 are quarantined at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, Calif,” our colleagues write. — The House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and Nonproliferation held a “I am concerned by our singling out China for travel bans we are effectively penalizing it for reporting cases,” Nuzzo told lawmakers. “This may diminish its willingness to further share data and chill other nations’ willingness to be transparent about their own outbreaks.” — The agency held a hearing Tuesday on testing for asbestos in talc, which is the first time the issue has been considered since 1971. The meeting was focused on recommended testing standards. Despite denials from Johnson & Johnson, plaintiffs in multiple lawsuits against the company allege it knew its products could cause cancer, The Post previously reported. — Executives of large health-care systems are asking the Trump administration to modify proposed new rules making it easier for patients to access their own health-care data. But the CEOs of more than 60 health systems are arguing the new rules would be overly burdensome for


Why treating the coronavirus like the Black Death is so dangerous

The coronavirus is rapidly spreading from its initial outbreak in Wuhan, China, to other places around the world. The list of countries with reported cases continues to grow and now includes, among others, the United States, France, Germany, Japan, Australia and India. But the coronavirus is only the latest addition to numerous infectious diseases that have caused global panics — a notorious list that includes Zika, SARS and Ebola. It is no surprise that we are frightened of infectious diseases that seem to threaten our lives, or that we are reminded of how plagues wiped out people in the past. But not all infectious diseases work the same way. And panicking that new diseases will unfold like previous ones generates inaccurate history and unnecessary fear in the present, sometimes with serious consequences. The quintessential infectious disease that frames our way of thinking is the medieval Black Death, which devastated Europe from 1346-1351. It killed perhaps half the population — some scholars estimate the number of dead between 75 million and 200 million — and it supposedly caused massive societal changes, including radically improved working conditions and a reshaping of the period’s art and literature. The Black Death was also the beginning of the much longer Second Plague Pandemic, which lasted until the 18th century in Europe and the 19th century in the Middle East. From the turn of the 20th century, the Black Death gradually became the standard model for how we understood the outbreaks of infectious disease leading to the deaths of huge numbers of people. For historians, the public and even schoolchildren around the world, the Black Death symbolizes the enormous potential mortality a pandemic can cause. It also highlights the importance of modern medicine and technology today to prevent a return to the seemingly backward Middle (“Dark”) Ages. But assuming that all infectious diseases potentially have the same outcome as the Black Death would be a mistake. Consider, for example, the history of the Justinianic Plague (c. 541-750), an earlier plague pandemic. For the past few decades, and with increasing frequency since the turn of the 21st century, many scholars interpreted the written sources for this pandemic based on the Black Death model and assumed the Justinianic Plague had similar catastrophic mortality. Estimates over the past few years have suggested that between 15 million and 25 million people died, most in just the first three years of


was no sudden decrease in agricultural activity. These changes should be expected if half the general population — of which probably 90 to 95 percent worked in agriculture — had died of plague. The view that there were massive numbers of deaths from 541 to 750 lacks support. Plague certainly struck the Mediterranean, but it did not seem to affect the lives of most people. These results highlight the danger in assuming that the Justinianic Plague behaved similarly to the Black Death simply because both were caused by the same bacterium. In reality, the bacterium has caused far fewer deaths in other periods of history, and in fact still exists in the wild today, including in the western United States. What has changed is not what plague does, but what we think it does. Since the mid-1990s the media, scientists, the government, the security apparatus and eventually historians began to perpetuate an “outbreak narrative” about pandemic disease typified in popular culture, for example, by the 1995 movie “Outbreak.” Each of these groups had its own reasons — whether generating more stories, fundraising or identifying new national security threats. The result was a feedback loop: Studies emphasized potential dangers from infectious diseases, and it led to more research, preparedness exercises and media attention to infectious diseases, which in turn led to more research funding. We have internalized this cultural narrative to such an extent that we replay it as a script with each new outbreak — whether real or fictional. Once the pathogen’s identity is revealed to the public, a new name will become commonplace. The government will reassure the public that everything is safe (until it isn’t). Dissenters will critique the government for failing to prepare adequately. The media will publicize the identity of the source (almost always foreign), trace the pathogen’s transmission and headline the number of infected and dead. Doctors will heroically risk their lives to fight the disease and cure the pandemic. No one yet knows whether the coronavirus will more closely resemble the Justinianic Plague or the Black Death. Instead of assuming the future effects of an outbreak based on a cherry-picked past precedent (the Black Death), perhaps a better way forward would be to follow the Justinianic Plague example and evaluate each infectious disease based on what it actually does and not what we assume it should do or what we fear it might do.


A Chinese doctor was one of the first to warn about coronavirus. He got detained — and infected.

As word of a mysterious virus mounted, Li Wenliang shared suspicions in a private chat with his fellow medical school graduates. The doctor said that seven people seemed to have contracted SARS — the respiratory illness that spread from China to more than two dozen countries and left hundreds dead in the early 2000s. One patient was quarantined at his hospital in Wuhan, China, Li said. He urged people to be careful. Li and seven other doctors were quickly summoned by Chinese authorities for propagating “rumors” about SARS-like cases in the area — but their warnings were prescient. Soon, health officials worldwide would be scrambling to combat a novel virus with a striking genetic resemblance to SARS. The outbreak in Wuhan has exploded to more than 20,000 confirmed cases just in China. Among the ill: the ophthalmologist who was censured for sounding an early alarm. “The diagnosis is finally confirmed,” Li posted Jan. 31 on the social media platform Weibo. Li’s situation has drawn rare acknowledgment of official missteps in China, where a bureaucratic culture that prioritizes political stability over all else probably allowed the new coronavirus to spread farther and faster. Late last month, China’s highest court admonished the Wuhan police for the detentions. “If society had at the time believed those ‘rumors,’ and wore masks, used disinfectant and avoided going to the wildlife market as if there were a SARS outbreak, perhaps it would’ve meant we could better control the coronavirus today,” the court said. “Rumors end when there is openness.” Li, an ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital, had shared his concerns the same day that Chinese authorities confirmed they were investigating 27 cases of viral pneumonia. Officials at the epicenter in Wuhan — the capital of Hubei province, where millions are now trapped in an unprecedented lockdown — sent an “urgent notice” to all hospitals about the existence of “pneumonia of unclear cause." The notice ordered all departments to immediately compile information about known cases and report them up their chain of command. But it did not mention SARS or a coronavirus. Li had posted a snippet of an RNA analysis finding “SARS coronavirus” and extensive bacteria colonies in a patient’s airways, according to a chat transcript that he and other chat members later shared online. On Jan. 1, the Wuhan Public Security Bureau issued summons to Li and the others accused of fanning rumors. The detentions