Nowadays, Paris is for lovers of beer as well as wine. Check out these locations.

of beer. It hasn’t always been like this: Brasserie, after all, means brewery. When Alsatians founded these palaces of gustatory gratification in the late 19th century, there was often brewing on-site. There still is at Brasserie Georges, which reinstalled a brewery in 2004, but that’s in Lyon. Paris’s mightiest brasseries long ago gave up grain for grape. Beer is flowing in establishments with a young, energetic vibe But things are changing. Breweries and bars are popping up throughout the city. It’s a young, energetic scene, exemplified by the annual Paris Beer Festival (formerly Paris Beer Week). That the name is in English rather than French is telling; much of Paris’s modern beer culture has more than a hint of Anglo-Saxon influence. That said, there’s a definite Gallic edge to places such as La Fine Mousse, an elegant bar and restaurant in the Marais, or breweries such as La Goutte d’Or, which uses ingredients reflecting the rich diversity of the local neighborhood. The heart of this nascent Beervana can be found in northeast Paris, where rents are lower and the population younger. Around the Bassin de la Villette, a half-mile-long artificial lake in the 19th arrondissement, you’ll find Paname Brewing, a brewpub where the New England IPA is called Brexiteer (an example of how the French occasionally conflate “Anglo-Saxon” countries), and L’Atalante, with a huge outdoor terrace that fills up with young Parisians on summer evenings. One of the most interesting breweries is Gallia: Originally founded in 1890, it was reestablished as a brand at the end of 2009. At first, the resurrected brand’s founders, Guillaume Roy and Jacques Ferté, focused on conservative pale lagers — but under head brewer Rémy Maurin, the range has expanded to encompass an impressive variety of flavors and styles. It hasn’t gone unnoticed; in September, Heineken bought a minority share. Most bars in this city are tied to big brands such as Heineken or Kronenbourg. If they start offering customers the likes of Gallia, it’ll be a genuine game-changer. It’s about time. Paris sits on the dividing line between northern Europe, where beer has traditionally held sway, and the wine-drinking south. Only Champagne, of France’s great wine regions, is further north, and it has (or had, until global warming) a fairly marginal grape-growing climate. This is natural beer country; it’s only right that Beaujolais, Bordeaux and the rest make room for la bière artisanale. travel@washpost.com


Hundreds of evacuees to be held on bases in California; Hong Kong and Taiwan restrict travel from mainland China

the evacuees. By: Marisa Iati 5:00 PM: Principal in Mexico told to stay home from school because her son was recently in China MEXICO CITY — Mexico has no confirmed cases of coronavirus. But that doesn’t mean people aren’t panicking. Residents of the town of Tetelpa, in Morelos state, demanded that the principal of a local primary school stay away from work this week because her son had just arrived home from China. The principal, Patricia Coria, went to the Mexico City airport last weekend to pick up her son and his girlfriend, who had been studying in Shanghai but left because of the outbreak, according to news reports. On Tuesday, the school supervisor for the region including Tetelpa, Maria Guadalupe Molina Arias, told parents that the principal had agreed to stay away from Vicente Guerrero primary school for a few days, the news reports said. Marco Antonio Cantú Cuevas, the health secretary of Morelos state, scolded residents for panicking. Their demand “has no scientific foundation, it’s based on fear,” he told reporters. He added that state authorities had been in contact with the couple after their return from Shanghai and were monitoring their health. “They’ve been back for several days, and they haven’t shown any symptoms” of the illness, the official said. Mexico has had several suspected cases of coronavirus, but all have proved to be negative. By: Mary Beth Sheridan 4:15 PM: U.S. plane to evacuate a ‘few dozen’ Canadians in Wuhan WASHINGTON — A U.S. plane will evacuate a “few dozen” Canadians in Wuhan, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said Wednesday. More than 300 Canadians have asked for government assistance to leave the city at the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, but the flight chartered by the Canadian government has room for only 211 of them. The U.S. State Department offered up some of its seats on Wednesday afternoon, Champagne said. The U.S. plane will leave a few hours after the Canadian flight on Thursday. The Canadians aboard the U.S. flight will eventually be taken to a Canadian military base in Trenton, Ontario, where they will be quarantined for 14 days. By: Amanda Coletta 3:15 PM: Wisconsin confirms first coronavirus case WASHINGTON — Wisconsin announced its first coronavirus case, the 12th in the United States, according to the Associated Press. Health officials said the patient is an adult isolated at their home, but have yet to


coronavirus. “China and all of us are running the risk of coronavirus spread. Chinese authorities are taking active and resolute measures to end the epidemic,” he said, adding that relations between Russia and China have reached an unprecedented level. Russia last week identified two coronavirus cases. By: Robyn Dixon 9:05 AM: Airbus closes assembly line in China amid outbreak DUBAI — European aviation company Airbus announced Wednesday it had closed its Tianjin assembly line facility in China due to the outbreak of coronavirus. The Chinese branch of the company is following government regulations that employees work at home, the company statement said, adding that the travel restrictions around the world “are posing some logistical challenges.” It added that it was monitoring the situation and any effects it might have on production, and would attempt to mitigate those “via alternative plans where necessary.” A number of companies have closed their facilities in China, as several areas of the country remain on lockdown in an attempt to stem the spread of the virus. Hyundai, Tesla, Ford, Peugeot, Nissan and Honda are some of the companies that have closed their plants in China. Taiwan’s Foxconn, which makes telephones, has said it is looking to restart its China factories. By: Paul Schemm 8:55 AM: Authorities eye Singapore hotel as potential link to cases outside China SEOUL — A business conference in Singapore has been tied to coronavirus cases in South Korea and Malaysia, prompting a multinational query into transmission of the virus. One Malaysian and two South Korean men have been diagnosed with the virus after attending the international gathering at a Singapore hotel mid-January. Health authorities from the involved countries are now working with the World Health Organization to tackle the case. The WHO said it is aware that the multinational cases “may have epidemiological links,” said the agency’s spokeswoman Olivia Lawe Davis. “However, based on current information, there is not evidence of effective and sustained community transmission.” The 41-year-old Malaysian man is that country’s first citizen to contract the novel coronavirus, Malaysia’s Health Minister Dzulkefly Ahmad told reporters on Tuesday. On Wednesday, South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed infections in two South Korean men in their 30s who attended the Singapore meeting along with the Malaysian man. They had been notified about the Malaysian case after the conference and were subsequently tested for the virus in South Korea. Chinese


to restart its China factories. By: Paul Schemm 8:55 AM: Authorities eye Singapore hotel as potential link to cases outside China SEOUL — A business conference in Singapore has been tied to coronavirus cases in South Korea and Malaysia, prompting a multinational query into transmission of the virus. One Malaysian and two South Korean men have been diagnosed with the virus after attending the international gathering at a Singapore hotel mid-January. Health authorities from the involved countries are now working with the World Health Organization to tackle the case. The WHO said it is aware that the multinational cases “may have epidemiological links,” said the agency’s spokeswoman Olivia Lawe Davis. “However, based on current information, there is not evidence of effective and sustained community transmission.” The 41-year-old Malaysian man is that country’s first citizen to contract the novel coronavirus, Malaysia’s Health Minister Dzulkefly Ahmad told reporters on Tuesday. On Wednesday, South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed infections in two South Korean men in their 30s who attended the Singapore meeting along with the Malaysian man. They had been notified about the Malaysian case after the conference and were subsequently tested for the virus in South Korea. Chinese nationals were also present at the week-long conference at Grand Hyatt Singapore. Davis said more cases of local transmission will probably be detected as more countries are stepping up surveillance. Such recent cases of possible secondary transmissions outside China raise concerns about the human-to-human spread of the virus among those with no travel history to China. Singapore’s health ministry announced its first cases of local transmission on Tuesday. With 24 infection cases reported in total, the city-state is one of the worst affected countries from the virus that originated in China. Since the coronavirus outbreak, Singapore has seen multiple delays in major meetings and exhibitions that would typically attract large numbers of outside visitors. By: Min Joo Kim 8:40 AM: Two flights carrying American evacuees from Wuhan to land in California Wednesday WASHINGTON — Two U.S.-chartered flights carrying hundreds of evacuees from Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, will land at the Travis Air Force Base in California on Wednesday, the Pentagon said in a statement. One of the planes will then refuel and continue to Miramar Marine Corps Air Station. Passengers on board the flights will be held in 14-day quarantine managed by the Centers for Disease Control


nationals were also present at the week-long conference at Grand Hyatt Singapore. Davis said more cases of local transmission will probably be detected as more countries are stepping up surveillance. Such recent cases of possible secondary transmissions outside China raise concerns about the human-to-human spread of the virus among those with no travel history to China. Singapore’s health ministry announced its first cases of local transmission on Tuesday. With 24 infection cases reported in total, the city-state is one of the worst affected countries from the virus that originated in China. Since the coronavirus outbreak, Singapore has seen multiple delays in major meetings and exhibitions that would typically attract large numbers of outside visitors. By: Min Joo Kim 8:40 AM: Two flights carrying American evacuees from Wuhan to land in California Wednesday WASHINGTON — Two U.S.-chartered flights carrying hundreds of evacuees from Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, will land at the Travis Air Force Base in California on Wednesday, the Pentagon said in a statement. One of the planes will then refuel and continue to Miramar Marine Corps Air Station. Passengers on board the flights will be held in 14-day quarantine managed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the statement said. By: Siobhán O’Grady 8:00 AM: Toronto man jokes he had coronavirus on a plane as part of an Internet stunt WASHINGTON — “It certainly wasn’t a smart thing to do,” James Potok, 28, has now acknowledged. The source of his regret? Joking that he may have coronavirus while on a plane Sunday — a stunt that prompted the Jamaica-bound flight to head back to Toronto. Potok, who described himself as an up-and-coming musician and entertainer, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that he insinuated he may have the infection as part of an attempted Internet video stunt. “I said: ‘I just returned from a flight from Hunan province.’ I might have said: ‘This is the capital for coronavirus.’ And then I said: ‘I don’t feel too well.’ And I looked around. I saw the reception of the people. They didn’t seem too happy about it. I don’t blame them. And I stopped recording, and I sat back down in my chair,” Potok told CBC. Potok has now been charged with mischief and breach of recognizance, according to CBC. “Coronavirus is not something to joke about,” he said. “People don’t take it lightly.” By: Miriam Berger 7:37


news release by the city of Salzburg. Authorities also said they were investigating the woman’s movements between her departure from the hospital and arrival at her apartment. The woman had been put under observation after returning from a trip to Asia with respiratory problems, according to the Salzburger Nachrichten newspaper. By: Rick Noack 5:50 AM: South Korea reports new case, man who traveled to Singapore DUBAI — South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported a new case of coronavirus infection on Wednesday, raising the national total to 19 cases. The new case involved a 36-year-old South Korean who attended a conference in Singapore and returned with the virus. Another South Korean who attended the same conference also became infected. There is concern that an increasing number of the cases in South Korea are not originating from contact with China but instead elsewhere in the region, suggesting new nodes from which the virus is spreading. By: Paul Schemm 5:39 AM: Australia reports new case from same Chinese tour group DUBAI — Australia on Wednesday has announced a new case of the coronavirus, a 37-year-old Chinese man from the same tour group that had three other cases of the illness. The man has been put in isolation at Gold Coast University Hospital in Australia’s Queensland state. All four infected members of the group, including a man and woman in their 40s and an 8-year-old boy, are reported to be in stable condition. Five others from the group who have not been diagnosed are still in hospital isolation. The latest announcement brings the number of cases in Australia to 14. By: Paul Schemm 5:02 AM: Coronavirus spread could throw ‘cold water’ over Tokyo 2020 Games YOKOHAMA, Japan — The spread of the new coronavirus could throw “cold water over the growing momentum of the 2020 Games,” a senior member of the Tokyo Organizing Committee for the Olympics and Paralympics said on Wednesday. “I am seriously concerned,” the director general and CEO of the organizing committee Toshiro Muto said at a meeting in the Japanese capital, according to Reuters. “I hope this will be resolved as soon as possible.” On Monday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed to work with the World Health Organization to ensure that Tokyo’s Olympic Games are not disrupted by the outbreak of coronavirus, and said work was already underway to design testing kits for the virus. Experts say there is


U.S. anti-doping chief urges Congress to tackle Russian doping: ‘We want it real, not rigged’

process and the lenient sanctions Russia’s Olympic officials have faced for the state-sponsored doping scheme that has roiled international sports the past several years. He called it “Groundhog’s Day for clean athletes.” “We need to be honest with ourselves. How many more athletes will we allow to be taken advantage of by state-sponsored doping systems?” he asked the committee. “How many more podium moments stolen from athletes like U.S. Olympians Alysia Montaño, Katie Uhlaender and Adam Nelson? How many more medals will be handed over years after a competition before we finally accept the responsibility to ensure clean sport and fair competition?” Tygart urged the Senate to act soon on the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act, a sweeping proposal that would penalize those who conspire to taint international athletic competitions. The bill, named after the Moscow lab director who blew the whistle on the doping scandal, already has passed the House. While WADA officials have expressed concerns about the scope of the legislation, Tygart says he’s hopeful the Senate passes the bill before the Tokyo Olympics. “We all now have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fix the global anti-doping system,” Tygart said. “We host the L.A. Olympic Games in 2028, and we want it real, not rigged.” The committee was also urged to act on the Empowering Olympic and Amateur Athletes Act of 2019, a bill aimed at improving the health and safety provided to Olympic athletes. Ju’Riese Colón, the chief executive of the U.S. Center for SafeSport, the nonprofit charged with monitoring and investigating abuse in sports, told the lawmakers that three years since Congress created the organization, it has received nearly 5,000 reports of misconduct, including more than 2,700 in 2019 alone. It’s sanctioned 627 people, Colón said. The organization has struggled to keep up with the complaints, she said, which now amount to more than 200 reports each month — a 500 percent increase in less than three years. SafeSport is looking to more than double its staffing in 2021 to 112 employees. But it needs more funding, Colón said. About $11.5 million of its $18.2 million budget for 2020 comes from the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. The legislation would require the USOPC to provide $20 million annually to SafeSport. The bill does not allocate any federal funds or explore where the USOPC, which does not receive federal dollars, should find the extra money. “This should be passed swiftly,”


National Symphony Orchestra considers the one and the many in program of Grieg, Dvorak and Nielsen

Nationalism and its consequences were on the bill for the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center on Thursday night: three works, by three heroes of their respective homelands — Edvard Grieg, Antonin Dvorak and Carl Nielsen — spanning the era from nationalism’s late-19th-century apotheosis to its early-20th-century implosion. The performance, though, offered even more localized politics: negotiations between top-down leadership and individual initiative. On the podium was English conductor Edward Gardner, making his third appearance with the NSO. The past couple of NSO guest conductors had no qualms about micromanaging. Gardner was more hands-off, vigorously showing the beat, mood and contour of a passage, then letting the musicians connect the dots. The result was vivid playing and intimate phrasing but also some wonky balances and hazy entrances. Both sides were apparent in the opener, Grieg’s “Lyric Suite,” daubs of Norwegian color orchestrated from his 1891 piano collection. The effect was like a designer scarf tossed over the shoulder — stylish charm but casual ensemble. Dvorak’s 1895 Cello Concerto traditionally has been interpreted as a longing for his Czech home. The last piece composed during his three-year stay in the United States, it seems to make the distance between soloist and orchestra more acute, a quality that cellist Nicolas Altstaedt, making his NSO debut, further emphasized. His playing elevated every opportunity for lyricism. The concerto became a dramatic push-pull, the orchestra launching ideas in extroverted fashion, Altstaedt refashioning them as interior monologue. It played down the work’s more obvious virtuosity; Altstaedt’s soft passages often seemed to project farther into the hall than his loud ones. But his superb skill at singing tones and eloquent disquisition won out. The close, Altstaedt picking up concertmaster Nurit Bar-Josef’s line and reducing it to stillness, was exquisite. Gardner had tightened up his approach a bit in the Dvorak (literally — you could see the hinges of his elbows stiffen up slightly). In Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4, “The Inextinguishable,” that tightness seemed to undulate, sometimes to fascinating effect. Composed against the backdrop of the World War I, the work is an extraordinary document, a self-proclaimed celebration of music as a life force nevertheless heavily marked by violence, its Danish folk influence both obvious and subsumed. Sections of looser coordination allowed the solo lines to emerge with individual personality — the principal winds providing especially concise character touches — but left the whole with a


The Energy 202: Trump backs down from building nuclear waste site in Nevada

Nevada officials have argued seismic rumblings near the site make it unsuitable for storing waste that needs to be underground for tens of thousands of years. No elected official did more to stymie it than Harry M. Reid. In 2010, the former Senate Democratic leader leveraged his powerful position to get the Obama administration to take Yucca funding out of its budget request. The retired Nevada senator is happy to see Trump do the same thing. “I’m glad he has finally seen the light,” Reid tweeted. Cautious praise came in too from Nevada’s current senators, Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, as well as Gov. Steve Sisolak. All three are Democrats. Trump’s shift comes at a time when Republicans are pushing to build the next generation of nuclear power plants amid a growing effort within GOP ranks to address climate change, even though there is no permanent spot to store the long-lasting waste from today’s nuclear stations. Nuclear power currently produces more than half the nation’s carbon-free electricity. In Trump’s early funding proposals, the Office of Management and Budget had sought to gut funding for restoration programs for the Great Lakes and Florida Everglades. But last year, amid pressure from Midwestern and Florida Republicans, Trump changed course and decided to support funding both programs. “I support the Great Lakes,” Trump said at a rally last year in Grand Rapids, Mich., a state encircled by lakes Michigan, Huron and Erie that he carried by just 0.3 percent in 2016. “Always have. They’re beautiful. They’re big. Very deep. Record deep.” You are reading The Energy 202 , our must-read tipsheet on energy and the environment. — Giant pesticide manufacturer to stop making controversial chemical: — Approval given to developing Utah lands: Trump’s Interior Department greenlighted plans Thursday to allow for drilling, mining and grazing in what was previously Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, both protected national monuments, The Post’s Sarah Kaplan and Juliet Eilperin report. Officials said the new plans balance economic interests with protecting natural and cultural sites, but environmentalists and tribal groups say its disrespectful of the area’s biodiversity and significance to Native Americans. — Trump EPA appointee who was ousted faults friendliness with Democrats: — New report reveals refineries spewed toxin: — Joe Biden snags endorsement from electrical workers: — Not-so-sweet news: — Figuring out what to do with wire hangers is a high-wire act: Coming up: — W


The virus that shook China’s system

EIGHT CHINESE doctors expressed concern about a new sickness in Wuhan in December and were reprimanded for spreading rumors. One of them, Li Wenliang, died on Friday of what has now been identified as a novel coronavirus, and he quickly became a powerful online symbol of speaking truth to power. Mr. Li’s heroism is undeniable. The larger story is how this fast-moving epidemic is severely testing China’s authoritarian system, which is showing signs of strain. Dr. Li, a 34-year-old ophthalmologist at the Central Hospital of Wuhan, was reprimanded by the police after he shared concerns about seven new cases of pneumonia in an online chat group on Dec. 30. At the time, the Wuhan health commission was telling hospitals not to say anything publicly and just report the cases internally. The police accused the eight doctors of rumor-mongering. They compelled Dr. Li to sign a statement answering the questions “Can you stop your illegal behavior?” and “Do you understand you’ll be punished if you don’t stop such behavior?” He wrote, “I can” and “I understand,” and put his red-inked thumbprint on them. In a strictly totalitarian system, that might have been the last word. But it was not. China is an authoritarian, one-party state that can easily silence dissidents one by one, but there are limits to its control, especially when millions of people on social media grow angry — as they have over Dr. Li’s death and the government’s failure to inform the public in the early stage of the epidemic. Aside from the biomedical issues and lockdown sacrifices, the public has zeroed in on the unexplained information gaps and coverups. This is extremely sensitive for a leadership that rigidly polices information. According to Li Yuan of the New York Times, the hashtag #WeWantFreedomOfSpeech# was created on China’s social media platform Weibo at 2 a.m. on Friday, and had more than 2 million views and over 5,500 posts by 7 a.m. before it was deleted by censors. Another hashtag, “The Wuhan government owes Li Wenliang an apology,” was viewed 180 million times by late Thursday before it was blocked by government censors, the Financial Times reported. This is not the first crisis of the digital age to expose popular fury in China: The Sichuan earthquake and contaminated dairy products scandal of 2008 and the Zhejiang train disaster of 2011 all did the same. China’s leaders have grown more proficient


The Health 202: Washington is at war over block granting Medicaid

the Philippines. Dozens more people tested positive for the coronavirus on the quarantined Carnival’s Diamond Princess cruise ship, anchored in Japan’s Yokohama harbor. The total now is more than 60 infected passengers. Struggling with the outbreak aboard the vessel, Japan declined to let passengers on the cruise ship Westerdam sailing from Hong Kong disembark in the port, Simon writes. — After evacuating Wuhan at the start of the epidemic, 195 people were flown to the March Air Reserve Base What have they been up to while quarantined? “Many in the March Air Reserve group have started offering classes in their areas of expertise: boxing classes led by a boxing enthusiast, “ our colleagues write. “A seminar on preparing income taxes by an accountant. Zumba classes from a workout fiend. McCoy, who worked as a theme park designer in China, has experience drawing murals. So he’s planning a class for children on how to doodle with chalk using the barracks’s sidewalk as their canvas.” — The Department of Defense announced Thursday it will provide 11 military installations to house 20 quarantined travelers each near airports if the additional capacity is needed, our colleague Marisa Iati — — Chinese citizens are accustomed to strict censorship, but the epidemic has put the government's censors and security forces on the defensive, “Citizen bloggers, dissidents and gadflies who post criticism or negative news of the government are being spared tough punishment that authorities might have otherwise meted out in ordinary times,” Gerry writes. “Meanwhile, the country’s dwindling ranks of independent-minded journalists are also enjoying an unusual level of freedom to aggressively report in the outbreak’s epicenter — at least for now.” “The basic narrative that Chinese journalism is dead was accepted as fact before this outbreak,” Yuan Zeng, who studies media in China at the University of Leeds, told Gerry. “But it’s been surprising to see the space allowed for this wave of investigative reporting.” — The coronavirus is weighing on China's economy. Yet the country announced it would halve tariffs on $75 billion of U.S. goods, moving forward in its promise to quell a protracted trade conflict with the United States, “The widely expected move comes as China is paralyzed by the coronavirus,” Taylor writes, adding that it has “brought China’s powerful manufacturing industry to a standstill as travel restrictions freeze the country’s workforce and major companies such as Boeing, Apple and Nike have


The Finance 202: Senate Republicans have sunk Trump’s last four Federal Reserve choices. But Judy Shelton is far from a lock.

firm said it found no evidence Mr. Thiam knew about the surveillance.” — More problems arise for 737 Max's return: “Flight testers discovered another flaw in the software of Boeing Co’s grounded 737 MAX, the plane that suffered two fatal crashes, though the company and the top U.S. aviation regulator said ... the issue most likely could be fixed without extending the target date for the plane’s return to service,” Reuters’s Alistair Smout and David Shepardson report. “U.S. Federal Aviation Administrator Steve Dickson mentioned the new flaw at an airline industry event in London, but said he did not think it ‘will be a significant delay’ in the aircraft’s return.” — It's 2020 and women lead just 6 percent of top companies: “Why, when women earn the majority of college degrees and make up roughly half the workforce, do so few occupy the chief executive job? Women today lead 167 of the country’s top 3,000 companies. That’s more than double the share a decade ago, but still under 6%,” the Wall Street Journal’s Vanessa Fuhrmans reports. “For many, the barrier isn’t only a glass ceiling at the very top, but also an invisible wall that sidelines them from the kinds of roles that have been traditional stepping stones to the CEO position. A Wall Street Journal study of executives at the top companies, the biggest publicly traded firms by market value, shows that men on the way up overwhelmingly get the management jobs in which a company’s profits and losses hang in the balance. So-called line roles with profit-and-loss, or P&L, responsibilities, such as heading a division, unit or brand, are what set executives on the CEO track.” — Musk plans IPO for Starlink: “Elon Musk’s SpaceX plans to list its space internet venture, Starlink, but not for several years, a company official told Reuters on Thursday,” Joey Roulette and Ayanti Bera report. “The plan comes as Jeff Bezos’ e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. prepares to build its own internet network of over 3,000 satellites in low-Earth orbit through its Project Kuiper. SpaceX has been launching Starlink satellites in batches of 60 since May and currently has 240 orbiting Earth. The company aims to make the broadband internet service operational by the end of 2020.” — Elliot builds stake in SoftBank: “Elliott Management Corp. has quietly built up a more than $2.5 billion stake in Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. 9984 3.28


After Brexit, Britain faces a cold, shrunken reality

Want smart analysis of the most important news in your inbox every weekday, along with other global reads, interesting ideas and opinions? Britain finally quit the European Union a week ago in a display of symbolic pomp Prime Minister Boris Johnson keeps trying to cloak himself in Churchillian optimism, declaring Monday that post-Brexit Britain was, among other metaphors, a butterfly “leaving its chrysalis,” flapping its way to new prominence on the world stage. He both extolled his nation’s reclamation of sovereignty from the European Union’s vast regime of rules and regulations and, at the same time, celebrated Britain’s embrace of global free trade — just days after he had withdrawn his country from the world’s most important and integrated bloc of free-trading states. That bravura belies the wishful thinking that has coursed through the Brexit movement from its initial inception. “Leave” campaigners, including Johnson, offered rhapsodic visions of unleashed Britain’s return to worldwide primacy. But in the weeks and months ahead, it has to reckon with some cold realities: The actual process of splitting from Europe is far from over, and Britain will probably find itself reminded, repeatedly, of its diminished standing in the world after cutting itself adrift from the continent. Moreover, the anger in Northern Ireland and Scotland over Brexit may mean that, in leaving one union, Johnson and his allies laid the groundwork for the dissolution of another. “Brexit belongs to this era in one quintessential way,” explained New York Times columnist Roger Cohen. “It is an act of the imagination, inspired by an imaginary past, carried along by misdirected grievances, borne aloft by an imaginary future.” Over an 11-month transition period, Johnson’s government still has to negotiate the terms of Britain’s new relationship with Brussels, It’s a fraught process few experts believe can be substantively settled in the given time frame. European officials would like to secure a pact that keeps Britain closely in line with existing frameworks and ensures a level competitive playing field. But this week, Johnson took a hard line, saying he’d take an arrangement with Europe that involved tariffs between the two sides over a deal that leaves Britain subject to E.U. regulations and oversight from European courts. That’s in keeping with the ideological convictions of some of the pro-Brexit crowd, including members of Johnson’s cabinet who want to convert Britain into a low-tax, deregulated “Singapore on the Thames.” The impasse spells


The Daily 202: Pete Buttigieg is emerging as a unity candidate in New Hampshire – with a bounce from Iowa

oil bust left thousands of abandoned wells behind, and there’s not enough money for a cleanup. -- Someone filled an Indian town’s well with alcohol, and now beer is pouring out of people’s taps. DOMESTIC DEVELOPMENTS THAT SHOULDN'T BE OVERSHADOWED: -- Bumblebee populations in North America and Europe have plummeted as a result of extreme temperatures. “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. … 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. … Unlike many other insects, bumblebees are especially sensitive to temperature. Their large, hair-covered bodies give them an ability to internally heat up by flapping their wings at different speeds. But that also makes them vulnerable in hot weather.” -- Another red flag: -- Trump will auction the right to drill and graze in areas of southern Utah that were previously protected as two national monuments. -- Trump kept a controversial pesticide on the market. Now its biggest manufacturer is discontinuing it. -- “The U.S. economy added 225,000 jobs in January, a surprising sign of continued strength for the economy -- GOP senators are facing a new loyalty test: Whether to approve Trump’s controversial Federal Reserve nominee Judy Shelton. -- The House passed a bill to rewrite labor laws and strengthen unions. -- Virginia will probably become the first Southern state to ban LGBT discrimination. -- Trump is ramping up border-wall construction ahead of the 2020 election. “Nearly all of the new fencing the Trump administration has built so far is considered ‘replacement’ fencing, swapping out smaller, older vehicle barriers for a more elaborate — and costly — ‘border wall system.’ -- Patrick


Inside the heart of the U.S. effort to evacuate Americans from China

747s that had just lifted off from the Wuhan airport. The room erupted in whoops and applause from more than a dozen government specialists who had been tensely awaiting that precise moment. Then they quickly pivoted to tracking the progress of the second aircraft. All passengers aboard. Doors closed. Taxiing. Then, at 7:18 p.m., another jubilant “Wheels up.” Some Americans stranded in Wuhan have criticized the U.S. response, saying they found it difficult to sign up for the flights or learn when the next one would leave. Others complained about the approximately $1,000 they have to pay for each seat, saying the price is prohibitively expensive for families. Once back in the United States, many will face 14 days of quarantine on a military base before they can go home. The flights that left Thursday night were the last of several evacuations carried out in the past week. One chartered plane carrying more than 200 passengers back to the United States arrived last weekend, and two more planes with 350 passengers arrived Wednesday. State Department officials say there may be more in the future, though none are scheduled at the moment. Steve Biegun, deputy secretary of state, is a member of the interagency Coronavirus Task Force that is leading the U.S. response to the outbreak. A visit to the State Department room, down the hallway from the offices of Biegun and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, offered a glimpse of the undertaking’s complexity. The room is the size of a small conference room. At times, as many as 20 officials have been there at work. The walls are covered with whiteboards and maps of China, including one showing concentric circles radiating out from Wuhan. A large screen filling a wall at one end of the room alternates between news alerts on the coronavirus to flight-tracking maps. A table covered with potato chips, doughnuts, Twizzlers, rice cakes, cookies, popcorn and nuts has contributed to what the workers call the “Ops 15,” referring to the number of pounds some of them stand to gain working there. Some of those seated around the conference table that takes up more than half the room’s square footage cross-checked passenger manifests with consular officers from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and consulates elsewhere in China, recruited to help after the U.S. Consulate in Wuhan was evacuated. Several members of the State Department’s operational medicine staff, a


In the U.S. embargo on Venezuelan oil, Russia is a clear winner

representing themselves as senior members of Russian intelligence — Oleg Antonov, 50, and Tsvetan Kirilov, 40 — held a meeting in a mid-rise building in central Caracas. Several executives from Venezuela’s oil and other industrial sectors were present, according to four people who said they had direct knowledge of the event. Trump administration sanctions, the Russians argued, had largely targeted the state-owned oil firm. So they pitched a way around them, with oil exploration and export deals conducted through joint ventures between Russian companies and private Venezuelan entrepreneurs. Such arrangements, the two men suggested, could exploit a loophole that would make it easier to sell Venezuelan crude to leery foreign buyers. Under a deal struck between Chávez and the Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Venezuela provides free and heavily discounted oil to the communist island, which keeps some and sells the rest. The Trump administration, which accuses Cuba of running Venezuela’s repressive intelligence service, has been studying the possibility of a limited naval blockade to prevent the shipments, and it has blacklisted several ships and maritime companies based in countries such as Cyprus and Panama. The Russians, the people with knowledge of the meeting said, floated the idea of flying Russian flags on tankers leaving Venezuela’s ports, essentially daring the United States to interfere. They also discussed the possibility of expanding cooperation in gold and other commodities mined in Venezuela’s mineral-rich south. U.S. sanctions block Venezuela’s government and specific individuals close to it from using the U.S. financial system or conducting transactions in U.S. dollars, measures that have led many European banks to stay away rather than complicate their relations with the United States. But the Russians discussed expanding a system already employed by the Maduro government to sidestep U.S. sanctions: the use of Russian banks to store cash and make international transactions on Venezuela’s behalf. “The Russians were talking about everything, about more business, about how to get around U.S. sanctions,” said one person with direct knowledge of the meeting. Asked about the reported meeting and the Russian individuals, the CIA declined to comment. Russia’s Federal Security Service, the alleged employer of the two visitors, did not respond to a request for comment. Putin has long criticized U.S. sanctions against Russia and other countries, and he has suggested that other currencies be used to replace the dollar as international tender. The Russians are expanding their stakes in Venezuela in other


Maryland counties face pressure to cut ties with ICE

at issue in Maryland is a program called 287(g), in which ICE trains local police in federal immigration law so county jails can screen inmates for immigration violations. Frederick, Harford and Cecil counties participate in that program. In 2018, immigration advocates were heartened when Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman ended the county’s participation in the 287(g) program in one of his first moves in office. Later, ICE canceled its contract at the county jail. Activists are continuing to press Howard County Executive Calvin Ball, a Democrat elected in 2018, over his county’s jail contract. They had hoped Ball, who sponsored a “sanctuary” bill as a councilman, would be open to ending the deal. The county administration has not signaled that it plans to. Ball was unavailable for an interview, a spokesman said. In Columbia last week, a group of protesters gathered with signs as Ball spoke at a Holocaust remembrance event. “Ball sells out immigrants for $14+ million,” one sign read, referring to the amount the county has received through the contract since 2013. “Howard County Profits from Jailing the ‘Other,’ ” read another. Opponents of the contract say it’s wrong for the county to receive money from ICE. The jail agreement, which dates to 1995 and has been amended over time, generated about $2.6 million last fiscal year, according to the Howard County corrections department. The county gets a daily rate of $110 per ICE inmate. At a council meeting in January, council member Liz Walsh, a Democrat, said she was concerned the county is “profiteering off of this program.” ICE inmates stay an average of 90 days, though there are outliers, Kavanagh told the council. The daily ICE population at the county jail fluctuates, but the average is more than 80 people. “Working with and benefiting financially from working with an organization like [ICE] is just unethical as far as I’m concerned,” said Columbia Jewish Congregation Rabbi Sonya Starr, who has taken part in protests, including a 2019 gathering outside the Jessup center on Tisha B’Av, a Jewish day of mourning. “It’s immoral.” In a statement to the Baltimore Sun, ICE officials said that both the jail contracts and the 287(g) programs “are essential elements in our cooperative efforts” to protect public safety. Baltimore Field Office Director Diane L. Witte said 287(g) helps prevent criminals from reoffending in the community, while the jail agreements help ensure detainees


Former top Olympics doctor sues, claims he was fired for standing up for athletes

maintaining medical charts. But these complaints, the lawsuit alleged, were just the latest examples of Moreau raising concerns about athlete care that USOPC officials either ignored or failed to respond to aggressively. "The time has come to shine a light on the USOC’s long practice of prioritizing medals and money over the rights and wellbeing of athletes and retaliating against the people who object to improper or illegal practices,” Moreau said in a news release. During the 2012 Summer Games in London, the lawsuit claims, Moreau raised concerns about Larry Nassar, then the physician for the U.S. women’s gymnasts, who routinely treated his patients outside the USOPC medical area. But the lawsuit does not claim that Moreau’s complaint was ignored, and it leaves out context from an independent investigation of the USOPC’s role in Nassar’s rampant abuse of young gymnasts. That investigation, by the law firm Ropes & Gray, found that Moreau later visited the area where Nassar was treating gymnasts and, the report stated, “concluded that there was no reason to believe the treatment setting was unsafe or inappropriate.” Nassar continued to treat Olympic athletes, as well as other girls and women, until his arrest in 2016, and he was convicted of charges including molesting several children and possession of child pornography. Later in his career, however, Moreau raised concerns that he did not feel his colleagues and superiors appreciated or handled properly. In the spring of 2018, the lawsuit alleges, Moreau informed his superiors that he believed a 15-year-old Paralympic athlete had been the victim of statutory rape by a 20-year-old male athlete at an event in Iowa. USOPC officials waited three days to inform local law enforcement, the lawsuit alleges. In January 2019, according to the complaint, Moreau raised concerns about a USOPC adult male strength and conditioning coach who had been seen naked in a public sauna by a female employee at the organization’s training center in Colorado Springs while Team USA’s under-18 female gymnasts were also training at the facility. While Moreau thought the coach should have been fired, USOPC officials only gave him a verbal reprimand, the lawsuit alleged. And in March 2019, according to the lawsuit, Moreau raised concerns about an unnamed Olympic athlete who had attempted to commit suicide. USOPC officials failed to aggressively intervene and provide mental health counseling, the lawsuit alleges, and the unnamed athlete committed suicide several days later.


Another 41 people test positive for coronavirus on quarantined cruise ship in Japan, health minister says

China have been directed to land because of the coronavirus outbreak. As many as 20 people could stay at each installation during their mandatory 14-day quarantine, DOD said in a statement. HHS will bring any evacuee who is ill to a civilian hospital and ensure they do not go to a DOD facility. The Defense Department also plans to provide office space for HHS employees through Feb. 22. Here are the chosen military installations with their corresponding airports. By: Marisa Iati 4:30 PM: Scientists seek a new name for the new coronavirus WASHINGTON — Scientists are wrestling with the sticky question of what to call the novel coronavirus. Right now, it is officially “2019 nCoV,” which is inelegant at best and does little to describe either the virus or the resulting disease in humans. But the virus could acquire a new, more easily communicated name in the coming days. It could be a variant of an existing name, SARS, which stands for severe acute respiratory syndrome, according to two scientists involved in the decision. The SARS virus emerged in southern China in 2002 and killed more than 700 people before it was contained. The new virus is genetically similar. Both are coronaviruses of the type found in bats. “They likely had a common ancestor in the bat population,” said Stanley Perlman, a virologist at the University of Iowa who is part of the Coronavirus Study Group, a subset of the International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses. “It’s like a cousin. They probably started from a common ancestor some years ago in bats, and they mutated and evolved, and that’s what you have now,” he said. He said the committee favors including SARS in the name of the new virus. “It’s close to SARS. But it’s not SARS. You could say a SARS-like virus, slash Wuhan, slash 2019,” he said. “From a taxonomic point of view, it’s so related to the previous virus, it needs to be included in its name.” Of the roughly 30,000 nucleotides (or “letters”) in the virus genome, about 6,400 are different, according to Benjamin Neuman, a virologist at Texas A&M at Texarkana who is also in the Coronavirus Study Group. By: Joel Achenbach 3:20 PM: Japan’s Abe tells parliament that the Olympic Games will go on as planned despite the coronavirus WASHINGTON — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told lawmakers that there was no discussion


service at the Ministry of Transport, told a news conference Thursday. “We are working to come up with targeted solutions, to resolutely prevent the epidemic from spreading on public transport, and to reduce the imported risks brought by passenger arrivals.” The measures include compulsory temperature checks, strengthened disinfection, better ventilation and higher hygiene standards in both vehicles and terminals. Those showing symptoms of fever will be immediately handed over to health departments, he said. China Railway will ensure an occupation rate of no more than 50 percent on trains, while civil aviation authorities have asked airlines to reserve a “quarantine zone” on the plane and seat passengers as apart as possible. Cai said local governments are prohibited from shutting down expressways or blocking artery highways without permission. He also urged provinces and cities, Hubei excluded, to make plans about resuming intercity buses, taxis and other public transport. “More importantly, I would love to remind every citizen and every passenger to wear a face mask whenever you take the public transportation. It is for protecting yourself as well as for protecting other people,” Cai said. The Lunar New Year produces the largest human migration on Earth, with billions of trips made in a 40-day holiday period. This year, the spread of the coronavirus epidemic has forced many to cancel their trips and postponed business and school openings. As of Wednesday, road and train trips had decreased by at least a third from last year’s levels. Since Jan. 29, train and road trips fell to around 13 million a day, down 70 percent from the same period last year, while airlines reported an average 45 percent occupation rate, half of last year’s level. By: Lyric Li 6:50 AM: Fearing another cruise liner crisis, Japan says ‘no thanks’ to new ship coming from Hong Kong TOKYO — In a bid to head off another cruise liner crisis, Japan announced Thursday that foreign passengers on board the cruise ship Westerdam sailing from Hong Kong would not be allowed to disembark in Japan. There are already nearly 3,700 passengers and crew sitting in quarantine on board the Diamond Princess cruise liner in the port of Yokohama, with 20 people testing positive for the virus on board the ship and taken to local hospitals. Another 171 are still waiting for their test results. With the Westerdam approaching Japan from Hong Kong, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe


How cruise ships are handling mass onboard quarantines as the new coronavirus spreads

not allowed to visit St. Lucia in the Caribbean last weekend because some people on board had upper respiratory infections, Fox News reported. Putting an entire cruise ship in quarantine might sound “a little bit extreme,” says Paola Lichtenberger, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. But, she said, authorities are taking “desperate measures to contain the disease.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spells out “a unique combination of health concerns” for cruise passengers, who congregate in relatively small spaces for dining, entertainment, recreation and other activities. “Travelers from diverse regions brought together in the often crowded, semi-enclosed environments onboard ships can facilitate the spread of person-to-person, foodborne, or waterborne diseases,” the agency says. “Outbreaks on ships can be sustained for multiple voyages by transmission among crew members who remain onboard or by persistent environmental contamination.” While the cruise industry group points to its health screening processes, frequent cleaning, inspections and onboard medical facilities as steps to keep passengers and crew healthy, experts say it is still difficult to keep highly contagious illnesses from spreading. “On a ship, look, you’re in a small town and everybody’s in, what, a half mile of each other?” says Gary Simon, the director of the Division of Infectious Diseases and a professor of medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. (The largest ships are less than a quarter of a mile long, although they have more than a dozen decks.) “These are big ships, I know. But people are in very close contact with one another, and unless you’re going to stay in your room the whole time, there’s going to be some degree of exposure.” Several times a year, well-publicized outbreaks of stomach illnesses on ships prompt new waves of people to swear they’d never be caught on cruises. Last year, there were 10 such incidents, but the percentage of passengers on board who become sick is often relatively low. The CDC — which publicizes information about certain outbreaks of gastrointestinal illnesses — points out that even though health-care facilities, restaurants and schools are other common settings for norovirus, the illness is commonly known as the “cruise ship virus.” But the agency points out that respiratory illnesses are the most common medical complaint on cruise ships and that influenza is the most commonly reported vaccine-preventable illness on cruise ships. Many unknowns


In combating coronavirus, slamming the door to China will hurt more than help

there is nothing sunny about its emergence as a respiratory disease that can harm and kill human beings. This is important to understand in order to consider the proper response. For healthy people, the body’s immune system is a critical first line of defense. There are others, such as isolating the infected, hand-washing, masks, protective gear and quarantine. And once infection has set in, it is important to treat patients and help them recover. Physical isolation, rapid diagnostics of suspected cases and monitoring of others can be vital tools. These depend on early detection and information sharing, a lesson reinforced over and over again in previous outbreaks. China’s draconian lockdown of Wuhan and other cities was an attempt to physically contain the outbreak, a worthy goal that may have been compromised by the secrecy and paranoia of China’s own leaders, who did not share information with the population. If the new coronavirus remains largely in China, then the cordon may have helped. But there is a serious possibility the virus will spread. The tiny particles are opportunists. They know no roads, no rivers nor fences; they recognize no national flags. The new coronavirus may become a global pathogen, as is influenza today. That’s why physical measures such as limits on travel and trade, which the United States and others are now imposing on China, can become problematic. All the lessons of the 2014 Ebola epidemic were that such restrictions further harmed an already suffering region. The World Health Organization’s 2005 International Health Regulations, which cover 194 countries including the United States, call for rapid response to the outbreak at the source as the most effective way to fight an outbreak, and to “minimize unnecessary restrictions to travel and trade.” Perhaps it is human nature to want to slam the door, but those who have been through this before wisely counsel that shutting down air routes and disrupting trade for a prolonged period will hurt more than it will help. Supply chains that are critical to the global economy, involving autos, technology and even the surgical face masks so ubiquitous in recent weeks, emanate from China and are vital to everyone else. We must move on from fear to the immense practical needs of coping with the new coronavirus if it becomes a global pandemic. Surveillance, diagnostics and improving capacity in health-care systems, as well as new therapies, are practical priorities.


Possible software issue forces NASA to cancel Boeing Starliner’s attempt to dock with space station

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Boeing, still reeling from the crashes of two passenger jets that killed 346 people and led to the worldwide grounding of its most popular aircraft, suffered another major setback Friday when the craft it is designing to fly NASA astronauts to space failed to achieve the correct orbit, forcing the cancellation of its planned mission to the International Space Station. Officials said they were investigating what caused the Starliner capsule’s main engine not to fire as scheduled to push it onto a path to rendezvous with the space station. But suspicion immediately fell on the capsule’s software, which was directing the spacecraft’s operations after launch. No one was aboard the spacecraft and no one was hurt, but the problem reignited questions about Boeing’s procedures as NASA seeks to restore human spaceflight from U.S. soil. No American has flown into space from the United States since the space shuttle fleet was retired in 2011. Boeing spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in an email to The Washington Post that there is “no direct comparison” between the Starliner’s failure on Friday and the two deadly crashes of 737 Max airliners, which were blamed on a software program called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS. Spaceflight software development “utilizes different approaches and people due to the unique mission demands and conditions,” Johndroe said. But questions are sure to arise around whether Boeing’s divisions might share approaches to design, testing and evaluation that could result in shared problems with software, said Todd Curtis, an aviation safety analyst for the website AirSafe.com and a former Boeing engineer. “Although they are different divisions, they are the same company, and they are in these spaces where assets from one part of the company can be used in a completely different part of the company,” Curtis said. He recalled that during his time in the commercial plane division, he was sometimes called on to help out with issues in the military aviation division. “They can be working off shared documentation, shared procedures, or shared staff, or other shared resources used in different parts of the company,” he said. “Even though this is a space story today, 737 Max’s problems are in the back of people’s minds.” Loren Thompson, a defense analyst who works with Boeing as well as some of its competitors, suggested Boeing’s problems with the 737 Max would inevitably affect Boeing’s other businesses.


Boeing spacecraft lands safely in New Mexico desert, a successful end to a flawed test mission

they have recovered the spacecraft, they will investigate what went wrong and why. Chilton said Sunday that the timer was significantly off — an 11-hour discrepancy between what the spacecraft’s internal clock was reading and what the actual time was. He did not say what could account for such a big difference. A Boeing spokesman said the company is still “diving into the data” to figure out what went wrong. “Make no mistake, this did not go according to plan in every way that we would have hoped,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said at the news conference. But he added that the mission still achieved a number of key objectives, including the landing, which he said was “an absolute bull's eye. … Overall we learned a lot, but there’s a lot more learning left to do." NASA is relying on Boeing and SpaceX to design and build spacecraft capable of flying its astronauts to the space station. Before they undertake missions with NASA astronauts on board, both companies are to fly uncrewed missions to test how their capsules operate in space. SpaceX completed a successful flight without astronauts on board in March. But a month later its Dragon spacecraft exploded during a test firing of its emergency abort system engines. The company says it has since fixed that problem and is hoping to perform a test of the abort system in-flight next month. Boeing’s mission got off to a good start, when Starliner launched successfully early Friday morning on an Atlas V rocket, operated by the United Launch Alliance, from Cape Canaveral on Florida’s Space Coast. But when the spacecraft was released, a problem with its timing system caused the engines not to fire as expected. That put the spacecraft in the wrong orbit, where it was between communications satellites. Because it was in the wrong location, its antennae were unable to receive commands from the ground to correct the error, Chilton said. As the spacecraft struggled to put itself on the correct flight path, it fired a series of thrusters that burned up fuel, and NASA and Boeing decided that the spacecraft should not attempt to dock with the station. Starliner had been scheduled to spend about a week attached to the space station but instead was forced to come home early. Early Sunday morning, Starliner fired its engines once again, this time to slow it down to reenter


Californians can now get earthquake early warnings on their phones. Here’s how the alerts work.

team have consulted emergency managers and social scientists in developing such a tone. Initially they had hoped to use the same “bling, bling, bling” cadence used in Japan and Chile, but the focus has since shifted to creating a U.S.-specific tone. “We’re working with a sound engineer now.” Other earthquake-prone nations have developed similar systems for earthquake detection and early warning; some have been in use for more than a decade. In Japan, an alert box pops up automatically on television, with two iterations of a designated tone followed by “this is an earthquake early warning.” Newscasters immediately switch into earthquake mode, relaying vital information on intensity and additional threats. If a tsunami alert is issued, that follows. Some televisions are even equipped with the technology to turn on automatically and tune to NHK News, Japan’s public news channel. Mexico’s seismic alert system, or SASMEX, relies on a similar network of sensors. Processing and dissemination of alerts in Mexico is also faster than in the U.S., with the alerts broadcast less than two seconds after preliminary data arrives. The system can provide close to a minute of advanced notice in Mexico City for some earthquakes thanks to the city’s distance from a dangerous subduction zone running just west of the Mexican state of Guerrero. Chile has a similar system too. But in the United States, getting that much warning will be tough. Technology gaps do play a role. “With most of our distribution systems, [the United States is] not built for speed,” de Groot said. “We had no idea when these [public alert] systems were being designed and built that we would be doing this. Latency is a challenge.” But the geology of the region proves equally toilsome. “You know Japan and Mexico, both countries have subduction zones that are pretty far off the coast. [The Mexican system] was designed ... with protecting Mexico City in mind." But for the Pacific coast, the dangerous boundary doesn’t lurk offshore. It runs right through the heart of some of the most heavily populated land in America. “The challenge with California, Washington, Oregon ... we have a lot of faults on land, so if you’re right on top of the fault, you’re sitting right on top of the source of the earthquake.” When that happens, you’re not going to get an alert before the shaking. Only folks farther away from the epicenter will.


How did the coyote and the badger cross the road? Together.

Badgers and coyotes have occasionally been spotted hanging out before, mostly in wide-open spaces, where their skills at hunting ground squirrels and prairie dogs are complementary: Badgers can tunnel below ground to flush out prey, and coyotes can run quickly after the targets above ground. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shared photos in 2016 of one such badger-coyote duo in northern Colorado. A 1992 study of badger-coyote associations in northwestern Wyoming concluded that the coyotes definitely benefited — meaning, ate more ground squirrels — from the relationship. The badgers probably also did, the researchers decided, but it was hard to tell, because they were so often below ground. What was clear was that the pairs had formed tolerant, if not friendly, relationships. The coyotes “encouraged badgers to move and search by mock pursuit and by scrambling around a specific site; by leading or by soliciting play,” the authors wrote. “The badgers’ behavior indicated the association with coyotes was either neutral or positive for them.” Yet even though the animals are known to associate, the new California video stands out, Sharma said. “These are two species that are very different and actually traveling through a human-made structure under a busy highway,” Sharma said. “To our knowledge, it’s a first.” Jennifer Campbell-Smith, a behavioral ecologist and science teacher in Colorado, wrote a widely shared Twitter thread about how “excited” she was by the video. It showed two predators that are often persecuted by humans — and that have been known to kill each other — being playfully at ease together, she wrote. That the animals chose to ally in an area dense with people, where survival itself is a challenge, is even more remarkable, she said in an interview. “The coyote was definitely excited about the badger, and the badger was about as excited as badgers get, which is, ‘I’m going to walk with you and not growl at you,' ” Campbell-Smith said. “We were looking at something where they were relaxed with each other, with no aggressive behavior shown. These are two animals that very much showed body language that they knew one another as individuals.” Read more: Here’s why there are so many coyotes and why they are spreading so fast Coyotes have adapted to the streets of L.A., and biologists want to know how Tame foxes taught us about animal domestication. But did we get the story wrong?


Moon attempts to be ‘super’ on Saturday night, settles for mediocrity

The second full moon of the decade — called the snow moon — will shine bold and bright in the sky Saturday. Some are even calling it a supermoon, the celestial body’s orbit bringing it close enough to Earth that the natural night light will appear a bit brighter than normal. It’s the perfect recipe to enjoy a quaint weekend evening gazing upward and enjoying the spectacle. The full moon will rise at 4:58 p.m. Saturday in Washington, 5:33 p.m. in Oklahoma City and 5:03 p.m. in Los Angeles. It will remain visible all night long, finally retiring about sunrise Sunday. The moon will appear largest when it’s closest to the horizon thanks to how our mind plays tricks on us. Make sure you arrive a few minutes before moonrise and have an unobstructed view of the horizon if you’re looking for the best show. (In areas where the temperature rises with height, the moon might even look a bit wider than tall.) It will first climb in the northeast. There’s no official definition of a supermoon, but several sources have come up with their own stringent requirements. According to Time and Date, a supermoon occurs “when the center of the Moon is less than 223,694 miles from the center of Earth.” Seeing as though Saturday’s moon will be 225,234 miles away, it’s not a supermoon by this definition. Astrologer Richard Nolle argues that a full moon must occur during the closest 10 percent of its orbit about Earth to be classified as a supermoon. That also won’t happen Saturday night, according to EarthSky, which used averages over the course of a year’s worth of lunar orbits to make its calculation. Nolle and Time and Date both conclude that only two supermoons will occur in 2020. But if you’re really rooting for Saturday’s moon to be a supermoon, you’re in luck. AstroPixel.com has ruled that this is a supermoon. It used historical averages pertaining to the moon’s mean distance relative to the Earth and found that this weekend’s full moon can be dubbed a supermoon. In fact, it also says a supermoon will occur in March, April and May — that makes four supermoons this year. If it feels like every moon these days is being branded as “super,” you’re apparently not imagining things. Can it get any better! Because supermoons appear slightly larger than your average moon, they also


NASA finds ‘fundamental’ software problems in Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft

launch began. For some reason, however, the two computers synced before the countdown, resulting in the error, said Jim Chilton, the head of Boeing’s space division. The revelation this week of yet another software problem indicates the issue was not an isolated one. After discovering the issue with the timer, Boeing officials “went hunting” for any other software problems while the Starliner was in flight, Chilton said. They found one — a big one that Chilton said would have gone undiscovered if they had not had the earlier problem. In the second case, the issue would have caused the wrong thrusters to fire during the separation of what’s known as the service module from the crew module. Company officials grew concerned that if the wrong thrusters fired the two capsules could have collided, leading to an array of significant problems, from damaging the capsule’s heat shield, to sending it tumbling off course. While it was not clear what exactly would have happened, “nothing good could come from those two spacecraft bumping,” Chilton said. Boeing officials were able to quickly come up with a software patch, beam it up to the spacecraft, which prevented the wrong thrusters from firing. The spacecraft then landed safely the next day. NASA has repeatedly said it has been working side-by-side with both Boeing and SpaceX, the other company under contract to develop a spacecraft to carry humans into space, to ensure their spacecrafts meet requirements and are safe to fly. But a series of problems have plagued the $6.8 billion program, which is now three years behind schedule. Last year, during the test of the Starliner’s abort motors, one of the main parachutes failed to deploy because a pin was not properly secured to a smaller drag chute. The pin was underneath a protective sheath and out of sight. Boeing has said it intends in the future to verify that the pin is secure by pulling on it. NASA announced this week that it plans to reverse itself and conduct a more thorough review of Boeing’s safety culture. In 2018, NASA announced it was launching “invasive” probes of both Boeing and SpaceX. The reviews were prompted after SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took a puff of marijuana on a show streamed on the Internet. NASA confirmed it had proceeded with a full review of SpaceX, but that it had decided to perform a far more limited


As coronavirus travel restrictions keep Chinese tourists at home, a world that has grown dependent on them feels their absence

no work.” In Italy’s Civita di Bagnoregio, the last trickle of tours have been coming through, with people who started their travels before the virus exploded. And even some of those groups are smaller than they would have been, because of travelers who were unable to leave China as the virus began to spread. “We were supposed to be 20 people. Instead, we’re 10,” said Han Hui, 30, a painter from Hainan, who was wandering past the village’s vine-covered stone homes. Chinese visitors still in Europe say they feel they’re being viewed with trepidation. There have been a handful of cases of blatant xenophobia — jeering on trains or public buses, for instance. But the more common scenario comes in hotel lines, where other visitors keep their distance, or in restaurants, where even healthy Chinese travelers feel like they’ll be stared at if they cough. Only three cases of coronavirus have been identified in Italy. Two Chinese tourists who had been staying in Rome tested positive, as did one Italian who had been evacuated from Wuhan. This past week, one tourist in Civita di Bagnoregio hesitated before walking into a perfume shop, uncertain whether she would be welcomed. “Is it okay to enter?” the tourist asked, explaining where she was from. “You can come in, don’t worry,” said the employee, Gessica Cirica, who has taught herself to speak a few words of Mandarin and Cantonese, as well as Japanese. Amid the outbreak, others in the village have wondered whether it was risky to have Chinese visitors. The town’s mayor, Luca Profili, said there had been “clearly a bit of worry,” given that some days Chinese visitors account for 90 percent of foreign tourists. “Some were asking if I’d take action,” Profili said. “Once [the Italian government] shut down flights, everybody felt more at ease.” Any reassurance about the chances of the virus making its way here, though, is counterbalanced by unease about what the drop in visitors might mean for the local economy. Among the places that had been lifted by the wave of Chinese tourism, Civita di Bagnoregio is among the most unlikely. It’s a two-hour drive from Rome, accessible only by footbridge, and — until a decade ago — it was just one of Italy’s crumbling, evocative hilltop towns. But the village worked to promote itself as a precarious, endangered treasure. The town also had the fortune of


Death of whistleblower doctor unleashes fury in China; more trouble for cruise passengers

from the coronavirus.” Pompeo’s tweet included a short video of boxes being unloaded beside a plane. The announcement came at an icy time for U.S.-China relations. Beijing has accused Washington of trying to use the coronavirus outbreak to harm China. Last Friday, the United States temporarily banned all non-U.S. citizens who had recently traveled in China. By: Miriam Berger 1:01 PM: Coronavirus may show risk of new zoonotic infection WASHINGTON — The outbreak of a new kind of coronavirus in central China is loaded with mysteries, and among the biggest is how the virus made the jump from an animal host into humans. This global health crisis is a reminder of the danger of zoonosis — the ability of pathogens, including bacteria and viruses, to enter the human population from an animal host. The coronavirus is similar to two viruses that circulate in bats, but it might have skipped through another species before infecting humans. Suspicion has fallen on the pangolin, an endangered, highly trafficked creature that looks like a cross between an anteater and an armadillo. Its scales are prized in traditional Chinese medicine, although they’re made of keratin, just like fingernails. In recent days, some researchers have noted that a coronavirus previously identified in pangolins is more closely related to the new coronavirus than any virus identified. It’s not clear whether any bats or pangolins, alive or dead, were on sale in December at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, where more than half of the people first identified with the virus had shopped. And it’s possible that the viral leap into humans occurred somewhere else, as some early cases occurred in people with no known link to it. The disease detectives need to nail down the host species, because there could be a population of animals capable of sparking new outbreaks, said Melissa Nolan, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of South Carolina. Read more: “Coronavirus came from bats or possibly pangolins amid ‘acceleration’ of new zoonotic infections” By: Joel Achenbach 12:41 PM: Trump says he thinks China is doing a ‘very good job’ on coronavirus WASHINGTON — Trump praised the efforts of China to contain the coronavirus outbreak as he spoke to reporters at the White House on Friday, saying that “China is working very hard.” “They’re working really hard, and I think they are doing a very professional job,” the president said. “We’re


involve people who were recently in Wuhan. Vardhan said India has 12 laboratories capable of testing for the virus, and the government has offered help to other countries in the region, including Afghanistan, Bhutan and Maldives. India has already moved to restrict travel links with China. Indian airlines have suspended some flights to Chinese cities, and the government has canceled visas issued to Chinese citizens and foreign nationals in China. India is conducting thermal screening at airports of passengers arriving on all flights from China, Hong Kong, Thailand and Singapore, Vardhan said. Officials are also screening arrivals at seaports and land border crossings with Nepal. By: Joanna Slater 8:30 AM: World faces ‘chronic shortage’ of medical safety equipment, WHO warns BERLIN — The world is facing a “chronic shortage of personal protective equipment,” the director of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned Friday. Addressing the WHO executive board at the organization’s Geneva headquarters, Tedros said he was working on identifying potential solutions. China has faced major shortages of medical equipment as the coronavirus has spread from its epicenter in Wuhan across the country. Chinese officials have asked for donations from foreign governments, saying that “medical masks, protective suits and safety goggles” are urgently needed. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies cautioned earlier this week that the donation of inadequate masks was creating “more problems than help,” according to the organization’s secretary general, Jagan Chapagain. He urged donors to supply only masks that adhere to minimum requirements for medical workers. By: Rick Noack 7:55 AM: Thai public health minister apologizes after calling for tourists who refuse face masks to be kicked out of country WASHINGTON — Thailand’s public health minister apologized Friday for suggesting that foreign tourists who failed to wear face masks should be expelled from the country. Anutin Charnvirakul this week visited a Bangkok train station, where he handed out masks to passersby and then complained to reporters that Western tourists were not taking them. “These kinds of people, we should kick them out of Thailand,” the Bangkok Post quoted him as saying. Anutin posted on Facebook that he was sorry for “losing it” during his public health campaign, when a group he described as “some foreigners from Europe” failed to cooperate with the mask handout. “We never know which country foreigners have visited before they come to Thailand,” he wrote. Thailand is


travel history to China, meaning that the virus could be spreading more widely in the community. The city-state, which was also badly hit by the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic in 2003, has a caseload that is among the highest outside mainland China. Singapore, under the new heightened risk assessment, is taking measures to prevent the virus from spreading further. Event organizers have been asked to cancel “nonessential large-scale events,” and employers have been instructed to make their employees take their temperatures regularly. The orange alert means health authorities have deemed that the disease is severe and is spreading easily from person to person, but is still being contained. Schools have also been asked to suspend many activities, but otherwise, classes are going ahead. If the risk assessment level rises to red, all schools will be closed. The World Health Organization said Thursday it has begun an investigation into several virus infections linked to a business meeting at Singapore’s Grand Hyatt hotel. The meeting was attended by more than 100 people, including participants from Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak. Cases in Malaysia and South Korea have been linked to the meeting. By: Shibani Mahtani 5:08 AM: Ten years’ demand in three weeks: Korean mask producer goes into overdrive SEOUL — Welkeeps, a producer of respiratory masks in South Korea, says it has received 10 years’ worth of demand in the past three weeks, as panic buying sparked by the coronavirus outbreak grips Asia. The company’s president, Park Jong-han, said he cannot deal with the 200-plus phone calls a day he receives, while wholesalers are camping in the lobby cafe of his office. While Beijing launched an “urgent” appeal for medical masks, suits and goggles this week, other countries such as South Korea, Japan and Thailand are experiencing panic-buying of masks. Factories in China that produce half of the world’s medical masks are also operating below capacity due to the virus epidemic As store shelves are wiped clean in Thailand, Bangkok authorities on Thursday encouraged the public to make their masks and hand sanitizers at home. The citywide shortage in Hong Kong prompted thousands of people to line up, sometimes overnight, to buy protective masks this week. South Korea has introduced tough penalties for mask “hoarders.” Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki called for a relentless crackdown to “root out” illegal hoarding, price gouging and smuggling of medical masks. Hong announced


numbers for the supposedly healing qualities of its scales and meat. Resembling a cross between an armadillo and an anteater but unrelated to either, the pangolin is the world’s most trafficked mammal, with 1 million thought to have been poached from the wild in just a decade. Its meat is considered a delicacy and its scales are widely used in traditional Chinese medicine, wildlife experts say. The research suggested the pangolin could have been an intermediate host, transmitting the new coronavirus from bats to humans. “This latest discovery will be of great significance for the prevention and control of the origin [of the virus],” South China Agricultural University, which led the research, said in a statement on its website reported by Reuters news agency. The discovery could also be a lifeline for the reclusive pangolin, a mammal that had been headed for extinction because of unchecked demand from China and Vietnam. The air of mystery attaching to the pangolin has been its downfall, sparking an unjustified belief that its scales have magical medicinal properties. In hospitals and pharmacies across China and Vietnam, powder made from pangolin scales is prescribed for a wide range of ailments, including rheumatism, wound infections, skin disorders, coronary heart disease and even cancer. Mothers take powdered pangolin scales to help them lactate, while men drink pangolin blood or consume fetuses in the belief that this will make them more virile. But Dirk Pfeiffer, a professor of veterinary medicine at Hong Kong’s City University, told Reuters the study was still a long way from proving pangolins had transmitted the virus. Read more By: Simon Denyer 4:36 AM: State ramps up supplies of food to virus-hit Hubei province BERLIN — China’s state-owned agriculture company, known as Cofco, is among the country’s conglomerates that have stepped up their food supplies in response to the novel coronavirus outbreak, China’s National Development and Reform Commission said on Friday. The Chinese agency said state-owned companies were supplying additional cooking oils, flour, rice noodles and meat, among other items, to Wuhan and Hubei province. Cofco sends about 220 tons of rice to Wuhan daily, the agency said, adding that the company was expanding its storage space in the region to make room for further stockpiles of food. Earlier this week, China’s Assets Supervision and Administration Commission said its conglomerates were doubling or tripling their capacity in various sectors, including “manufacturing, chemical, petrochemical and


Ahead of Irish election, Leo Varadkar is struggling, while Sinn Féin surges

and ended its ban on abortion in 2018 — what the prime minister called “the culmination of a quiet revolution.” Ireland also was the first nation to legalize by popular vote same-sex marriage, in 2015. Having weathered a brutal banking crisis and global recession a decade ago, the Irish economy is now zipping along. Although Brexit could have threatened that growth, and the republic’s trade relationship with Northern Ireland and the European continent, Varadkar played hardball, outmaneuvering British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and winning a guarantee that there would be no border on the Irish island. In a direct personal appeal to the Irish voters in the closing days of the campaign, Varadkar said: “I remember 2010. We were told that our futures were lost. I remember the mass unemployment, the dole queues, people emigrating. Empty main streets, our country humiliated on the world stage.” He alluded to a bailout by the International Monetary Fund back then, which sparked austerity budgets, higher taxes and cuts in services. Varadkar thanked the country for its hard work and sacrifices. “We’re in so much a better place now than we were then,” said the prime minister, called the taoiseach in Irish. As part of its transformation, Ireland invested heavily in the future, in pharmaceuticals, medical devices and tech. The country serves as European headquarters for Google, Facebook, Airbnb, LinkedIn and Microsoft. It now boasts the second-fastest-growing economy in the European Union, after tiny Malta. Unemployment is 4.8 percent, a 13-year low. With a surge in corporate tax receipts, the government is running a surplus. Dublin is booming. But with its newfound wealth has come social stress. Housing prices and rents have skyrocketed, which means young Irish, even with university degrees, despair that they will never be able to buy their own homes. Social media is full of posts mocking the tiny “room shares” available — a toilet, a stove, a bed — for thousands of euros a month. It’s not just “generation rent” complaining. Wait times for doctor’s appointments and hospital beds doubled, then tripled. The construction of a new hospital in Dublin is behind schedule and over budget. Because many Irish have to pay upfront for medicines and doctor’s visits, health care is the most important issue for 40 percent of voters, according to a January poll by the Irish Times. Gross domestic product has soared, but so have tax bills. Pensioners


On America’s college campuses, the coronavirus delivers a chill

Some students of Asian descent at Arizona State University felt a chill in the campus atmosphere soon after the disclosure last month that a person connected to the school tested positive for the novel coronavirus. It struck them that a routine cough or sneeze might draw sidelong looks from classmates worried about getting infected from a virus believed to have originated in China. It struck them that the mere act of sitting down at a crowded table might prompt others to stand up and leave. It struck them that they might be targets of racial discrimination, said Tevinh Nguyen, a senior at Arizona State who is president of the Asian/Asian Pacific American Students’ Coalition. Nguyen said he and others are worried about those who are “using this public health rhetoric to justify xenophobia.” Across the country, colleges and universities in recent days have accelerated efforts to guard against a virus that causes respiratory illness and in some cases death. It poses a major public health challenge worldwide. But educators also are seeking to prevent outbreaks of hysteria and racism. “This has been an intense learning moment for us, for our students, for everybody,” Arizona State President Michael Crow said Friday. He said the university has focused on disseminating accurate health information and making sure international and domestic students know the school upholds values of tolerance and diversity. Arizona State kept its normal academic schedule despite a widely publicized online petition that urged the university to cancel classes because students were worried about coronavirus. Crow said the university is following its protocols for dealing with public health scares and keeping student groups informed. “We’ve been working really hard to keep the environment on track,” Crow said. Some schools have made missteps. Officials at the University of California at Berkeley apologized last month after the campus health center shared a handout in which xenophobia was listed as a “normal reaction” that some people might experience during the health crisis. The handout sparked widespread outrage. “Stop normalizing racism,” a molecular virologist named Dustin R. Glasner, who is Asian American, wrote on Twitter. Glasner’s résumé notes he earned a doctorate at UC-Berkeley and is now a scholar at UC-San Francisco. “It is not normal, and racist reactions to the current coronavirus outbreak are NOT OKAY.” University officials swiftly revised the handout and said they regretted “any misunderstanding it may have caused.” Coronavirus fears weigh


Navy SEAL’s family pushes for recognition of traumatic brain injuries after son’s suicide

made him a respected and relied-upon Special Operations combat medic, sniper and explosives breacher. He received the Bronze Star, Army Commendation and Navy-Marine Corps Achievement medals with valor, among other awards. As a combat medic, he volunteered to serve in back-to-back tours in Iraq and then Afghanistan for a total of 12 months. Larkin deployed on four heavy combat tours between 2008 and 2013, where he would blow through thick walls and doors, fire weapons with a powerful blast and be exposed to improvised bombs. In a video, he stands by, his fingers in his ears, as a soldier blasts a rocket launcher a few feet away. “He would say to me, ‘Mom, it would just clear out my sinuses, and you could feel it.’ It was so unbelievable,” Jill Larkin said. The vibrations left microscope tears in her son’s brain, so small that MRIs and PET scans couldn’t detect the damage while he was living. Survivors of explosive attacks often report headaches, difficulty sleeping, trouble concentrating, irritability and memory problems. A 2017 study of eight deceased military personnel found that blast exposure produces lesions in the brain called astroglial scarring. When Larkin returned home after his third tour, his brain had changed. “He was a different kid. Totally,” his mother said. Larkin started having trouble sleeping. He complained of headaches and became short-fused. He stopped smiling, and his relationships started to erode. He deployed on his fourth tour in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, an area with a high rate of enemy contact. When he returned home, he was more anxious and confused. He was hard to talk to, his parents said. When he was able to sleep, he would have nightmares. Larkin began teaching other SEALs explosive breaching techniques in San Diego, where he was exposed to blast waves daily. Eventually, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. The Navy referred him to several programs; some were helpful, others destructive. The common theme was a prescription for medication, his parents said. Boxes of medication would arrive at their house. “Every time we turned around, somebody was writing a new prescription for some type of drug,” Frank Larkin said. Over two years, Ryan Larkin was prescribed over 40 medications, his father said. The drugs made him feel worse, and he was labeled operationally unfit and mentally unstable. Without a customized care plan, he started losing trust in the institution he loved


Inspiring military family reunions actually hurt our soldiers

the Army’s Post-Deployment Health Reassessment and the Battlemind psycho-education program 2005 and 2006 marked a key moment in the military’s growing awareness of the psychological toll that these conflicts were taking on troops, and of the need to not simply celebrate soldier homecomings but attend to service members’ needs in the months that follow. Studying soldier readjustment and its effect on families was a significant step forward for the military. Although there has been some research on the impact of deployments on families during the Second World War, it wasn’t until after Vietnam that the military saw this as a serious concern. Many Vietnam veterans recall their return as a sort of whiplash — leaving Southeast Asia on an airplane, arriving in the United States to be discharged and returning home to communities that hardly understood their experiences. Indeed, the climate of publicly celebrated returns stems from the widespread sentiment that Vietnam veterans were never properly welcomed home. With the shift to the all-volunteer military, however, military leaders and researchers became more interested in studying how soldiers experienced deployments and, because more soldiers had partners and children, how those deployments affected families. Such research, the Army understood, was crucial to recruiting and retaining soldiers. The Navy, for example, studied how sailors and their families withstood separation during cruises. As the Army deployed soldiers to the Balkans, Somalia and the Middle East throughout the 1990s, researchers from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), the Army’s medical research unit, surveyed them to find out what caused them stress. Unsurprisingly, being separated from their families was near the top of the list. This awareness, and the research capacity that WRAIR developed, shaped researchers’ approach to studying soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet while they expected that these deployments would result in psychological challenges for many soldiers, exactly how — and when — those issues manifested surprised them, generating new ways of studying and caring for returning troops. In 2004, WRAIR psychologists Amy Adler and Col. Paul Bliese traveled to Pisa, Italy, to assess the mental health of members of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, a unit that had just finished a year-long deployment to Iraq. Using a document called the Post-Deployment Health Assessment, they surveyed these soldiers for depression, post-traumatic stress, anxiety and other conditions that might follow a deployment. Surprisingly, few of the soldiers reported any symptoms. At a time


Downed pigs are turned into pork products. A new lawsuit seeks to stop that.

Congress ordered the U.S. Agriculture Department nearly 20 years ago to investigate how often pork plants slaughter hogs that arrive too sick or exhausted to stand. The goal of the mandate was to develop ways to humanely handle the animals — and to determine whether they should be kept out of the food supply. That never happened. Now, as dozens of U.S. pork plants are poised to begin a new safety inspection system, animal welfare groups and some members of Congress are trying to stop lame and fatigued animals from being turned into food for humans. The new program makes plant workers — not USDA inspectors — responsible for evaluating the health of pigs as they arrive at the facilities. On Thursday, Farm Sanctuary and six other animal protection groups filed a federal lawsuit that seeks to make it illegal for pork plants to slaughter the animals, typically referred to as “downers” or “downed” pigs because they are unable to stand or walk when they arrive at the plants. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) said he supports the groups’ efforts and is working with other lawmakers on a plan that will include a public education campaign and renewed efforts to pressure the USDA to take action. “It’s shameful that this is where we are at. These are sick, damaged animals,” Blumenauer, a member of Congress’s Animal Protection Caucus, said in an interview. “It’s ludicrous that this is still an issue and that the industry is now in charge of [evaluating] the animals. We will ultimately win like we did with downer cows.” The USDA made it illegal in 2007 to slaughter downed cattle for beef products and in 2016 outlawed the slaughter of downed calves for veal. Agriculture officials cited safety concerns because the lame animals are more likely to harbor and transmit food-borne diseases in beef. The USDA also said that allowing their slaughter “may have created an incentive for establishments to inhumanely attempt to force these animals to rise.” The agency’s inspection records show plant workers in recent years have kicked, shocked and dragged downed pigs in an effort to get them to stand upright. Mobilizing pigs, even for a few minutes, means the animal can be rendered fit for slaughter and be turned into pork products shipped to grocery stores and restaurants. The USDA declined an interview request and did not answer written questions, saying the agency could


A Smithsonian team discovered a new coronavirus. The story behind that effort shows what it takes to get ahead of potential pandemics.

the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Emerging Pandemic Threats program. The lead organization was the One Health Institute at the University of California at Davis. Samples collected and tested in Myanmar were sent to the institute, which determined that that coronavirus hadn’t yet been detected anywhere else in the world. It is not believed to have the ability to cause serious health problems. “We don’t think it poses a big threat to the human population, at least not now,” Murray says. “But you never know what’s going to happen in the future, and at least we have that information.” Getting that information wasn’t quick or easy. It took years. It required setting up laboratories in Myanmar, establishing partnerships with local government agencies and buying protective gear for humans and GPS collars for bats. It required not only gaining the trust of local residents, but also hiring and training some to do the testing. Without their help, Valitutto says, he couldn’t have navigated sweltering caves that offered little ventilation and housed poisonous snakes and other dangerous animals. “We were going into caves you can’t breathe in,” he says. The caves were often hotter inside than outside, and he along with a team of about 20 locals had to step into them while wearing body suits, goggles and masks. Once inside, they often found themselves standing in bat feces as it fell on them. The team also worked in the night and in torrential rain. When outbreaks happen, there is a tendency to blame the country where it started for not doing more, Valitutto says. But the work done for PREDICT shows that communities in countries across the world have been working, and working hard, toward the same goal of protecting people. “They’re working alongside us hand-in-hand to prevent these from spreading,” he says. But it’s work that requires ongoing support and funding. “The work that we’re doing is a lifelong thing. It’s a forever thing.” Valitutto moved to Myanmar five years ago to start the project and remained there until it wrapped up in September. An official meeting to bring PREDICT to a close is scheduled to occur in the District in March. In the past 10 years, Murray says, PREDICT teams have found more than 1,200 new mammalian viruses, including 160 coronaviruses. To find that single Myanmar virus, Valitutto estimates his team collected as many as 1,000 bats and took