the unknown — something far worse. It’s one of the most isolating physical sensations imaginable. While my immediate condition improved, my lungs became increasingly susceptible to infections. Foreboding events came in succession. A longtime distance swimmer, I gasped and grabbed my sister while looping around a lake island we had swum dozens of times. When downhill skiing, my lungs jammed on the emergency brakes. My body would not, could not continue without pausing every few steep feet to catch a breath and use the impotent steroid inhaler. Willpower, a longtime ally, simply didn’t cut it anymore. By the end of 2012, chest infections lasted a month, and I had ruptured my eardrum from heaving coughs. Having been a somewhat sickly child, my tolerance for illness was robust, yet my gut knew something was terribly wrong. I had given up on 20 years of running, now often struggled to breathe during sex, dragged when walking up my subway stairs, and wheezed in cold weather. Convinced of pneumonia or whooping cough, then in resurgence, I went for a chest X-ray. To my astonishment, the radiologist muttered, “I haven’t seen this since medical school.” Her boss told me to see a pulmonologist immediately. When the pulmonologist called about the X-ray, I asked off the bat if it was cancer, the obvious mortal threat. It wasn’t, but he thought it was serious, “extremely rare,” and “progressive,” and the treatment, “is no chicken soup.” He requested reports for all CT scans of my chest and abdomen, and then rang the next day, demanding why I never told him I had LAM? “What?” I asked, assuming he wasn’t discussing a menu item. In 2005, I had had a CT scan to find a cause for chronic night sweats. In that report, procured from my then-internist’s office, a radiologist had diagnosed me with an ultrarare progressive disease called Lymphangioleiomyomatosis or LAM. The report advised its recipient, my internist, to send me to a pulmonologist in haste. For some reason, the internist did not inform me of the diagnosis at the time or during the ensuing eight years during routine checkups. Now in 2013, the pulmonologist was telling me to “come tomorrow, and don’t look it up online” — an unrealistic exhortation all physicians give at the first mention of a rare diagnosis, I have since learned. Of course I turned to Google only to be assaulted with


Turkey’s Erdogan urges U.S. to confront Saudi Arabia over Khashoggi killing

ISTANBUL — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday scolded the Trump administration for not confronting Saudi Arabia over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He said that his government was in possession of additional “documents” related to the case it had not shared. “The CIA has yet to put all their weight on this issue. America needs to put their presence and their weight on this issue,” he said while talking about the United States’ bilateral relationship with Saudi Arabia. Erdogan’s comments, during a live television interview with a private Turkish broadcaster, came a day after police in Istanbul offered a theory about the disposal of Khashoggi’s remains by Saudi agents who allegedly killed the journalist. The police said his body may have been burned, according to Turkey’s state-run news agency. Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul soon after he entered the building on Oct. 2 to obtain documents that would allow him to remarry. His body, which was dismembered, has not been located. The president’s interview and the police report suggest a renewed effort by Turkey to pressure the Saudi leadership at a delicate moment for the kingdom. In the past few weeks, U.S. lawmakers have moved to punish Saudi Arabia for alleged human rights abuses and its military intervention in Yemen. A United Nations human rights expert who has opened an independent investigation into the Khashoggi killing said in a preliminary finding this month that Saudi Arabia had “seriously curtailed and undermined” Turkey’s attempts to investigate the crime. In November, the CIA concluded with medium-to-high confidence that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman probably ordered the killing of Khashoggi, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post who had written articles criticizing the prince. Saudi officials have vigorously denied that Mohammed was involved. President Trump has defended the crown prince and argued that the U.S. alliance with Saudi Arabia should not be threatened because of the Khashoggi case. Saudi Arabia has cast the killing as a rogue operation carried out by Saudi officials who had disobeyed orders to bring Khashoggi back to the kingdom alive. Saudi prosecutors have indicted 11 unidentified people and said they are seeking the death penalty for five of them. In his comments Friday, Erdogan mocked Saudi assurances that justice would be served and suggested Turkey would eventually make public the evidence it has collected, including audio recordings from inside the


Georgetown wants to raze 210 acres of trees to meet green-energy goals. Environmentalists are crying foul.

at-risk birds — including bald eagles, warblers, eastern whip-poor-wills and wood thrushes — live there in the Nanjemoy forest, according to the Audubon Society of Maryland and D.C. Moses said the company has not found any endangered species during its climate studies and has taken steps to ensure that tributaries to the bay would not be affected by runoff. Andrew Elmore, a professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, said the best place for solar panel installations are the roofs of parking lots and buildings. He said he is not familiar with the details of the Origis project but studies how ecosystems interact with land-use issues. “These are industrial operations,” he said. “Just because there is a positive environmental impact doesn’t offset the fact that you’re cutting down forest.” Environment secretary Ben H. Grumbles, who must decide whether to grant a wetlands permit, said the project “is definitely raising some concerns about unacceptable impacts on the trees and wetlands.” He said the administration of Gov. Larry Hogan (R) wants to balance creating new renewable energy projects and making sure that those projects happen in locations that are appropriate. Last month, Hogan joined Comptroller Peter Franchot and Treasurer Nancy K. Kopp, both Democrats, to block Columbia Gas from using state land to build a natural gas pipeline that activists have been fighting for two years. Hogan also supported a ban on hydraulic fracturing in the state. The site designated for the solar farm is owned by nine people descended from the two original property owners. Steve Scott, the court-appointed trustee for the land, said the owners tried to sell for years before agreeing with Origis to a $1.3 million purchase price. He said the sale has not been finalized. If the solar farm is blocked, Scott said, the owners could elect to “timber” the property, which has been done in the past and would involve cutting down a large number of the trees. Many of the trees on the property now appear relatively young, although environmentalists say this does not lessen their importance in the ecosystem. If the solar farm is built, 32 “specimen trees,” which are more than 30 inches in diameter, will remain in place, while 17 others of that size will be cut down, Moses said. “Part of the foundation of America — I hate to wax poetic — but property rights were one of


With opioid deaths up, Maryland looks to medical marijuana as possible treatment

need for new solutions. “Yes, there needs to be more research,” said Gail Rand, a patient advocate and the chief financial officer for ForwardGro. “However, we believe there is enough research, especially considering the urgent need.” Patricia Frye, a physician in Takoma Park, said her patients who use marijuana and opioids to treat chronic pain need smaller doses of opioids than those who eschew cannabis. She said she has also observed decreases in anxiety and depression among users of medical marijuana. Frye said it should not be a deterrent that marijuana can be addictive because opioids are far more lethal. “They may be unproductive or sit on the couch, but [marijuana] won’t kill them,” she said. Studies show the addiction rate for marijuana is about 10 percent. Joseph Adams, a physician associated with the Maryland-D.C. Society of Addiction Medicine, testified against the legislation, saying it was part of a “desperate effort” to find alternatives to traditional methods for treating addiction, which he said are unfairly stigmatized. He is the medical director of a methadone program with several locations in Baltimore. Listing opioid-abuse disorder as a qualified medical condition could increase opioid-related overdose deaths, Adams said, because patients could stop using methadone or other proven treatments. Adams’s organization is part of a cohort of drug policy groups — which includes the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the American Society of Addiction Medicine and the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence — that oppose using marijuana to treat opioid addiction without more research. The states that have allowed marijuana to be used to treat opioid addiction have done so with a variety of restrictions. Regulations in Pennsylvania, for example, only permit physicians to prescribe medical cannabis if traditional treatments fail, or if cannabis is used in conjunction with traditional treatment options. Physicians in Maryland already can authorize marijuana for opioid addicts if their patients have “severe or chronic pain.” Supporters of the bill say explicitly including opioid-abuse disorder in the list of qualifying conditions is necessary for more doctors to begin seeing marijuana as a viable treatment option. “People are educated enough now to understand that medical cannabis can help with pain, but until it becomes brought to the public’s attention more, I don’t think it’s a go-to to deal with opioid-abuse disorder,” Rand said in an interview. “And it should be.” rachel.chason@washpost.com


‘Whatever he wants’: Inside the region Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska runs like a personal fiefdom

stake in a Siberian smelter, he built one of the world’s largest aluminum conglomerates. Along the way, according to the Treasury notice announcing sanctions against him last year, Deripaska “has been accused of threatening the lives of business rivals, illegally wiretapping a government official, and taking part in extortion and racketeering.” Deripaska has denied those allegations, but he’s been open about his support for Putin — and the Kremlin has supported him. As recently as 2016, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asked then-Secretary of State John F. Kerry for assistance in getting Deripaska a U.S. visa, The Post reported. In a written statement, Deripaska said that he considered Ust-Labinsk home and that he spent more time there than in Moscow. “Our efforts are a drop in the ocean,” he said. “Until the residents of the district start to get involved themselves, fundamentally, nothing will change.” The area has come to rely on Deripaska’s money. He paid for the seed and fertilizer for the children’s sugar-beet cultivation contest and for the sand for a village beach volleyball court. When the director of the district history museum heard about a site where the invading Germans may have massacred local Jews in World War II, he asked Deripaska’s foundation for funding to examine it. The museum director, Furkat Baychibayev, said it was a no-brainer to seek money from the foundation rather than the local government. “It’s a more flexible system,” he said. Although the U.S. Treasury lifted sanctions on his companies, Deripaska himself remains banned from doing business with any Americans. Sanctions helped cut Deripaska’s wealth to $3.6 billion from $6.7 billion in the past year, according to Forbes. The sanctions have been felt in Ust-Labinsk, too. Deripaska’s effort to bring foreign companies into an industrial park he built in the district broke down after the U.S. sanctions were announced, Ryabchenyuk said. So did a deal to buy a combine harvester from John Deere, according to Dreeris, the farm manager. Dreeris said Deripaska has been spending more time on the property lately and has shown interest in expanding his farming operation. It already boasts plums, apricots, 56 varieties of apples, dairy and beef cows, quail, rabbits, a food-safety laboratory and an animal-feed processing plant. Much of what Deripaska doesn’t consume is sold in local markets. “It’s said that the locals eat what the oligarch eats,” Dreeris said. “It’s very prestigious for them.” anton.troianovski@washpost.com


Japan’s Abe won’t confirm Trump Nobel Prize nomination, but media reports say he made it

SEOUL — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wouldn’t say Monday whether he nominated President Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating with North Korea, even though local media reports suggested that he had. Trump said Friday that Abe had personally given him “the most beautiful copy” of a letter nominating him for the prize for opening talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. But Abe wouldn’t confirm that Monday. “The Nobel Committee for the last 50 years has not disclosed who recommended and who was recommended. In line with this policy, I would like to refrain from giving a comment,” Abe said in response to a question from an opposition lawmaker. Pushed again to confirm or deny the report, he added: “I am not saying it’s not true.” But Japanese media reports on Sunday suggested that Trump was telling the truth. The Nikkei newspaper, citing government sources, said Abe had sent in a nomination. “He showed a five page-long copy of a letter of recommendation for the Nobel Peace Prize to President Trump at the past summit meeting,” it quoted a source as saying. The Asahi Shimbun newspaper cited an unnamed government source as saying the nomination came in response to an “unofficial” U.S. request, made after last year’s summit in Singapore. It said Abe made the recommendation in the fall. Abe’s reluctance to confirm the story is understandable, as he negotiates a fine line between flattering Trump’s ego and appearing too deferential in front of his electorate. Japanese public opinion is fixated on the return of at least a dozen of the country’s citizens who it says were abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s. Without progress on that issue, or actual progress on convincing North Korea to surrender its nuclear weapons, Abe risks domestic criticism for, at best, acting prematurely by nominating Trump. Yet Abe still took the opportunity to praise Trump in parliament Monday. “President Trump has acted decisively toward resolving the issues of the North Korean nuclear and missile problems,” he said. Television anchor Shigenori Kanehira noted that Trump had claimed that Abe submitted the nomination on behalf of Japan. “But do you remember having asked Prime Minister Abe to do such a thing?” he asked on TBS television, in a clip that was widely shared. Opposition lawmaker Junya Ogawa said it was “unthinkable” for Abe to have nominated a man who


In Indian-controlled Kashmir, unprecedented attack puts focus on ‘homegrown’ militants

political and religious terms, Devadas said. Nowhere is this sentiment more heightened than in the villages in the southern part of the Kashmir Valley, which has become a hotbed of militancy. On Sunday, three days after the attack, shops in the area remained shuttered and streets were deserted, save for a few people playing cricket games on roadsides. In Dar’s village, Gundibagh, mourners gathered near his home on Sunday. His relatives sat under a tent. “Kashmiris can feel the pain of the families of those who died,” said Dar’s cousin Umar Ayyub, 25, “because every family here has lost someone.” The uneasy silence is punctured by a woman’s wail from inside the house. Dar, 18, was among scores of young Kashmiris who joined mass protests in 2016. At one demonstration in which protesters threw stones at security forces, he was shot in the leg, his mother said, then spent months bedridden. He reportedly left home to join the militancy in March. Barely two miles from Dar’s village, on a lane dotted with three-story homes in the town of Kakapora, is the house of Majid Ahmad Mir. One day in June 2016, the 19-year-old engineering student did not return home from college. Almost exactly a year later, his family spent a sleepless night as a gun battle raged nearby. At 5:30 the next morning, the family received a call from police to pick up his body. Majid was 6 feet tall, recalled his older brother Imtiaz, but in death, his charred body was a fraction of its size. Imtiaz said after his brother joined the militancy, the authorities conducted multiple raids on their home. Even after Majid’s death, the scrutiny and harassment has not stopped, Imtiaz said. “I do not even have a photo of him on my phone,” he said. “The security forces stop and question me every time like a thief.” Hilal Mir, a senior journalist based in the city of Srinagar, said the militants are not just increasingly local, but also younger. Thursday’s attack could be a turning point, he said. The Modi government’s tough approach to the Kashmir conflict is likely to harden further, sparking a new cycle of killings and reprisals. The scale of Thursday’s violence is also a major departure, Mir added. Security forces and militants “get killed routinely in twos or threes, which doesn’t register anymore,” he said. “This attack changes that.” niha.masih@washpost.com joanna.slater@washpost.com


Fact-checking Trump’s announcement of a national emergency

suspected” members of MS-13 in fiscal 2018 and 1,073 in fiscal 2017, which included part of President Barack Obama’s last term. ICE has not yet released data for MS-13 removals in fiscal 2019, which began on Oct. 1, 2018. In other words, at most 2,405 known or suspected MS-13 members have been deported over the past two fiscal years, according to currently available data, but not all of that was under Trump. Although MS-13 is now run out of El Salvador, the gang originated in Los Angeles in the 1980s. In 2017, the Justice Department estimated there were about 10,000 total active members in the United States and 30,000 around the world. "In El Paso, they have close to 2,000 murders right on the other side of the wall. And they had 23 murders. It’s a lot of murders. But it’s not close to 2,000 murders, right on the other side of the wall, in Mexico.” Even though Juarez and El Paso sit roughly a 20-minute drive from each other across the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas, the two cities have vastly different homicide rates. El Paso had 23 slayings in 2018, according to the El Paso Police Department. Juarez did not have “nearly 2,000” slayings in 2018 but 1,032, according to the Mexican government. The president regularly claims this difference can be attributed to the physical barrier between the cities. But El Paso had the third-lowest violent-crime rate among 35 U.S. cities with a population over 500,000 in 2005, 2006 and 2007 — before construction of a 57-mile-long fence started in mid-2008. “Take a look at Israel. They're building another wall. Their wall is 99.9 percent effective, they tell me — 99.9 percent.” Only one-tenth (33 miles) of the Israeli barrier with Palestinian territories is an eight-meter (25-foot) concrete wall. The other 90 percent is a two-meter-high (six-foot) electronic fence. As for 99.9 percent, that would not apply to the barrier along the West Bank. The New York Times in 2016 reported on a vast smuggling industry that easily evades the Israeli security fence and wall that divides Israeli and Palestinian areas. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pointed to “99 percent” success in reducing immigration from Africa with a barrier erected along the southern border with Egypt. “While there is a clear correlation between the construction of the wall and the decrease in immigration, experts claim that the border


Annual ‘snow moon’ will be a supermoon timed for a snowstorm

The full moon that rises on Tuesday will be a supermoon as well as the yearly “snow moon,” and appropriately enough, it will appear just as the area awaits snow. So, see the snow moon, then watch the snowstorm. A supermoon is the name given to a full moon that occurs when the moon is at its closest approach to Earth on its monthly orbit. Each full moon has been given a seasonally indicated designation — hence “snow moon.” After the moon rises about 6 p.m. Tuesday, if it is visible, it will look a little bigger and brighter than usual. Perhaps ironically, our closer-than-usual view of the annual snow moon may be obscured by snow itself. Although forecasts suggest that flakes may not start falling until early Wednesday, snow clouds could start streaming across our skies before that. However, it seems possible that as shoppers head for the stores to get snow supplies, they may find themselves doing so by the light of a snow moon. At about midnight Tuesday, astronomers expect the moon to be about 221,700 miles above us. Meteorologists expect the snow to be only a few hours away from us. Meanwhile, consider this among modern lunar truisms. In 2019, there’s going to be no moon like the snow moon. Because February’s snow moon will, according to the experts, coincide with the moon’s closest approach to Earth this year. martin.weil@washpost.com


In Central Asia’s forbidding highlands, a quiet newcomer: Chinese troops

when the United States might consider a pact that would pull American troops out of Afghanistan, China appears to be tiptoeing into a volatile region critical to its security and its continental ambitions. Already, the retreat of old powers and arrival of the new are on display in Tajikistan, a tiny, impoverished country that served as a gateway into Afghanistan for U.S. units in the early phases of the 2001 invasion. During a recent trip along the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border, The Post saw one of the military compounds and encountered a group of uniformed Chinese troops shopping in a Tajik town, the nearest market to their base. They bore the collar insignia of a unit from Xinjiang, the Chinese territory where authorities have detained an estimated 1 million Uighurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority. The crackdowns against the Uighurs have been internationally condemned as a violation of human rights, but the Chinese government says they are part of a campaign to insulate its restive far west from Islamic extremism seeping in from Central Asia. “We’ve been here three, four years,” a soldier who gave his surname as Ma said in a brief conversation while his Chinese comrades, guided by a Tajik interpreter, bought snacks and topped up their mobile SIM cards in Murghab, a sprawl of low-rises about 85 miles north of the base. When asked whether his unit had intercepted anyone crossing from Afghanistan, Ma smiled. “You should be aware of our government’s policies about secrecy,” he said. “But I can say: It’s been pretty quiet.” Scarce public information Details about China’s activities at the facilities, some of which bear the Chinese and Tajik emblems, are not made public. Also unclear are the arrangements over their funding, construction and ownership. Satellite imagery shows what appear to be two clusters of buildings, barracks and training grounds, about 10 miles apart near the mouth of the Wakhan Corridor, a narrow strip of territory in northeastern Afghanistan. The Post separately spoke to members of a German mountaineering expedition who said they were interrogated in 2016 by Chinese troops patrolling the Afghan corridor, near the settlement of Baza’i Gonbad. Photos provided by Steffan Graupner, the expedition leader, showed Chinese mine-resistant armored vehicles and equipment embossed with the country’s paramilitary logo. Taken together, the findings add weight to a growing number of reports that China, despite public denials, has been conducting security operations inside Afghanistan.


Karen Attiah and David Ignatius receive Special Polk Award for their writing on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi

Washington Post Global Opinion Editor Karen Attiah and Opinion Columnist David Ignatius have been awarded the Special George Polk Award for their writing on the murder of Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi. The judges wrote: “A Special Award is presented to columnist David Ignatius and Global Opinions editor Karen Attiah of The Washington Post for their eloquence and resolve in demanding accountability from the Saudi Arabian government and candor from the Trump Administration in the wake of the gruesome murder of their colleague and friend, Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. In column after column, nine in all, Ignatius hammered home the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s likely role in Khashoggi’s death and dismemberment, a connection U.S. intelligence agencies established despite President Trump’s equivocation, and Attiah, who had recruited Khashoggi as a Post contributor and hired him as a columnist, came out from behind her editor’s desk to wage a public campaign on behalf of the truth.” One of the most prestigious prizes in journalism, the Polk Awards memorialize George Polk, a CBS correspondent who was killed while covering the civil war in Greece. View the full list of award winners here.


Five years have passed, and Russia is still occupying territory in Ukraine

the international community. It relentlessly tells the world this is a “domestic issue” between Ukraine and Russia. Maintain the lie long enough and the world gets weary. This is exactly what has happened. The lackluster response by some in the international community risks long-term consequences — and not just for Ukraine but for the whole of Europe. History reminds us that appeasement and weakness in the face of rampant aggression have grave consequences. The contagion always spreads. At this five-year milestone, our top priority is the release of Ukraine’s 24 captured servicemen, as well as the 70 Ukrainian political prisoners who are suffering in Russian jail cells. These include the seriously ill Edem Bekirov, 58, a disabled Crimean Tartar activist now suffering in jail after being abducted on Dec. 12, 2018. Pavlo Hryb was kidnapped by Russian agents in Belarus in 2017 after posting comments on social media criticizing the occupation. He was 19 at the time. He was subsequently forced to confess to trumped-up “terrorism” charges during a show trial. He is also seriously ill and being denied medical treatment. The courage of Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian filmmaker, has made his name a symbol of the fight for his native country. Sentenced by the Russians to 20 years in prison for his moral opposition to the Russian occupation regime in Crimea, he has refused to give up. In May 2018, he declared a hunger strike, simultaneously protesting Russian repression and demanding the release of all Ukrainians held by Russia under politically motivated charges. He maintained his strike for 145 days, until the deterioration of his health forced him to stop. He is still recovering. We urge the international community to acknowledge the inherent dangers of a weak response to Russian aggression. If you value democracy and the rule of law, and if you genuinely believe the international rules-based system makes us all safer, you will increase pressure on the Kremlin to start adhering to international law. Increasing sanctions is the next logical step. Russia should be dealt with from a position of strength, not from a position of appeasement. Read more: Jackson Diehl: While Trump wallows in the White House, America’s allies are left on their own Michael McFaul: Sorry, but Trump is not ‘tough on Russia’ The Post’s View: Russia’s escalation against Ukraine shows how little Putin worries about the West Anne Applebaum: Putin’s war is transforming Ukraine


Walmart’s 4th-quarter profits and sales beat Wall Street projections

quarter of surging e-commerce sales during the holiday period as it expanded its online assortment and services. The strong performance is encouraging after a weak December retail sales report last week from the Commerce Department. Walmart executives said Tuesday that customers are benefiting from a stronger economy. The retailer posted strong sales of products from toys to groceries and electronics. That helped sales at stores open at least a year rise 4.2 percent at its U.S. namesake stores, after a 3.4 percent pace in the third quarter. The figure excludes fuel sales. Walmart had a fourth-quarter profit of $3.69 billion, or $1.27 per share. Earnings, removing one-time items, were $1.41 per share, 8 cents better than analysts had expected, according to a survey by Zacks Investment Research. Revenue was $138.79 billion, also better than expected. — Associated Press BANKRUPTCIES Payless ShoeSource files for Chapter 11 Payless ShoeSource has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and is shuttering its remaining stores in North America. The filing on Monday occurred a day after the shoe chain began holding going-out-of-business sales at its North American stores. Payless, based in Topeka, Kan., updated the number it plans to shutter to 2,500 stores, up from 2,100 on Friday when it confirmed it was planning to liquidate its business. It said stores will remain open until at least the end of March and that the majority will remain open until May. — Associated Press ECONOMY Home builder sentiment rose in Feb. Sentiment among U.S. home builders rose in February for a second month, exceeding all forecasts, as lower mortgage rates and a strong labor market help stabilize demand. The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index rose to 62 from 58 amid broad improvement on gauges of sales, expectations and buyer traffic, data released Tuesday showed. Readings above 50 indicate that more builders view conditions as good than view them as poor. The pickup in sentiment, which fell to a three-year low of 56 in December, suggests buyers are taking note of mortgage costs falling to the lowest levels in almost a year as Federal Reserve policymakers pledge patience on further increases in the benchmark interest rate. The measures of expectations and traffic advanced to the best since October. — Bloomberg News Also in Business A joint venture The United States One of the nation’s — From news reports Coming today 2 p.m.: NOTE: Earnings:


Trump is terrible, but the sabotage of Brexit will outlast him

is always possible Trump does something so ill-conceived that he ends up starting a real war, not a trade war. Second, for all the robustness of the United States’ constitutional checks and balances, his impact on politics might be irredeemable if he is succeeded by another infantile attention-seeker. But at least Trump will one day depart the stage. Britain, by contrast, is in such a humiliating mess that it still has no clear idea how it will leave the European Union six weeks from now. Ships laden with goods have already set off from Asian ports, their owners uncertain whether fresh tariffs will greet them at British docks. The March 29 Brexit deadline may be extended because of Westminster paralysis, but the odds remain that we Brits will exit regardless of the damage to our economy, culture and society. The possible cliff-edge catastrophe of leaving with no deal still looms. Already there are signs of the impact as firms shift assets abroad, growth slows and investment plummets. Nissan’s recent decision to ignore a $76 million state bribe to build a new car at its factory in Sunderland was significant. Sunderland is a northern city that voted heavily for Brexit, and Nissan’s auto plant is a symbol of Britain’s 1980s revival under then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She sold the Japanese firm on the idea of locating there by touting Britain as the “gateway to Europe,” inside the world’s biggest trading bloc yet freer of red tape than its neighbors. Thatcher’s revival of a moribund automobile industry by encouraging foreign ownership symbolized Britain’s economic renaissance, along with the even more important 1986 deregulatory “Big Bang” opening the London financial district to investors from all over the world. Brexit’s economic impact is likely to unfold slowly, even imperceptibly, at times. But it will be just as significant as firms invest elsewhere, exacerbating problems in struggling areas that backed Brexit and reducing state revenue. James Dyson, a leading Brexiteer and tech billionaire, has already announced that he is shifting his headquarters to Singapore. Britain sent out a message that it is replacing bridges with walls — walls less obvious but more of a barrier than the one Trump wants to build. Even if Ireland stays peaceful, Scotland does not break free and London retains its artists and bankers, the Brexit message will erode the wealth and strength of a country that was revitalized by


National Butterfly Center sues federal government to prevent construction of border wall

The National Butterfly Center in Mission, Tex., has asked a federal judge to stop the U.S. government from building a border wall on its property. In a motion for a restraining order, filed Monday night, the center argues that the government must not take any action on the organization’s land, which runs along the border with Mexico. The center’s director alleges in court documents that Customs and Border Protection and other law enforcement agencies have been driving heavy machinery through the center’s property without permission or notice. The director, Marianna Trevino Wright, also alleges that the number of law enforcement officers on the butterfly center’s land has dramatically increased since early February, something that is “intimidating” and “restrains” the movement of guests and staff. “Border wall construction is beginning on land adjacent to NABA’s property and Defendants’ constitutional violations are escalating,” the center’s lawyers wrote in court papers, using the acronym for the North American Butterfly Association. “Immediate injunctive relief is necessary to prevent irreparable harm.” The motion is another salvo in a battle between the federal government and the butterfly center, a 100-acre tract that houses more than 200 species of butterflies and native plants, trees and grasses. The butterfly center first filed suit against the government in December 2017, alleging that federal officials decided to build a border wall on the property without complying with existing law. The government petitioned in May to have the case dismissed, but no decision has been made. The lawsuit comes as litigation and tensions are escalating in the Rio Grande Valley as the government has said it plans to begin construction of 33 miles of border wall there. Construction is slated to begin shortly on a levee that cuts through two wildlife refuges. A federal judge ruled last week that the government can begin surveying land that houses a small Texas church and is owned by the local Roman Catholic Diocese. The diocese has said it will continue to fight any move to take land for a border wall, claiming that it violates the right to free expression of religion. Dozens of landowners received surprise letters from the federal government in recent months requesting access to their properties for soil tests and other examination. Lawyers said it is the first part of a two-step process the government uses to obtain land by eminent domain. Some landowners have declined to let the government


U.S. sues Lockheed Martin over alleged kickback scheme at nuclear cleanup site

allegations made by the Department of Justice and rejects the suggestion that the Corporation or Frank Armijo engaged in any wrongdoing. Lockheed Martin will defend this matter vigorously,” a company spokeswoman said in an email. An MSA spokeswoman said the company would stand by its employees. “We look forward to presenting a strong defense in this matter, and as always, we stand behind our team of employees who perform extraordinary work supporting the Hanford mission,” an MSA spokeswoman said in an email. The site was set up in 1943 to produce plutonium for U.S. nuclear bombs, including one that was dropped on Japan at the end of World War II, according to a government website describing its history. For more than 40 years and through the height of the Cold War, the 586-square-mile site was a critical piece of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Its workforce at one point swelled to well over 50,000 people. But the last reactor at Hanford was decommissioned in 1987, and the site was left with massive underground tanks containing radio-active sludge. About a third of those 177 tanks have leaked an estimated 1 million gallons of waste, according to a fact-sheet published by a company tasked with clean-up services, raising environmental concerns. A 1989 agreement between the Energy Department, Environmental Protection Agency and the state of Washington began the clean-up process and established a set of milestones to return the area to toxic waste levels that are acceptable under federal regulations. Starting in 2000 the Energy Department started paying the construction and energy contractor Bechtel to build an advanced nuclear treatment plant that would “vitrify," or convert the waste into a less dangerous form, allowing for its safe disposal. A host of challenges have thrown the clean-up off-schedule, however, raising the question of whether the disposal work will ever be completed. According to a 2015 report from the Government Accountability Office, the Department of Energy spent more than $19 billion over 25 years on “treatment and disposition of 56 million gallons of hazardous waste" at the Hanford site, without actually treating hazardous waste. “Over the last 25 years, [the Department of Energy] has considered and abandoned several different approaches to treating and disposing of this waste but, to date, no waste has been treated,” the GAO wrote in 2015. The Energy Department has pushed back the deadline for that work at least twice: In 2000


Here’s why Robert Mueller is so interested in Paul Manafort’s time on the campaign

"Paul is a great asset and an important addition as we consolidate the tremendous support we have received in the primaries and caucuses, garnering millions more votes than any other candidate,” he said. Eight days before, hackers believed to be working for Russian intelligence gained access to the email account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta. April 10, 2016 April 11, 2016 “How do we use to get whole,” Manafort replied, according to emails reported by the Atlantic. “Has OVD” — the oligarch Oleg Deripaska — “operation seen?” Kilimnik is a central character to questions about the Trump campaign's and Manafort's interactions with Russia. Mueller's team believes that Kilimnik himself is directly linked to Russian intelligence. At some point in this period, Manafort provides Kilimnik with polling data both from the Trump campaign and publicly available elsewhere. Kilimnik was asked to pass that information to two other oligarchs, Serhiy Lyovochkin and Rinat Akhmetov, according to the Times. Both Lyovochkin and Akhmetov had funded the Ukrainian political party for which Manafort once worked. (A representative for Akhmetov denies that Akhmetov had contact with or received information from Kilimnik.) Also in April, The Washington Post asks the Trump campaign about Manafort’s ties to Deripaska. Manafort tells campaign communications head Hope Hicks to ignore the request. April 16, 2016 Ten days later, George Papadopoulos, an adviser to the Trump campaign, is told by a Kremlin-linked professor in London that the Russians have thousands of emails incriminating Clinton. A few days before, hackers believed to be linked to Russian intelligence had stolen several gigabytes of data from the Democratic National Committee’s network. Around May 5, 2016 In this same time period, two other campaign staffers are talking to or about Russia: Papadopoulos, who’s now in contact with a Russian linked to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who’s invited to an event in St. Petersburg that’s presented as an opportunity to advance a possible construction project in Moscow. May 19, 2016 Within the week, hackers believed to be working for Russian intelligence access the DNC's email server. The campaign also receives an email from a supporter in May hoping to introduce a Russian named Alexander Torshin. (Torshin is closely allied with Maria Butina in efforts to build inroads with the National Rifle Association; Butina late last year admitted to working on behalf of the Russian government.) The request


Tom Sietsema’s 9 favorite places to eat for January 2019

apple crisp and tres leches cake. What sounds like a head-scratcher makes sense in the mouth. 2000 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria, 703-549-5051, eveningstarcafe.net. Entrees, $14 to $27. ET VOILA! My mom is such a fan of Et Voila!, in the Palisades, that she requested the Belgian restaurant for her 90th birthday, where she would have ordered waffles (“the best!”) had only they been served at night. Me? I go for the superlative steamed mussels, presented in a double-decker pot, the top of which is used for empty shells. My current pick involves a base of creamy red curry, resonating with lemon grass and ginger. But the stars of the show are the plump Dutch-style mussels themselves, which chef-owner Claudio Pirollo buys from a Belgian family in Maine. Eaten in tandem with Et Voila!’s crisp golden fries, the best around, the mussels make a joyful meal for just under $25. No one-trick pony, the restaurant checks off a number of boxes. Its hamburger is a tower of juicy Oregon beef and glossy toasted bun; its desserts run to such lovelies as floating island; and if you’re looking for privacy, this charmer, renovated two years ago, offers spaces in three sizes, my favorite of which is the tall, 10-seat chef’s table in the rear. 5120 MacArthur Blvd., 202-237-2300, etvoiladc.com. Entrees, $18.95 to $33.95. ALTA STRADA “During times of unrest — political, economic — food has a way of soothing us,” says chef-owner Michael Schlow. No dish on the menu of his neighborhood Italian dining room addresses the issue better than his first-rate chicken Parmesan. Forget the oversauced, heavily cheesy stereotype. Schlow’s version is built for 2019. The breading — panko ground together with bread crumbs, rosemary and thyme — is a mere veneer, while the sauce picks up its brightness from San Marzano tomatoes, garlic and basil. And the cheese (mostly Parmesan, a bit of mozzarella) comes across as a suggestion rather than a shout. Hearty? Yes. Heavy? The $22 entree is just right on a winter night, better in the company of a vegetable rather than the usual pasta. The night I dropped in, the chicken shared its plate with lightly crisp broccoli tarted up with garlic and lemon. Finer still: The goodness can also be enjoyed across town, at Schlow’s other Italian outpost, Casolare in Glover Park (2505 Wisconsin Ave. NW, 202-625-5400, casolaredc.com. Entrees, $16 to $41). 465 K St.


White House prepares to scrutinize intelligence agencies’ finding that climate change threatens national security

between $10,000 and $15,000 from Peabody Coal to testify before a Minnesota Public Utilities Commission hearing. During a December 2016 energy and climate policy summit sponsored by the conservative Heritage Foundation, Happer explained that the CO2 Coalition aimed to counter the idea that carbon dioxide is a pollutant because it is the primary driver of recent climate change. “I like to call this the CO2 anti-defamation league,” he said, gesturing to a slide, “because there is the CO2 molecule, and it has undergone decade after decade of abuse, for no reason. “We’re doing our best to try and counter this myth that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant,” he said. “It’s not a pollutant at all. . . . We should be telling the scientific truth, that more CO2 is actually a benefit to the earth.” Most scientists have taken a different view, concluding that the world must curb its carbon output dramatically in the next few decades or risk dire consequences. Global temperatures have risen roughly 1 degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, from preindustrial levels. A U.N. report issued in October said the world has to cut its emissions by more than 1 billion tons each year over the next decade to keep the rise from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius. The Trump administration, however, has accelerated domestic fossil fuel production and sought to reverse most of the curbs on greenhouse gas emissions adopted under President Barack Obama. Last year the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published an analysis predicting that global temperature rise could reach 4 degrees Celsius, or 7 degrees Fahrenheit, by 2100 under the government’s current trajectory. While several Trump appointees have argued that climate change does not pose a significant risk to the nation’s defense capabilities, the Pentagon and intelligence agencies have reached the opposite conclusion. The assessment Coats submitted on Jan. 29 to the Senate Intelligence Committee, for example, states, “Global environmental and ecological degradation, as well as climate change, are likely to fuel competition for resources, economic distress, and social discontent through 2019 and beyond. The Defense Department said in a report submitted to Congress in mid-January that several dozen military installations around the nation already are experiencing climate impacts. The assessment, which called climate change “a national security issue,” said rising seas, wildfires and other such disasters are likely to create more severe problems for the military in the coming years. juliet.eilperin@washpost.com missy.ryan@washpost.com


Disgusted by Brexit hard-liners, three lawmakers abandon Theresa May’s Conservative Party

would threaten Northern Ireland’s position in the United Kingdom. In announcing their resignations, the three Tories — Sarah Wollaston, Heidi Allen and Anna Soubry — told the prime minister in a statement, “We no longer feel we can remain in the Party of a Government whose policies and priorities are so firmly in the grip of the ERG and DUP.” They wrote: “Brexit has redefined the Conservative Party — undoing all the efforts to modernize it. There has been a dismal failure to stand up to the hard line ERG which operates openly as a party within a party, with its own leader, whip and policy.” At a news conference, Allen complained that May and the Conservative Party were being “bullied into submission” by hard-line Brexiteers such as former foreign secretary Boris Johnson. Wollaston said the Conservatives were no longer the “tolerant, moderate, openhearted” party of the past, but have been taken over by the hard right, which she claimed “is marching us toward the cliff edge of a no-deal Brexit.” Soubry said, “The right-wing, hard-line, anti-E.U. squad are now running the Conservative Party, from top to tail.” “Please, come join us,” Soubry said, predicting that more ministers in May’s cabinet would soon resign their posts — if not their parties — over the prime minister’s handing of Brexit. The resignations came before May flew to Brussels for another round of talks on how Britain could leave the E.U. but preserve open borders in Ireland. May said she was “saddened” by her colleagues’ decision to leave the party. “These are people who have given dedicated service to our party over many years, and I thank them for it,” she said. The prime minister acknowledged, too, the obvious, that Brexit is painful and hard. “Of course, the U.K.’s membership of the E.U. has been a source of disagreement both in our party and our country for a long time,” May said. “Ending that membership after four decades was never going to be easy.” But May said she and the government would press on and deliver the Brexit that the country voted for in a June 2016 referendum. Her Brussels meetings produced no breakthroughs, and the two sides agreed to meet again next week. Corbyn planned to visit Brussels on Thursday for meetings of his own. Tony Travers, a politics professor at the London School of Economics, noted that the Independent Group


Bid protest for Pentagon’s cloud is put on hold after ‘new information’ emerges related to conflicts of interest

Department unit responsible for building commercial technology practices into the military’s operations. While he worked at the Pentagon, he also separately ran a Silicon Valley-based start-up called TableHero, which used cloud-based software to help restaurants build their business online. Ubhi publicly praised Amazon while he worked at the Defense Department, repeatedly referred to himself as an “Amazonian” and at one point claimed to be “leading the effort” to move the Defense Department’s computer systems to the cloud. For about seven weeks, he worked directly on early planning and market research for the JEDI contract, according to court documents. In October 2017, he recused himself from the JEDI procurement process, citing “potential conflicts” over “further partnership discussions” in which his business might engage with Amazon. He left the Defense Department the next month and rejoined AWS. Ubhi’s revolving-door career path ― and the possibility that his decisions as a government procurement officer were colored by his close affiliation with Amazon ― has been at the center of Oracle’s lawsuit. Oracle also criticized the Defense Department’s efforts to vet Ubhi and screen for potential conflicts of interest, saying a Defense inquiry into the issue “spans less than one page” and “entirely ignored” Ubhi’s later employment at AWS. The Defense Department and AWS both pushed back against Oracle’s claims, arguing that the company is engaged in a “broad fishing expedition” and regurgitating arguments it had made in its failed protest of the bid process. “Oracle attempts to use Mr. Ubhi’s voluntary recusal as evidence of supposed bias, when in reality it demonstrates precisely the opposite: Mr. Ubhi acted specifically to avoid any potential conflict by voluntarily recusing himself from any JEDI activities before he eventually returned to AWS,” Amazon’s attorneys wrote in a court filing. Throughout the litigation, Amazon has offered few public details regarding the circumstances of Ubhi’s hiring. An Amazon spokesman said in an email late last year that both of Ubhi’s positions at Amazon had been on the commercial side of the company’s business, not the public-sector business that pursues government contracts. The Amazon spokesman declined to make Ubhi available for an interview, citing pending litigation. In a Jan. 23 court filing, the Pentagon’s attorneys said the Defense Department contracting officer overseeing JEDI was considering whether Amazon’s rehiring of Mr. Ubhi creates an [organizational conflict of interest] that cannot be avoided, mitigated, or neutralized." Julie Tate contributed to this report.


Local Digest: NTSB hearing will seek to determine cause of Md. explosion that left 7 dead

THE DISTRICT Hearing seeks cause of deaths in explosion The National Transportation Safety Board has scheduled a hearing to determine the probable cause of a fatal natural gas explosion more than two years ago. The NTSB said in a news release Tuesday that the hearing is scheduled for April 23 at its conference center in Washington. The hearing was originally scheduled for March 12. Authorities said the explosion at an apartment complex in Silver Spring, Md., on Aug. 10, 2016, killed seven people and injured dozens. Last November, Maryland’s two U.S. senators said federal investigators needed to wrap up their inquiry. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives concluded the explosion stemmed from a gas leak in a utility room housing the complex’s meters. — Associated Press VIRGINIA Professor announces candidacy for primary election Fairfax County’s already crowded Democratic primary election to replace county Board of Supervisors Chair Sharon Bulova added another name last week when Alicia Plerhoples, a Georgetown University law professor, announced her candidacy. Plerhoples, 39, had been running for a county school board seat in McLean but decided to abandon that race in hopes of working to bridge the economic gap in Virginia’s most populous jurisdiction as leader of the board of supervisors, she said in a statement. “There are two Fairfax Counties, divided by economic security and opportunity,” Plerhoples said. “I am running for Chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors because I want to close the gap through affordable housing, public education, environmental justice and transportation improvements.” Bulova (D) is set to retire at the end of her third term in December. The other Democrats seeking to succeed her are Supervisor Jeff C. McKay (D-Lee), county school board member Ryan McElveen (D-At Large) and Reston-based developer Tim Chapman. — Antonio Olivo


How often do you see fruits and veggies on billboards? The answer depends on who you are and where you live.

that I should have bariatric surgery or else, in five years, start picking out a spot in a cemetery,” he said. For O’Grey, an experience aboard an airline helped him make the change. “As I was walking down the aisle of the aircraft, I saw the look on the people’s faces. It was a look that said, ‘Please, God, don’t let that fat man sit next to me.’ ” He squeezed into a center seat only to discover that the airplane had run out of seat-belt extensions. He couldn’t buckle up and the airplane could not take off until an extension could be found. “Several people around me were saying things like, ‘He’s too fat,’ and ‘I’m going to miss my flight because this guy has no self-control.’ It was humiliating.” He had already been scheduled for bariatric surgery but decided to give the plant-based diet a try and to get a dog — one last attempt before having part of his stomach removed. It worked. In 2017, he got married. His wife, Jaye, had weighed 197 when they met. He became her nutrition coach, and in just over a year she was down to 115 pounds. More proof that a whole-food, plant-based diet can make a tremendous difference in the quality of life. And fast. “You have to wonder, why aren’t more people eating this way?” O’Grey said. From those initial walks around the block with Peety, he joined a running group. When Peety died in 2015, he took it hard, nearly went back to some old eating habits. But he stuck with the program and got another dog. In addition to running marathons, he’ll be participating in the Ironman Maryland competition in September. I was still new to all of this and just didn’t want to find myself at some drive-through window grabbing a burger and fries. I needed support. O’Grey said that he, too, notices the TV commercials for fast foods but isn’t tempted by them. There are other ads that take the sizzle out. “I’ve seen fast-food ads followed by ads for pharmaceutical products — medications for conditions caused by fast foods in some cases,” he told me. “And those commercials are sometimes followed by ads for lawyers involved in class-action lawsuits against the pharmaceutical companies. It’s a circle of insanity. Why not just eat more fruits and vegetables?” Maybe I’ll get a dog, too. courtland.milloy@washpost.com


Who ordered the slaying of Jamal Khashoggi? It was personal for two Post staffers.

When Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October, the mystery of his fate was personal to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius and global-opinions editor Karen Attiah. Ignatius had been friends with Khashoggi since 2003; Attiah had recruited him as a Post columnist in 2017 and had edited his columns. Together, Ignatius and Attiah sought to expose Saudi complicity in what turned out to be Khashoggi’s slaying, the latter through dozens of social media posts and media interviews and the former through a series of reported columns revealing the machinations of Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler. Their work describing the plot against Khashoggi by Mohammed’s regime, and its ramifications, was honored Tuesday with the George Polk Award, one of journalism’s most prestigious honors. The awards’ judges cited Ignatius and Attiah’s “eloquence and resolve in demanding accountability” from the Saudi government and from the Trump administration following Khashoggi’s death. Ignatius “hammered home” Mohammed’s likely role in his columns while Attiah “came out from behind her editor’s desk to wage a public campaign on behalf of the truth,” they said in their citation. The Polk Awards are themselves named for a CBS correspondent who was murdered in 1948 while covering the Greek Civil War. The annual honors, which focus on investigative and enterprise reporting, are administered by Long Island University. In the wake of Khashoggi’s death, Ignatius said he felt “a deep anger” over the crime and the Saudis’ fumbling attempts to cover it up. “I thought, I’m not going to let this story go until I found out how and why he was killed,” he said Tuesday. He added, “Trump has given [Mohammed] a pass on the murder of a Washington Post colleague . . . and I think the president has to answer why it’s business as usual.” Attiah said she was motivated “to keep reminding people of [Khashoggi’s] words and ideas,” which stressed reform of the repressive monarchy. “I felt protective of his work . . . I was grieving in public. I was angry in public.” She highlighted her colleague’s death via numerous interviews and a relentless Twitter feed . The New York Times was a double winner in the competition. Times reporters David Barstow, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner were honored for their 18-month investigation of Trump’s financial history, which they found was derived from an inherited


How meat producers are trying to avoid becoming like dairy farmers competing with nut ‘milks’

At 7 p.m. on a Tuesday night last May I’d invited him here to see how he would fare at a restaurant that prides itself on vegetarian “charcuterie.” But I quickly learned that Kester has no beef with vegetarians. In fact, he enjoys many a vegetable himself: “Avocado, yes. Beets, yes. Radishes, yes,” he said as he scanned the menu. By the time he had drained his pineapple-pandan soda and dutifully swallowed part of the last course, an avocado topped with pickled cauliflower, I’d learned that what worried him — and what brought him to Washington often — was “fake” meat. By fake, Kester meant the plant-based burgers from Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, which have elbowed their way into grocery-store meat cases next to the sirloins and ground round. In January, Impossible Foods, which is backed by Bill Gates, announced that it is developing a plant-based “steak” that bleeds. Even more worrisome is the much-ballyhooed, but not yet commercially available, “lab” or “cultured” meat, cultivated from animal cells without raising or slaughtering an animal. Fighting fake meat is NCBA’s top priority for 2019. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, in 2018, it spent $766,500 on the midterm elections, nearly all of it going to Republicans. The cattlemen are trying to persuade federal officials to more closely oversee meat alternatives. The Food and Drug Administration regulates plant-based “meat” and the U.S. Department of Agriculture regulates meat. The meat industry wants the USDA to inspect lab-grown products and regulate what they are called: Kester and his colleagues want to ban terms such as “clean meat,” which seems to imply that your steak is dirty. In November, the USDA and FDA announced a joint framework for cell-based meat regulation. In a statement, NCBA called it a positive step but still a skeleton: “Now the federal agencies need to put (real) meat on the bones.” Meat lobbyists have also taken their fight to the states. On Jan. 1, Missouri became the first to regulate the names of aspiring meat alternatives, restricting the word “meat” to only products harvested from livestock. (It has already been challenged in court.) Nebraska lawmakers are considering making it a crime to advertise or sell any product as meat “that is not derived from poultry or livestock.” Tennessee, Virginia and Wyoming are also looking at the issue. The level of concern over what is essentially a marketing question


Darla Shine doesn’t get it. Childhood illnesses of old are no joke.

universally available. Nine years ago, I did just this, spending the year in rural Cambodia teaching fifth grade gifted students. It was in Southeast Asia where I became a passionate defender of the importance of vaccines, because I witnessed the ravages of these diseases firsthand. The first of these vaccine-preventable diseases I encountered was the mumps. At an orphanage I visited, I met several children spread out on rugs in one of the common areas hooked up to IVs filled with coconut water. At first, I had no idea what I was seeing, so thoroughly has mumps been eradicated in the United States: My guide had to explain what was making the orphans so ill. While I had seen many cases of dengue fever and malaria in my time there, the mumps was frighteningly different. The necks of several of the children were swollen several times their normal size, and they looked like they were struggling to breathe. I’m unsure if that was because of the swelling around their airways, sitting in tropical temperatures with high fevers, or a combination of the two. They were immobile on the floor, ignored in the bustle of all of the other children present, lethargic and in visible discomfort. It was a painful sight to witness and, I can only imagine, unimaginably miserable to experience, even if the children survived. Over the course of the year, I also saw children similarly afflicted with the measles, felled by a rash, pain and a raging fever in daytime temperatures of more than 100 degrees in the shade, always accompanied by suffocating humidity. I heard of children in nearby villages dying and of women miscarrying their unborn babies. It has become a trend for Western parents to eschew vaccinations, to spend their time searching out doctors who will agree to treat children whose parents refuse vaccinations, and to find ways to obtain legal exemptions to send their children to school without the required immunization. I witnessed parents in Cambodia spending their time quite differently. Often, nongovernmental organizations and nonprofit hospitals would offer Cambodian parents free vaccinations during clinic hours. It was always clear when these clinics were open, because lines of dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of mothers with their babies and young children would appear. Standing in the heat and direct sun, shaded only by their own scarves, families would line up for hours to obtain lifesaving


Grab your stretchy pants for the Michelin Star-Spangled Road Trip across America

If your flavor of road-trip food leans more toward grilled foie gras wontons than Panda Express chow mein, then start packing your suit jacket and stretchy pants. Verve Search, a content marketing company in London, has mapped out a celestial culinary adventure: the shortest possible route to all 159 Michelin-starred restaurants in the United States. The 3,426-mile journey includes both lengthy stretches (the 2,111-mile drive between Bouchon in Yountville, Calif., and EL Ideas in Chicago) and frog hops (Per Se and Masa, both in Manhattan’s Time Warner Center). James Barnes, an outreach specialist working on behalf of Orbitz, explained the math and madness behind the Michelin Star-Spangled Road Trip. What inspired your team to map this route? Why Michelin restaurants, and why the United States? We were intrigued by the prospect of plotting the ultimate road trip for fine diners and figured that Michelin-starred restaurants would serve as the perfect proxy, given that Michelin stars are widely regarded as the top accolade for a restaurateur or chef. The fact that there are fewer than 200 Michelin-starred eateries in the U.S. and that they’re primarily clustered in four locations (California, Illinois, Washington and New York) renders this a more realistic endeavor than first meets the eye. How did you come up with the route? To calculate the shortest route between the full set of restaurants, we would need to discover the distances between each pair of restaurants and find the ordering that results in the minimum distance covered. Even if there only 20 restaurants, the number of potential orderings would be 2.43 times ten to the eighteenth power. It would take an unfathomable amount of time to compute all the variations. This is where the work of Randy Olson comes into play. The data scientist [at the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Biomedical Informatics] first employed his mathematical wizardry to create a search path that could find the titular character in “Where’s Waldo.” He then applied the same logic to map out the ultimate American road trip, which involved visiting 50 historical landmarks spanning the Lower 48 states. The algorithm that underpins Olson’s work belongs to a class of “genetic algorithms” whose purpose is to find a solution that, while potentially not perfect, can get extremely close to unearthing the optimal route. The algorithm, when applied to our Michelin road trip, works by picking a random route through the full set


In a high-tech world, aged spirits still get much of their flavor from wood and fire

point, they noticed that wines at the end of their journey tasted better than at the beginning. Centuries later, barrel aging is an art and a science that wine and spirits makers invest money and time into getting right. The influence of wood is even stronger in spirits, whose higher proof makes them extract more of the botanicals they rub up against. Estimates vary, but anywhere from 40 to 70 percent of the flavor of an aged spirit is thought to come from the wood. Globally, several species of European and American white oak remain the preferred material. “They’re able to breathe, so oxygen can pass in and out of the barrel — which is a key component of maturation — and they taste good,” says Jason Stout, vice president of marketing and business development at Independent Stave, an international cooperage company founded in 1912 and headquartered in Missouri. The main difference between a barrel the company would create for, say, a bourbon and one for wine is that a bourbon barrel will be charred inside rather than gently toasted. What happens to a spirit during its years in a barrel is multifold: Unappealing flavors get filtered out by that layer of char. New flavors get put in as the alcohol penetrates into the so-called red layer underneath the char and extracts its chemical components. As temperature and humidity levels change around the porous barrel, it “breathes,” causing evaporation and oxidation inside: Some of the liquid disappears into thin air while the spirit is maturing (the fabled “angel’s share”), but the interaction between wood, spirit and air also impacts the development of flavors. “Wood is made of certain building blocks . . . and heat transforms those big building blocks into smaller compounds that are then extracted,” says Stout. Understanding how to get those flavors out is part of the cooper’s art. You might be trying to get at, for example, an aldehyde called vanillin. “How do we toast that barrel in order to . . . get the maximum amount of vanillin?” says Stout. “Or how do we create a little bit of that sweet smoke character, without going a little too far and starting to get into that kind of burnt smoke character?” Distillers can do plenty of experimenting, but what they can release under particular designations is another story. In the immortal words of Walter Sobchak, there


The hopes and fears surrounding the second Trump-Kim summit

denuclearization will look like — and chart a road map for the United States and North Korea. Duyeon Kim, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, put it this way: “The Vietnam summit this month will determine whether real denuclearization of North Korea is possible ever, and how much Washington is willing to pay for it, while ensuring the regime’s survival and the country’s prosperity.” Trump and Kim signed an agreement that made only vague reference to nuclear weapons at the first summit in June (with the exception of a pledge to repatriate the remains of U.S. service members killed in the Korean War, which has seen some progress). But after the second summit, the devil will be in the details. Exactly what is being offered in Vietnam will be important. Biegun, who was appointed after the summit last year and initially struggled to get meetings with the North Korean side, is known to have met with a number of domestic denuclearization experts in recent months. One of the groups he met with is associated with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which released benchmarks for the success of the Vietnam summit. Among the key points outlined by Carnegie’s Toby Dalton and Ariel Levite is that the two sides need to agree to a road map, while North Korea should agree to a verifiable freeze on the production of nuclear weapons along with a general increase in transparency. “As a first step to demonstrate its sincerity and commitment to making progress, North Korea should immediately cease all fissile material activity at Yongbyon and open it to monitoring,” Dalton and Levite write, referring to North Korea’s main nuclear facility. These may be achievable goals — Kim has already offered to dismantle Yongbyon, though only after the United States makes its own concessions. But a big question is: What would Washington offer in return? One obvious suggestion is that Washington may move to pull back sanctions placed on North Korea in recent years. “A series of more developed issues, compared to the first summit, will be discussed during the meeting,” Kim Sang-ki, director of the unification policy unit at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told the Korea Times. “They will include a lifting of economic sanctions on the North and the expansion of bilateral engagement in such areas as culture and sports.” Other options include an


Israel could become fourth country to reach the moon with space shot this week

TEL AVIV — Israel is aiming to become the fourth country to land a spacecraft on the moon with the scheduled launch Thursday from Cape Canaveral, Fla., of Beresheet, the first homegrown Israeli spaceship. At stake are not only $100 million of investment and eight years of hard work, says the team of scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs involved in the venture, but also possibly the future of independent privatized space travel. Beresheet, named for the Hebrew word for Genesis, will be the smallest and least expensive spacecraft ever to attempt the journey from Earth to the moon, say those behind the project. Measuring only 1.5 meters in height and two meters in diameter, the vessel is aiming to make a lunar landing on April 11. Previous moon landings — including the first by the former Soviet Union in 1966, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969 and China in 2013 — were all government-sponsored endeavors. This initiative, spearheaded by Israeli nonprofit SpaceIL, is being funded mainly by Jewish donors and foundations from around the world. SpaceIL’s chief executive, Ido Anteby, said that as long as there are no last-minute hiccups on Thursday night — the launch has already been postponed at least once — Beresheet will leave the Earth’s atmosphere by hitching a ride on a Falcon 9 commercial rocket belonging to Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Once the spaceship disengages from the Falcon 9 rocket, the craft will travel a roundabout route to the moon, covering a total distance of about 4 million miles, orbiting both the Earth and the moon several times. As it reaches the moon’s orbit, Beresheet will reduce its speed, with the goal of being picked up by the moon’s gravity. There are still challenges before it reaches a lunar landing and puts Israel on the space industry’s map. Israelis have already experienced their share of disappointment and tragedy when it comes to space travel. Israel’s only astronaut, Ilan Ramon, was among the seven-member crew of the space shuttle Columbia when it disintegrated upon reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere in 2003. Morris Kahn, SpaceIL’s president and its largest investor, said Monday he hoped the initiative, as the first commercial, nongovernment flight to the moon, would contribute significantly to future space exploration. He also said he was “gifting” the project to Israel and declared it a national project. “Not only every Israeli, but also every Jew


Tiny new moon discovered around Neptune

A diminutive nugget of a moon has been discovered lurking in the inner orbit of Neptune. The moon, dubbed Hippocamp for the half-horse, half-fish sea monster from Greek legend, is about the size of Chicago and so faint only the powerful Hubble Space Telescope can spot it. But by examining data stretching more than a decade, researchers were able to discern its dim form from 3 billion miles away. “Being able to contribute to the real estate of the solar system is a real privilege,” said planetary scientist Mark Showalter, the lead author of a study on the discovery published Wednesday in the journal Nature. “But it shows how much we still don’t know about the ice giants, Neptune and Uranus." Showalter and his colleagues suggest Hippocamp is a fragment of a larger neighboring moon called Proteus, broken off during a cataclysmic collision some 4 billion years ago. Neptune has been explored just once in human history, with a brief flyby of the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989. “But there are all these interesting processes going on there, that we only got a glimpse of,” Showalter said. “Atmospheric phenomena, rings with peculiar properties . . . and these collisions and breakups that formed the inner moons.” “It’s not just a dinky little moon we’ve found,” he continued. Moons such as Hippocamp “are witnesses to the formation and evolution of the planets they orbit. In my mind, they have very interesting stories to tell.” Showalter, a senior research scientist at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute in Mountain View, Calif., is something of a distant moon detective. By accumulating scores of long-exposure Hubble images, then adjusting them to account for an orbiting body’s predicted movement, he has already uncovered two new moons each around Pluto and Uranus. The resulting images “are not pretty,” Showalter said. The planets are so overexposed they become big white blotches, and the moons at their centers are little more than pale dots. The procedure generally does not capture enough data from the moons to allow scientists to take spectra — splitting light into its component parts to reveal clues about the moons’ composition. Hippocamp is the first new inner satellite found around the solar system’s outermost planet since the Voyager 2 flyby. Researchers were initially surprised to find the tiny rock so close inside the orbit of Proteus, which is more than 100 times its


A fox, a mysterious death and the hidden wild side of Washington

yes — and then we discussed coyotes. They are one of the most “respectful” animals, able to exist in neighborhoods without residents having any idea, she explained. She also confirmed that they have made homes in Arlington. While they are elusive, several have been picked up after they were hit by cars. They also have been captured on video. Abugattas, who is known as the Capital Naturalist on social media, posted a YouTube video of a coyote sniffing in a fox den in an Arlington park. The coyote did that on three different nights, he said. When I told Abugattas about my fox, he said the most plausible culprit was a coyote. “Coyotes would see a fox as not only a potential prey but also as competition,” he said. “They’re hunting a lot of the same things.” But he left room for other possibilities. He said coyotes normally eat the whole body. Abugattas said this area is rich with animal life many people have no idea exists. A bobcat was captured on video. Southern flying squirrels are abundant, he said. And a Mediterranean gecko was recently found in the laundry room of a local residence. “They want to be in our area but not seen in our area,” Toussaint said. “Animals are very smart.” Foxes have been known to use walkways, and one Toussaint nicknamed “Ma” likes to sunbathe in a grassy area by a parking lot, which has led some people to call the authorities. Toussaint said many of the calls her office receives stem from a “lack of understanding that leads to unnecessary fear.” She got one call about an aggressive squirrel. It wouldn’t allow a woman to step out of her house. It turns out, a few days earlier, the family had patched a hole in front of the house, and trapped inside of it were the squirrel’s babies. “They’re fantastic parents,” Toussaint said of squirrels, which have been known to adopt orphaned squirrels, relocating them from one tree to another. That all of this co-exists in the area speaks to “good city planning,” Toussaint said. If animals couldn’t successfully raise their young here, they would leave. If they are successful, “they do it again and again.” So, what then killed our fox? The possibilities alone speak to the range of wildlife in the area. I learned from Toussaint and Abugattas that there was no way to


Harvard’s top astronomer says an alien ship may be among us — and he doesn’t care what his colleagues think

of the Great Refractor — an enormous 19th-century telescope where he sometimes does photo ops. “I see it as a continuation of childhood curiosity — trying to understand what the world is like.” He joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., in the late 1980s (“Where Einstein used to be,” he notes) and later took a junior position in Harvard’s astronomy department, where “for 20 years no one had been promoted from within . . . They tenured me after three years.”) As he tells it, his life story sounds like a cerebral version of “Forrest Gump” — Loeb always single-mindedly pursuing his science and intersecting with the giants of the field, whom he regularly name-drops. Stephen Hawking had dinner at his house. Steven Spielberg once asked him for movie tips. Billionaire Yuri Milner once walked into his office and sat on the couch and asked him to help design humanity’s first interstellar spaceship — which he is now doing, with a research budget of $100 million and the endorsement of Mark Zuckerberg and the late Hawking. Loeb mentions casually that when he was 24 years old he got a private audience with the famed physicist Freeman Dyson — and then pauses for effect beneath the 20-foot shaft of the Great Refractor, grinning until he realizes the reporter doesn’t know who Freeman Dyson is. At midday, Loeb leaves the telescope and his office and descends to a bare white classroom to introduce the basics of astrophysics to a dozen new students. If he’s mastered the national news interview by now, his lecture begins a bit stilted. He looks down at the table as he speaks. He asks the freshmen at this most prestigious of universities to go around the table and list their hobbies. Ten minutes later, Loeb goes off script. “Did anyone hear the name ‘Oumuamua?” he asks. “What did it mean?” Almost everyone nods, and freshman Matt Jacobsen, who came to Harvard from an Iowa farm town, volunteers quietly: “There was speculation that it was from another civilization.” “Who made that speculation?” Loeb asks, smiling. There’s an awkward silence in the room, and then Jacobsen cries, “Was it you? Oh, my gosh!” and the professor smiles wider. Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Steven Spielberg’s name and Yuri Milner’s name. Read more The extraordinary life and death of the world’s oldest known spider avi.selk@washpost.com


Kraft’s iconic American cheese is losing ground in today’s America

Food conglomerate Kraft Heinz took a $15.4 billion write-down in two of its most powerful brands this week, a jarring warning that even the most iconic American names are vulnerable to shifts in consumer tastes. The hit on the value of the Kraft and Oscar Mayer labels on Thursday highlights the struggles that packaged-food companies face as they try to keep up with evolving palates and the rise of smaller, organic and online competitors. Though Kraft Heinz boasts some of the most distinctly American products — Jell-O, Kool-Aid, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese — nostalgia isn’t enough to guarantee sales in the age of fresh-focused eating. Consider Kraft Singles. The radiant orange slices have been the gooey glue of American lunches since the 1960s. The founder of Kraft Foods, James L. Kraft, created early versions of “process cheese” with hopes of making a sliced cheese with a longer shelf life. Kraft and researchers found a way to kill off the bacteria that spawns mold, but it took 15 more years of tinkering before their individually wrapped creation hit markets, the New York Times reported. The product was heralded for the ways it sidestepped the failings of other cheese: Slices didn’t dry out or curl up at the ends; they were beloved for their uniformity and convenience. Now, the same factors that made Kraft Singles an American household staple are eroding its appeal for modern consumers, who prioritize fresh ingredients and have a vested interest in how their food is produced. A June report from Nielsen found that fresh categories are driving nearly half of all growth in brick-and-mortar groceries, with fresh and perishable foods generating more than $177 billion in sales. Conversely, the volume of packaged products sold in the center aisles of grocery stores fell 1.7 percent. "Consumers are seeking craft, not Kraft,” said Matt Gould, editor at Dairy & Food Market Analyst. “People want a story, and they want something that’s natural. They’re afraid of preservatives.” Recent years have seen a spike in the popularity of natural cheeses and a drop-off in processed ones. Processed-cheese sales fell an estimated 1.6 percent in 2018 — a fourth straight year of decline — according to a study from Euromonitor International. Over the past decade, the grocery store cheese section has evolved as Americans have developed a more advanced taste for cheese, Gould said. That might explain why consumers have turned away


out or curl up at the ends; they were beloved for their uniformity and convenience. Now, the same factors that made Kraft Singles an American household staple are eroding its appeal for modern consumers, who prioritize fresh ingredients and have a vested interest in how their food is produced. A June report from Nielsen found that fresh categories are driving nearly half of all growth in brick-and-mortar groceries, with fresh and perishable foods generating more than $177 billion in sales. Conversely, the volume of packaged products sold in the center aisles of grocery stores fell 1.7 percent. "Consumers are seeking craft, not Kraft,” said Matt Gould, editor at Dairy & Food Market Analyst. “People want a story, and they want something that’s natural. They’re afraid of preservatives.” Recent years have seen a spike in the popularity of natural cheeses and a drop-off in processed ones. Processed-cheese sales fell an estimated 1.6 percent in 2018 — a fourth straight year of decline — according to a study from Euromonitor International. Over the past decade, the grocery store cheese section has evolved as Americans have developed a more advanced taste for cheese, Gould said. That might explain why consumers have turned away from Kraft Singles, which officially are a “pasteurized process cheese food” because they don’t meet the Food and Drug Administration’s definition of cheese; to do that, they would have to be at least 51 percent real cheese. Executives have tried to paint the product’s unnatural qualities as a virtue. Peter Cotter, general manager of cheese and dairy for Kraft Heinz, told Bloomberg in October that the “melt” factor of Kraft Singles is a unique asset, a byproduct of its artificial makeup. "Honestly, you can’t get that in a natural cheese,” Cotter said. “It’s a unique product. The creamy smooth texture and melt of the cheese. The natural cheeses, they just don’t melt that way.” Kraft Singles sales are flat, even though about 40 percent of U.S. households still buy them, Cotter told Bloomberg. And as shoppers have scaled back on processed cheese, so have restaurants. Last year, McDonald’s eliminated artificial preservatives from its own squares of American cheese (as well as its buns and Big Mac sauce) to show consumers it’s prioritizing clean ingredients. Chains like Panera Bread and Cracker Barrel have jettisoned classic grilled cheeses from their menus in favor of sandwiches with artisan cheeses like cheddar and Gouda.


As I prepare to become a grandfather, I have some questions for my son

crying coming through the baby monitor at 2 a.m., rather than those precious, reassuring breaths and grunts, the comforting rustle of turning over in the crib. Anger has many causes. Exhaustion, stress and frustration with a job or spouse can take hold for months, even years, with one baby in diapers and another one or two little ones toddling around the house. Add a couple of big dogs to a small space, and that was my life for many years. I was not always calm. In Column A, I would put perseverance, or something along those lines. While there are pursuits I didn’t stick with (teaching, fiction writing, postgraduate work), there are others I have clung to despite considerable physical and emotional pain. My son once told me he respected that kind of perseverance, and he has certainly embraced the same in many aspects of his life. Something he wrote and gave to me for Christmas in 2015 showed me how much he valued my example on this. That October, he and I ran the Columbus Marathon. He had pneumonia that summer, yet gutted out the long training runs and the marathon. We ran side by side the entire 26.2 miles. It was a top-five moment in my life, without question. That Christmas Eve, he handed me a 500-word essay, “Five Things I Learned Running a Marathon with My Dad.” In the happy chaos of the holiday, I put the essay aside until the next morning, when I was alone. This is from No. 4: "Before I took on the marathon, I considered myself to be 'in shape' and my dad to be 'skinny.' Running alongside my dad on training runs (and on the day of the race), I realized pretty quickly that I had it backward. My dad is pushing 60, and several decades of nonstop running have hammered his lungs and legs into a finely tuned machine that transforms oxygen into miles at an alarming pace. “When I was a boy, I remember being impressed by my dad’s biceps and the heavy whiskers on his chin — that’s what a man looks like, and someday I’d be one. Then I grew into one, with muscles and facial hair of my own, and he didn’t seem all that physically imposing anymore. So this is a message to my fellow 20-somethings who have long-since ceased to be impressed by their


Maryland needs more freeway lanes to catch up to Virginia

Regarding the Feb. 17 Metro article “Maryland focuses on toll lanes in plan to widen Beltway and Interstate 270”: Efforts by the Montgomery County delegation to put forth legislation to delay or derail the construction of toll lanes on Interstates 495 and 270 show they have lost touch with their constituents because traffic congestion is a top concern of Montgomery County residents. As an employer, I have more than 50 employees who commute daily from Pennsylvania, West Virginia and southern Maryland to D.C.-area locations. There are no mass-transit options for them, and because 270 and 495 are so congested, many of them begin their commutes at 4 a.m. to avoid rush hour. Several of my neighbors work in the Tysons area. Metro would take more than an hour and a half, so they drive. The morning commute into Virginia on I-495 is tolerable, but the reverse evening commute from Virginia into Maryland is unbearable. It begins daily on the inner loop in Maryland at the 270/495 split and backs up into Virginia as far as Tysons. Virginia has been building additional lane capacity for several years; Maryland hasn’t. Virginia’s four- and five-lane inner loop is reduced to three lanes in Maryland at the 270/495 split. Road proponents are not transit opponents. We need smart and reliable road and transit options to accommodate our growing population. Maryland’s portion of the Beltway needs to catch up with Virginia’s, or the daily bottleneck will continue to choke Maryland’s success as businesses and residents will continue to move to Virginia. Chris Bruch


انقلاب السيسي على الدستور يهدد استقرار مصر

عز الدين شكري فشير هو كاتب مصري ودبلوماسي سابق يُدَرِّس في كلية دارتموث. إنّه مؤلف رواية خلال أقل من أسبوعين، اقترح البرلمان المصري “التعديلات الدستورية” التي تمت مناقشتها والموافقة عليها التي من شأنها أن تسمح للرئيس عبد الفتاح السيسي بالبقاء في منصبه حتى عام 2034، وتجعله رئيسًا للسلطة القضائية وتسمح له بإخضاع النظام السياسي إلى “الوصاية” العسكرية. هذه التعديلات الخارجة عن المألوف ستخضع لاستفتاء بعد فترة “نقاش عام” مدتها 30 يومًا (في دولة حيث يمكن لتغريدتك عبر تويتر أن تعرّضك لعقوبة بالسجن لمدة خمس سنوات). المادة 226 التي تحدد عملية التعديل الدستوري تحظر بشكل صريح تعديل حدود فترة الولاية الرئاسية أو الأحكام المتعلقة بالحريات “ما لم ينصّ التعديل على مزيد من الضمانات” لهذه الحريات. بعبارة أخرى، فإنّ تعديلات السيسي المقترحة غير دستورية. الضغط من أجل الدفع بها هو بمثابة “انقلاب دستوري”. الكثيرون داخل مصر وخارجها سيتجاهلون الأمر عندما يقرؤون هذه المعلومات. بالنسبة لهم، هذا ليس أمرًا جديدًا ولا هامًا. “أليست مصر بالفعل ديكتاتورية عسكرية؟” “هل أخذ أي شخص على محمل الجد انتخابات رئاسية اعتُقِلَ خلالها كافة المرشحين الآخرين أو أُجبِروا على الانسحاب؟” “هل يهتم أحد ما بدستور تمت صياغته تحت عهدة الجيش وتتجاهله الدولة بشكل منهجي؟” وأيضًا: “هل يدعم أحد ما حقًا – أو يتحمّل – حكم السيسي العسكري على أمل أنه سيحوّل مصر إلى دولة ديمقراطية؟” الجواب على كل هذه الأسئلة هو “لا” بكل وضوح. السبب الوحيد الذي يساعد أيًا كان على تحمّل الحكام السلطويين في مصر هو أنهم يحققون الاستقرار لبلدهم المكتظ بالسكان والأمن لجيرانه وشركائه. المصريون أنفسهم يفعلون ذلك. في عام 2013، اختارت الأغلبية الأمن والاستقرار بدلًا من الوعد المراوغ بالديمقراطية. تنفس بقية العالم الصعداء وحذا حذوهم. داخل مصر وخارجها، تراجع الجميع إلى نموذج غير سار لكنه مألوف: في مقابل الاستقرار، نحن نغضّ الطرف عن الاستبداد. في أفضل الأحوال، يمكن للمرء أن يدلي ببيان حول انتهاكات حقوق الإنسان وطرحها خلال اجتماع أو مؤتمر صحفي ثم العودة إلى المعتاد. لقد تخلينا عن فكرة ما بعد الحادي عشر من سبتمبر/أيلول التي مفادها أنّ الديمقراطية والاستقرار خيطان مرتبطان. واليوم، ليس هناك اعتبار إلا لخيط واحد فقط: الاستقرار. المشكلة مع هذا “الانقلاب الدستوري” هو أنّه يربط الخيطين من جديد. من خلال تمديد حدود فترة الرئاسة وتآكل ما تبقى من استقلالية القضاء وتكريس الرقابة العسكرية في الدستور، فهذا الانقلاب يحوّل مصر إلى ديكتاتورية عسكرية عارية من دون حتى الوعد بالحكم الديمقراطي أو التظاهر به. هذا الأمر يتعارض مع توقعات المصريين وتصورهم لأنفسهم. لقد تعب المصريون بالفعل من استفتاءات الرئيس السابق حسني مبارك، وعندما استسلم أخيرًا للضغوط وعرض انتخابات تنافسية في عام 2005،


Break dancing among new events proposed for 2024 Olympics

Paris 2024: Electric Boogaloo? When the Olympics get underway in the French capital five-plus years from now, break dancing may be part of the program. Organizers of the Summer Games in Paris put forward a proposal Thursday to add four sports to the slate there, with break dancing accompanied by skateboarding, climbing and surfing. The latter three sports are set to debut in 2020 at the Tokyo Olympics, and all four will need approval from the International Olympic Committee. Also known as breaking, break dancing has grown from its roots in the nascent American hip-hop culture of the 1970s to a “dance sport,” somewhat incongruously related to ballroom dancing, that is notably popular in France. Break dancing got its Olympic start at the 2018 Youth Games in Buenos Aires, where Japan’s Ramu “Ram” Kawai and Russia’s Sergei “Bumblebee” Chernyshev won gold in the girls and boys events. “There’s simply no doubt about the athletic aspects of the discipline,” French break dancer Mounir Biba said at Thursday’s announcement (via the Associated Press). “I defy Cristiano Ronaldo to do just one of my movements." Olympic break dancing features “battles,” in which competitors square off either individually or as part of teams. They show off an array of moves that are rated by judges, all while a DJ lays down some beats. “We are pleased to see that Paris 2024′s proposal for new sports to the Olympic programme is very much in line with the reforms of Olympic Agenda 2020, which is striving to make the Olympic programme gender-balanced, more youth-focused and more urban,” the IOC said in a statement. The head of the Paris organizing committee, Tony Estanguet, said that his group wanted to “connect the Games to their era.” He added that the four new sports would provide a “more artistic” dimension to the Olympics. “It is an incredible honour and privilege that, for the first time, a dance discipline is being considered for inclusion in the Olympic Games,” the president of the World DanceSport Federation, Shawn Tay, said in a statement. “It is a humbling experience for all members and supporters of DanceSport.” Left disappointed by the Paris announcement were the governing bodies for sports such as squash, billiards and chess, which had hoped for inclusion. In addition, karate, which will make its Olympic debut next year, was excluded from the 2024 proposal. “Our sport has grown exponentially over the


Flutist settles equal-pay suit with Boston Symphony Orchestra

Flutist Elizabeth Rowe, who filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the Boston Symphony Orchestra seeking $200,000 in back pay, settled with the BSO last week, both parties have announced. The terms are confidential, though “all those involved in the process are satisfied with the result,” according to a statement from the orchestra. In July, Rowe, 44, who has played principal flute in the orchestra since 2004, sued after years of privately protesting to management about the roughly $70,000 less a year she was paid than John Ferrillo, 63, the orchestra’s principal oboist. In her filing, Rowe contended that her gender was the reason she did not make an equal salary. The BSO argued that the oboe was more difficult to play, that there is a larger pool of flutists and that gender “is not one of the factors in the compensation process at the Boston Symphony Orchestra.” A Washington Post examination of salary structures throughout the orchestra world, spurred by Rowe’s lawsuit, found that although women make up nearly 40 percent of the country’s top orchestras, when it comes to the principal, or titled, slots, 240 of 305 — or 79 percent — are men. The gap is even greater in the “big five” — the orchestras in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia and New York. Women occupy just 12 of 73 principal positions in those orchestras. There is a direct link between principal positions and pay, the Post examination found. Of the 78 “big five” musicians whose salaries are large enough that they must be reported in the orchestras’ tax filings, only 14 are women. Rowe, speaking to The Post last year in her lone public comments about the dispute, said she came to the BSO eager to resolve it positively. “There has not been a lot of good press in our industry recently around women and the treatment of women,” she said, “and I genuinely saw this as a really great opportunity for the orchestra to have something positive to stand for.” But the BSO’s silence to a proposal she had made in March was “devastating.” She added that she was still hoping for a resolution that would please both parties. “I love the Boston Symphony. It is my artistic home,” Rowe said. “It’s where I want to be.” geoff.edgers@washpost.com


Does America have a savings crisis?

Americans save so little money that there is an annual week-long campaign to encourage people to put aside cash for financial emergencies. If faced with an unexpected $400 expense, 4 in 10 adults said they would not have the money to cover it, according to a report last year from the Federal Reserve. To get the funds, they would have to sell something or borrow. There was a time in the 1970s when the savings rate in the United States was in the double digits. But the most recent figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics put it at 6 percent, the lowest level since the 2008 financial crisis. The drop is part of a 60-year downward trend in the personal savings rate, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. America Saves Week, and Military Saves Week, which runs from Feb. 25 until March 2, is a national effort by government agencies, nonprofit organizations and financial institutions to encourage Americans to make saving a priority, reduce their debt and invest for future financial needs. The campaign, managed by the Consumer Federation of America, includes webinars, social media discussions, YouTube talks and saving challenges. “Life is full of unexpected financial emergencies,” said Carol Kaplan, a spokeswoman for America Saves. “Your car breaks down, your refrigerator dies, a family member gets sick. We need to be prepared for such events to the best of our abilities, without going bankrupt. Life has enough stress as it is. Having a savings cushion relieves a lot of that stress and protects us financially.” Americans struggle to save for a number of reasons. It’s difficult to put money aside when you’re earning only enough to cover basic necessities. And maybe some of us could save but are living beyond our means. Others, meanwhile, are concentrating on getting out of debt. “My bank tried to convince me that I needed to have an automated savings account while I was carrying almost $6,000 on my bank credit card,” wrote Mark Pashia of Missouri. “I refused to do that, as they offered less than 1 percent interest on the savings, while they charged me 12.24 percent on the card balance.” Even while diligently paying down debt, you still need savings. Otherwise, in the face of an emergency, your debt will grow. My explanation still didn’t make mathematical sense to Pashia, who said he would soon pay off the