Hey, climate-change mitigators, you can start right now, with the Great Barrier Reef!

Do you rock yourself to sleep at night with soothing thoughts of climate mitigation? We don’t have to switch to solar power. We can stick with beautiful coal, and mitigate! Maybe houses on stilts wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe a dike here and there. We can move our houses, if need be, or have the tornadoes move them for us! Munchkinland had lots of flowers, and one street was paved with gold! Great. So, okay, mitigate this. Strap on your scuba tanks, and fix the Great Barrier Reef, much of which is now dying or dead. Or maybe you would prefer to move it someplace where it will be happier. Maybe off the coast of Munchkinland. Or maybe your idea of mitigation is simply getting used to doing without. Although it must be said, you can’t seem to get used to the idea of doing without coal. So okay, we keep the coal. Who needs coral reefs, anyway, or their stupid fish? The forest that just burned down? Charcoal isn’t so bad. Sort of like coal! The community that just flooded out? Didn’t you ever hear of building an ark? Maybe we can’t get ALL the species on one boat the way Noah did, but who needs all those species, anyway? Canaries in the coal mine? We can do without those. A sixth mass extinction will clear some needed space for the endless mass migrations of people whose nations have collapsed due to drought and crop failure, or pounding, incessant rains and flooding. Why, look at Puerto Rico! It has recovered to the point where it even has electricity some days! Mitigation is the equivalent of living with plywood sheets screwed over your windows, water dripping into buckets, no, you’re mopping up the water, no, you’re wading through the water on your way up to sit on the roof to look for rescuers. Except the rescuers moved inland some time ago to forage for non-extinct species. The idea of mitigation is the idea of surrender. To sacrifice one reef, another species, an ecosystem, a nation, and the best and most beautiful sustaining parts of our home planet. Permanently. If this is your idea of how to handle the problem of climate change, all I can say is that you are probably a member of Congress. In other words, a Munchkin.


Does medical marijuana decrease opioid use or boost it?

On Thursday, an advisory panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration voted its support for the first marijuana-based drug, a treatment for two rare forms of epilepsy in children. As a cannabis-derived medicine moves closer to full FDA approval, some people think marijuana has that potential to make an even bigger contribution to public health: turning back the opioid epidemic. Studies conducted at the state level show that expanding access to medical marijuana is correlated with lower rates of opioid misuse and overdose. Yet studies of individuals show that using medical cannabis is correlated with higher rates of using and misusing opioids. This set of conflicting research has revealed less about the relationship between marijuana and opioids than it has about how science is misunderstood and misused in political debates. It's understandable when looking at the research on medical marijuana and opioids to think that the state and individual level studies are inherently contradictory. But just because two variables have different relationships to each other at the individual level and at the aggregate level doesn’t mean that either finding is wrong. For example, a famous study conducted in 1930 showed that states with more foreign-born residents had higher rates of English-language literacy, even though foreign-born individuals were less likely to be literate than U.S.-born individuals. The seeming contradiction came about because foreign-born residents tended to settle in states with higher rates of English language literacy. The math underlying why many such apparent contradictions exist across scientific research areas is complicated, but the underlying point is simple: We can’t know what’s happening to individuals by looking just at state data (or county or city data), and we can’t know what is happening to states just by looking at individuals. Thus there isn’t any logical contradiction between marijuana and opioid use having opposite relationships at the state and individual level. The other statistical point of relevance here is more widely understood: Just because two things are correlated doesn’t prove there’s a causal relationship between them. However, in this particular domain, people tend to apply that rule only to the subset of studies that conflict with their views on marijuana. Sometimes this is a conscious decision by people who want to spin the evidence, but more often it reflects unconscious, built-in flaws in human reasoning that make us more prone to attend to and trust evidence that confirms what we already believe


The energy revolution has already begun

will, solar energy will play a larger role in juicing the world’s homes and industry — as it already does in heavily subsidized China. But while the arrows are pointed in the right direction for energy consumption and energy mix, we’re still destined to emit many billions of tons of carbon dioxide over the coming decades if not generations. The essential challenge on the other side of the equation is to find ways to capture and safely store those gases. Here, too, the news is promising. Perhaps, like me, you were too distracted by a tempestuous presidential campaign to notice a scientific breakthrough announced in 2015 and patented the following year. At Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, a team led by the esteemed inventor Jeff Brinker came up with a highly efficient, durable and low-cost technology for scrubbing carbon dioxide from power plant emissions. A thin membrane (the inventors call it a “memzyme” in honor of the microscopic enzymes engineered on its surface) isolates carbon dioxide molecules and rapidly sucks them from the surrounding plume. This reusuable, non-toxic technology easily outperforms government goals for carbon scrubbers, and does so at a fraction of the cost of previous devices, according to Brinker and his colleagues. Even better, scientists in Norway may have found a good way to store the captured carbon. At a conference in Vienna last summer, a team from the University of Bergen unveiled a promising advance in high-pressure oil and gas extraction. Rather than “fracking” underground rock formations to free trapped fuels, the scientists successfully injected carbon dioxide into core samples to force out trapped oil, leaving the carbon dioxide locked in its place. The new process “increased recoverable oil by an order of magnitude compared with fracking, and at the same time reduced the carbon footprint by associated CO2 storage,” the team summed up. Fracking has been a game-changer for the U.S. economy, offering cheaper, cleaner fuel and the prospect of energy independence. But this process could be even better, if the Norwegian experiment can be proved in field tests. No more chemically contaminated water, no more fractured rocks and related earthquakes. Furthermore, by creating a lucrative market for large supplies of carbon dioxide, the new technology could drive rapid commercialization of “memzyme” scrubbers. Congress can goose this progress by creating a revenue-neutral tax on carbon dioxide emissions and steering the proceeds into further research and


What’s up with politicians suddenly embracing pot?

That’s in stark contrast to what Trump’s attorney general did earlier this year by rolling back Obama-era protections allowing states to create their own marijuana laws without fear of prosecution from the federal government. (The federal government says marijuana is illegal.) Trump’s position on reconciling the different laws was vague before this. This week, the House of Representatives held one of its first hearings ever on legislation to roll back medical marijuana regulations. And last week, former Republican House speaker John A. Boehner pulled a stunning 180 from his days in Congress and announced that he had joined the board of directors of a cannabis company. Boehner had once said he was “unalterably opposed” to decriminalizing marijuana because it would lead to more people abusing it, alcohol and other drugs. Legalization advocates say there is no one thing that has happened recently to spark these politicians to suddenly switch from their long-entrenched views. But there is plenty of evidence of states and public opinion moving, rather rapidly, in favor of marijuana legalization, and perhaps the politicians in Washington are taking notice. All but two states have laws on the books at least recognizing the value of medical marijuana. Medical marijuana is legal in 29 states. Recreational marijuana is legal in nine states and the District, and advocates are optimistic that the number could double by the 2020 presidential election. An October Gallup poll found record-high support for legalizing marijuana, including among Republicans: “The politics of it are making more sense every day,” Murphy said, “even among Republicans.” In Michigan, Republican lawmakers are considering legalizing recreational marijuana rather than letting an initiative that’s gaining steam make the ballot this fall. GOP lawmakers fear that the ballot measure would boost Democratic turnout in November, reports the Detroit News. That would make Michigan only the second state where marijuana has been legalized by the legislature, after Vermont did so earlier this year. That bill was signed by a Republican governor, Phil Scott. In the fall, voters in Oklahoma and Utah will consider marijuana measures. In 2016, voters in Arkansas, North Dakota and Florida overwhelmingly approved medical marijuana legalization. Those are all states Trump won. It’s probably less of a surprise that Democratic gubernatorial and attorney general candidates are practically tripping over themselves to support marijuana legalization, said Karen O’Keefe of the Marijuana Policy Project. In Schumer’s home state of New York, Gov. Andrew


E. coli outbreak spreads as source of tainted lettuce remains a mystery

health agency added: “Before purchasing romaine lettuce at a grocery store or eating it at a restaurant, confirm with the store or restaurant that it is not chopped romaine lettuce from the Yuma, Arizona, growing region. If you cannot confirm the source of the romaine lettuce, do not buy it or eat it.” New cases were reported to the CDC in Arizona, Alaska, California, Montana and Louisiana. Previously, the E. coli reports had been centered in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, from Connecticut to Michigan. A 66-year-old woman in New Jersey, Louise Fraser, filed a lawsuit Tuesday in federal court against Panera Bread after claiming she ate contaminated romaine lettuce there, which sent her to the hospital for two weeks. Fraser’s attorney, Bill Marler, told The Washington Post on Sunday that he expected the number of reported illnesses nationwide to grow as officials investigate how romaine harvested from the Yuma region made it to retailers and restaurants around the country. “This stuff went everywhere. It’s conceivable that we may be seeing the beginnings of a fairly significant outbreak,” Marler said. “They’ve linked it to Yuma, because that’s where romaine this time of year is grown. It’s unclear how it made it from Yuma. ... What we don’t know is the sort of supply chain in between.” Romaine lettuce is sometimes packed in the fields and shipped directly to restaurants or grocery stores. Other times, Marler said, the vegetables are taken to a central processing plant, where they are packed under different brand names before they are sent to retailers. The latter situation could make identifying the specific origin of contaminated vegetables more difficult, Marler said. Last week, Fresh Foods Manufacturing, based in Freedom, Pa., recalled 8,757 pounds of prepackaged salad products over fears that they may have been contaminated with E. coli. The recalled items were labeled “Great to Go by Market District” and were shipped to retailers in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Retailers and restaurants, such as Walmart and Del Taco, have warned customers who may have bought recalled products and removed all salad items from their locations. E. coli are bacteria found in undercooked beef, raw milk, soft cheeses made from raw milk, raw fruits and vegetables and contaminated water. Most E. coli bacteria are not harmful, but one strain known as E. coli O157: H7 produces a toxin called Shiga which destroys red blood cells and


Md. Democrats running for governor embrace marijuana

a rational next step after the full implementation of medical marijuana, and it would provide an additional revenue stream to the state,” Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz said through a spokesman. “It will be important to observe and adopt lessons from states that have already implemented this policy.” State Sen. Richard S. Madaleno Jr. (Montgomery) sponsored bills last year that would have legalized sales and possession of cannabis under certain circumstances and imposed a 9 percent excise tax. “I will champion this issue and make it one of my priorities as governor,” he told the Marijuana Policy Project as that organization put together a voting guide for the race. Tech entrepreneur Alec Ross tweeted a link to a YouTube video Friday in which he offered: “Some nugs of wisdom inspired by my fully baked plan to legalize recreational marijuana in Maryland.” He added: “The jokes are fun, but it really is high time we do away with antiquated drug laws and enforcement policies.” Another Democratic candidate, attorney Jim Shea, said legalization would not only foster justice, but also bring in revenue for state services. “Currently, Maryland is forgoing hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue from recreational marijuana legalization, while too many of our citizens — most of them African American — face criminal punishment for marijuana offenses,” he said through a spokeswoman. “That has to change.” And former Michelle Obama aide Krishanti Vignarajah also supports legalization. “Ultimately, I believe we need to treat drug use as a public health issue, not a criminal one,” she said in a statement Friday. “We need policy that sensibly follows the evidence, rather than the drug enforcement dogma that too often penalizes our most vulnerable communities due to their ethnic, racial, or socioeconomic status.” Perennial candidate Ralph Jaffe said, “I disagree with Mr. Jealous 100 percent.” He said Friday he would, however, support legalizing medical marijuana in Maryland, which he did not realize has already been done. A spokeswoman for Gov. Larry Hogan (R) did not follow up Friday on a request for his position. Some strategists had speculated that the failed effort to add a marijuana-legalization question to the ballot might have helped turn out young and other Democratic-leaning voters against the popular governor in the general election. It’s also possible that progressive candidates might be too extreme to beat Hogan, especially in moderate districts where he has strong support. steve.thompson@washpost.com


From posh oligarchs to taxi drivers, Russians in London feel a chill

then they will believe it.” Arthur Doohan, co-founder of ClampK, an anti-corruption initiative, welcomes the scrutiny. Doohan runs “kleptocracy tours” of London, pointing out opulent homes purchased with suspect funds. Standing in Belgrave Square — dubbed “billionaire row” in the tabloids — he noted that the homes owned by Russian oligarchs are almost always empty, save for visits by the cleaning staff. “Oh, the maid is in,” he said, as the curtains twitched in a white stucco building that British newspapers say is owned by the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, the oil tycoon and metals billionaire who now finds himself on a U.S. sanctions list for his ties to Putin. While London is awash with cash from rich foreigners — not just Russians — Doohan said it’s often easier to spot Russian money. “The Russians just flaunt their wealth. They are completely indiscreet about it. We know there are Chinese people here: They are unbelievably discreet and don’t flaunt it. The Russians flaunt everything. Their visibility makes it very easy to track them.” Real estate brokers and property sellers in Britain, and London in particular, have gorged themselves on Russian and overseas investments, based on lax laws and easy access to friendly offshore holding companies. Katya Zenkovich, who helps Russian clients acquire properties in London, says the vast majority of Russians aren’t millionaires seeking to shelter money, but professionals drawn by Britain’s private education system. “I have clients who are like myself, are salaried people, who need a mortgage to get onto the property ladder,” Zenkovich said. “They could be professionals in any kind of capacity: IT specialists, working in banks.” She continued: “I think what Russians are slightly upset about is that they are brushed with the same brush — if it’s Russians, then it’s rich and super-rich and political kleptocrats, you name it. The stereotypes are very strong. But, actually, the Russian contingent is very, very varied.” The British government has said that frosty relations should not impact ordinary Russians living in Britain. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson warned people not to engage in “Russophobia.” But it’s everywhere, said Katia Nikitina, the editor of ZIMA, a magazine for Russians in Britain and beyond. “It’s affected all of us, those who already moved here, those thinking about moving, because there is quite a lot of uncertainty with the situation,” she said. As the Skripal investigation moves forward, as Sergei or


Racial bias in campus discipline: When will universities look in the mirror?

have found greater racial disparities for vague offenses (such as “disrespect”) than for clear-cut violations like smoking. One theory is that when teachers use subjective judgments to decide whether a student’s disrespect merits punishment, implicit racial bias affects the results. Even if most or all teachers try to treat everyone fairly, unconscious attitudes toward students of different races lead to more black students with suspensions. In the university context, we have some offenses that are clear-cut, such as serving alcohol to underage students. And we have others that are less clearly defined, such as sexual harassment. Defining harassment is complicated enough in the workplace. On a college campus, where one cannot easily separate one’s “job” from one’s “home,” it seems quite likely that unconscious biases will affect which students are reported for harassment. Keep in mind that the racial disparities observed at the University of Virginia relates to its Honor System, not its Title IX process. In other words, even for academic dishonesty, which in many cases is fairly straightforward to diagnose, UVA finds black students (and international students) facing disproportionate charges. When we inject America’s racialized attitudes toward sex and dating into the mix, perhaps even more disparity will result. I am not alone in worrying about racial bias in campus discipline. Students alleging racial discrimination in their own university punishments have filed lawsuits against Amherst College, the University of Pennsylvania, and other schools. Universities may eventually reveal in discovery the statistics they have so far kept hidden (or uncollected). Of course, perhaps I am mistaken, and the data will show that college students of all races face institutional discipline at similar rates. That would be excellent news. For now however, universities seem to believe that by not collecting data, they can avoid reckoning with possible racial injustice. In other areas, universities are making real efforts to confront racial bias. For example, when I served on the committee that vetted candidates for my university’s recent chancellor search, committee members attended a presentation on how racial and gender biases can affect evaluations of possible hires. Student orientation at Mizzou includes information about cultural competency and the value of meeting students from different backgrounds. And universities work constantly to recruit classes boasting diverse members. University professors have conducted important research about racial bias in K-12 school discipline. It’s time for us to consider whether we have problems even closer to home.


NASA’s newest planet hunter launches successfully

This story has been updated. NASA's newest planet hunter was launched Wednesday evening on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. At the moment the spacecraft lifted off, astronomers knew of nearly 4,000 alien worlds outside our solar system. During the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite's planned two-year mission, scientists expect, it will increase that number by a factor of five. Among the new discoveries, they hope, will be a rocky world with an atmosphere that can be probed for signs of life. “This is opening an entirely new window on the universe,” said MIT astrophysicist George Ricker, the principal investigator for the mission. TESS should arrive in orbit around Earth — on a never-before-used, highly elliptical path that takes it close to the moon — about two months after launch. It will begin science operations shortly after that. TESS is intended as a high-powered successor to the Kepler space telescope, which has orbited the sun alongside the Earth for the past 10 years and detected most of the exoplanets known to science. “Kepler broke open the field in a rather dramatic way,” Ricker said — demonstrating that for every star in the sky, there are untold numbers of exoplanets waiting to be found. Now it is time to pass the torch. Unlike Kepler, which peered deep into a narrow stretch of sky to find faraway planets around stars like the sun, TESS's survey will be “wide and shallow,” Ricker explained. It is designed to look stars of all ages and sizes within a few hundred light-years of Earth, and it will be able to canvass the entire sky in just two years. Armed with four sensitive cameras, the refrigerator-sized satellite will seek out the tiny, telltale dips in a star's light that occur when a planet “transits,” or passes in front of it. The frequency of each faint flicker will indicate the planet's size and its distance from the star. Next, astronomers on Earth will measure the way the planet's gravity makes the star wobble as it orbits — an observation that will provide the planet's mass. Combined, those data will help scientists characterize the planet: Is it a small, rocky world like Earth? Is it light and water-rich? Does it have a solid surface, or does it resemble Neptune, with a dense core surrounded by swirling clouds of gas? The TESS mission coincides with the debut of powerful new ground- and


a small, rocky world like Earth? Is it light and water-rich? Does it have a solid surface, or does it resemble Neptune, with a dense core surrounded by swirling clouds of gas? The TESS mission coincides with the debut of powerful new ground- and space-based observatories, including NASA's James Webb Space Telescope that is scheduled to launch in 2020. If a TESS planet has an atmosphere, these instruments may be able to sense the way it alters the starlight that filters through it. That research could reveal “biosignatures” — molecules including oxygen and methane that are often generated by living organisms. “This is the reason we're all so excited,” said Jessie Christiansen, an astronomer at Caltech and NASA's Exoplanet Science Institute who sits on the steering committee for TESS's follow-up working group. Unlike Kepler's discoveries, the planets found by TESS will orbit stars nearby and bright enough to allow for detailed characterization. “We have this whole army of observatories and astronomers on the ground waiting eagerly to be told, 'Here’s a candidate,'" she said. It is unlikely that JWST or any other existing telescope would be capable of detecting biosignatures on an exoplanet as small as Earth. For that, astronomers must await missions that are still in their concept phase and will not launch for nearly two decades. Even if TESS does not immediately find possible homes for alien life, it will essentially conduct a census of our galactic neighborhood, offering other insights into planets and solar systems. “We can start to find out, how does planet occurrence vary as a function of the type of star and the age of the star?” Christiansen said. “We can resolve competing theories about how planets form.” Beyond planets, the spacecraft will also have its shutters open for other serendipitous, short-term events, such as supernovas, gamma ray bursts, or gravitational wave-generating neutron star collisions like the one that made headlines last fall. “TESS is very much a trash-treasure sort of mission,” said Natalia Guerrero, deputy manager for the TESS Objects of Interest team. Looking at light from across the whole sky, she said, it will inevitably find something to satisfy almost everyone in the astronomy community. Read more: Found: Another star system with eight planets, just like ours This broken space telescope keeps spotting new planets There's a new planet in the neighborhood — and it looks like a nice place to live


British TV chef Matt Campbell dies after collapsing at warmest London Marathon

Matt Campbell, a 29-year-old professional chef who reached the semifinals on the most recent season of the BBC’s “MasterChef: The Professionals,” died after collapsing during Sunday’s London Marathon, race organizers announced Monday. “Everyone involved in the organisation of the London Marathon would like to express our sincere condolences to Matt’s family and friends,” race officials said in a statement, adding that the cause of death had yet to be determined. The 40,000-runner marathon took place under the warmest conditions in race history, about 75 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the BBC. Campbell, who had completed the Greater Manchester Marathon in less than three hours just two weeks earlier, collapsed at the 22.5-mile mark and received immediate medical attention before being taken to a hospital. Hugh Brasher, the London Marathon’s event director, told the BBC that more water was distributed to the runners — 4 1/2 liters per person — than at any mass-participation event in the world. But he also admitted that organizers ran out of water at miles 8, 9 and 10. Campbell was running the race to support the Brathay Trust, a youth charity in England’s Lake District, where Campbell was from. He also said he was running in memory of his father, who was involved with the charity before he died 18 months ago. “As many of you know, I lost my father Martin 18 months ago suddenly,” Campbell wrote on his JustGiving page. “The past year & a half have been the toughest of my life but his spirit and energy live on in me. “He was the most inspirational man in my life and was the one who said — ‘Go on, why don’t you give it a go? I know you can do it!’ and entered me into my first marathon; Brathay 2016 along with my brother, Josh,” Campbell continued. “It was maybe the proudest day of my life standing at the finish line having achieved something I never imagined possible with my Dad & my Brother by my side.” In a statement According to the BBC, Campbell began working in Michelin-starred restaurants after finishing second in the BBC’s Young Chef of the Year competition in 2009. British food journalists mourned his passing: A 22-year-old London Marathon runner died after collapsing during the race in 2007, when temperatures reached 72.6 degrees. Another 73 runners were taken to hospitals. More from The Post: McKayla Maroney says


At just $10 a bottle, this rosé will make you want to buy a case

Exceptional Excellent Very Good Skin-fermented white wines are all the rage. While most whites are made from juice pressed off and separated from the skins, a technique that emphasizes freshness, skin-fermentation adds color, body and tannin. This week’s selections feature a California Gewurztraminer that serves as a great introduction to this style. And we have two bold reds from South America as well as two great rosés for spring. Union Sacré "Belle de Nuit" Gewurztraminer 2017 Central Coast, Calif., $21 This lovely Gewurztraminer was fermented on its skins, like a red wine, giving it a lovely salmon tint, as well as extra body and tannic grip. It isn’t floral like many Gewurzes are, but it does have the characteristic litchi flavor of the grape. This is a nice introductory wine to the skin-fermented style popular for white wines today. Alcohol by volume: 12.8 percent. Distributed by Le Storie: Available in the District at Ace Beverage; Calvert Woodley; Cordial Craft Wine, Beer & Spirits (the Wharf); Wardman Wines. Available in Virginia at Arrowine and Cheese in Arlington, Chain Bridge Cellars in McLean, Corks & Kegs and Union Market in Richmond, Dominion Wine and Beer in Falls Church, Grape + Bean (Old Town, Rosemont), Tastings of Charlottesville and Wine Warehouse in Charlottesville. GREAT VALUE Loma Larga Vineyards Quinteto 2015 Red Blend Casablanca Valley, Chile, $17 Here’s another example of Chile punching above its price level in terms of value. And it’s an anomaly: The Casablanca Valley, a cooler climate region northwest of Santiago, is known for its pinot noir, sauvignon blanc and chardonnay. This blend is based on cabernet franc, with malbec, syrah and merlot — oh, and a dose of pinot noir thrown in for extra interest and an intriguing balance of bold fruit and acidity. Creative, delicious and original. ABV: 14.5 percent. Distributed by DMV: Available in the District at Georgia Ave Food Barn, Paul’s of Chevy Chase, Rodman’s, Yes! Organic Market (Georgia Avenue). Widely available in Maryland, including at Cork 57 Beer and Wine and Georgetown Square Wine and Beer in Bethesda, Dawson’s Market in Rockville, Diamond Square Beer & Wine and Finewine.com in Gaithersburg, Eastport Liquors in Annapolis, Franklin Liquors in Ijamsville, Frederick Wine House and Old Farm Liquors in Frederick, Highland Wine & Spirits in Highland, Hop N Grape in North Bethesda, Maple Lawn Wine & Spirits in Fulton, Snider’s Super Foods in Silver Spring, Takoma Park-Silver


Don’t automatically switch to coconut oil. How to handle ever-changing nutrition science.

and chronic disease. In the science world, that's considered rapid. Sometimes a one-off "new" study you hear about may not mesh with the U.S. Agriculture Department's tried-and-true Dietary Guidelines, which leads to more confusion. Studies are published weekly, but policy guidelines change every five years. What should you rely upon? Mozaffarian says he doesn't think the public should change its dietary behaviors based on single studies, nor should policies be based on single studies. Instead, scientists have to help move the field forward by reviewing the body of evidence as a whole. We can't get consistent federal advice Another major contributor to the public's nutrition confusion is that there's no unified central home for federal nutrition policy, Mozaffarian says. In addition to the USDA Dietary Guidelines, there's Food and Drug Administration food labeling; Health & Human Services' disease-specific recommendations; Dietary Reference Intakes from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine; and more. "I think it's a lost opportunity that these relatively separate agencies don't always overlap," Mozaffarian says. "I think we need to have a Cabinet-level position that brings together all of this disparate nutrition policy so it's more coordinated." That would reduce consumer confusion, he said. Mozaffarian also hopes that universities will do more to help minimize the confusion. He'd love to see more nutrition researchers intersect with policymakers, the food industry, the media and celebrity influencers to deliver evidence-based and credible messages to the public. He suggests Harvard's Nutrition Source and Tufts University's Health & Nutrition Letter as trustworthy places for consumers to turn. I would add Examine.com, for evidence-based nutrition info without any sponsors or industry influence, and the Cochrane Library, if you like to read the research. Science is influencing policy, which is good news. The most recent Dietary Guidelines have shifted from the old advice of meeting nutrient targets to a sharper focus on developing better dietary patterns as a whole. This change is consistent with what nutrition researchers are working on. "People ask me if I'm frustrated with the pace of change," Mozaffarian says. "I say that the pace of change is remarkably fast. This is a very young science and is moving very quickly." I agree! In my almost 20 years as a dietitian, I've seen interest in food and nutrition skyrocket. Now if we can continue to guide that interest to trusting only credible sources, we'll all be much healthier. localliving@washpost.com


Gov. Hogan signed a law banning Maryland pet stores from using ‘puppy mills.’ Store owners are pushing back.

Iowa — so they can personally vouch for their conditions. “We don’t want puppy-mill puppies,” she said, sitting at the cash register in her Rockville location, which sold more than 1,000 young dogs last year. “Most of these puppies are being bred on farms.” But Del. Benjamin F. Kramer (D-Montgomery), the legislation’s sponsor and a longtime owner of adopted Doberman pinschers, called the commercial breeders that supply the stores “abominations” that lack “room for puppies to roam and for breeding dogs to play.” In all, Hogan signed 207 bills on Tuesday, including legislation that aims to reduce gun violence in Baltimore and keep guns out of the hands of people who pose a danger to themselves and others. The governor, whose 16-year-old Shih Tzu died last year, appeared outside the statehouse Tuesday morning with several rescues that are available for adoption. He brushed off questions about whether the legislation would harm small business owners in Maryland, saying the law is really about “the puppy mills.” “There are about seven pet stores in Maryland that might be affected, but there are thousands of puppies,” he said, cradling one of the rescue dogs and asking it, “What do you think?” Maryland already has strict regulations in place that require stores to disclose information about breeders and bar them from using any that have received citations from the U.S. Agriculture Department within the past two years. But Kramer said that is not enough to protect the young animals. The abrupt removal of inspection reports from the USDA’s website last year made ensuring that breeders are being honest about their history especially difficult, he said. Nearly 260 localities nationwide, including Montgomery County, have banned the sale of puppies and kittens, according to the Humane Society. (Rockville is a separate municipality within Montgomery, so the Just Puppies store there was exempted.) The California law, which passed last year, takes effect in 2019. No retail pet stores sell puppies in the District, although they are legal, said Amy Jesse, a public policy director for the Humane Society. There are some in Virginia, which has passed a law requiring stores to reveal their breeders. Jesse said she hopes Virginia’s legislature will “revisit this issue next year,” especially since Maryland stores that would otherwise have to change their business model may look to move there. A search for ethical options Among the witnesses who testified in favor of


We know an awful lot about Manafort and Russia. Trump can’t make it disappear.

“foreign national” who was “a close business colleague” and “worked in Ukraine at Manafort’s company.” Mueller’s March 27 sentencing memo in a separate case included this startling allegation: FBI agents “assess that Person A has ties to a Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016.” (Kilimnik has denied any intelligence ties, and some Manafort sympathizers argue that the FBI has overstated any real intelligence role Kilimnik might have played.) And who was the “OVD” whom Manafort was so eager to impress? According to The Post and the Atlantic, which cited people familiar with the emails, it was Oleg V. Deripaska, a billionaire Russian oligarch and Kremlin insider. Manafort had been trying for more than a decade to woo Deripaska into various business deals, and, along with his partner Rick Gates, used funds controlled by the oligarch as “their personal piggy banks,” according to a lawsuit filed against the pair in January by a company controlled by Deripaska. As Trump neared the nomination in mid-summer, Manafort continued to nurture his Russian ties. In a July 7 email to Kilimnik, Manafort offered: “If he needs private briefings we can accommodate,” The Post wrote on Sept. 20, 2017, quoting from the emails. Manafort didn’t specify who the “he” was, but people familiar with the discussions told me that it was a reference to Deripaska. Mueller’s team cited news reports about Manafort’s past relationship with Deripaska in an April 2, 2018, court filing that noted: “Open-source reporting also has described business arrangements between Manafort and ‘a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin,’ ” quoting the August 2016 New York Times article that first revealed the alleged “black ledger” Ukrainian payments to Manafort. The prosecution memo continued that Mueller’s investigation “would naturally cover ties that a former Trump campaign manager had to Russian-associated political operatives, Russian-backed politicians, and Russian oligarchs.” A Deripaska spokeswoman has denied that the Russian tycoon received any offer of a briefing from Manafort. In a comment to The Post last September, the spokeswoman rejected reports of Manafort’s alleged emails as the work of “consultants in the notorious ‘beltway bandit’ industry.” Whatever his Manafort connection, Deripaska has paid a steep price for his alleged ties to the Kremlin: Deripaska’s aluminum company was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury this month; the next trading day, its shares lost half their value. Now we come to August


Which tips first, runaway climate change or public demand for action?

The size of the forces we’re fooling around with in our ill-considered, or rather unconsidered, experiment in Earth ruination is unfathomably large. The latest one to take note of is a possible feedback loop of melting Antarctic glaciers. The point of this is not that this particular instance of a feedback loop is conclusive. It is that the forces we’re setting in motion could easily dwarf tardy efforts to control them. And to remind everyone that, despite Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt’s affinity for luxury, we do not have the luxury of waiting and wasting four years of a Donald Trump presidency to get back to the job of climate action. A job we had only begun, and belatedly at that. In the slow lockup of our political process into corruption and paralysis, we have had the severe misfortune of having a climate crisis occur now. Now, when there is a quite possibly irremediable catastrophe unfolding. Dealing with climate is the defining test of our time, and we are failing. The institutions we assume are in place to address problems of this magnitude have failed thus far, and are continuing to fail, even as the firehouse alarms have started sounding all over the globe. The science has been done, but it has been under coordinated, nonstop assault. The politicians know full well what is going on, but they have been complicit in allowing their hands to be bound by donors. The media has covered the story and has at least gotten past the false equivalence of the “two sides” to the debate but still cover it as an ongoing series of worrisome developments rather than the out-and-out crisis it really is. The public has also come to understand the subject, more or less, but they haven’t yet gotten from the point of supporting action to the point of demanding it. The drip, drip, drip of evidence and concern has been like the ice eroding from the bottom of a glacier. Real but largely unnoticed. Our political process has been frozen on this as on so much else. But listen carefully to that drip, drip, drip.


Why legal marijuana is abandoning weed’s old slang

For decades, the marijuana industry operated underground, outside the confines of the law. But even though at the federal level possession and the use and sale of marijuana remain illegal, 29 states and the District of Columbia now allow medicinal marijuana to be sold for the treatment of specific diseases. Moreover, nine states now permit its recreational use. As a linguist Marijuana terminology is vast, with as many as 1,200 slang words used to describe the drug and its various strains. Slang develops for several reasons. It’s a form of in-group signaling — a way for people who share a similar set of interests to communicate with one another. But it also allows people engaged in criminal activities to conceal their illegal pursuits. Slang can quickly change. Once the general population becomes aware of the meanings behind certain words — and they become adopted in everyday speech — users feel compelled to create new lingo to remain subversive (or mask unlawful behavior). Given marijuana’s decades-long status as an illegal drug — and its popularity relative to other drugs — it’s no surprise that a rich lexicon has developed over time. Some of marijuana slang is ephemeral, while others have endured for decades and tend to still be used in popular culture. They can be organized into six categories: strains that reference geographical designations (Kona gold, Texas tea); names that reflect the strand’s color (blue sage, green goddess); terms derived from the word “marijuana” (Juanita, Mary Jane); words that reference the effects of the strain (giggle weed, dry high); how the marijuana is packaged (bale, doobie); and deceptive code words (astro turf, broccoli). These words are metaphoric and graphic, conjuring up striking images that allude to the distinctive features of the drug and its iterations. But now that marijuana has become legalized, there’s been a shift in the way the drug is marketed and sold. No longer is it peddled in parking lots and apartments. Instead, storefronts are cropping up on main streets in cities and towns across the country. And many of these dispensaries have vague, clinical-sounding names that are the exact opposite of weed’s vibrant, slangy jargon. A few years ago, linguist Will Styler wrote about a gift certificate he had received from a family member for a “Wellness Center” in Denver. He immediately thought it was a gift certificate to a marijuana dispensary, but it was actually for


The Daily 202: VA nominee’s struggles are a consequence of Trump’s vetting failures

With Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve. THE BIG IDEA: President Trump promises “extreme vetting” of all immigrants, but he has repeatedly failed to hold his own Cabinet picks, senior White House staff and judicial nominees to the same standard. Ronny L. Jackson’s imperiled nomination to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs is just the latest example. Senate lawmakers postponed the White House doctor’s confirmation hearing last night after top Republicans and Democrats raised concerns about his qualifications and oversight of the White House medical staff. Jackson’s Wednesday hearing before the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs was set to be brutal because several lawmakers fear he lacks the experience to lead an agency with 360,000 employees and an annual budget of $186 billion. They’re also frustrated that Trump sprung the pick on them without advance consultation, and that Jackson did not go through a formal vetting process. It’s unclear whether it will be rescheduled. A lack of due diligence is a feature, not a bug, of Trumpism. -- CBS News reports that Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), the top Democrat on the Veterans' Affairs committee, is reviewing multiple allegations he's heard from current and former White House medical staff that Jackson created a “hostile work environment.” -- “The White House also is assessing whether questions that have been raised about Jackson have validity,” our Seung Min Kim, Lisa Rein and Josh Dawsey report. “Three White House officials said Monday that they worried the nomination was in peril.” In recent days, they scoop, committee Chairman Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) called the White House to express his concern that Jackson was unqualified -- The aforementioned allegations, which are apparently coming at least partly from people who literally work at the White House, would normally come out as part of routine vetting for any Cabinet secretary. In his rush to remake the courts, Trump has put up many people for judgeships who would have been very unlikely to get nominated if they went through a more rigorous vetting process. -- The Presidential Personnel Office, the White House office responsible for vetting political appointees, has suffered from chaos, dysfunction and nepotism under the leadership of young and inexperienced Trump loyalists who seem to enjoy partying more than working. “From the start, the office struggled to keep pace with its enormous responsibilities, with only about 30 employees on hand, less than a third of the staffing in prior


on his personal cellphone to contact outside advisers, a sign of White House Chief of Staff John Kelly’s waning influence. -- Mike Pence named retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, a Trump ally, to serve as his personal national security adviser. -- Charles Kushner took responsibility for the decision to purchase a New York skyscraper at 666 Fifth Avenue, which he called “bad timing and bad judgment.” THERE’S A BEAR IN THE WOODS: -- Trump twice told James Comey that he did not spend the night in Moscow during a 2013 trip to the Miss Universe pageant. But flight records now place him in Russia for Friday and most of Saturday night in a combined total of 45 hours and 43 minutes. -- “A conscious effort by Trump to mislead [Comey] could lend weight to the allegation … that Trump engaged in compromising activity during the trip that exposed him to Russian government blackmail,” -- The Treasury Department softened its position on Russian metals giant Rusal. The department said it would provide relief from planned sanctions if Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska relinquished control of the company. -- The White House struggled to answer questions about Trump’s weekend Twitter thread denying Michael Cohen would “flip” against him. -- Even if Cohen wanted to flip on Trump, legal obstacles could make doing so difficult. MEN BEHAVING BADLY: -- Rep. Martha McSally, an Arizona Republican running to replace outgoing Sen. Jeff Flake, said she was sexually abused by her track coach in high school. -- “Inside A Divisive Fight Over How A Top Progressive Think Tank Handled Sexual Harassment,” -- Olympic gold medalist McKayla Maroney says she tried to tell a USA Gymnastics coach about Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse THE MIDTERMS: -- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will announce a plan for the federal government to guarantee a job for every American that would pay $15 an hour and provide health-care benefits for every American “who wants or needs one.” -- Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) said in a radio interview she will no longer accept donations from corporate PACs, in a shift from her public position several weeks ago. -- Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) was kicked off the state’s primary ballot after Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled that hundreds of signatures on his candidate petitions were collected by people outside his district -- Arizona’s 8th District will hold its special election today to choose a


The Finance 202: Wells Fargo shrinks lobbying team as it faces crisis in Washington

earnings on Thursday... Such a move, if it happens, would effectively signal a sharper focus on the lower-risk business of private and commercial banking in its European home market.” — Alphabet soars. The Post's Hamza Shaban: “Google, which dominates online advertising, continues to thrive amid escalating threats of regulation in Washington and a wider backlash against Silicon Valley and widespread data collection. In the first quarter, Google parent company Alphabet’s net income grew by 73 percent, totaling about $9.4 billion. Revenue rose 26 percent to $31 billion from $25 billion last year, beating analyst estimates. Alphabet’s stock climbed upward nearly 1 percent in aftermarket trading. Google is expected to command more than 37 percent of the U.S. digital ad market, at about $40 billion this year, continuing its dominance.” How regulation favors Facebook, Google — Amazon's robot plans. Codename: “Vesta.” Bloomberg's Mark Gurman and Brad Stone: “The retail and cloud computing giant has embarked on an ambitious, top-secret plan to build a domestic robot... The Vesta project originated a few years ago, but this year Amazon began to aggressively ramp up hiring... People briefed on the plan say the company hopes to begin seeding the robots in employees’ homes by the end of this year, and potentially with consumers as early as 2019, though the timeline could change, and Amazon hardware projects are sometimes killed during gestation.” (Amazon’s owner, Jeff Bezos, also owns The Post.) — SCOTUS splits on in-house judges. Reuters's Andrew Chung: “U.S. Supreme Court justices on Monday appeared divided over a challenge to the constitutionality of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s selection of in-house judges to enforce investor protection laws in a case involving a former radio host and investment adviser backed by the Trump administration. The court heard arguments in an appeal by Raymond Lucia, who was given a lifetime ban from investment-related work by an SEC administrative law judge for misleading investors in his ‘Buckets Of Money’ retirement wealth presentations. The case could expand the control by the president and political appointees over officials in various federal agencies.” Today Coming Up The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to endorse Mike Pompeo, President Trump’s nominee for secretary of state: White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders did not rule out a potential pardon for Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen, and added Trump does not believe Cohen did anything wrong: Stephen Colbert on President Trump’s weekend Twitter rampage:


The United States is way behind other countries on robot ‘readiness,’ report says

up with technological changes, and companies will seek workers who can adapt to cutting-edge developments. Germany, in contrast, encourages technical training, which is generally more reactive to immediate employer needs. Sixty percent of young adults in the country train as apprentices in manufacturing, IT, banking, construction and other fields, compared with 5 percent of Americans. “We lack this vocational training track,” said Jouret, who works in San Francisco. Susan Lund, “Not everyone needs a four-year college degree,” she said In China, meanwhile, the government is updating public education to prioritize creativity, rather than acing standardized tests. One 2015 public policy experiment in Shanghai gave students another chance to take a college admission exam, which was meant to curb stress and reduce the focus on memorization. “They are considering relaxing exam pressure,” Harry Patrinos, practice manager for education, East Asia and Pacific at the World Bank, is quoted as saying in the ABB report. Economists say such efforts are aimed at training children and young adults to value independent thinking over regurgitation — a trait robots can't yet replicate. “Take the Southwest Airlines pilot — she did a phenomenal job landing that plane,” Jouret said, referencing an engine explosion that grabbed international attention earlier this month. “This is the thing we need people to be good at: How to cope with the unexpected.” U.S. leaders have vowed to prepare workers for the next industrial revolution, lauding the merits of apprenticeships, without expanding funding for them. But economists say the nation would benefit from more creative solutions to what future jobs will demand: continuous learning. One example comes from Singapore, which ranks second on the readiness index. In 2016, the Asian nation gave its citizens cash in “individual learning accounts,” which they may tap to cover job training courses at any stage in their careers. German lawmakers have proposed a similar model called “employment insurance,” which would help workers pay for upgrading their skills throughout their lives. The United States scores higher on research-and-development spending, the dollars that fund the next advancements. The country devotes 2.79 percent of gross domestic product to the effort, behind only South Korea (4.23 percent), Japan (3.28 percent) and Germany (2.88 percent). Read more: Why a white town paid for a class called 'Hispanics 101' Companies can't find workers to rebuild after Harvey and Irma 'Look, I can quit': Why Target is giving workers a big raise


Three Mexican film students were killed, their bodies dissolved in acid, authorities say

Mexico who expressed frustration by killings going unsolved or partially solved. Many people turned to social media to demand more evidence and more answers. The attorney general’s office made clear the investigation is ongoing. “The indignation that the case of the three students awakens in society is absolutely justified,” Aristóteles Sandoval, governor of Jalisco, tweeted Monday. “As a father I am hurt and shocked; as an authority I will fulfill the commitment I made with the relatives of the victims to continue investigating.” Jalisco experienced a year of record violence in 2017, with 1,369 homicides. It is home to the powerful Cartel Jalisco New Generation, a network of traffickers and assassins who “have shot down an army helicopter, ambushed federal police and sent a pig’s head to the former attorney general’s home,” as The Washington Post’s Joshua Partlow wrote last year. The cartel stemmed from the remnants of another group, the Milenio cartel, and it makes money by selling guns, stealing gasoline, extortion and kidnapping. Missing persons cases in Mexico often go unsolved. In a high-profile case in 2014, 43 student teachers protesting education reforms were stopped by police officers who opened fire at them. They were never seen again. Their disappearance led to international outrage, drew condemnations from President Barack Obama and Pope Francis, and became a turning point in the administration of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. The government later said the 43 students were captured by police and handed over to drug cartel assassins, who shot them and burned their bodies. But in a report, outside experts later said the government’s narrative was wrong. More than 100 people have been arrested in the case. On Monday night, mourners gathered at a vigil in Jalisco to honor the three film students. Scores of Mexicans poured out their anger and frustration over the alleged killings — and too many other deaths across the country — on social media, using the hashtag #NoSonTresSomosTodos, meaning “It’s not three, it’s all of us.” “They murdered the film students and dissolved their bodies in acid for doing homework. For doing homework,” one person tweeted in Spanish. “This country is hell.” “The rage, the impotence, things can’t keep going like this,” another said. “The most vile and nauseating, the story that never ends, the reality that surpasses fiction,” wrote another. “We continue to suffer every day. … Enough!” More from Morning Mix: NRA supporters


Fed advances plan to weaken post-financial-crisis rule for biggest banks

it covers — the six biggest Wall Street banks and two “custodian banks,” responsible for holding safe assets — have pushed for the rule to be loosened. They say other banking rules ensure that they have adequate cushions against collapse and argue that the restriction limits lending that would help private-sector growth. The proposed rollback of this capital requirement — called the “enhanced supplementary leverage ratio” — comes as lawmakers move in multiple other ways to overhaul the banking oversight rules that President Barack Obama helped install after the 2008 banking crisis helped trigger a global recession. Last month, the Senate passed a bipartisan banking plan, over the objections of progressive Democrats, that would exempt banks with assets between $50 billion and $250 billion from the highest levels of scrutiny by the Fed. It also would repeal or pull back other regulations created by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. House Republicans are now negotiating changes to a companion measure passed in the House. Meanwhile, the Fed is moving forward with a new proposal that would revamp the “stress tests” banks face to periodically ensure that their assets are safe. Both rule changes, which now move to a public comment period expected to take 30 to 60 days, can be enacted by the Fed without congressional approval. In announcing the proposal, the Fed estimated that the “required” capital for the eight critical companies' banking subsidiaries would fall by $121 billion, a number that would be much higher without other capital requirements left in place. Experts disagree about the significance of reducing these banks' capital requirements, with liberal critics contending it would increase the likelihood of a banking crisis and industry officials pointing to other capital constraints that would remain in place. “This is bad and risky,” said Sheila Bair, who served as the chair of the FDIC under Obama and President George W. Bush. “There’s no reason to reduce the capital requirements.” The change would reduce the capital requirements for the Wall Street firms' holding companies by only $400 million, or .04 percent, meaning they would have the flexibility to plow capital back into the banking subsidiaries in the event of a crisis, Fed officials said in announcing the plan. The Fed said the current rules act as a “binding constraint” at a time when banks have already increased their capital stockpiles. (The top banks now hold


Why Russia is openly violating sanctions against North Korea

Union’s collapse in 1991. After the 1991 Gulf War, anti-Western nationalists in Russia stridently opposed the international community’s near-complete embargo against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. These nationalists pressured Russian policymakers to violate U.S.-led embargoes against other Kremlin-aligned countries such as Yugoslavia and Iran. Some pro-Western officials, like then-Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, ignored these powerful groups and aligned Moscow with U.S. sanctions policies to improve relations with Washington. For instance, Kozyrev went along with the 1992 vote for sanctions against Moammar Gaddafi’s Libya, and supported an embargo against Serbia during the Bosnian War. Anti-Western nationalists were outraged at what they saw as betrayals of long-standing Russian allies and unacceptable sacrifices of Russia’s national interests, undermining Moscow’s oft-repeated claims that it is a crisis-proof ally. The criticism was successful. Then-President Boris Yeltsin dismissed Kozyrev in 1996. The risks of going along with the United States only increased as the U.S.-Russia relationship deteriorated. In 2011, Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s predecessor as president, signed on to U.N. Resolution 1973, which authorized a humanitarian intervention against Gaddafi’s Libya in 2011. Anti-Western nationalists stridently criticized Medvedev for his acquiescence to a NATO military intervention in Libya and restricted his influence over foreign policy decision-making after Putin, who opposed the Libya intervention, returned to the presidency in 2012. To stay in power, Putin needs the loyalty of these anti-Western factions within Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and military-industrial complex. And so he has actively considered the opinions of these groups in his sanctions policy toward North Korea. To preempt internal opposition, Russia has imposed punitive measures against North Korea, such as the proposed expulsion of guest workers by 2019, that are difficult to enforce. This strategy allows Moscow to look as if it is taking action against North Korea — but without actually taking measures that harm Siberian businesses dependent on North Korean guest workers or that greatly restrict North Korea’s access to hard currency. Putin’s consistent defiance of international sanctions against North Korea rallies anti-Western nationalists around his regime, while also carrying out Russia’s vision of moderate sanctions that are more likely to nudge Kim Jong Un in the right direction. The West can expect the Russian government to continue to prevent the complete isolation of North Korea for the foreseeable future. Samuel Ramani is a DPhil candidate in international relations at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, specializing in post-1991 Russian foreign policy. Follow him on


Milk, bread, hemp oil? A dietitian’s guide to the cannabis items in your grocery store.

Cannabis is making its way into more and more foods and beverages, thanks to its touted therapeutic benefits. In fact, no matter where you are in the United States, cannabis products are probably being sold in your grocery store — and it’s perfectly legal. Because regulation hasn’t kept up, this should be cause for concern no matter your politics. But before we go further, let me define what I mean when I say cannabis. Cannabis is a plant that has been selectively bred into two distinct varieties: hemp for its fiber and nutritious seeds; and marijuana for its medical and recreational uses. Cannabis contains numerous compounds called cannabinoids. The most well-known cannabinoid, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), causes the high many people associate with cannabis. Marijuana plants have been selectively bred to have a lot of THC. Hemp products contain either minuscule levels or no THC at all. Hempseeds and the oil made from the seeds are already in grocery stores nationwide as food items or ingredients. Hempseeds are rich in heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids and omega-6 gamma-linolenic acid (GLA) and other nutrients that contain trace or no THC. Consuming hempseeds or hemp oil doesn’t cause a high and won’t cause you to fail a drug test. But there is another cannabis compound gaining popularity called cannabidiol (CBD), which can be found in either marijuana or hemp. It doesn’t have mind-altering effects and may offer therapeutic benefits. In states where they’re legal, CBD from hemp, and both CBD and THC from marijuana, are starting to appear in products such as specialty ice cream, snack bars, beer and cold-brew coffee. This isn’t limited to dispensaries; some grocery stores are selling CBD oil. As a dietitian, I never thought that cannabis would be a topic within my wheelhouse. But more clients are asking about it, and, before looking into it, I wasn’t clear on when it’s considered a food, drug or medicine — or even legal or illegal. Here’s what I can tell you. Potential benefits of cannabis According to a 2017 report by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, there is substantial evidence that cannabis or cannabinoids are effective for treating chronic pain, multiple sclerosis spasticity symptoms, and chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting. Initial studies show that CBD oil may be helpful for children with epilepsy, and it is being investigated as a potential treatment for other neurological disorders and mental health and


fail a drug test. But there is another cannabis compound gaining popularity called cannabidiol (CBD), which can be found in either marijuana or hemp. It doesn’t have mind-altering effects and may offer therapeutic benefits. In states where they’re legal, CBD from hemp, and both CBD and THC from marijuana, are starting to appear in products such as specialty ice cream, snack bars, beer and cold-brew coffee. This isn’t limited to dispensaries; some grocery stores are selling CBD oil. As a dietitian, I never thought that cannabis would be a topic within my wheelhouse. But more clients are asking about it, and, before looking into it, I wasn’t clear on when it’s considered a food, drug or medicine — or even legal or illegal. Here’s what I can tell you. Potential benefits of cannabis According to a 2017 report by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, there is substantial evidence that cannabis or cannabinoids are effective for treating chronic pain, multiple sclerosis spasticity symptoms, and chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting. Initial studies show that CBD oil may be helpful for children with epilepsy, and it is being investigated as a potential treatment for other neurological disorders and mental health and substance abuse issues. CBD oil, THC and marijuana have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration “for the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of any disease.” Medications that contain synthetic THC or similar compounds, however, have been approved by the FDA for specific uses. What's legal and what isn't? The line between marijuana and hemp seems clear, but U.S. law and some state laws disagree. This is where things get even more confusing. At the federal level, marijuana and hemp extracts such as CBD oil are illegal, Schedule I substances. It was illegal to grow hemp in the United States until the “legitimacy of industrial hemp research” amendment in the 2014 farm bill. Now some states are permitted to grow industrial hemp for research purposes. The Hemp Farming Act of 2018 is a bill that, if passed, will make farming hemp federally legal. At the state level, things get much more complicated. Some states allow recreational marijuana use; others permit medical marijuana use for specific health issues that differ from state to state; some allow the use of low-THC, high-CBD products for specific medical reasons; and others don’t allow the use or sale of marijuana or certain


A (so far) complete timeline of the investigation into Trump and Russia

he learns that Papadopoulos is tied to the Trump campaign, Mifsud is uninterested in talking. March 19, 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta is sent an email that encourages him to change his email password, probably precipitating the hack of his account. March 21, 2016During an interview with The Washington Post, Trump lists Page as part of his foreign-policy team. Page had been recommended by a son-in-law of President Richard Nixon, New York Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox. Trump also mentions Papadopoulos. At some point during the spring, long-time Trump confidante Roger Stone tells an associate that he had spoken with Assange and learned about emails WikiLeaks possessed that would be problematic for Democrats, including Podesta. March 28, 2016 Political veteran Manafort is hired to help the Trump campaign manage the delegate process for the Republican National Convention. He is recommended by Stone. Before joining the campaign, Manafort lobbied on behalf of Oleg Deripaska, a Putin ally. That business relationship followed a memo from Manafort in which he offered a plan that could “greatly benefit the Putin Government.” His business relationship with Deripaska ended in 2009. Manafort also worked on behalf of the Russia-friendly Party of Regions in Ukraine, helping guide the party’s leader, Viktor Yanukovych, to the country’s presidency. Yanukovych was later ousted. March 31, 2016Trump’s foreign-policy team meets. Included in the meeting are Papadopoulos, Trump and then-Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions (R). Papadopoulos says he can facilitate a meeting between Trump and Putin based on his interactions with Mifsud, the professor. Sessions says it shouldn’t happen, though Papadopoulos later reportedly tells Mueller that Trump encouraged the meeting. April 2016Hackers believed to be linked to Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) also gain access to the DNC network. The Internet Research Agency begins buying ads on social media aimed at promoting Trump’s candidacy and undermining Hillary Clinton. The same month, Fusion GPS is hired by the law firm Perkins Coie on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. April 11, 2016Manafort emails longtime aide Konstantin Kilimnik (who himself may have ties to Russian intelligence) to ensure the oligarch Deripaska’s “operation” has seen his media coverage, presumably about the Trump campaign. “How do we use to get whole?” he asks. April 18, 2016Papadopoulos is introduced via email to someone who has contacts at Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Papadopoulos and the contact begin communicating regularly to try to


R. Lee Ermey made ‘Full Metal Jacket’ a movie that Marines and antiwar protesters could love

or seven minutes of “Full Metal Jacket,” part one-liner master, part insult comic, part psychotic fitness instructor. There’s a reason one of the recruits, a hulking pile of blubber nicknamed Gomer Pyle (Vincent D’Onofrio) by the Gunny, can’t stop smiling as Hartman makes his rounds instructing the recruits on the levels of filth they now find themselves in, informing them that he hates all of them equally — and informing them in the vilest way possible. The simple fact of “Full Metal Jacket’s” opening 45 minutes — and the reason that it can be both beloved by the Marine Corps and despised by people who find the military to be a backwater of reaction — is that Kubrick plays the scenes more-or-less straightforwardly. The only moment when the language of cinema invites us to judge the recruits and their teacher negatively is during the blanket party scene, when Pyle is gagged, immobilized in his bed, and beaten for failing to get his act together. The film is shot in the blue of night; the score takes on an artificial quality, the synthesizer work calling to mind a more artistic version of the “Friday the 13th” theme. That horror-film interlude aside, we see the destruction and re-creation of men into fully conscious weapons of war — not mindless robots; as Joker (Matthew Modine) says during a brief moment of narration, the corps has no use for unthinking drones — in a way that feels ambivalent, a way that can be both celebrated by the corps and seen as suspicious by those who hate and fear the military and what it does. And that ambivalence was only really possible through the efforts of Ermey, himself a drill instructor in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. “Full Metal Jacket” does not hit its satirical stride until the warriors under Ermey’s watch go off to war. There’s something darkly comic about breaking a man, remolding him into a killer of the highest caliber, and then sending him thousands of miles to fight a war for which there is no clear objective and for which there is no real will to win on the home front. We move from the training grounds of Parris Island to a tent filled with combatants masquerading as journalists — or vice versa. Far more important in the war than learning how to fire a rifle is learning how


The effort to save red wolves in the wild is failing, a five-year review says

The federal government’s bid to keep North America’s only distinctive wolf from disappearing in the wild is in deep trouble, according to a review of an endangered species program that was established to save red wolves. A colony of red wolves that was reintroduced in North Carolina in 1987 is failing because of poor management and fierce state opposition from game officials and hunters who are killing it, said the five-year review, prepared by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Southeastern Regional Office and released Tuesday. Red wolves were declared extinct in the wild in the 1970s when their populations were devastated by hunters and their habitat was overtaken by coyotes, but a few were bred in zoos. After an experimental population was released at the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge near the Outer Banks, the group managed to reach an estimated 130 wolves in 2006. The number currently stands at about 40, a decline more rapid than even the worst-case scenarios had predicted, federal officials said. “There is consensus that the current direction and management … is unacceptable to the Service and stakeholders,” the review said. And “it is obvious that there are significant threats … in eastern North Carolina and conditions for recovery of the species are not favorable and a self-sustainable population may not be possible.” Fish and Wildlife vowed to soldier on with its attempt to revive the animals at the refuge, saying it will continue to recognize red wolves “as the species Canis rufus.” Treating the population as a species puts the agency in defiance of North Carolina wildlife officials and some scientists, who say the animals are a hybrid created either by a union of gray wolves and coyotes or are the remnants of a bygone species of pure coyotes. The fight over the fate of red wolves is playing out at a time when Republicans in Congress are waging an effort to alter the Endangered Species Act in a way that would make protecting plants and animals more difficult. For example, proposed legislation would strike down a rule that commands federal officials to conserve species regardless of the economic effect on a community in and around their habitats. Conservationists say red wolves are arguably the most endangered mammal on the planet, considering that there are 2,000 Bengal tigers in the wild and more than 1,500 giant pandas, compared with fewer than three dozen


When in Barcelona, I’ll have what José Andrés is having

When I used Barcelona Chef José Andrés had other plans for me. I had to find time, he told me, for Disfrutar, started four years ago by three of the best chefs to have worked at the late El Bulli in Roses, Spain. The trio had been trained by no less than Andrés’s own friend and mentor Ferran Adrià, one of the most influential chefs in modern history, the man whose sleights of hand include foams, spheres and the much-imitated liquid olive. “It’s the best restaurant in Europe right now,” Andrés said. “One of the best restaurants in the world.” It’s also the recent recipient of two Michelin stars and a must-see for such trailblazing chefs as Daniel Humm of Eleven Madison Park in New York and Virgilio Martinez of Central in Lima, Peru. Andrés’s guilt trip worked. I cut my time short in Lisbon to return to Barcelona for one last meal before flying home. News flash: Big-deal restaurants are starting to chillax. Leading the way are places such as Disfrutar, among the most inviting dining destinations in recent memory. The name of the restaurant implores customers “to enjoy,” a sentiment expressed a hundred ways from the moment you depart reality — the neighborhood of Eixample, popular for shopping and nightlife — for fantasy. Arrivals are led past a long kitchen whose tunnel of ceramic tiles is the color of fire. “The kitchen is the oven of the restaurant, both real and metaphorical,” one of the three chefs, Mateu Casañas, 41, says about the design. “It is from there that all activity emanates.” The 50-seat main dining room, in contrast, is an embrace of soaring white walls, floors and ceiling, punctuated with pretend skylights that always reveal blue sky. More allure comes by way of displays of Mediterranean plants (palmetto and reed) and wicker panels dropping from on high — handsome, natural sound buffers. Disfrutar is the uncommon restaurant to make indoors feel like outside. “Basically, what we wanted to convey is happiness, joy, good atmosphere and relaxation,” says Casañas of the dining room, inspired by fishing villages and including a luminous patio. “We wanted to avoid that people feel self-conscious about being in a haute cuisine restaurant.” So they do without the usual trappings of luxury: linens, fancy silverware or servers in suits. Like many noteworthy restaurants, this one offers multiple menus, some based on dishes that have


Police arrest suspect in beating death of man in Northwest Washington

Police have arrested a suspect in the beating death earlier this month of a man inside a business on Georgia Avenue in the Park View neighborhood of Northwest Washington. Members of the Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force arrested Keith Sweptson, 29, of Northeast, on Monday. He was charged with first-degree murder. Police also made public a picture of a second man being sought in the case. The incident occurred about 8:30 p.m. on April 5 in the 3500 block of Georgia Avenue NW, just south of the Petworth neighborhood. Police said the victim, Yusef Turner, 33, of Northwest, was found injured inside a business. It is about 300 yards from a D.C. police substation. Turner was pronounced dead on April 6 at a hospital and his death ruled a homicide. Police said the victim had been attacked inside the establishment, which was not identified. Authorities did not describe a motive. peter.hermann@washpost.com


More older Americans are smoking marijuana

U.S. marijuana consumption is more prevalent today than during the conservative 1980s. Surges in drug use are often attributed to “kids these days,” but new research shows that the change has been driven not by stereotypical longhair youngsters but by the gray-haired and balding set. Researchers William Kerr, Camillia Lui and Yu Ye integrated 30 years of survey data from over 40,000 participants who reported on whether they had used marijuana in the past 12 months. Only two age groups showed a significant rise in use. Compared with older Americans 30 years ago, Americans age 50 to 59 and 60 and older today are a remarkable 20 times more likely to use marijuana. Even though marijuana use was consistently more prevalent among the young than the old throughout the 30 years that were studied, and the use rate of young adults has risen over the past decade, the use rate of people age 18 to 29 was about the same in 2015 (29.2 percent) as it was in 1984 (29.9 percent). This was also true of Americans age 30 to 39 (14.8 percent in 2015, 18.1 percent in 1984) and age 40 to 49 (11.7 percent in 2015, 9.6 percent in 1984). This pattern of results led the team to conclude that they had identified a cohort effect rather than a trend affecting the entire society. Specifically, the researchers noted that people born before World War II very rarely used marijuana at any point in their life, but as this population passed away, the marijuana use of subsequent generations became increasingly felt in greater total population use. The signature change occurred with the baby boomers who were born from the late 1940s through the early 1960s. Many generational habits begun in youth die hard. Just as the boomers engaged in an unusually large amount of crime in their youth and continue to do so far later in life than did their parents, they also have also carried the heavy substance-use patterns of their adolescence into their senescence. Whether the generations that follow the boomers will use as much marijuana is hard to know. On the one hand, children often rebel against their parents’ substance use habits, including at times becoming more abstemious. On the other hand, all Americans from this point forward will live in the presence of a legal, for-profit industry that markets and distributes marijuana and may wash


Transcript: World Press Freedom Index 2018

like Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But also, we have jail terms or police harassment of journalists who are trying to cover the fight against terrorism, specifically Boko Haram in Mali and Nigeria. Demirjian: And when you talk about the shutdowns of the internet, what are you referring to more specifically? Ewen: I think it goes to shutdown of cellular service, but also any kind of use of internet, social media apps on people’s phones so that they can’t get information about where a protest is occurring, or have there been arrests, have there been violent assaults, have there been deaths at a protest. Things that journalists should normally be able to cover freely. Demirjian: And that’s something that we talk about—or we have talked about in various coverage of what things are happening in the Middle East. Ewen: That’s correct. Demirjian: So is it a similar trend there? Ewen: We do see similar trends in the Middle East, however, it does have the worst performance regionally in the index. And we do see repression of journalism through the use of antiterrorism or cyber crime legislation in places like Egypt, but also in the Gulf states. But then, of course, you have deadly countries for reporting, like Syria and Yemen, countries in conflict. Syria being the deadliest country still for journalists in 2017. Demirjian: Right. And that makes sense given the general situation of what’s happening in Syria, that would be reflected for the press as well. I feel like Asia is almost too big of a region to ask you to paint one trend, but tell me what is going on in that very large part of the world that stands out to you. Ewen: Right. If I could highlight one thing, it’s the exportation of China’s authoritarian model and control of information. China, as you know, is the biggest prison in the world for both professional and nonprofessional journalists. And two imprisoned bloggers, writers died in 2017 due to untreated cancer while they were in detention. But you know, this model has been exported to places like Cambodia, places like Vietnam, where there’s crackdown on independent bloggers. Bloggers in Vietnam now could face 15-year jail sentences for simply trying to relay information to the public. Demirjian: Wow. So we went on a global tour there about all the different regions and the highlights of what’s going


like keep being a good journalist, not just justify it with some other side. Priest: Yeah. I was thinking of organizations like StopFake, which has an English version, which was really on the frontline of identifying disinformation and sharing it with the public as such. Jesus, your situation is similar in the sense that reporters get killed, but not similar in the sense that it’s usually perpetrated by drug cartels and their friends in power in the government. Did the drug cartels, in that sense, share the same goal as some of the authoritarian political leaders? What are they trying to do by killing journalists? Esquivel: Absolutely. They’re trying to close the door to the truth about their business and their relationship with the government, with the politicians, local politicians, local police, and the federal government. It’s too sad. To be a reporter of Mexico, the second deadliest country in the world to do journalism, after Syria. And to see that when a colleague has been arrested, or disappear, or kill, the federal government don’t care. You have to use the power of the social media, the people to go to the streets, to organize a protest in order to get the attention of the authorities to that. Last year, 12 journalists were killed in Mexico. So far this year, three. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing, being done by the government that to us, journalists, satisfy what their investigations are doing. We don’t believe in the investigations by the government about the killings of journalists. And believe me, the drug cartels, I think, are taking advantage of that. They’re being in the border, and you know what I’m talking about. Priest: So do you see any light in this darkness? Esquivel: There is always hope. And we are hoping that the next president of Mexico—we’re going to have elections on July 1st—is going to at least to put more attention to the issue. So far, I can tell you, sadly, there is no hope until the new president arrives to Mexico and see what offers to us. Priest: Yeah. It’s really astonishing that this is right next door. Esquivel: It is. Priest: Okay, thank you. Margaret, it was sort of unthinkable that we would have an American reporter here representing American reporters. You know, can you talk a little bit about how the administrations attitude toward the press has


Russia sanctions the West — hurting its own citizens

For all the sanctions imposed by Western governments, no one has punished the Russian people harder than Russian President Vladimir Putin. Where Western measures are directed against specific individuals and entities close to the regime, the Kremlin’s “asymmetrical response” has targeted the Russian people at large. Russian social media came up with a bitter joke: “In retaliation for new designations under the U.S. Magnitsky Act, the Russian government has decided to bomb the city of Voronezh.” As a Russian commentator observed last week, had the Kremlin decided to bomb Voronezh, the damage would have probably been smaller than what the Russian counter-measures actually caused. When the U.S. enacted the Magnitsky Act, which banned Russian officials complicit in human rights abuses from obtaining U.S. visas and holding U.S. assets, the Kremlin promised an “adequate response.” Naturally, it could not respond in kind: Not many U.S. officials hold their retirement savings in Sberbank or own villas in Krasnodar Region, so it was clear that the response would be unequal. But its precise nature shocked even the most cynical Kremlin-watchers. In response to the United States closing its doors to human rights abusers, the Putin regime imposed a blanket ban on U.S. citizens adopting children from Russian orphanages. This included children who had already met and were expecting to join their prospective families. “I know of only two organizations in the world that hurt their own children to scare their enemies: Hamas and [Putin’s] United Russia party,” wrote Russian journalist Valery Panyushkin. In a march organized by opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, tens of thousands walked through the streets of Moscow in protest at the measure that became known as “the law of scoundrels.” It would perhaps be more appropriate to call it “the law of murderers.” At least two Russian children who were in the process of being adopted to the U.S. are known to have died in orphanages. The number of lives scarred by that law is beyond measurement. The next round of “bombing Voronezh” came in 2014, when the West imposed new sanctions on the Kremlin following its annexation of Crimea. The so-called counter-sanctions announced by the Russian government banned the imports of food products from most Western countries, simultaneously reducing choice and driving up food prices for millions of Russian consumers. In a country where 22 million officially live below the poverty line, the authorities have destroyed more than 19,000


The dangers weather poses for airliners, and how you’re protected

all six aboard. But large hail is not the only threat to commercial aviation, as strong winds during takeoff and landing can prove disastrous. Changes in wind direction and speed can cause sudden reductions in lift, spelling disaster to aircraft near the ground. Fortunately, enormous progress has been made in the early detection and warning of conditions that could be hazardous to flight, thanks to the contributions of renowned tornado and severe weather researcher Tetsuya “Ted” Fujita. His work predominantly stemmed from the 1975 crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 66 at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. Fujita was called in to investigate what caused the disaster, and he coined the term “microburst” to describe a sudden and narrow downdraft of air rapidly descending from a thunderstorm’s base, where it would collide with the ground and accelerate outward at exceptional speeds. This type of highly localized windstorm would have accounted for the sudden changes in wind direction and speed encountered by the aircraft in the seconds preceding the crash. Following this incident, the FAA created the low-level wind shear alert system, designed to alert pilots in advance of sudden wind shifts that could be dangerous. In 1993, a device dubbed the “Airborne Wind Shear Detection and Alert System” was installed in all commercial aircraft to serve as a predictive device, integrating radar data and information about the aircraft’s movement to warn pilots of potential downburst winds. Likewise, major airports each have their own terminal Doppler radar, which can provide up-to-the-minute radar information on an exceptionally localized scale. To date, 163 of these terminal radars have been erected across the United States. Many larger aircraft also have their own X-band weather radar system tucked in the nose cone; while the shorter wavelength (2.5 to 4 centimeters) can subsequently detect smaller particles, it doesn’t penetrate as far into storms as traditional ground-based weather radar. If a storm intercepts a plane’s desired path, Air Traffic Control will “re-accommodate” the flight. “Airlines tend to fly around rather than through thunderstorms,” said Nate Johnson, a meteorologist for NBC News and a private pilot, “and that can add to flight time.” But it’s not just in the sky that storms can help rack up those delays. “Storms on the ground can make takeoffs and landings tricky,” according to Johnson, “and lightning will prompt airports to pull in ground crews that marshal planes to the


He was linked to war crimes. Now he’s Colombia’s ambassador in Seoul.

Last week, South Korean President Moon Jae-in received the credentials of six new foreign ambassadors. Among them was the new Colombian ambassador to South Korea, Juan Pablo Rodríguez Barragán. Rodríguez isn't a career diplomat, but he has a lengthy resume. He had 41 years of active military service, eventually becoming commander of the Colombian Military Forces until he resigned in 2017. But what really makes him stand out is another detail: He faces allegations of participating in war crimes and supporting cyberespionage against human-rights activists. According to a 2015 report from Human Rights Watch, Colombian military units carried out routine extrajudicial killings between 2002 and 2008, when Colombia's war against the Marxist guerrilla group FARC was still ongoing. The cases became known as "false positives" because Colombian soldiers allegedly falsified evidence against civilians, painting them as guerrilla fighters to boost body counts and collect financial rewards. At the time, Human Rights Watch's executive director for the Americas, José Miguel Vivanco, called these killings "one of the worst episodes of mass atrocity in the Western Hemisphere in recent years." Hundreds, possibly even thousands, of civilians are believed to have been killed. Rodríguez allegedly played a key role, commanding the Colombian army's 4th Brigade from 2006 to 2008. According to evidence gathered by Human Rights Watch, at least 28 civilians were killed by the brigade under his watch. Many low- and mid-level military figures have faced prosecution for their role in false positives, but senior officers like Rodríguez have escaped legal repercussions. A pending criminal investigation against the former general has stalled. But there is evidence that Rodríguez was still deeply concerned about the accusations against him. Earlier this month, the Colombian magazine Semana published a story alleging that Rodríguez sought advice from his cyberintelligence expert on how to conduct electronic surveillance on Vivanco in 2017. In their report, Semana recounted testimony from an official that suggested Rodríguez was concerned about tweets from Vivanco about false positives and the International Criminal Court, and asked whether the military would be able to "counterattack" and use a surveillance device called a WiFi Pineapple to monitor the activist's Internet activity. Rodríguez stepped down as commander of the Colombian Military Forces in 2017, just three years after he had taken the position. The move was unexpected: According to a report from McClatchy, it came shortly after the U.S. government began reviewing his visa rights. Vivanco told


Noseda resigns Torino post

Gianandrea Noseda, the busy music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, is about to have a little more time in his schedule. As of noon on Thursday, he extended his resignation to the theater where he has been music director for 11 years, the Teatro Regio Torino in his native Italy. The move was arguably foreseeable since the board accepted the resignation of Walter Vergnano, the opera’s superintendent last week. Technically, Noseda was an appointee of Vergnano, but he said last week he was hoping to find accommodation with the board and the theater’s new leadership. The announcement today that William Graziosi (who once worked at the now-defunct Lyric Opera of Baltimore) would take over as Torino’s new superintendent, along with the announcement that the theater’s planned U.S. tour with Verdi’s “I Vespri Siciliani” — already announced as a highlight of the Carnegie Hall and Kennedy Center 2018-19 seasons — would be canceled, prompted Noseda’s decision. “The recent actions taken by the board of the Teatro Regio Torino are disappointing and disheartening,” Noseda said in a statement. “The fact that the quality which has propelled the theater on the international scene has not been taken in due consideration provides a clear indication to me that there is no interest to share a common vision for the future of the Teatro Regio Torino. … Under these circumstances, I will not be available to continue my relationship with the Teatro Regio Torino.” For Americans who look to Europe as a mecca of state support for the arts, the current situation in Torino illustrates a down side: Political appointments, and struggles, can suddenly upend an opera house. Vergnano’s resignation, though officially couched as personal, was allegedly prompted by disagreements with the current political administration, who were rumored to want to replace him with Giancarlo Del Monaco. From the political perspective, Noseda — who has supervised the rise of Torino from a provincial house into a strong company with an international presence — is no more than a cog in the machine. In the immediate future, Torino’s loss cannot even be Washington’s gain, as the NSO’s 2018-19 season is already firmly planned. The next question will be which conductor will replace him in Torino, and whether the productions he was to have overseen there will continue to attract international notice.


Vast survey finds far more gorillas in Africa than previously believed — and some bad news, too

World Wide Fund for Nature, the Jane Goodall Institute and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES. Scientists collectively spent 61,000 days in the field gathering data, the Wildlife Conservation Society said in a statement. The researchers developed a computer model to predict densities of gorillas and chimps outside the areas directly surveyed, over the whole of their Texas-size range. Scientists also conducted surveys by walking straight lines, or transects, in 59 areas of tropical forest in the region, known as Western Equatorial Africa. Along these lines, they would count gorilla and chimpanzee nests, which the animals make each night for sleeping. The number and condition of these resting places were key building blocks of the final population estimates, Maisels said. Both animals are threatened by hunting and the bushmeat trade, as well as logging, forest degradation and agricultural expansion. The Ebola virus, which affects both animals, has also taken a toll. “We need far better management of existing parks and reserves, and we need to have more protected areas, since large portions of chimp and gorilla populations occur outside” them, said Mittermeier, who is the chief conservation officer for Global Wildlife Conservation and was not involved in the study. Gorillas and chimps can survive in areas that are managed responsibly, said Maisels, who said she would like to see stronger enforcement of laws and hunting prohibitions from logging companies within areas they manage. But laws against illegal logging and hunting are not always observed, and the roads that loggers build through forests can allow poachers to more easily access and kill wildlife within. To keep the animals around, “we have to make sure the protected areas are truly protected,” Maisels said. One obvious reason to save gorillas and chimps is that they are huge draws for ecotourism, a growing source of revenue throughout the area. They also help keep forests healthy, including by spreading seeds. Their forest habitats hold massive stores of carbon, which has its own economic value, Mittermeier said. But maintaining robust wild populations is about more than that, Maisels argued. “They’re our nearest relative,” she said. “It’s a kind of moral responsibility.” Read more: What Harambe’s death means for a critically endangered species of gorilla War isn’t just bad for people — it harms wild animals, too The danger of seeing cute animals everywhere Animals keep getting their heads stuck in our trash