The following review appears in The Washington Post’s 2019 Fall Dining Guide. (Good/Excellent) Francis Layrle is used to cooking for discerning palates. At the French Embassy, the Gascon native fed seven ambassadors. “I was doing what I wanted to do: looking for the best products,” says the chef, who arrived in 1973 and took over this kitchen near Washington National Cathedral five years ago. “Now, same thing: I’m looking for the best products.” When he can get it, there’s Dover sole, procured, he says, from “two little boats” that fish the waters in northern Denmark. Amish farmers from Pennsylvania bring him young carrots, watercress, delicate goat cheese and parsley root, which Layrle likes to use in soup. “I love vegetables,” he says, and a recent salad confirms: Sliced golden beets, tangy leeks and sumac-dusted yogurt make for an interesting concert. Diners, many of them neighbors, head to the cozy bistro anticipating boudin blanc with soft roasted apples, juicy lamb T-bone steak, floating island. Then they linger, despite the cramped tables and the clamor. “There’s magic in the place around 6:30,” says Layrle, “a buzz that’s hard to explain.” The staff seems to know most everyone by name, people are air-kissing, and isn’t it nice to be served warm bread and see champagne, the real deal, offered by the glass? Magic indeed. 2.5 stars La Piquette: Open: Price: Sound check: -- The following review appears in The Washington Post’s 2017 Spring Dining Guide. La Piquette: Your our local neighborhood Paris bistro (Good) “Is everything to your liking?” a server asks. Indeed it is. My cheese omelet is tender, its greens are sharply dressed, and a glass of Sancerre is keeping me company in a dining room that could pass for a neighborhood bistro in Paris. Fostering the illusion are chalkboard menus, blood-red banquettes and a chef with a French accent: Francis Layrle, a Gascon native who fed seven ambassadors during his tenure at the French Embassy. Lately, entrees have bested the starters. Focus, then, on crackling duck confit, lemony skate wing and lamb T-bone rather than the dreary leek vinaigrette or a saffron-tinted mussel soup with too few bivalves. All’s swell come dessert, with attractions including apple tart and orange cake, the latter offered with vanilla custard sauce. The name is a joke; Piquette alludes to second-rate wine. Otherwise, this is a serious bistro that knows how to make its clientele


Peter Handke won the Nobel for his ‘great artistry.’ Critics say he’s an apologist for genocide.

As they announced Austrian author Peter Handke as one of the two winners of the Nobel Prize in literature for 2019, the judges at the Swedish Academy highlighted the “great artistry” in his exploration of the “periphery and the specificity of human experience.” But as word that 76-year-old Handke had won the prize spread Thursday, many others remembered something else: Handke’s embrace of the Serbian nationalist leader Slobodan Milosevic. That relationship prompted a visceral reaction from those who remembered the violence of Milosevic’s Serbia. “This is the single most offensive possible decision,” Petrit Selimi, the former foreign minister of Kosovo, wrote on Twitter. “What’s next? Assad for Peace Prize? Vlora Citaku, Kosovo’s ambassador to Washington, called Handke “a propagator of ethnic hatred & violence” and shared a photograph of him at Milosevic’s funeral in 2006. Albania’s acting foreign minister, Gent Cakaj, wrote on Twitter that the Nobel had been awarded to “a genocide denier." Writers and academics also expressed unease on social media. Historian Orlando Figes wrote that he was deeply shocked that Handke had won the Nobel, describing him as a “notorious apologist for the murderous regime of Slobodan Milosevic.” For the Nobel judges, it may be an unwelcome return to controversy. The unprecedented decision to confer two prizes this year had occurred in the wake of a sexual assault scandal that erupted in late 2017, leading to a decision to delay last year’s prize. Polish author Olga Tokarczuk also won the prize Thursday, making her one of only 15 women to have been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature since it was first given out in 1901. Both Handke and Tokarczuk are widely considered masterful writers, with the Austrian’s long and productive career dating to 1966 and his debut novel, “The Hornets.” But Handke has been dogged by his links to Serbian nationalism since the 1990s. In 1996, Handke wrote an essay about a trip to Serbia for the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung that questioned the media’s portrayal of Serbs as the aggressor in the conflicts sparked after the collapse of the Yugoslavian state. “In an effort to bring the war to their customers, international magazines from Time to the Nouvel Observateur relentlessly portray the Serbs as evil and the Muslims as the usual good guy,” Handke wrote. The article was published a year after a massacre in the town of Bosnian Srebrenica after Serbian forces overran a


Peter Handke and Olga Tokarczuk win Nobel Prizes in literature

Austrian author Peter Handke and Polish author Olga Tokarczuk have won Nobel Prizes in literature, the Swedish Academy announced Thursday. The Nobel Prize in literature for 2019 was awarded to Handke “for influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience,” according to the judges. The 2018 prize was awarded to Tokarczuk “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.” Before today, only 14 women had won the Nobel Prize in literature since it was first awarded in 1901. The 2018 prize was not awarded last year amid a scandal at the academy. The judges praised Handke for his vast production in different genres, including essays, short prose, plays and films, and noted that he has become “one of the most influential writers of contemporary fiction” since his 1966 debut novel, “The Hornets.” His most widely read work is “A Sorrow Beyond Dreams,” about his mother’s suicide in 1971. The Nobel committee called out for special praise for “Die Obstdiebin” (“The Fruit Thief”) published in 2017, for its acute awareness of the landscape and its nomadic theme. “With great artistry, he explores the periphery and the unseen places,” the judges said. For some, Handke’s win has been a long time coming. When Elfriede Jelinek won the Nobel in 2004, she told the New York Times, “I was convinced that, if Austria was to get it, it would go to Peter Handke, and rightly so.” But Handke’s win today is not without controversy. The committee, so eager to move beyond its recent scandals, may have just stumbled into another one. Handke has been widely accused of being an apologist for fascists and Serbian nationalism. Such influential writers as Salman Rushdie have noted with alarm Handke’s coziness with the worst elements in Serbia. Handke was condemned for speaking at the 2006 funeral of Slobodan Milosevic and suggesting that the West had misunderstood the leader, who was accused of war crimes. Kosovo’s ambassador to the United States, Vlora Citaku, immediately condemned the Nobel Prize for Handke, saying it was a “preposterous and shameful decision.” Citaku tweeted: “SCANDALOUS! #Nobel committee decides to award Peter Handke — a man who glorified Milosevic aka ‘The Butcher of The Balkans’ & supported his genocidal regime — this year’s prize in literature. There is nothing nobel about this!” Handke’s works have


American Simone Biles wins fifth all-around world gymnastics title

Olympic champion on the apparatus with the amplitude of her Cheng — an exceedingly difficult skill few women perform. Her score of 15.233 proved highest on the apparatus. She acquitted herself well on uneven bars, her least favorite event. Lee’s bars routine, however, went awry almost at once, with a rare fall. She collected herself and finished but scored 13.330, well below her potential. On beam, Biles chose not to perform the double-twisting, double-somersault dismount that now bears her name after she became the first to successfully execute it on a world stage in qualifying. She didn’t need it, scoring top marks anyway for an already rigorous routine that included just a small wobble or two. As the final major international competition before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the 2019 world championships serve as a bellwether. Biles is on track to become the first woman in 52 years to win back-to-back Olympic all-around gold medals, since Vera Caslavska of former Czechoslovakia did so at the 1964 and ’68 Olympics. But any parallel to a half-century-old achievement is strained, at best. Today’s gymnastics are far more demanding, complex and dangerous. Credit Biles for pushing those boundaries without being pushed by a rival or young upstart. Biles is competing against her own potential, which is seemingly limitless. It’s extremely rare for female gymnasts to maintain championship form over two Olympic cycles. And it’s almost unheard of for those who qualify for back-to-back Olympics to raise their technical level, as Biles has since the 2016 Rio Games, where she won four golds, including the all-around, and a bronze. “The few athletes that have tried to come back, very often they’re repeating the same skills they did four years earlier, which usually is not enough because the sport is continually evolving,” said Tom Forster, U.S. women’s team coordinator. “Simone is really, really unique in that sense. I don’t think anyone ever has shown up at their potentially second Olympics stronger than their first, if they were the champion. This is a totally different level of competition than the world has ever seen before.” What makes Biles exceptional is a combination of factors. At just 4-feet-8, she has remarkable power. She also has impeccable form, which means there’s no extraneous motion in her gymnastics. Mentally, she’s strong as granite. And despite her mountain of medals, she trains and competes with a hunger that’s not sated by


The best restaurants in Washington D.C.

Tom Sietsema’s 10 top restaurants in the District that set the standard for fine dining.


Northern California blackouts may mean mobile outages

SAN FRANCISCO — The place that helped make the Internet the center of our lives may have to live offline, at least temporarily. Nearly a million Northern Californians are enduring or preparing for unprecedented blackouts — and top U.S. mobile providers are scrambling to maintain service. AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile said the shutdowns could interrupt service and make it difficult or impossible to make calls, send texts or access the Internet. Only Verizon expressed unwavering confidence about its service in the face of the blackouts. One of the largest utilities in the nation, Pacific Gas & Electric, began shutting off power Wednesday ahead of dry, windy conditions that increase the risk of dangerous wildfires. The blackout affected about 500,000 customers early Wednesday, with additional blackouts expected to impact about 300,000 others on Wednesday and Thursday. PG&E told customers that power could be out for as long as five days, depending on weather and how long it takes to get power systems back up and running. Some people had lost cellular coverage as of Wednesday evening, according to AT&T spokesman Jim Greer. T-Mobile also reported some outages. All the companies are encouraging customers to fully charge their devices before a scheduled outage, consider purchasing a charging device that doesn’t need to be plugged in, prepare an emergency kit and keep in touch with officials for updates. Backup equipment will be key to whether the connected Bay Area can get online during the blackout. AT&T’s Greer said the company is working as quickly as possible to deploy recovery and generators in areas where customers may be affected. He added, though, that network is performing well despite the outages. AT&T is offering unlimited talk, text and data to its customers in 758 California Zip codes between Oct. 9 and Oct. 13. AT&T was informed of the power shutdowns in over 38 counties less than 36 hours in advance, and the information changed in the hours ahead of the blackouts according to a person close to the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. In a blog post on its website, Sprint said that the blackouts could impact cellular towers in the affected area. Some of the sites have generators, and the company says it is deploying backup power to the ones that don’t as quickly as possible. T-Mobile stated in a post that the company has permanent generators in “key cell sites”


Tired of impeachment talk? Check out Saturn’s new moons.

we’re using these shiny new celestial bodies to peer deep into the history of our solar system. Scientists theorize that these moons are actually the remnants of at least three much larger objects that had once danced around rings of Saturn. But those structures were torn apart in the event known as the Late Heavy Bombardment some 4.1 billion and 3.8 billion years ago, when asteroids and comets wreaked havoc as they hurtled through our star system. We call these moons “new,” but of course, they were with us all along. At the time of their theorized formation, Earth was just a spry ball of volcanic mess — likely hundreds of millions of years before it supported life. And there they remained until, at last, intelligent life-forms in Hawaii spotted them through a telescope and decided they should be given names. At a time when our government seems hopelessly incapable of doing, well, anything at all, this discovery is an encouraging reminder that smart people outside the realm of politics and government continue to accomplish amazing feats — vastly expanding our knowledge of this small corner of the universe we call home. Perhaps a little bit of space exploration is exactly what our country needs in this moment of political paralysis. At the onset of the Cold War, the promise to explore beyond the confines of our atmosphere was the scientific enterprise that helped mobilize and unite the country against our Soviet foes. Perhaps today, it could serve a similar purpose, though this time, our primary adversary is our own dysfunction. Space exploration has the potential to unite humanity behind the common purpose of greater understanding. Our celestial neighborhood is so vast and so full of mystery that the scientific potential and sense of wonder it offers ought to eclipse the sources of the partisan polarization that divide us. Yes, Democrats and Republicans might have difficulty getting along at Thanksgiving, but the secrets of the reservoirs of water detected at Mars’s south pole know no party. And sure, the latest Trump tweet might throw the Internet into another tizzy, but my goodness are those cryovolcanic plumes spurting out of Enceladus enticing! Don’t get the wrong message: We should care about what’s happening in our country. The political fights — especially how we address environmental challenges — will have real impacts on our lives and future generations. But space has the


Transcript: The CEO Series: Steve Schwarzman

school in China. It's a lot like the Rhodes Scholarship. It's called the Schwarzman Scholars at Tsinghua University, which is their number-one university. So I go over for that. MR. DUFFY: Do you think the Chinese need more whispering about--well, let me phrase it carefully. Who needs the Schwarzman whispering more: the Chinese to understand the Americans, or the Americans to understand the Chinese? MR. SCHWARZMAN: Yeah, well, I mean, I'm not going to answer that question. But I think it's really impossible for an outsider to deal with the internal politics of China. That's their situation. And you can describe to them the consequences of decoupling, that its not, in my view, in any case, in their interest. And they can take that on board. But you're powerless to do anything to influence things more than giving your views. MR. DUFFY: Given what you know about both parties, would you say that we're getting closer to a deal or getting further away from at the moment? MR. SCHWARZMAN: Well, actually, it's been really unusual that in May, is in the close to the deal pile. MR. DUFFY: Yeah. MR. SCHWARZMAN: And I think everybody knows that story, that you had roughly 150 pages and like a third of them disappeared a few days before their group was scheduled to come over, and they obviously changed their mind. And then, as there usually is between these two countries, there's a period where they withdraw and trying to figure out where they're going next. And that's why they're coming over. So, in a way, it's a great reveal when they come over--and coming over Thursday, Friday, I guess. And we'll know what happened backstage because we'll see it on the front stage. And I'm not sure anybody knows exactly what that will be. MR. DUFFY: Who or what is coming. MR. SCHWARZMAN: Excuse me? MR. DUFFY: You aren't sure who or what is coming. MR. SCHWARZMAN: Well, I know who's coming. MR. DUFFY: Yeah, but exactly what'll be put on the table. Do you believe that a small deal might be advisable before a big comprehensive deal? There has been talk about sort of a down payment. MR. SCHWARZMAN: I think that's up to the President. MR. DUFFY: Would you favor it? MR. SCHWARZMAN: He's got to figure out whether that's of interest. MR. DUFFY: Has Hong Kong made this deal


to change and technology types of intersections going apart, the whole world, it's sort of like when the parents are fighting, the children get affected. And this at the moment has been sort of economically disadvantageous, particularly in manufacturing. Manufacturing is going backwards literally every place in the world. I have difficulty describing who a winner or loser is in that. There are a lot of losers. MR. DUFFY: Anywhere in this. Do you at all worry that the relationship could actually come completely apart and there would be a breakdown between the two countries worse than we've already had? MR. SCHWARZMAN: I don't think that's in the long-term interests of the world. MR. DUFFY: China was an early investor when you had the Blackstone IPO. MR. SCHWARZMAN: Yeah. MR. DUFFY: Are they still? MR. SCHWARZMAN: No. I was completely unsolicited. I mean, I was stunned. I mean, how would you like somebody to show up and say here's $3 billion? MR. DUFFY: That's B, with a B. MR. SCHWARZMAN: I mean, I started out trying to get $5 million. I thought that was great. So this was an unsolicited approach by them. And at that time, when we went public in 2007, we actually had two other countries do the same thing. So it was pretty flattering. And we took the money from China because I thought that in the scale of the sort of global economy there was going to be nobody, no other country like China. And we actually did that with non-voting stock and no board representation because I wanted to make sure we were run independently without an influence. MR. DUFFY: Are they still investors in Blackstone, the Chinese? MR. SCHWARZMAN: Oh, no, they sold their stock I think after about six or eight years. MR. DUFFY: One more trade question since we are also looking down the road here. Do you expect Congress to approve NAFTA? What does your crystal ball tell you? It's getting harder to get anything done, so I'm wondering about that one. MR. SCHWARZMAN: Well, you guys all live here, and it's Washington. MR. DUFFY: But we're having you here today to tell us-- MR. SCHWARZMAN: And I see people on television all the time, you know, with their crystal balls and Ouija boards. MR. DUFFY: You don't need one of those. Just tell us what you think. MR. SCHWARZMAN:


Computer-assisted judging is being tested at gymnastics world championships

STUTTGART, Germany — On the eve of the 2019 gymnastics world championships, the 527 participating athletes were asked to consent to a scan by multiple laser sensors to create a precise, three-dimensional image of their bodies. Those images, in turn, are being used to improve the accuracy of a so-called “judging support system,” developed by Japanese IT giant Fujitsu, that’s being used here for the first time in competition. The expectation, pending approval by the International Olympic Committee, is that the technology — in which artificial intelligence helps human judges score gymnastics routines — will be used at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. And it may presage the day when computers replace human judges entirely in the largely subjective sport, although that is not the plan “for now,” officials from both the International Federation of Gymnastics (FIG) and Fujitsu acknowledged Wednesday. “The history of gymnastics has seen cases of misjudgment,” said Morinari Watanabe, president of the sport’s international governing body, who hailed Fujitsu’s judging-support system as a step toward “justice through technology” in a joint news conference with Fujitsu. “Gymnasts start training as early as age 3 or 5 and may train 20 years to pursue their Olympic dream. We must respect his or her 20-year efforts. Misjudgments are not allowed.” At these world championships, where Russia, China and Japan took gold, silver and bronze, respectively, in the men’s team event Wednesday, computer-assisted judging is being used on a limited basis on four of 10 events: men’s vault, pommel horse and still rings, and women’s vault. Moreover, it is being used only for the “D” score, which reflects a routine’s difficulty, and not the “E” score, for execution. And it is being used in one of two circumstances: when a gymnast or national governing body files an “official inquiry” disputing the judging panel’s D score or if there is a profound disparity between judges’ “D” scores. Ideally, the technology will safeguard against the pitfalls of human judging, such as judging bias, whether willful or subliminal, or simple mental fatigue on the part of judges who lose focus after scrutinizing routine after routine. Moreover, according to Fujitsu and FIG executives, it will shorten event time by automatically generating “D” scores. They also tout other applications of the computer-generated images, which capture every phase of a gymnast’s routine with yellow lines indicating their skeleton, along with precise data about their body positioning. For


Since 2000, these trailblazers have helped make D.C. a better place to eat

Hundreds of people have made Washington a better place to eat, drink and be merry since I became food critic in 2000. These brands blazed trails: José Andrés: Ashok Bajaj: Amy Brandwein: Derek Brown: Jeff Buben: Erik Bruner-Yang: Lisa and Peter Chang: Jackie Greenbaum: Mark Furstenberg: The Nortons: The Obamas: Patrick O’Connell: Michel Richard: Andy Shallal: Fabio and Maria Trabocchi:


Man on life support after shooting along troubled Northeast Washington road

including a teenage girl tying her shoe outside a grocery store at Eighth and P streets NW, were shot in separate attacks in Shaw over the weekend. Police described the girl as a bystander. Later Sunday night, a man in a vehicle fired on another car as they sped up Sixth Street NW. No one was hit, police said. Community meetings to address the violence were scheduled in Shaw for Wednesday evening at the Watha T. Daniel Library and 6 p.m. Thursday at the United House of Prayer. The shooting in Northeast Washington happened in the 5200 block of Sheriff Road, a popular gathering spot outside a small commercial strip that contains a barbershop called Nooks and a day-care center. People who hang out there have complained about police harassment, and a confrontation with officers in the summer of 2018 led to a day-long hearing before the D.C. Council to examine police conduct. D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham has said the area is known for drug dealing and asserted that people there bait his officers to force entanglements. Earlier this year, a 17-year-old was shot in the back in that area when 40 or more bullets were sprayed in front of the barbershop in the middle of the afternoon. In July, Dominic Robinson, 32, was shot and killed near Sheriff Road. He had been one of the central activists complaining about police and had testified at the council hearing. No arrest has been made. Police did not comment on a possible motive in the latest shooting on Sheriff Road. A police report said the victim, identified as Kevin Eli Better, was found Tuesday in front of Nooks and was rushed unconscious to a hospital. The victim’s mother, Monica Better, 45, said her son, who lives with her near Dupont Park in Southeast Washington, hung out on Sheriff Road with childhood friends. She said she did not think that her son took part in confrontations with police. He has no adult criminal record in the District. Better said he has two brothers, three sisters and a 2-year-old daughter. Better said she worried about her son hanging out on Sheriff Road and called him frequently asking when he would come home. “He stays pretty much to himself,” she said. “He’s not the rowdy type.” She said she talked with some people who were there during the shooting and that they told her


Seven Reasons gives you many more than that to dine there

serrano. Other Milanese seem drab in comparison. Vegetarians are gladly received with such dishes as cauliflower tartare and a roasted sweet potato made dramatic and delicious with crimson beet puree and an almond-chipotle vinaigrette. (Limardo is promising something other than an election to think about next year: a month-long vegan menu.) Isn’t the space cool? Aren’t the servers lovely? Doesn’t everyone look happy to be here? When I think of it, there are dozens of reasons to pick this restaurant for your next dining adventure. 3 stars Seven Reasons: Open: Prices: Sound check: The Top 10 restaurants of 2019: 10. Thamee 9. Anju 8. Three Blacksmiths 7. Mama Chang 6. Poca Madre 5. The Restaurant at Patowmack 4. Métier 3. Pineapple and Pearls 2. Rooster & Owl 1. Seven Reasons -- The following review was originally published on Sept. 11, 2019. Seek and ye shall find plenty of excuses to explore Seven Reasons (Excellent) Venezuela could use some good press, and one person in Washington poised to dish it out is Enrique Limardo. A native of Caracas, he studied architecture and industrial design before abandoning both fields for cooking, first in his homeland, with two restaurants in Venezuela’s capital; then around the world (Dubai, Hong Kong, Paris) as a personal chef; and later in Baltimore, where his food at Alma Cocina Latina drew me like Picasso to paint. After a devotee in the District promised to support him if he relocated to Washington, Limardo, 44, responded with Seven Reasons on 14th Street NW. No sooner did the three-story restaurant throw open its doors in April than it became the “Dear Evan Hansen” of the food scene, a homegrown spectacle with an original point of view. Arepas — baked, fried or grilled cornmeal cakes that can be filled with just about anything — may be the extent of your familiarity with the cooking of Venezuela. The chef wants you to know the role immigration has played in his native country, a melting pot whose flavors come by way of “Spain, Italy, Japan, China, even India,” says the chef, who got his start as a dishwasher. It only takes a dish or two to catch his drift and appreciate his creative mind. There’s an ocean of octopus out there. But nowhere else have I seen it offered as a single steamed, boiled and fried tentacle, dusted with trendy “ash” created from charred


This restaurant is one of 10 classics in The Washington Post’s 2019 Fall Dining Guide. Old Ebbitt Grill (Good) A menu with mass appeal and the Treasury as a neighbor help pull in the crowds: Seafood is the best bet, but it keeps company with burgers, chicken fettuccine and roasted cauliflower presented as a main course — and pretty much around the clock. As area director of operations David Moran says, the Victorian-inspired saloon and restaurant is “for everyone and every time.” Founded in 1856 and in its current location since 1983, Old Ebbitt sets the bar for oysters, which budgeteers can enjoy during twice-a-day happy hours and which come with an Oyster Eater’s Bill of Rights. The kitchen also does well by fried calamari, tossed with pickled cherry peppers, and crusty crab cakes, served with creamy coleslaw and hand-cut fries — impressive for a place that attracts more than 1 million visitors a year. Not every dish is a winner — shepherd’s pie tastes like meatloaf soup — but this business puts the customer first, be it with handsome salt and pepper shakers or a bartender who offers a handshake, asks your name and remembers it when you leave. No wonder it sold $33 million in food and drink last year, or that Graham Holdings Co. recently bought its parent, Clyde’s Restaurant Group. “We buy well-established businesses that are profitable,” says chairman Donald Graham, former CEO of The Washington Post Co., and “run by people who would like to remain.” Long live Old Ebbitt. 2 stars Old Ebbitt Grill Open: Prices: Sound check: -- The following review was originally published June 12, 2019. Old Ebbitt Grill remains a mouthwatering monument in D.C. (Good) To get a sense of how popular Old Ebbitt Grill is, just look at the numbers. Last year, the Victorian-inspired saloon and restaurant across from the Treasury building sold more than $33 million worth of food and drink. But a more entertaining gauge of its success is to pass through the ever-revolving door at any time of day (the restaurant is open from breakfast through last call, seven days a week) and take a look around the 567-seat expanse. The attendants at the host stand are as busy as air traffic controllers on the day before Thanksgiving. More telling, the marble stairs connecting the ground floor to the basement restrooms are as worn down as anything


In Northern Virginia, there’s no restaurant like Clarity

Virginia. Or, as Krinn says his customers tell him, “a D.C. restaurant that’s not in D.C.” They’ve got that right. Feathery chestnut linguine draped with a sauce coaxed from mushroom stock and aged Parmesan tastes straight out of the Centrolina playbook at CityCenterDC. Pedigreed skirt steak served in thick ruddy slices with velvety red peppers and a red wine sauce could pass for a signature at grill-happy St. Anselm near Union Market. Meanwhile, the chef’s father, Mal Krinn, continues to play the role he has since 2941, baking the breads that make for memorable first impressions, wherever his son’s restaurant happens to be. If you’re lucky, the basket will include a crusty roll with a whiff of roasted garlic or a crackle of sunflower-sesame. They’re just the right companions for, say, falling-apart braised veal cheek on a ragout of tiger’s-eye beans, tinted green with kale pesto. Sweeter still, the polish on the plates extends to most of the dining room staff. Krinn has assembled a cast of young men and women who seem very familiar with the place. “I know most of their parents,” he says, “because they’re customers.” But first, an explainer. Listening to Krinn talk about his culinary classes explains some of the thinking that goes into his restaurant menu. Rather than focus on cooking techniques, the chef prefers to teach his students how to season, frequently deploying words used to describe wine. Hints of “leather” on a slab of venison are created from dehydrated, smoked, pulverized shiitakes that end up as the “crust” on the lean meat. Notes of “caramel” on a piece of pompano are extracted from a reduction of fish sauce, lime juice, smoked garlic and more. Krinn refers to the tactics as “push cooking”: aggressive layering of flavors, including opposites. Why use salt when you have capers? If the nightly vegetarian entree isn’t always as considered as most of the main courses, it’s at least interesting. The best brought together roasted butternut squash and velvety sauteed mushrooms, encircled by chopped red cabbage and a liquid whip of potato and Parmesan. It wasn’t meant to replicate a dish from the meat world, but rather, to simply taste harmonious. And so the sweet-savory-tangy concert did. Here and there, I wish the cooks had more time to rehearse the day’s menu, to gauge the reaction of the audience to food constantly whipped up on the fly. I’m


Abiy Ahmed’s Nobel Peace Prize is deserved, but he still has work to do in his country

ETHIOPIAN PRIME Minister Abiy Ahmed’s Nobel Peace Prize is an encouraging reminder that peace and democracy really do go together. It may also be a reminder that will come in handy to Mr. Abiy himself. Mr. Abiy won his award for what the committee called his “decisive initiative” in building peace in his region. “Decisive” is right. Ethiopia and Eritrea had been paralyzed in a military standoff for 20 years when the prime minister entered office. It took less than three months for him to broker a treaty, and fewer than 100 days to release thousands of political prisoners, invite back opposition parties that had previously been designated terrorist groups and lift his country’s long-standing state of emergency. These changes came in concert. The border dispute over a dusty town with little in the way of natural resources was described when it began as “two bald men fighting over a comb,” but they fought bitterly for decades. Mr. Abiy believed Ethiopia would not be stable unless the region around it was, too. His commitment to pushing policies that enriched all of his country’s people rather than those in the upper echelons of government cracked a once-uncrackable conflict. But presiding over a fledgling democracy after years of repressive rule isn’t easy. The persistent threat of punishment for any dissent kept many tensions at a simmer, and now the pot is boiling over. Ethiopia led the globe last year in internally displaced civilians. A coup attempt in Amhara resulted in the assassination of the region’s leader. Some problems could perhaps have been preempted by closer attention in Addis Ababa to local grievances, and others might have been inevitable in a nation made up of nine ethnic states that are often at odds. The response from the government has been to revive some of the same liberty-squashing behavior that Mr. Abiy at first made it his mission to root out. The peace with Eritrea isn’t complete, either. The border has not been demarcated or demilitarized, and the people living along it have not been settled. President Isaias Afwerki might be loath to give up the despotic practices he has long justified as necessary in wartime, and the ruling party in Ethiopia’s Tigray region is particularly ill-disposed toward its northern neighbor. Mr. Abiy should hold fast to the reality that animated him at the outset: A healthy nation is essential to a healthy Horn


The four U.S. presidents before Trump who weren’t snubbed by the Nobel Prize committee

The 2019 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Friday morning, thus thwarting President Trump’s dream to pick up the renowned prize for at least another year. At a Sept. 23 news conference, Trump said, “I think I’m going to get a Nobel Prize for a lot of things — if they gave it out fairly, which they don’t.” Fair or not, four other U.S. presidents have won the coveted award from the judges at the Norwegian Nobel Institute since the prize’s founding in 1901. And the winners are: Theodore Roosevelt President Roosevelt may have espoused the gospel of “speak softly and carry a big stick,” but that didn’t stop the Nobel committee from awarding him the peace prize in 1906 for “having negotiated peace in the Russo-Japanese war.” He was the first head of state to win the prize, and the move was controversial, since Roosevelt had also fought for control of the Philippines. According to the Institute, Swedish newspapers said Alfred Nobel was “turning in his grave.” Woodrow Wilson Between 1914 and 1918, i.e. World War I, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded only once, to the International Red Cross. Then in 1919, President Wilson won for being the “leading architect of the League of Nations.” A precursor to the United Nations, the League of Nations was supposed to prevent a world war from happening ever again. Unfortunately, Senate Republicans blocked the United States from joining, and the League ultimately failed. Jimmy Carter (post-presidency Former president Carter won the peace prize in 2002 for “his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts,” but the committee said he had probably deserved it while he was still in office. In 1978, he mediated a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel known as the Camp David Accords. As an ex-president, Carter also worked for peace in Northern Ireland, North Korea and Uganda, to name a few. He called for an end to the “war on drugs” in the United States, arguing that policies that punish instead of treat drug users are inhumane. And at 95, the longest-living former president in U.S. history is still building homes for the poor with Habitat for Humanity. Barack Obama As the Nobel committee noted, there was a long list of reasons Carter was Nobel-worthy. The same could not really be said for President Obama in 2009,


Why Eritrea didn’t win a Nobel for its peace accord when Ethiopia did

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was announced as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, with the committee that decides the awards singling out his efforts to achieve peace with neighboring country Eritrea. But notably, the prize was not awarded to Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, Abiy’s partner in the talks. Instead, Nobel Committee Chair Berit Reiss-Andersen simply acknowledged that “peace does not arise from the actions of one party alone” and said that they hope the “peace agreement will help to bring about positive change for the entire populations of Ethiopia and Eritrea.” In some years, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to multiple parties for their work trying to end a conflict. In 1994, for example, the prize was awarded to Israel’s Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, as well as Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. But the decision to award the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize only to Ethiopia’s Abiy was hardly surprising. Eritrea’s Isaias leads one of the most repressive military dictatorships in the world; his government has been compared to North Korea and accused of possible crimes against humanity. And even though he reached an agreement with Abiy in Eritrea’s capital last year to end the conflict between the two nations, in practice the agreement remains largely unimplemented, and there have been little visible benefits for Eritreans. “I think there was a lot of hope in Eritrea,” said Laetitia Bader, a researcher at Human Rights Watch. “But very quickly, Eritreans saw that things were not changing on the ground.” Vanessa Tsehaye, an Eritrean activist based in London, noted, “I’d say it has brought no positive developments for the Eritrean people, because the lived reality is the same more than a year after the peace deal.” The conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia stretches back decades. After European powers left occupied Eritrea in 1951, landlocked Ethiopia claimed the land of its coastal neighbor, eventually resulting in a civil war that started in 1961 and lasted three decades. In 1991, Eritrean forces helped overthrow the communist-led government in Ethiopia, and two years later, Eritreans voted for independence. However, the two nations did not reach an agreement on the border between them, and in 1998, small-scale border incidents around the town of Badme grew into a full-fledged conflict. It’s estimated that almost 100,000 people died, and after it ended, Ethiopian troops had control of Badme and other disputed areas. As


Boeing and FAA faulted in oversight breakdowns that contributed to 737 Max failure

A group of international and American aviation safety experts has identified broad failures in the design and oversight of Boeing’s 737 Max, saying in a report released Friday that government regulators had “inadequate awareness” of an automated system that contributed to two deadly crashes. The report by the Joint Authorities Technical Review panel said that assumptions about critical aspects of the plane’s design were “not adequately reviewed, updated, or validated.” It said communication breakdowns, bureaucracy and staffing disparities between Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration meant that key government safety personnel did not know enough about the power of the automated feature until after tragedy struck. Both Boeing and the FAA had deemed the now-grounded planes safe as part of a years-long certification process. But the expert panel convened by the FAA, after crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia together killed 346 people, said that process failed to identify and prevent what turned out to be profound dangers. “People who needed to know things in order to make informed decisions didn’t know everything they needed to know,” said Christopher Hart, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, who chaired the panel. “That was the challenge. Then when they found out about it, it was a fait accompli and it was too late. In fact it was, in most cases, after the crash occurred that they found out. ‘Really? I didn’t know that was an issue.’ ” Among other problems, the panel found that vital information about the automated feature, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) — including how it was intended to work and its technical underpinnings — was provided in a “fragmented” fashion. “Although MCAS may have been briefed to some FAA personnel, key aspects of the MCAS function such as intended function description, its interfaces, and architecture, were not directly visible to the FAA in a straightforward manner through the certification deliverable documents,” the panel found. The panel included experts from the FAA, NASA, and aviation authorities in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, Japan, Indonesia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. The FAA experts had not taken part in the certification of the plane, Hart said. The panel focused on the certification of the Max’s flight control system, including MCAS. Investigators say that before the deadly crashes, faulty information from an external sensor caused MCAS to mistakenly kick in, repeatedly, forcing the planes’ noses down


The Daily 202: Ukraine scandal entangles a widening cast of previously obscure characters. Here’s a primer.

but his interview has not yet been formally scheduled. -- H.R. McMaster, Trump’s second of four national security advisers, was asked Thursday whether it’s appropriate for a president to solicit foreign interference in the American political process. “Absolutely not,” he said at a Foundation for the Defense of Democracies event. -- Bolton, who replaced McMaster, took another concrete step toward writing a tell-all about his time in the Trump White House. -- Perhaps just as interesting as the people who are speaking up are those Trump aides who have gone radio silent. Normally talkative advisers have pulled a disappearing act amid the impeachment inquiry, remaining mostly absent from public view, FOLLOW THE MONEY: -- Two Soviet-born associates who have been working closely with Giuliani were arrested on charges of scheming to funnel foreign money to U.S. politicians while trying to influence relations with Ukraine, according to an unsealed indictment. The arrests mark the first criminal charges to emerge from L'Affaire Ukraine: “The indictment does not mention Giuliani or suggest that he was connected to the alleged crimes. A person familiar with the investigation said federal agents are scrutinizing Giuliani’s dealings with Parnas and Fruman but cautioned that this was to be expected as the FBI examines the pair’s finances. … In an interview Thursday, Giuliani declined to answer specific questions about the arrest of his two associates or his financial dealings with them, citing his past legal work for them. … “The Justice Department charges that Parnas and Fruman disguised the source of a $325,000 donation made in 2018 to America First, the main pro-Trump super PAC, by giving the money in the name of Global Energy Producers. … Federal prosecutors say the company was a front used to disguise the funds’ true source and that the money for the political action committee came from ‘a private lending transaction between Fruman and third parties.’ ... Prosecutors said Parnas, a Ukrainian-born U.S. citizen, and Fruman, a Belarusian-born U.S. citizen, [also] schemed to exceed campaign donation limits in giving money to an unnamed U.S. congressman, at the same time that they were asking the congressman to get the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine removed from her job. … The indictment does not identify the congressman by name, but public campaign records indicate he is former Texas congressman Pete Sessions (R), who lost his reelection bid last year.” -- Read the full indictment here.


I could hear a voice that resembled Giuliani’s shout ... in the background. ‘Oh, sorry,” the woman told me. ‘He was talking to the TV.’” -- House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said he will donate money he took from Giuliani’s indicted associates. -- Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also said he will return a $50,000 donation from Parnas and Fruman, IMPEACHMENT LATEST: -- House investigators issued a subpoena to Energy Secretary Rick Perry over his Ukraine work, -- Lawyers for the first whistleblower asked Congress if their client can submit testimony instead of appearing in person. -- Trump said last night that former congressman Trey Gowdy won’t join his defense team until next year – at the earliest – after all. -- Trump’s biggest lender, Deutsche Bank, has told an appeals court it does not have in its possession Trump’s personal tax returns. -- As Trump lashed out at Fox News, Attorney General Bill Barr met privately with network owner Rupert Murdoch at his home in New York. -- Notable commentary: WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING: -- The Washington Mystics won their first WNBA title after defeating the Connecticut Sun 89-78. THE NEW WORLD ORDER: -- Iran said missiles struck one of its oil tankers in the Red Sea, spilling oil into the ocean. -- The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who helped end a standoff with neighboring -- Turkish forces are pushing deeper into Syria, as the Kurds struggle to defend their homeland. -- Trump is under increasing pressure to take action in response to Turkey’s invasion. -- The U.N. Security Council's emergency meeting to discuss the crisis highlighted the degree to which the Russians are on board with the Turk offensive. -- Norway and Finland have suspended all exports of military arms to Turkey. -- “Our sons were killed by the Islamic State. Don’t let ISIS prisoners in Syria go free.” That's the message of an op-ed in today's paper by Diane Foley, the mother of journalist James Foley, and Art Sotloff and Shirley Sotloff, the parents of journalist Steven Sotloff -- The three top House Republicans — McCarthy, Steve Scalise and Liz Cheney — announced that they and dozens of their GOP colleagues will introduce legislation to impose sanctions on Turkey for going into Syria. -- At an event in South Carolina, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) called Trump’s decision to pull troops from


José Andrés doesn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize, but that doesn’t slow his disaster relief work

José Andrés The celebrity chef-turned-humanitarian and disaster relief specialist — who was nominated last fall for a Nobel Peace Prize by John Delaney, a former congressman from Maryland and a Democratic presidential candidate — spent most of the week in the Bahamas before the Nobel committee’s announcement Friday that Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. If Andrés had won among the 300 other nominees, a list that reportedly included his occasional nemesis, President Trump, he would have been the first chef to claim the honor. As if making a statement about his priorities — performing a public service over sitting around and awaiting news of a prestigious prize — Andrés was on the ground this week, working with his nonprofit organization, World Central Kitchen, to feed the victims of Hurricane Dorian. On Thursday, the group officially served its millionth meal in the Bahamas, less than six weeks after WCK set up operations on the islands. Andrés was not available for comment about the Nobel. The chef Unprepared for what he and his organization faced when they landed in Puerto Rico after Maria knocked out the electricity, the roads and most of the island’s communications, volunteers soon discovered they faced another obstacle: an outdated, bureaucratic, top-down, paramilitary-type model of disaster relief that wasn’t prepared to deal with the magnitude of the crisis. Frustrated by the red tape, the delays and the standard thinking on disaster relief, Andrés and his team of volunteer chefs did what kitchens have done for decades: They improvised. They activated any space with electricity and running water, whether a church, a restaurant or a food truck. They eventually opened a giant kitchen at the Coliseo de Puerto Rico in San Juan, where they produced 60,000 meals a day. They rewrote the book on how to feed people after a natural disaster. They fed Puerto Ricans — who are American citizens, Andrés frequently pointed out to Trump, who was accused of responding slowly to the unfolding crisis — millions of hot meals, staying there for months to make sure the job was done. “It was also an untold disaster, hidden from view and lied about by our public officials,” Andrés wrote in his book, “We Fed an Island.” “My mission was to help my fellow American citizens, and to tell their story to a world that was living in the dark.” Puerto


Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopian prime minister who ended standoff with Eritrea

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for his dogged pursuit of democratic reforms and regional peacemaking efforts. Abiy was awarded the prize, “in particular, for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighboring Eritrea,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the Nobel Committee, which decides the winner. A peace accord between Abiy and his Eritrean counterpart, Isaias Afwerki, formally ended a 20-year military standoff that followed Eritrea’s secession from Ethiopia in 1993. As many as 100,000 people were killed between 1998 and 2000 when a border dispute flared into an all-out war. Abiy, a 43-year-old former intelligence officer, has ushered in an era of hope for peace and greater freedoms in Ethiopia, Africa’s second most-populous country, which has long been governed by authoritarian regimes. Upon taking office in April 2018, Abiy initiated the release of thousands of political prisoners, lifted bans on various political organizations, prosecuted former officials accused of torture and vowed to move Ethiopia toward its first free, multiparty elections in 2020. Abiy has also made bold moves to broker peace in neighboring Sudan and South Sudan, both beset by civil conflict. Abiy spearheaded rounds of talks between opposing sides in both countries, and he has sought a role in mediating other regional conflicts, such as a maritime dispute between neighboring Kenya and Somalia. In a statement, Abiy’s office said that “this victory and recognition is a collective win for Ethiopians, and a call to strengthen our resolve in making Ethiopia — the New Horizon of Hope — a prosperous nation for all.” Abiy’s recognition by the Norway-based Nobel Committee was reminiscent of President Barack Obama’s 10 years earlier. Like Obama at the time, Abiy is near the beginning of his term and has not yet fully implemented the broad changes and peace deals he has set out to accomplish. But his initial decisions in office have prompted an outpouring of hope that those stated objectives will be achieved. “No doubt some people will think this year’s prize is being awarded too early,” Reiss-Andersen said in her announcement of the prize. “The Norwegian Nobel Committee believes it is now that Abiy Ahmed’s efforts deserve recognition and need encouragement.” Ethiopia remains one of the world’s most insecure countries, with more than 3 million people displaced from their homes and more than 1,000 killed in 2018, mostly because of


Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who helped end standoff with Eritrea

Abiy, 43, has initiated democratic reforms and sought to resolve conflicts in the region. He has ushered in an era of hope for peace and greater freedoms in Africa’s second-most-populous country, which has long been governed by authoritarian regimes.This is a developing story. It will be updated.


NASA administrator visits SpaceX in bid to ease tension in their relationship

I have a fiduciary responsibility to the American taxpayer.” In 2014, NASA awarded contracts, worth $6.8 billion combined, to SpaceX and Boeing to design spacecraft capable of flying astronauts to the International Space Station. The program has suffered a series of setbacks and delays — as well as restricted funding from Congress that has delayed the first flights, originally scheduled for 2017. Last year, during a test of its abort system, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft suffered a propellant leak after four of eight valves failed to close properly. The investigation and remediation efforts resulted in a one-year delay, according to the Government Accountability Office. Boeing hopes to fly its capsule later this year in a test flight without humans, ahead of flights with crews next year. SpaceX has already successfully completed its test flight without crews on board. But shortly after the flight, its Dragon capsule exploded as the company was testing the engines of its emergency abort system. Talking to reporters after the event, Musk said the company has fixed what caused the explosion and that the point of a development program was to discover problems before flying astronauts. “If there’s a test program and nothing happens in that test program, I would say it’s insufficiently rigorous,” he said. “If there hasn’t been hardware that’s blown up on a test stand, I don’t think you’ve tested it hard enough. You’ve got to push the envelope.” He also pointed out that the spacecraft that was destroyed was the same one that had successfully docked with the space station in the test flight. “If people had been on board,” he said, “they would have returned safely.” He said that SpaceX is committed to making sure “we’ve done everything possible to ensure the astronauts will be safe. Only at that point will we launch.” And he said that developing the Dragon spacecraft “is absolutely the overwhelming priority” and that the company has “a lot of people working super hard” to make it happen. Still, it’s clear the company has a way to go before that day. It’s working on a new parachute design that will have to undergo more testing. It also has to test the spacecraft’s emergency abort system during a launch. In the end, Bridenstine said he has confidence in the company. “We will make it,” he said. “This is a big deal for our country. We can’t get it wrong.”


Made in America

the definition of process cheese food. None of this matters, of course, to chile con queso fans, who rely on Velveeta because of its ability to melt into a smooth goo. Ro-Tel tomatoes and chiles Before industrialization, chile con queso was a dish that could be prepared only when chiles and tomatoes were in season. Carl Roettele and his wife helped change that. In 1943, they opened a facility in Elsa, Tex., less than an hour from the Mexico border, where they canned tomatoes and green chiles for customers in the Lone Star State. Certain that few could pronounce his surname, Roettele decided to abbreviate the brand name to Ro-Tel. It would not be his last stroke of genius. Chili powder Decades before Roettele opened his plant, German immigrant William F. Gebhardt had developed chili powder, which he began selling in the 1890s. Like Ro-Tel, Eagle Brand Chili Powder allowed cooks to spice cheese sauces without waiting for chile season. Chili powders were used in early versions of Tex-Mex queso, including Mexican rarebit, a spicy take on Welsh rarebit. But the most famous use may have been in Felix’s Queso, a bright orange glop beloved at Felix Mexican Restaurant in Houston before the place closed in 2008. The queso was “thick and oozing with red grease,” wrote Fain. “It looked frightening but was surprisingly fluffy and addictive.” ‘Cover the nation in queso’ Almost from the start, Ro-Tel seemed to grasp how customers would use its product. Since at least 1949, the company has been selling convenience in chile con queso, according to food historian Robert Moss. That was the year Ro-Tel started running newspaper ads promoting its “Spanish Style Cheese Dip and Spread.” It included just two ingredients: Half a can of Ro-Tel tomatoes and green chiles and a half-pound of American-type processed cheese. Ro-Tel would later join forces with Kraft Foods, the parent of Velveeta, to solidify the relationship between the two products. As the years went by, and ConAgra acquired Ro-Tel in 2002, the partnership would become an unlikely one between two giant food companies that otherwise compete for business. Yet the relationship has survived. Several years ago, the companies went on a barnstorming campaign to sell queso outside the primary markets of Texas and the south-central part of the country: Two “queso queens” hopped on a “Quesobago” recreational vehicle to visit football games and grocery stores. The


Ethiopia’s leader won the Nobel Prize. But he’s got a long way to go for peace.

a “post-ethnic” narrative, in which ethnicity — when acknowledged — is simply called a “construct” and not fact. In Rwanda, authoritarian efforts to conceal human rights abuses went hand in hand with the creation of a homogeneous national identity that completely erased decades of ethnic identities. Kagame and his regime have taken extreme measures — masked as reducing deadly ethnic tensions — to eliminate individual freedoms and silence opposing views; many Rwandans are afraid to even say the word “Hutu” or “Tutsi.” The state employs propaganda campaigns, arrests and assassinates opposition members, and quashes independent media. And in Ethiopia, despite Abiy’s reforms, some of these authoritarian tactics have been replicated. Following the alleged coup attempt in June, the government shut down the Internet for 10 days and detained journalists on bogus charges under Ethiopia’s anti-terrorism law. Alarmingly, Abiy cautioned that the Internet is “neither water nor air” and could be blocked at any time. In this critical moment, Ethiopia must learn from Rwanda’s mistakes. Abiy’s experiences position him to avoid the “post-ethnic” authoritarian model: He joined the liberation struggle against the Derg in 1990 and even served as a United Nations peacekeeper in Rwanda. But healing and forgiveness cannot be driven by one person alone. Abiy must empower actual victims to become a fundamental part of the truth and reconciliation process and ensure that an authoritarian top-down approach does not undermine the process of reconciliation and the progress made by local community efforts. The suffering of every ethnic group needs to be equally addressed by Ethiopia’s commission, and all perpetrators held accountable for their wrongs. Twenty-five years after the genocide in Rwanda, with a Nobel Peace Prize to honor and propel a promising start — at least on paper — Ethiopia and Abiy must take heed not to follow in Kagame’s footsteps, and unambiguously reject the slippery slope into authoritarianism. Read more: The Post’s View: Abiy Ahmed’s Nobel Peace Prize is deserved, but he still has work to do in his country Paul Barrett: A new industry in Ethiopia is creating jobs. But at what cost? The Post’s View: After 20 years, Eritrea and Ethiopia are making peace. We should all celebrate. The Post’s View: Abiy Ahmed pulls off an astonishing turnaround for Ethiopia Frida Ghitis: Three countries where democracy actually staged a comeback in 2018 The Post’s View: More governments are shutting down the Internet. The harm is far-reaching.


How the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize fits a global pattern

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s Nobel Peace Prize win on Friday honored a unique peacemaking effort, but it also fit a global pattern. Others were believed to have chances — including Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg — but the Nobel Committee affirmed the prize’s commitment to global diversity. It wasn’t always that way. Until the 1970s, the vast majority of laureates had European or North American origins. Promoters of peace from developing countries were largely ignored. But in the following decades, the prize became much more international — and now it includes many laureates from other parts of the world, particularly Africa, Asia and the former Soviet Union. More of the recipients have also been women. “The impact of the decolonization of Africa, the Vietnam War and the fear of an atomic war made the Nobel Committee more focused on conflicts outside Europe,” said Oivind Stenersen, who co-authored a book about the Nobel Peace Prize, in an interview in 2015. While Ethiopia’s Abiy is expanding the laureates’ geographical diversity, he still fits at least two pre-1970s characteristics: He is a political leader, rather than an underdog, and he is a man. Until the 1970s, the Norway-based peace prize committee had focused on political leaders, but it began including more dissidents and lesser-known figures in the second half of the 20th century. For instance, no Russian won the Nobel Peace Prize between 1901 and 1974. But in 1975, the prize was awarded to Soviet nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov. Sakharov, the mastermind behind Soviet thermonuclear weapons, received the honor “for his opposition to the abuse of power and his work for human rights,” according to the committee’s official website. Soviet leaders viewed the committee’s choice as offensive and prohibited Sakharov from traveling to Norway to accept his award. But the decision reflected the growing shift within the Norway-based committee that continued in the following decades. The dogged defense of democracy and liberties by activists and opposition politicians took a more prominent role in the following decades, for instance with the 2003 decision to award the prize to Iranian lawyer and human rights activist Shirin Ebadi. Three influential women from Africa and the Middle East received the 2011 award: Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first elected female president in post-colonial Africa; peace activist Leymah Gbowee, also from Liberia; and Tawakkol Karman, a leading Yemeni activist. Malala Yousafzai, who has advocated for girls’


D.C. housing employee on lunch break fatally shot during apparent robbery, police say

of Columbia Housing Authority are deeply saddened by the loss of one of our employees,” he said in a statement. On Thursday, police identified a suspect sought in the fatal shootings inside a rowhouse in the 1600 block of Rosedale Street NE in Kingman Park. Davon Peyton, 27, of Alexandria, Va., was charged in a warrant with first-degree murder while armed, police said. The victims were identified as Devon Miler, 24, who lived in the two-story home with his grandmother, and Lekelefac Fonge, 27, of Lanham, Md. Relatives for Fonge could not be reached. A woman who said she was related to Miler and two neighbors who recalled him growing up described a young man full of smiles who loved to dance but was largely nonverbal. The neighbors and relative declined to provide their names, citing safety fears and to protect the victims’ privacy. “This is a community that is broken,” one woman said. “Everyone here knew Devon as he grew up.” Police identified the 15-year-old who was killed Wednesday afternoon in the 1300 block of Half Street SW, in the James Creek public housing complex near the waterfront and Nationals Park, as Thomas Johnson of Southeast Washington. Police did not cite a specific motive but said the shooting appeared to be targeted. “It looks like they were looking for this young man for some reason, and they took his life,” Newsham said. Authorities made public a surveillance picture of what appeared to be a young man sprinting from the shooting, which occurred about 1:20 p.m. The FBI doubled a $25,000 reward offered by D.C. police for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case. Police said the youth did not live in the neighborhood in which he was shot. His relatives could not be reached. In a letter to the school community, Anacostia High School Principal William Haith said Thomas’s death is a “devastating loss.” Thomas was the ninth juvenile between 11 and 17 killed in the District this year. Nine juveniles between 10 and 17 were slain in the city in 2018. Several times in recent days, Newsham continued his long-standing argument blaming violence on the proliferation of illegal firearms and a criminal justice system he says fails to adequately punish offenders his officers arrest. “We also need to start looking at policies and how we’re going to hold people accountable,” the chief said. “We have


House Democrats subpoena Perry, Giuliani associates; Trump to hold first campaign rally since impeachment inquiry launch

Department or other agencies a reason why the money was being withheld, or who had initially made the decision to freeze it, after substantive discussions about whether the move was legal. The unorthodox steps were carried out in connection with Michael Duffey, associate director of national security programs at OMB. Duffey was involved in approving orders to hold back nearly $400 million in congressionally approved military aid for Ukraine, according to people familiar with what transpired. Read more here. — Josh Dawsey and Karoun Demirjian 7:30 p.m.: McMaster says it was ‘absolutely not’ appropriate for Trump to solicit foreign interference One of Trump’s former national security advisers, H.R. McMaster, minced no words. When asked Thursday by the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser whether he thought it was appropriate for the president of the United States to solicit foreign interference in the American political process, McMaster replied: “Of course, no. Absolutely not.” Speaking at a Foundation for the Defense of Democracies event, McMaster elaborated: “Of course what has to happen here is seeing our democracy play out, the separation of powers play out, and for the American people through their representatives and their representatives in Congress to make a judgment as to whether or not that happened.” But, he added, “to answer your question directly, of course it’s just not appropriate.” — Ellen Nakashima 7:20 p.m.: Female ambassadors object to Trump’s treatment of former envoy to Ukraine Trump’s recall and denunciation of former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch incensed Women Ambassadors Serving America (WASA), an organization of over 170 current and former U.S. envoys. In a statement, the group chided Trump for comments that “demean and threaten Ambassador Yovanovitch… despite her very strong record of speaking out clearly and firmly against corruption in Ukraine.” She had already been recalled from Kiev in May, but that didn’t stop Trump from “denigrating the Ambassador and stating that ‘she’s going to go through some things’” during the call, the statement complained. Trump’s comment “suggests that it might be an intention to punish the Ambassador for unspecified actions,” the Women Ambassadors added. “This appears to be a threat of retaliation for political reasons, which is both shocking and inappropriate.” Read more here. — Joe Davidson 7:00 p.m.: Tillis declines to say whether it’s appropriate for Trump to ask foreign countries to investigate his political rivals Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who faces a tough reelection battle


The movers, shakers and surprising omissions in Tom Sietsema’s fall dining guide

in last year’s guide. Be warned: This is a section that might not stick around next year. There are now 11 restaurants in the Hall of Fame. Surprise: Rasika West End joins its sister restaurant in Sietsema’s list of “restaurants that do what they do better than their peers.” None of the restaurants in this category had ratings change, including the three-and-a-half-star Rasika West End. The Hall of Fame is home to seven of the guide’s eight four-star restaurants. The other one is Métier, which placed fourth in Sietsema’s Top 10. Eric Ziebold’s dining room earned four stars in 2017, was docked half a star in 2018, but is now back to a “superlative” rating. A Michelin star isn’t always enough. Little Pearl and Gravitas both celebrated receiving their first Michelin stars this year, but neither is featured in Sietsema’s new guide. Little Pearl had earned three stars in 2018, and Gravitas earned a No. 10 ranking in Sietsema’s spring Top 10, but that wasn’t enough. “One could argue that I liked two of Aaron Silverman’s restaurants [Pineapple and Pearls and Rose’s Luxury] better than Little Pearl this year,” Sietsema says, “or I thought Rooster & Owl was a more original, and less expensive, tasting menu experience overall than Gravitas. As I said in my introduction [to the Dining Guide], I also had to stop somewhere.” Bresca, Fiola, Masseria and Plume are other Washington restaurants that earned Michelin stars but have not been featured in Sietsema’s recent guides. Kinship, which has one Michelin star, returned to the dining guide after missing out in 2018. The big mover: The Restaurant at Patowmack Farm Chef Tarver King’s Lovettsville escape made its fall dining guide debut with a three-and-a-half-star rating and the No. 5 spot in Sietsema’s Top 10. Pretty impressive for a farm restaurant that first earned a mention in 2017′s spring dining guide, and “almost made it” into the fall guide that year. King is “living the dream,” Sietsema says, “getting most of his ingredients from his backyard and really putting ingredients on a pedestal, while also explaining their connection to the tasting menu. I tasted joy in his dishes.” As the dining scene grows, so do the options outside the city. This was a banner year for restaurants outside Washington’s borders. Eighteen of them — a dozen in Virginia, six in Maryland — earned a spot in the dining guide,


The Swedish Academy took a year off to fix the Nobel Prize in literature. It’s still broken.

transparency was in the air. And then came Thursday’s announcement of the winners of the 2018 and 2019 Nobel Prizes in literature. The big test: an opportunity to show that the committee members could, in fact, carry on Alfred Nobel’s vague instructions to select “the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction.” First, the 2018 prize was awarded to Polish author Olga Tokarczuk for what the judges praised as “a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.” But then the other shoe — or jackboot — dropped, and any celebration of Tokarczuk’s work was hijacked by a fresh controversy: The Swedish Academy awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in literature to Peter Handke. He’s a controversial Austrian writer known for his sympathy for the late Yugoslavia leader Slobodan Milosevic, who was accused of genocide. Handke not only attended that butcher’s funeral, he delivered a eulogy. As Kosovo’s ambassador to the United States, Vlora Citaku, put it: “There is nothing nobel about this!” This is no way to demonstrate good judgment or to regain trust. It’s just another tone-deaf stunt by a group of Swedish snobs who command a disproportionate and undeserved wedge of the world’s attention. Let’s set aside the ridiculous presumption that each year the Nobel Prize in literature goes to “the” greatest writer in the world. Given the complications of translation, the influences of cultural bias and the limits of any small group’s knowledge, the distinction of “best” is impossible to make with any defensible certainty. The prize is always political, always a compromise, always a statement of values. Which is what makes Handke’s selection this year, of all years, so maddening. It didn’t have to be this way. Consider: Before this year, only 14 women had won the Nobel Prize in literature. Given the committee’s record of chauvinism and the need to rebuild its reputation after a shocking sex scandal, why not select a female writer for the 2019 Nobel Prize in literature? Yes, two women in one year! Imagine the discussion we’d be having right now if the beloved Canadian writer Margaret Atwood had won this week. We can argue about the literary quality of some of her novels (please skip “Hag-Seed”), but what a profound influence her best work has had on the conversation about the rights of women. What a powerful way for the committee to


New guidelines on opioid tapering tell doctors to go slow

they desperately need the opioids they take and don’t want to be forced by their doctors to taper the dosages. Many also are anxious about the prospect of losing access to their painkillers. People who have been forced by their doctors to cut back rapidly on their medication may experience heightened pain and may suffer psychological distress, the new HHS guide for clinicians states. Clinicians are advised to monitor patients closely for signs of anxiety and suicidal ideation. “Risks of rapid tapering or sudden discontinuation of opioids in physically dependent patients include acute withdrawal symptoms, exacerbation of pain, serious psychological distress and thoughts of suicide. Patients may seek other sources of opioids, potentially including illicit opioids, as a way to treat their pain or withdrawal symptoms,” states the HHS guide. “Increased pain happens to be an opioid-withdrawal symptom. Most patients will experience a transient experience of pain,” said Deborah Dowell, a chief medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the lead author of the new guide. “All of us are extremely empathetic to people living with severe chronic pain,” Giroir said. He reiterated the need to take steps to limit opioid addiction and reduce the number of fatal overdoses. That can be done while still treating pain with opioids in a responsible manner, he said. “We can achieve both goals. They are not mutually exclusive.” This is a delicate issue for the millions of people taking opioids and the broader medical community, which in the 1990s embraced the idea of pain as the fifth vital sign of health. Drug companies promoted opioid painkillers as a safe and rarely addictive treatment for chronic pain. Pills such as OxyContin and Percocet began to be used widely for pain from back injuries, arthritis or headaches. The overuse of these pills and patches has fueled an opioid epidemic that claims more lives every year in the United States than automobile accidents or gun violence. In the past decade, medical experts have come to realize the potentially dire consequences — addiction, for starters, overdoses, and death in the worst-case scenarios — of prescribing these narcotics for ailments other than cancer, recent surgery or end-of-life palliative care. A 2016 guidance from the CDC set standards for prescribing of opioids. Officials later acknowledged that many medical professionals misinterpreted the guidelines. The CDC, for example, had suggested an upper limit for opioid dosages among


A political prisoner in Russia gains his freedom. Too many others are still waiting.

This post has been updated. Last week, the French mission to the Council of Europe hosted an unusual meeting between a head of state and a prisoner he helped set free. French President Emmanuel Macron, who holds the rotating chairmanship in the Council, Europe’s oldest pan-continental body dedicated to defending human rights, met with Oleg Sentsov, a filmmaker from Crimea who was arrested by the Russian authorities after the annexation of the peninsula in 2014. A military court in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don handed Sentsov a 20-year prison sentence on bogus charges of “terrorism.” Recognized by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience, Sentsov — who held a 145-day hunger strike demanding the release of other Ukrainian hostages (but not himself) — became a cause célèbre, receiving prestigious awards and becoming the focus of advocacy by prominent public, cultural and political figures throughout the world. Among the heads of state and government, Macron — even as he sought rapprochement with Moscow in other areas — became Sentsov’s most outspoken advocate, personally raising the Ukrainian’s case with Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin on several occasions. This commitment, no doubt, helped bring forward the day Sentsov was freed as part of last month’s prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine. “[Sentsov] is here today in Strasbourg, free. . . . Others are still waiting,” Macron told the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly at its autumn session. “Oleg Sentsov is one of those who think, like [French writer Georges] Bernanos, that the liberty of others is as important as our own.” Indeed, others are still waiting. According to Memorial, Russia’s most respected human rights group, there are currently 308 political prisoners in the country. The number is admittedly conservative, as it only includes those who fit the strict criteria in the Council of Europe’s Resolution 1900 — but even this figure is shocking for a country that has ratified the European Convention on Human Rights, which expressly prohibits arbitrary arrest and detention. Among the Kremlin’s political prisoners are journalists, opposition activists, peaceful protesters, adherents of “prohibited” religious groups (such as Jehovah’s Witnesses), and members of “undesirable” political organizations (such as Open Russia.) They include Yuri Dmitriev, a historian who has documented mass burial sites from Stalin-era executions; Alexei Pichugin, the remaining hostage of the “Yukos Affair” now in the 17th year of his sentence for refusing to give false testimony against his former superiors;


We’re still taking better care of banks than people

now (i.e., before the strike against GM) and was last seen clocking in at around zero. Recent research by Andre Perry of the Brookings Institution points out that in 20 majority-black cities with more than 65,000 residents, the average black unemployment rate is 12 percent. These facts underscore the point that even with national unemployment at a 50-year low, there are people and places that have been left behind. Though the research refers to a few years ago, the Economic Innovation Group found that 50 million Americans lived in “distressed communities,” characterized by high poverty rates and low educational attainment, with over 40 percent of working-age adults non-employed. Of particular concern, the gap between prosperous and distressed areas has grown in recent years, driven by a diverging trends in job growth and business start-ups. Economists used to eschew place-based policies, blithely advising people in distressed places to move to prosperous ones. Thankfully, in recent years, such facile thinking is disappearing — in part because people are increasingly staying put — and ideas to help struggling communities are percolating. Economist Tim Bartik suggests ways to help revitalize manufacturing communities, including helping small manufacturers connect to broader supply chains and training local workforces; David Neumark proposes that the federal government subsidizes jobs in struggling places; Larry Summers has ideas for targeted infrastructure investment and taxing location-incentive subsidies by affluent cities, to “give more disadvantaged communities a fairer chance to compete” for new businesses. Such ideas aren’t free, but neither are the Fed’s loans to the banks that lend in repo markets. In both cases, however, because interest rates are low, whether we’re unclogging credit flows or helping people and places get back on their feet, both investments are worth their costs. Of course, part of the difference is that the repo market went haywire all the sudden, while problems in the places described above are more like a slow burn. But that’s no reason to only help the banks. In fact, the major distinguishing factor here is that the Fed operates politically independently (despite Trump’s efforts to compromise this critical attribute), while policies like those noted above must be enacted by national or state legislatures. Some balance would be useful: I like credit flows as much as the next guy, but let’s see the same urgency for the living standards of large swaths of people who’ve been left behind for too long.


Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge just became the first marathon runner to break the 2-hour barrier

Kenyan long-distance runner Eliud Kipchoge on Saturday became the first person to run a marathon in less than two hours, blowing through the barrier by nearly 20 seconds in a special event in Vienna. With thousands cheering him on, Kipchoge completed the 26.2-mile challenge in 1 hour, 59 minutes and 40 seconds. As he crossed the finish line, the 34-year-old pounded his palms on his chest and smiled brightly. He threw his arms around his wife, who was waiting for him at the end, then let a throng of supporters hoist him into the air. “I’m the happiest man,” said Kipchoge, a Kenyan flag draped over his shoulders. “No human is limited. You can do it.” Despite being the fastest marathon ever recorded, Kipchoge’s time won’t count as an official world record because the run didn’t take place in an open event. The challenge, backed by the British chemical company Ineos, was held on a closed 6-mile course in a park in the Austrian capital, and Kipchoge was aided in the run by more than three-dozen pacemakers who rotated in and out several at a time throughout the race. But the milestone in athletic achievement, long considered impossible, reverberated around the world Saturday morning. In Eldoret, Kenya, where Kipchoge lives with his wife and three children, a massive crowd danced and cheered in the street in celebration of their hometown hero’s accomplishment. Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta congratulated Kipchoge in a statement posted to Twitter. “You’ve done it, you’ve made history and made Kenya proud while at it,” Kenyatta said. “Your win today, will inspire tens of future generations to dream big and to aspire for greatness.” In Vienna, four-time Tour de France champion Chris Froome told the Guardian: “It’s phenomenal, it’s fantastic, it’s just incredible to watch him — it looks like he’s not even breathing. He’s just gliding over the road. It’s fantastic to be here, and be part of this atmosphere.” “HISTORY... LEGEND,” tweeted British soccer legend Rio Ferdinand. Kipchoge set an official marathon world record in Berlin in 2018, completing the race in 2 hours, 1 minute and 39 seconds. That record still stands. This is his second attempt to break the two-hour mark. His first came in 2017 in a closed run in Monza, Italy, but he fell short by 26 seconds. As his run Saturday unfolded, Kipchoge appeared poised to shatter the barrier, clocking an


Two-time Olympic gold medalist Conor Dwyer slapped with 20-month suspension

race. He’d qualified for this year’s world championships, which took place in July, but was removed from the U.S. roster with no explanation and did not compete in Gwangju, South Korea. According to the arbitration panel’s ruling, Dwyer did not dispute that he had the pellets surgically implanted. According to the panel's final ruling, Dwyer returned home from the Rio Olympics three years ago and “for many months, he had been suffering from health issues such as brain fog, low mental and physical energy, difficulty sleeping, depression and anxiety.” He eventually underwent a hormone replacement therapy and had the pellets surgically implanted in October 2018. The panel wrote that “he was not concerned with his swimming performance, but rather his overall mental health and well-being." Dwyer didn't realize at the time that the procedure violated anti-doping policies and would result in a positive test, according to the panel’s findings. Shortly after USADA issued its statement Friday afternoon, Dwyer on Instagram announced his retirement from the sport. “It has been an incredible ride and I have accomplished more than my wildest dreams,” he wrote. “It was an honor to represent my country alongside my teammates. … This is an unfortunate end to an incredible chapter of my life. I believe that things happen for a reason, and I can’t wait to share with you all the next chapter of my life.” In a statement Friday evening, Dwyer said he made “an honest and unfortunate mistake,” and said his physician had assured him the treatment was legal. “Absent of these assurances, I never would have agreed to this medically necessary statement,” he said. Dwyer’s 20-month ban is retroactive to December 2018, which means he wouldn’t be able to return to the competition until after the Tokyo Games. “As noted in the Panel’s decision, USADA is independent of sport and here to help athletes ensure they compete clean and protect their health and well-being within the rules,” Travis Tygart, USADA’s chief executive, said in a statement. “It’s frustrating that Mr. Dwyer did not take advantage of this support and hopefully this case will convince others to do so in order to protect fair and healthy competition for all athletes.” Read more Russians take gold and silver in men’s all-around, illustrating U.S. gymnastics gap Noah Lyles, with two world track championship gold medals, returns home American Simone Biles wins fifth all-around world gymnastics title


‘A place of ghosts:’ Ethiopia opens controversial palace to a divided public

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — From the grand palace he had constructed on a hill overlooking this city 130 years ago, Emperor Menelik II plotted the brutal campaigns that would consolidate all of what is now Ethiopia under his rule. Five successive governments — two more emperors and a communist regime included — would rule from the same palace, orchestrating much of this country’s tragic history from within its walls. Its war rooms were where massacres, purges and mass incarcerations were ordered. Menelik’s basement refrigerator rooms were turned into torture dungeons. This week, the latest man to lead Ethiopia from this secretive compound opened most of its grounds to the public. The privately funded, $170 million renovation includes a park, a zoo and a museum of the country’s history, with exhibits adorning walls once stained with the blood of prisoners. The project is emblematic of the leadership of Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s 43-year-old reformist prime minister who on Friday won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in ending the violent standoff with neighboring Eritrea. In office less than two years, he has given people here hope that what was once secret will now be public and what was once authoritarian will become democratic. Abiy is promising nothing less than a renaissance in Ethiopia. He has scheduled its first free, multiparty elections for next year, released thousands of political prisoners, lifted a ban on opposition parties and pushed for the prosecution of former officials accused of torture. His success in transforming Ethiopia depends on unifying this incredibly diverse country despite persistent ethnic tensions that displaced millions and killed more than a thousand during his first year in office. “Abiy is trying to create unity, and maybe that can only happen by ignoring certain parts of our history,” said Seyoum Teshome, a writer and political analyst. “But you must magnify the positive things — the common history and common future. If we don’t do that, we will return to the brink of collapse.” The palace’s new museum, for instance, gives no indication that Menelik II, who is regarded by many as the nation’s founding father, waged what some historians classify as genocides as he conquered the lands he eventually called Abyssinia, which became modern Ethiopia. Instead, a wax figure of the emperor sits on his original wood-carved throne, looking out across the banquet hall where he once hosted feasts, with platters and goblets


Trump administration sharpens demand that Turkey end Syria incursion

to back off, President Trump authorized Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to invoke sanctions against Turkish officials and entities if the Syria incursion resulted in human rights violations, destabilized the region or lead to the escape of a “single ISIS fighter.” Mnuchin told reporters that there was no immediate plan to impose sanctions, but said they will be used “when necessary.” What he described as “very significant new sanctions authorities” could be “targeted at any person associated with the government of Turkey, any portion of the government” Mnuchin said. “This will be both primary sanctions and secondary sanctions.” Mnuchin said that Trump is “concerned about the ongoing military offensive and potential targeting of civilians, civilian infrastructure, ethnic or religious minorities” and “wants to make very clear: It is imperative that Turkey not allow even a single ISIS fighter to escape.” ISIS is an acronym for the Islamic State. More than 10,000 Islamic State prisoners are being held by the SDF in eastern Syria, in facilities guarded by YPG fighters. Some of those fighters have been ordered to the front lines against the Turkish incursion, leading the administration to warn that Turkey is responsible for ensuring there are no escapes. Although there was one unconfirmed report, emanating from the SDF, about an escape from a facility in the city of Qamishli, Esper said that there were no known escapes. Kilic said that Turkey is responsible only for those prisoners being held in an “area we control.” Most of the militant detainees are being held south of the area being claimed by Turkey. Esper and Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news conference that Turkey continued air and artillery attacks in the zone they have specified, and that ground forces have entered up to six to seven miles into Syria in some places. They said that the United States had “repositioned” an unspecified number of U.S. troops in the region to provide force protection for about 1,000 American troops based in eastern Syria. Other than the several dozen U.S. troops pulled back from the border area, U.S. forces remain “co-located” with the Kurds in eastern Syria, they said. “We’re asking them to continue their partnership with us . . . naturally, there’s a considerable amount of anxiety,” Milley said. “The leadership of the SDF has given instructions to some of their forces to begin


Local Digest: Virginia man charged in killings at D.C. rowhouse

THE DISTRICT A Virginia man has been arrested in connection with two fatal shootings inside a Northeast rowhouse last week, police said Sunday. Davon Peyton, 27, is charged with first-degree murder while armed, police said. The shootings occurred Wednesday in the 1600 block of Rosedale Street NE, in Kingman Park. The victims were Devon Miler, 24, who lived in the two-story home, and Lekelefac Fonge, 27, of Lanham, Md. — Laura Meckler A man was killed in a shooting late Saturday in Southeast, police said Sunday. D.C. police said Shaquille Simmons, 24, of Northwest was found in the 2200 block of Savannah Terrace SE by officers. He had no pulse by the time emergency medical responders arrived. A second man, also with gunshot wounds, was taken to a hospital with injuries that were not thought to be life-threatening, police said. — Hannah Natanson


Kenya’s Brigid Kosgei smashes world record in Chicago Marathon

The day after Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge became the first to run a marathon in under two hours, Brigid Kosgei showed her dominance by setting a world record in winning the Chicago Marathon. Kosgei, who is also from Kenya, finished with an unofficial time of 2 hours 14 minutes and 4 seconds, which would mean that she lowered the 2:15:25 mark set by Paula Radcliffe in the 2003 London Marathon by more than a minute. Kosgei lowered her personal best of 2:18:20 by over four minutes. The performance caps an extraordinary weekend for marathon competition, with Kipchoge breaking the two-hour barrier in a special event in Vienna designed to show that a sub-two-hour was possible. He ran the 26.2-mile distance in 1:59:40, but the mark is not a world record because the run didn’t occur in an open event. Kipchoge’s run at what he called an “almost superhuman” feat was held on a closed six-mile course in a park, featured three-dozen “rabbit” runners who rotated in and out to keep Kipchoge on pace. Kosgei had no such problem with a world record, even if she was somewhat surprised. “I am feeling good, and I am happy because I was not expecting this,” the 25-year-old runner said (via the Guardian), “but I felt my body was moving, moving, moving so I went for it.” Ababel Yeshaneh of Ethiopia was second, finishing 6:47 behind Kosgei, whose time was faster than all but 22 runners in the men’s division, and Ethiopa’s Gelete Burka was third in 2:20:51. Kosgei’s time would have been a men’s world record in 1964. Radcliffe was on hand for the accomplishment and posed for photos with Kosgei. “If you had told me when I set it in 2003, that it would last that long I wouldn’t have believed it,” she admitted, “but I always knew this time would come — and when I saw how fast Brigid was running today I knew the record would go if she could maintain her pace.” Earlier this year, Kosgei became the youngest female winner of the London Marathon, with a time of 2:18:20. She won the 2018 Chicago Marathon (with a time of 2:18:35) and finished second there in 2017. In the Chicago Marathon men’s division, Kenya’s Lawrence Cherono, the reigning Boston Marathon champion, outlasted a pack of four runners at the finish line, winning in an unofficial time of 2:05:45, edging Ethiopia’s


Jailed New Jersey native a pawn in U.S.-Russian-Israeli tensions

few minutes later telling me something was going on with her luggage, she said she didn’t think they would let her on the plane but told me not to worry.” Lawyers also told Yaffa not to be concerned, saying — even after the first few days of Issachar’s detainment — the 26-year-old would just receive a slap on the wrist: a fine or, at worst, a few months under house arrest. Issachar has no previous convictions. In a similar case this year, 19-year-old American student Audrey Lorber was arrested in a St. Petersburg airport with two-thirds of an ounce of cannabis in her luggage. A Moscow court found her guilty. Instead of a jail sentence, she received a fine equivalent to $230 and time served of just three to four weeks. For Issachar, though, there was no time served, no fine and no release to house arrest. A few weeks after her incarceration, she was slapped with the harsher charge of drug smuggling, something her lawyers said they had never seen before. “We couldn’t understand why she was being treated like this,” Yaffa said. She said the conditions of her daughter’s detention have been difficult, particularly because of the language barrier. She said she tried contacting U.S. government officials, congressmen and senators, even sending a pleading letter to President Trump’s son-in-law and special adviser, Jared Kushner. Then, in August, after deciding to go public with Issachar’s ordeal, the family said they were contacted by a friend of Aleksey Burkov, a Russian IT specialist arrested in Israel in 2015. There is little information on Burkov’s case, but news reports in Israel and Russia say the United States issued an Interpol warrant for him on charges relating to cyberattacks and computer network fraud. Israeli daily Haaretz wrote Sunday that he was indicted in Virginia in 2015 on four counts of fraud and a year later on additional charges of identity theft, money laundering and illegally accessing a computer. A story posted on the Russian news website RT said Burkov was an IT freelancer from St. Petersburg. It said “he was on holiday with his girlfriend in Israel in 2015 when he was hijacked and brought into custody as he was departing Israel, which he says is a standard U.S. scheme.” The report also said it was Burkov’s family that had come up with the idea of a prisoner swap — Burkov’s extradition


‘I’m not here to take anyone’s job’: Mexican crab pickers quietly work in Maryland as immigration debate rages

the shells and quickly maneuver their knives, piling the meat into small plastic containers marked with numbers to identify how much each laborer extracted. The only sound — save occasionally for Spanish-language music — is a constant rustling as the knives work and the shells are cracked. In the 1980s, crab houses started bringing workers from Mexico. But last year, changes to the H-2B program left crab processing plants in Dorchester County teetering on the precipice, with half of the county’s eight picking houses unable to secure enough visas. Family businesses such as Lindy’s “had a lot of conversations that were really scary about how are we going to get through this,” said sales manager Aubrey Vincent. She said Lindy’s — which usually has annual sales of about $9 million to $10 million — had to unload many crabs whole instead of selling their meat to restaurants and grocery stores much more profitably. Selling crabs whole usually yields at least 50 percent less money. Other plants also reported revenue being cut nearly in half, and Dorchester’s economy felt the effects. This year, the plants said they got enough visas but remain concerned because they believe the program has gotten caught up in the administration’s efforts to tighten immigration policies. “We don’t know what’s going to happen next year,” said Bill Seiling, executive vice president of the Chesapeake Bay Seafood Industries Association. When they’re not working or sleeping, the workers watch Spanish-language soap operas in the houses they share or play on their phones. Often, they talk to their children in Mexico on video apps that don’t always function because of poor cell signals or lackluster WiFi. “For the most part we really don’t have any time,” said Garcia, the Lindy’s worker who first entered the program at a Virginia plant 29 years ago. “We’re always working. We even work Saturdays. The only day we take off is Sunday when they take us out to buy groceries,” she said. “If I have the opportunity, I go to Mass on Sundays.” Staying busy is a salve of sorts because it blocks out the yearning to be back with their families. It is for them that Garcia, Vazquez and the others endure the separation year after year, earning money that in a rural Mexican village might pay for food all winter or finance such luxuries as an indoor bathroom. Garcia, who lives in