مرت ستة أشهر منذ مقتل جمال خاشقي وترامب لم يفعل شيئًا

انتهكوا حقوق الإنسان من خلال تورطهم في مقتل خاشقجي. لكن إدارة ترامب هي قصة مختلفة تمامًا. أصدر مسؤولو الإدارة كلمات انتقادية وتأنيب خفيف، لكنهم فشلوا في فرض عقوبات ذات معنى. لقد قوّضوا وشوّشوا وتجاهلوا النتائج التي توصلت إليها وكالة الاستخبارات المركزية “سي آي أيه” لكي يواصلوا العمل كالمعتاد مع ولي العهد. هذه المقاربة الإنكارية التي تقول “لا أرى شيئًا!” لا تعني مجرد غضّ النظر ريثما يقتل السعوديون صحفيًا مرموقًا، بل أيضًا عندما يسجن النظام النساء لمطالبتهن بالحريات الأساسية وتعذيب قادة الأعمال وإرهاب المواطنين حتى يخضعوا. للأسف، فإنّ أكثر شخصية خاضعة في هذه القصة هو الرئيس ترامب. حتى بعد ظهور أدلة دامغة تبين أنّ السعوديين كذبوا بشأن وفاة خاشقجي، أعلن ترامب أنّ ابن سلمان “حليف كبير” واحتج قائلًا إنّ الأمير قد يكون بريئًا. ربما الأمر الأكثر فظاعة هو أنّ ترامب تنازل عن مسؤوليات منصبه ورفض الامتثال لمتطلبات قانون ماغنِتسكي بأنّ تقدم الإدارة نتائجها بشأن قضية خاشقجي إلى الكونغرس. من خلال هذا الرد العاجز، فإنّ ترامب لا ينتهك القانون فحسب. بل إنّه يقوّض مصداقية الولايات المتحدة وسلطتها الأخلاقية. تماشيًا مع وجهة نظره التجارية في التعامل مع السياسة الخارجية، فإنّ ترامب يبدو على استعداد تام لبيع مبادئ أميركا. ولكن ماذا أضاف منهجه إلى الجانب الآخر من العملية التجارية؟ إنّه يدعي أنّ قيمة صفقات الأسلحة السعودية، ومساعدة السعودية في تحقيق أهدافنا الاستراتيجية في المنطقة، تتطلب منا كتم اعتراضاتنا على جرائم النظام. لكن تلك المليارات من الدولارات المزعومة في مبيعات الأسلحة والتقدم في عملية سلام الشرق الأوسط لم يتحققا بعد. لا يوجد أي تفنّن في عقد الصفقات إذا كنتَ على استعداد للتنازل عن الشروط الأساسية. على مدى عقود، تجنّب رؤساء من كلا الحزبين بثبات خوض هذا الطريق السهل، واتخذوا مواقف صعبة للإظهار للعالم أنّ الولايات المتحدة لن تتنازل عن قناعاتنا أبدًا. لهذا السبب، وبعد مرور ستة أشهر، لم تتلاشى قصة جمال خاشقجي. بدلًا من ذلك، مع كل يوم يمر دون تحقيق العدالة، فإنّ عواقب مقتله تزداد إثارة للقلق. كل يوم يسمح فيه ترامب للسعوديين بتجنب المحاسبة هو يوم يعتقد فيه المزيد من الطغاة حول العالم أنّهم أيضًا يمكنهم ارتكاب جرائم قتل دون عقاب. كل يوم تتبدد قيمة السمعة التي راكمَتها الأجيال الماضية من الأميركيين. كما لاحظ الرئيس ترامب ذات مرة، “العالم مكان خطير للغاية”. لهذا السبب يجب على الولايات المتحدة أن تقف شامخة دائمًا وألّا تُسَلِّم قيمها أبدًا. يجب أن يواصل الكونغرس بذل كل ما في وسعه لمحاسبة قتلة خاشقجي. يجب أن ينظر مسؤولو الإدارة إلى الأدلة المروعة التي تدعم استنتاجات وكالاتنا الاستخباراتية. ويجب على ترامب كحدٍ أدنى الالتزام بالقانون وتقديم النتائج التي يتطلبها قانون


كيف هزّت أسرار مقتل خاشقجي الشراكة الأميركية-السعودية

[Read in English: How the mysteries of Khashoggi’s murder have rocked the U.S.-Saudi partnership] لقد مر ما يقرب من ستة أشهر منذ مقتل جمال خاشقجي بشكل وحشي داخل القنصلية السعودية في إسطنبول، لكن صدى الحادثة لا يزال يرتد باستمرار. لقد عصفت الجريمة بشراكة الدفاع والاستخبارات الأميركية-السعودية، حيث أصبح مستقبلها معلّقًا بانتظار الإجابات من الرياض. هذه القضية شخصية بالنسبة لنا هنا في صحيفة البوست. كان خاشقجي زميلنا وصديقي لمدة 15 عامًا. لفهم كيفية حدوث عملية اغتياله الشنيعة وما إذا كان من الممكن إعادة بناء العلاقة بين الولايات المتحدة والسعودية، فقد أجريتُ مقابلات مع أكثر من اثني عشر مصدر أميركي وسعودي على علمٍ بالمسألة، وقد كشَفَت هذه المصادر بعض التفاصيل التي كانت سرية سابقًا لأنها تأمل في وضع قواعد جديدة وإطار محاسبة قد يساهمان في الحفاظ على العلاقة. لقد طلبت المصادر عدم الكشف عن هويتها نظرًا لحساسية المعلومات. خلاصة القول هي أنّه ما لم يعترف ولي العهد السعودي الأمير محمد بن سلمان بدوره في هذه الحادثة ويقبل اللوم عن أعمال القتل التي ارتُكِبَت باسمه، فستظل علاقته بالولايات المتحدة معطوبة. يزعم مسؤولون سعوديون أنّ ابن سلمان قد أقدم على بعض التغييرات، حيث طرد منّسقه السابق للعمليات السرية سعود القحطاني. لكن آلة القمع السعودية لا تزال متماسكة. اتخذ ابن سلمان خطوة صغيرة نحو تهدئة النقاد يوم الخميس عندما أعلنت المملكة أنها أطلقت سراح ثلاث ناشطات في مجال حقوق المرأة من السجن أثناء انتظارهن المحاكمة. لا تزلن عشر نساء أخريات رهن الاحتجاز. قال الأمير خالد بن سلمان، الأخ الأصغر لولي العهد والسفير السابق في واشنطن والآن نائب وزير الدفاع، في مقابلة أُجرِيَت معه يوم الخميس إنّه يأمل في إصلاح الشراكة: “العلاقة لم تبدأ خلال يوم واحد، ولن تنتهي خلال يوم واحد.” قصة خاشقجي هي درس في كيفية إساءة استخدام دول أخرى لإمكانيات الاستخبارات والعمليات الخاصة التي تدعمها الولايات المتحدة. من بين النتائج التي لم يُكشَف عنها سابقًا: – بعض أعضاء المجموعة السعودية للتدخل السريع التي أُرسِلَت إلى إسطنبول تلقوا تدريبات في الولايات المتحدة، وفقًا للمصادر الأميركية والسعودية. حذرت وكالة الاستخبارات المركزية “سي آي أيه” وكالات حكومية أخرى من أنّ بعض عمليات التدريب الخاصة هذه قد تمّت عن طريق “تِير 1 قروب”، وهي شركة مقرها ولاية أركنساس، بموجب ترخيص من وزارة الخارجية الأميركية. – ثمة خطة أميركية معلّقة أيضًا لتدريب وتحديث جهاز الاستخبارات السعودي بانتظار ترخيص من وزارة الخارجية الأميركية. تم تطوير هذا المشروع بواسطة “كُلبيبر ناشونَل سِكيورِتي سُلوشُنز”، وهي وحدة تابعة لشركة “داينكورب”، بمساعدة من بعض مسؤولي “سي آي أيه” السابقين البارزين. لم يتم القيام بأيّ عمل في هذا المشروع. في عام 2017، تم التعرّف


أس أو” وبائعين آخرين. نظرًا لتخصص القحطاني في حملات وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي ضد منتقدي ابن سلمان، أصبحت أهدافه تميل بشكل متزايد نحو المعارضين والصحفيين أمثال خاشقجي. بحلول عام 2017، كان القحطاني قد جمع أكثر من أربعة وعشرين اسمًا لأشخاص قد يكونوا عرضة للاعتقال أو الاحتجاز، من بينهم خاشقجي، وفقًا لسعودي رأى القائمة بأم عينه. قال المصدر إنّ أربعة من الأسماء فقط يمكن وصفهم بأنّهم “مقاتلون أعداء”. من بين عمليات سرية أخرى، أشرف القحطاني على اعتقال واحتجاز السجناء السياسيين مثل النساء الناشطات. وفقًا للمصادر الأميركية والسعودية، فإنّ إحدى التفاصيل المفزعة للاستجوابات تقول إنّ المعتقلين أُجبِروا على توقيع اتفاقيات عدم إفشاء تتعهد بأنّهم سيتحملون “المسؤولية الكاملة” عن العواقب إذا ما تحدثوا عن احتجازهم واستجوابهم. كان قائد فريق الهجوم في إسطنبول ماهر المطرب عقيدًا في جهاز الاستخبارات السعودي، وهو أحد أفراد عائلة سعودية ثرية ومحترمة. قال مصدر سعودي إنّه خدم في لندن منذ عام 2002 إلى 2007 كنائب لرئيس المحطة. لقد كان خبيرًا مبكرًا في مجال الاستخبارات الإلكترونية، وكان يقدم المشورة بشأن الأمن الحاسوبي في بعض الأحيان إلى الأصدقاء السعوديين الذين عملوا في السفارة، وفقًا لمصدر سعودي. عندما عاد المطرب إلى المملكة حوالي عام 2007، كانت أجهزة الاستخبارات ترسله بانتظام إلى الخارج، إلى الولايات المتحدة وأماكن أخرى، من أجل المزيد من التدريبات. قال المصدر السعودي إنّ المطرب ذكر لأصدقاء سعوديين أنّه ذهب إلى برامج تدريبية في الولايات المتحدة. قال المصدر السعودي، نقلًا عن مصادر بداخل الديوان الملكي، إنّ المطرب انجذب إلى دائرة القحطاني عندما دُعي للانضمام إلى الاتحاد السعودي للأمن السيبراني. بفضل مهاراته الاستخباراتية والإلكترونية، تم اختياره عام 2017 كمساعد للأمين العام لشؤون الأمن في مركز القحطاني، وفقًا لمصادر أميركية وسعودية. يوضح التقوّس الوظيفي للمطرب من ضابط استخبارات أجنبي محترم إلى عضو مزعوم في فريق للخطف والقتل كيف أنّ ابن سلمان والقحطاني قد لَوا الاستخبارات السعودية من أجل تحقيق رغباتهما. ما حدث داخل القنصلية السعودية في إسطنبول يظل غامضًا حتى بعد مرور ستة أشهر لأن السعوديين لم يفصحوا بعد بالكامل عن تفاصيل الأحداث. يبدو أنّ أفضل رواية لمقتل خاشقجي جاءت من خلال جهاز تنصّت زرعته الاستخبارات التركية بداخل القنصلية. المصدر السعودي الذي قرأ نصّ محتويات جهاز المراقبة غير القانوني ذلك قام بوصفها. قال إنّها تشير إلى أنّ الفريق كان يعتزم اختطاف خاشقجي وإعادته إلى الوطن من أجل اعتقاله واستجوابه – لكن الخطة فشلت وقُتِلَ خاشقجي. ثم تم تقطيع جسده والتخلص منه. إنّ نصّ التسجيل، كما وصفه المصدر السعودي، يقشعر له الأبدان. يقول المطرب لخاشقجي: “ستعود معنا.” يحتج خاشقجي بقوله: “لا! لدي أناس في الخارج ينتظرونني”، وكان يعني خطيبته خديجة جنكيز. يصرّ المطرب: “أنت


The folly of Brexit is that it peers backwards at past glories

Regarding Sir Jeremy Hunt’s March 29 commentary on Britain’s role in shaping the world and the ongoing parliamentary struggle with Brexit, “As it always has, Britain will keep calm and carry on”: Mr. Hunt claims that the parliamentary ruckus over Brexit was to be expected as a consequence of “something as crucial as our country’s place in Europe.” Indeed, the issue of leaving an economic pact with 27 other nations after nearly 50 years would normally have been preceded by a succession of white papers explaining the consequences, costs and choices related to the European Union divorce. That didn’t happen, and his Conservative Party should explain why. Former Brexit secretary and member of Parliament David Davis last year claimed he ordered studies of the Brexit impact on Ireland but later admitted there were none. Does that sound like a nation with a concern for its subjects or its neighbors? Like many Brexiteers, Mr. Hunt revels in past glories, the wisdom of Winston Churchill and how the United States and United Kingdom are destined to make the world safe for democracy, justice and the rule of law. One need only examine British “rule” in Northern Ireland to recognize the folly of that notion. And as for Robert Burns being “the most gifted wordsmith of his age,” I suggest Irish poet Thomas Moore is not chopped liver. Michael J. Cummings, Philadelphia The writer is secretary of the American Brexit Committee. As a naturalized Yes, Britain is the world’s fifth-largest economy and a leading financial center, but those rankings are in jeopardy. The older generation of Brexit supporters, exemplified by Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, are awash in nostalgia for what their country used to be, and have deluded themselves and others into thinking that ancient glories can be revived. The younger generation, mostly pro-Europe, is more concerned about the country’s future, and they are right. David Lindley


How the U.S. could prosecute Jamal Khashoggi’s killers

Lee C. Bollinger is the 19th president of Columbia University and the Seth Low professor of the University. He is the co-author, with Geoffrey R. Stone, of “The Free Speech Century.” The First Amendment permits any individual in the United States to criticize political leaders, in public, without fear of retribution from the state. Journalists, whose job may entail investigating public officials, are afforded additional protections. But what happens when a U.S.-based journalist’s work offends a foreign leader, who then turns vindictive? Should the journalist not expect the same protections? The question is not an academic one: This is the case of Jamal Khashoggi, the U.S.-based Saudi Arabian dissident, author and contributing columnist for The Post, who was unsparing in his criticism of the Saudi regime. Six months ago, on Oct. 2, he was tortured and murdered at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and, according to U.S. intelligence authorities, at the apparent direction of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The Saudi government, after weeks of denials amid intense international criticism, eventually conceded that Khashoggi had been murdered at the consulate, supposedly by rogue Saudi operators. The regime promised their prosecution — and then, nothing. In an ideal world, international conventions could be used to try the suspects in an international criminal court. But Saudi Arabia does not recognize the international criminal courts and has not signed on to relevant conventions. There is another solution. The deadly assault on Khashoggi — a legal resident of the United States, with children who are U.S. citizens — was also a brazen and an egregious assault against American values and against the First Amendment rights he exercised in this country. Federal prosecutors thus have an obligation to investigate and potentially bring a criminal case against Khashoggi’s killers. It would be somewhat novel to prosecute the murder of a noncitizen abroad, committed by noncitizens — and there would be legal hurdles to overcome — but there are reasonable legal bases for a U.S. federal investigation and prosecution. Principles of international law caution against one country asserting jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed in other countries, but U.S. courts and international law recognize that extraterritorial jurisdiction — regarding crimes occurring outside the United States — can be warranted in certain circumstances. Extraterritorial jurisdiction may be appropriate, for instance, where a crime offends the vital interests of the prosecuting state. The murder of a prominent journalist writing


How the mysteries of Khashoggi’s murder have rocked the U.S.-Saudi partnership

that without clearer rules and accountability, the partnership might be unsustainable, given vocal opposition from many members of Congress. Birth of a strike team Understanding how the murder in Istanbul happened begins with MBS and Qahtani, his Iago-like adviser. Starting in 2015, when King Salman took the throne and a few months later installed his son Mohammed in the royal succession, Qahtani began using the royal court to suppress dissent. His base of operations was the Center for Studies and Media Affairs, but behind this bland-sounding front, Qahtani began assembling a team drawn from the Saudi intelligence services and military. And he began purchasing surveillance tools from NSO and other vendors. MBS’s surveillance dragnet allowed him to spy on other key officials in the kingdom. Starting in late 2015 or early 2016, he obtained permission from Mohammed bin Nayef, then crown prince and interior minister, to conduct “lawful intercepts” of communications through the royal court, according to U.S. and Saudi sources. The subsequent wiretaps, through various hidden channels, included Mohammed bin Nayef himself, his key intelligence counselor Saad al-Jabri, and the heads of the foreign intelligence and domestic security agencies, according to U.S. and Saudi sources. Because Qahtani specialized in social media campaigns against critics of MBS, his targets became increasingly tilted toward political dissidents and journalists such as Khashoggi. By 2017, Qahtani had drawn up a list of more than two dozen names, including Khashoggi, of people who might be subject to arrest or detention, according to a Saudi who has seen the list. Only four of the names could be described as serious “enemy combatants,” the source said. Qahtani developed special-operations capabilities at the center. Several key operatives later became members of the Rapid Intervention Group sent to Istanbul to kidnap or kill Khashoggi. The biographies of three alleged team members sanctioned by the Treasury Department illustrate how the group came together. The Istanbul team’s alleged leader was Maher Mutreb, a colonel in the Saudi intelligence service and member of a wealthy and respected Saudi family. A Saudi source said he had served in London from 2002 to 2007 as deputy chief of station. He was an early expert in cyberintelligence, and he would sometimes give advice to Saudi friends who worked at the embassy about computer security and how to avoid hackers, a Saudi source said. When Mutreb returned to the kingdom around 2007, the intelligence service


A bipartisan challenge to Trump’s fawning over Saudi Arabia

Not only has the Trump administration failed to take any concrete action against Saudi Arabia for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which experts and members of both parties believe Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had a hand in, but the administration has gone out of its way to reward the Saudis. Most recently, the administration blessed the sharing of certain information about nuclear energy with the Saudi government. In response, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s senior Democrat, Robert Menendez (N.J.) and Republican committee member Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) drafted a letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry: There is good reason to be concerned about the Saudis’ commitment to nuclear nonproliferation. “As has been reported, Saudi Arabia has repeatedly asked during nuclear cooperation negotiations that no limitations in a 123 agreement be placed on its ability to enrich uranium and reprocess its spent nuclear fuel,” the senators write. “Many in Congress therefore worry that Saudi Arabia’s interest in someday producing its own stocks of nuclear fuel—despite the fact the Kingdom could purchase fuel on the international market more cheaply—could lead to it to divert fuel to a covert nuclear weapons program.” They point out that none other than Mohammed bin Salman “has stoked fears surrounding Saudi Arabia’s interest in acquiring a nuclear weapon, asserting in March 2018 that ‘without a doubt if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.’ ” Taking a step back, this issue raises the question of why, in light of Saudi atrocities in the Yemen war and the gruesome murder of Khashoggi, we are even considering this deal. This extraordinary step, seemingly outside the normal processes for nuclear technology channels, would be questionable even if a responsible democracy were the recipient. The Saudi government does not remotely meet that standard. The senators raise a host of questions about how this came to be (e.g., “What are the nonproliferation risks associated with these authorizations? What negotiations has the department engaged in with Saudi Arabia? How did these negotiations lead to the development of the authorizations? What was the interagency process behind the authorizations? How were the approvals coordinated?”). One fears, however, that this policy, like so much else in this administration (including security clearances), is subject to the whims of Trump and his family members. Whether there are issues at play that affect Jared Kushner and Trump’s financial interests specifically is unknown


Maryland’s climate will become more like Mississippi’s, researcher finds

BALTIMORE — Imagine winters without a hard frost. Cotton fields spread over rural Baltimore County. Wild hogs munching corn on the Eastern Shore. Impossible, right? Maryland just won’t be the same in 60 years, and a new study predicts its climate will come to resemble someplace nearly 1,000 miles away, somewhere hotter and wetter and thick with mosquitoes: Mississippi. Matt Fitzpatrick, a professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, spent years developing the methods behind the study he published in February in the journal “Nature Communications.” He partnered with Robert Dunn, an ecologist at North Carolina State University, to match cities with their 2080 climate counterparts. The average U.S. city will come to resemble climates more than 500 miles away, often to the south and west, the researchers found. “Cities in the northeast will tend to feel more like the humid subtropical climates typical to parts of the Midwest or Southeastern U.S.,” they wrote. “Climates of western cities are expected to become more like those of the desert.” Their study and interactive web app — where you can discover how your city will feel — are the latest reports to predict changes for Maryland’s climate. In November, the Trump administration released the fourth National Climate Assessment, which found Maryland faces shorter winters within 30 years. By 2040, the last freeze of spring will come two or three weeks earlier. The first freeze of fall will come two or three weeks later. The federal assessment also said rising sea levels risk drowning marshes and flooding low-lying areas such as the Annapolis City Dock. Average temperatures could rise 4 or 5 degrees by 2050, the assessment found. Should folks worry about a few degrees? That is where Fitzpatrick and Dunn come in. They were searching for a way to help the public relate to climate change. “People hear numbers like 1.5 degrees Celsius, and they think, ‘Well, what’s the big deal?’ ” Fitzpatrick said. His study has drawn attention from around the country. Newspapers from San Francisco to Philadelphia have reported his findings: San Francisco would feel like Los Angeles, Philadelphia like Memphis. Most cities, he said, will see winter become about 8 to 10 degrees warmer. The researchers analyzed 540 cities and their surroundings, home to three-quarters of Americans. Fitzpatrick gathered historical weather data for each city from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He collected high and


‘Terrible’ antisatellite test by India endangers International Space Station, NASA says

One week after India became the fourth country in the world to target and shatter a satellite in low Earth orbit with a missile, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine condemned the unilateral move on Monday. During a town hall meeting, Bridenstine called the test “unacceptable,” saying, “Intentionally creating orbital debris fields is not compatible with human space flight.” According to a NASA assessment last week, the Indian space test increased the likelihood of small debris hitting the International Space Station (ISS) by 44 percent over a period of 10 days. The risk is expected to eventually return to normal. Debris impact can have catastrophic repercussions in space, which is why NASA tries to track the trajectory of potentially dangerous pieces. “What we’re tracking right now — objects big enough to track, we’re talking about 10 centimeters or bigger — about 60 pieces have been tracked,” said Bridenstine, referring to the fallout of the Indian space test. The antisatellite test catapulted 24 of those pieces to locations above the ISS, from where they will gradually descend toward Earth, possibly passing the space station. Other debris pieces have been identified but not yet tracked, which means that they could collide with the ISS without prior warning. During the three-minute-long antisatellite test last week, India shot down one of its own satellites to prove that it has acquired technology that would allow it to participate in possible future confrontations in space. While the vast majority of global defense budgets are still used to purchase conventional arms, experts are warning that space is increasingly becoming a new frontier for some of the world’s best-equipped militaries. President Trump announced the creation of a U.S. Space Force last June, and China, India and other nations are also doubling down on defense-related space ambitions. “We are not just capable to defend on land, water and air, but now also in space,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said last week. “India registered its name as a space power,” he said. The Indian Foreign Ministry initially defended its antisatellite test last week, saying in a statement: “Whatever debris that is generated will decay and fall back onto the earth within weeks.” It did not, however, acknowledge that some debris may pose a threat to the ISS on its path back to Earth. The satellite destroyed by India last week was 186 miles from Earth, whereas the ISS usually circles Earth


In the battle against unsavory online content, I’m enlisting my tweens on my team

Over time she began to normalize them. She had an intense meltdown when we told her she couldn’t watch them anymore. Other parents have experienced this with the same show. There are stories about negative experiences with Jeffy, and how it has affected kids and parents’ relationships with their kids. After our daughter calmed down, we talked to her. We discussed how Jeffy wasn’t funny but hurtful. He mocks the disabled, and he insults and physically attacks people. Those aren’t behaviors I want to encourage in my daughter; in fact, they are the opposite of what she strives to be. And then we let her have the computer back, with no further restrictions. The idea was to give her boundaries that she was to adhere to independently. Yes, we set a boundary, but we made it clear we trusted her to follow the rules. Instead of shaming her and limiting her access, with that discussion, we made her part of our team. My goal is that when my children see videos that have spliced suicide scenes in them or other harmful material, they tell us immediately, because they know they’re not fighting against us. They know their privileges won’t be taken away. I want it to feel more mature to them to tell us than to illicitly watch banned content behind our backs. They’ve even told us when they see a commercial for “Birdbox.” We’ve made it us and them against the videos, not us against them and the videos. My kids don’t want to side with videos over their parents, but if we don’t guide them, that’s what could happen. We can police our children rigidly until they move out, but if we don’t teach them to police themselves, we’re doing them a disservice. That’s the area parents of preteens need to focus on. How do we get our children to tell us when they see something they shouldn’t? Parents need to make it common practice to navigate the Internet with their children, and talk about it openly, rather than putting up barriers and hoping they hold. Kid safety measures and parental monitoring are important tools, but they are rudimentary at best, and can be harmful to the parent-child relationship at worst because they take away self-agency and they inhibit that bond of trust we can build with our children. Instead of blocking the wrong road with cement barriers


The Daily 202: Bernie Sanders is more pragmatic than you may think

the crowd. Warren probably got the second-best reception of the eight candidates. WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING: -- The Los Angeles Police Department identified a suspect in the killing of rapper Nipsey Hussle, hours after a vigil for the musician ended abruptly in a stampede that left at least a dozen people injured. GET SMART FAST: STILL WAITING FOR JUSTICE: -- If you read one thing today: “It’s been six months since Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, and Trump has done nothing,” an op-ed by Washington Post publisher Fred Ryan: “White House officials have issued critical words and slaps on the wrist, but they’ve stopped short of imposing meaningful penalties. They have stonewalled and obfuscated, brushing aside the CIA’s findings to continue business as usual with the crown prince. This ‘I see nothing!’ approach has meant looking away not only as the Saudis killed a prominent journalist, but also as the regime jails women for demanding basic liberties, tortures business leaders and terrorizes citizens into submission. Sadly, the most submissive figure in this story is President Trump. “Even after irrefutable evidence came to light showing the Saudis had lied about Khashoggi’s death, Trump proclaimed Mohammed bin Salman a ‘great ally’ and protested that the crown prince might well be innocent. Perhapsmost egregiously, Trump has abdicated the responsibilities of his office, refusing to comply with the Magnitsky Act’s requirements that the administration present its findings on the Khashoggi case to Congress. In this impotent response, Trump isn’t just violating the law. He is also undermining the credibility and moral authority of the United States.” (Read a translation of Fred’s piece in Arabic here.) -- The Post has produced a 25-minute documentary on Khashoggi’s assassination. -- Khashoggi’s children have, in the aftermath of their father’s killing, received million-dollar houses in Saudi Arabia and monthly five-figure payments as compensation for his death. -- The Saudis have commenced a trial against Jamal’s alleged killers — but it’s clouded in secrecy. WEST WING INTRIGUE: -- Presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner brushed off concerns about how he got his security clearance during an appearance on Fox News last night. The appearance followed revelations that a White House whistleblower told lawmakers that dozens of denials for security clearances have been overturned during the Trump administration, despite concerns about things like blackmail, foreign influence and other red flags. Among those reversals was Kushner, who Trump demanded be granted a permanent top-secret clearance,


Amazon hopes cheaper designer nut butter and antibiotic-free chicken will finally shed the ‘Whole Paycheck’ image

and 50 percent above what you’d see at a Costco or Sam’s Club. That’s where they’ve run into a problem.” In a statement from John Mackey, the chief executive of Whole Foods, the company committed to a continued focus on both lowering prices and “bringing customers the quality they trust and the innovative assortment they expect from our brand.” But if Whole Foods stocks 30,000 items, which 500 to discount is strategic. Given Amazon’s rigorous commitment to data, we can assume the 500 items discounted were very strategically chosen. Stern says a retail term is “known value items,” the products that disproportionately drive customer’s price-value perception: a gallon of milk, a dozen eggs, the things for which the average consumer may have a ballpark dollar figure in mind. For Whole Foods, this could mean fancy antibiotic-free free-range chicken. And indeed, that’s the case (air-chilled, no-antibiotics-ever whole chicken sees a price cut of more than 40 percent to $1.79 a pound; fresh, sustainable wild-caught halibut fillet drops more than 35 percent to $16.99 per pound; organic asparagus falls to $2.99 a pound). Historically, Whole Foods justified higher prices with its commitment to quality: “Our chicken is better, so it costs more,” explains Josh Lowitz of Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. He draws parallels between this Amazon decision and Walmart’s pricing rationale in the 1990s. Walmart put products on the shelves at a lower cost than Kmart to become the preferred place to shop. “My perspective is that Amazon is a really efficient retailer. One thing efficiency allows you to do is lower prices. With Whole Foods, their only grocery presence, they want to make it as accessible as possible.” Amazon is planning to open dozens of its own grocery stores as early as next year, according to news reports, with signed leases in cities such as Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and the District. These Whole Foods cuts may play into market positioning for Amazon’s more mainstream grocery ambitions, says Stern, but it’s unlikely that Whole Foods will ever be in a position to compete on price in the increasingly crowded grocery space. Whole Foods is expensive to operate, and, more important, its commitment to clean ingredients is limiting. “They are never going to have the items that directly compete with Walmart — there’s no Diet Coke, no Tide. By having those standards, it keeps them away from those core mainstream products.”


U.S. officials said aid to El Salvador helped slow migration. Now Trump is canceling it.

MEXICO CITY — Until last week, U.S. officials held up El Salvador as proof that foreign aid could help curb migration. The partnership between the two countries drew praise from diplomats, members of Congress and even America’s top border enforcement official. Then President Trump announced that he was withdrawing economic assistance to the Central American country and its neighbors Guatemala and Honduras. “They haven’t done a thing for us,” the president said Friday. The claim baffled development officials and Salvadorans, who saw the country’s cooperation with the United States on security, civil society and economic development as a success story, inasmuch as it achieved the Trump administration’s goal of slowing the flow of migrants heading north to the United States. In the past three years, both El Salvador’s homicide rate and migration flows have declined sharply. More than 72,000 Salvadorans were apprehended crossing the U.S. border in 2016. By 2018, the number had plummeted by more than half, to fewer than 32,000. “The decision to cut funding contradicts the results of what we have accomplished together,” Raúl López, El Salvador’s vice minister of justice, said Monday. “The fact is that migration from El Salvador is declining, thanks to our work.” The United States has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years on programs aimed at bringing stability to one of the world’s most dangerous countries. Money has been spent to train police officers, fund after-school programs and improve local governance. U.S. officials argued repeatedly that those programs were successful, and they offered the crime and migration statistics that they said proved their claim. “What [El Salvador is] doing is working, both on the security front and on the economic opportunity front,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said in July. Trump said he was cutting off aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras because the countries have failed to curb migration to the United States. He has accused those three countries of allowing their citizens to join migrant caravans destined for the U.S. border. Analysts have been quick to point out that cutting off assistance to Central America could cause migration to increase, as programs aimed at improving security and economic opportunity are shuttered. They say the case of El Salvador, a nation of 6.5 million, is still more confounding. Migration from Guatemala and Honduras has surged in the past two years. But in cutting aid


Saudi Arabia has no intention of changing

that to an end. We must stop the era of Saudi impunity. Trump’s failure to do so is one of his worst yet. For now the Saudi Embassy remains open. Prince Khalid bin Salman, the crown prince’s brother (and deputy defense minister), is still welcome in town. He met with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just last week. A growing number of U.S. lawmakers, though, are beginning to reassess the relationship. The current pushback in Congress is not new. It’s been quietly bubbling for years. The difference is that it can now be discussed in the open, with a frankness and a vehemence we’ve never really seen before. Weakening Saudi influence in the Middle East — but also in Washington — was a core, but unspoken, goal of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. Officials in the previous administration understood the status quo was untenable. The hubris of the Saudi royal family is not a new phenomenon. One need not be in favor of the brutal regime in Tehran to understand that the regime right across the Persian Gulf is capable of acts just as sinister. Both are atrocious on human rights, wield enormous leverage in the form of their massive energy reserves, have aided terrorist groups that have targeted the United States and our allies, and have shown unending desire to extend their spheres of influence. Traditionally, one of the two sides has learned to use its ample resources to whitewash its many transgressions in an effort to be seen as a benign or even positive force in a restive part of the world. The other has failed miserably to capture anything close to sympathy from the international community. Ultimately, though, this is a moment of reckoning for the United States. For years, we’ve been presented with a false choice among potential partners in the Gulf. When our leaders say that we have to pick either Riyadh or Tehran, don’t believe them. The real answer should be “none of the above.” Read more: Fred Ryan: It’s been six months since Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, and Trump has done nothing Lee C. Bollinger: How the U.S. could prosecute Jamal Khashoggi’s killers David Ignatius: How the mysteries of Khashoggi’s murder have rocked the U.S.-Saudi partnership The Post’s View: Pressure on Saudi Arabia might finally be starting to work. Keep it up. Jamal Khashoggi: What the Arab world needs most is free expression


The world’s energy systems are transforming. Here’s how.

come from relatively few places. These patterns don’t usually change much over time because most of what matters for energy performance depends on infrastructure and institutions — forces that are usually slow to change. The biggest changes in performance since the WEF started measuring in 2014 have come from countries that are improving energy access and security but already had clean energy systems. On the WEF index, it looks as though all these countries are heavy hitters — they bat triples, at least. In reality, they are starting at second base -- they are already rich and clean and have strong institutions that make it easier to invest in infrastructure. For the past two years, the index has been measuring countries’ readiness for the transition to green energy sources. The readiness indicators are complicated — perhaps too complicated — but they try to capture factors such as quality of regulation, openness of investment rules (because energy transition is capital-intensive), human capital and quality of infrastructure. Openness to investment means a country can shop the world for firms that are willing to deploy capital. The quality of regulation depends, in part, on whether countries recognize the need to cut emissions — and can offer policies stable enough so that private firms will invest. Human capital includes factors such as the percentage of the workforce in low-carbon industries and the quality of education. This measure, however imperfect, suggests that there is a big gap between the parts of the world where institutions could facilitate radical transformation of their energy systems, on the one hand, and on the other, the places in the world where energy systems actually emit the most carbon. Political scientists generally assume that the problem of climate change is a problem of global collective action. That mindset forces attention to strategies for setting and enforcing rules about how to allocate the burden of cutting emissions. The reality is somewhat different. Climate is a leadership and followership game — the leaders are ready for energy transitions, but by themselves they don’t matter unless followers also come along. This challenges both diplomacy and analysis. For diplomats, the game is no longer about leaders showing how green they are willing to be. Such leaders represent a shrinking proportion of the total share of emissions. For analysts, attention needs to focus less on what leaders do and more on what I call followership


Bryce Harper loves Silver Diner. Silver Diner knows.

Bryce Harper finally said goodbye and thank you to Washington and the Nationals on Tuesday morning. He’ll face the team with which he began his major league career for the first time Tuesday night. In his Instagram thank-you note, he wrote that he was grateful to the fans, the ballclub’s ownership and its front office, while also recognizing three of his favorite local restaurants, including, yes, Silver Diner. “The city of DC was home,” he wrote. “Filomena’s, The Silver Diner, The Italian store, and countless other places helped make it feel like home.” And those two sentences in his 286-word post started a whole lot of discussion around the region about why Harper, who is wealthy enough to dine wherever he pleases, digs the regional diner chain so darn much. Really, no one should be so shocked. Before the 2018 All-Star Game, Harper recommended Silver Diner’s breakfast service for players and fans coming in from out of town. After he won the Home Run Derby, he brought his family to the Silver Diner in Clarendon at 1 a.m. (He ordered bison huevos rancheros — “Crispy whole wheat tortillas, chorizo hash with organic bison, cage-free Amish eggs over easy, peppers, salsa roja, scallions, cilantro, goat cheese, guacamole,” according to the menu — for $15.99, in case you’re wondering.) Servers at the restaurant told higher-ups afterward that it was one of his regular haunts after night games. The staff recognized him when he came in, but tried not to bother him. The manager even said he half-expected Harper to show up after either the derby or All-Star Game itself, recalled Glenn D’Amore, Silver Diner’s executive vice president of operations. “When he came after the Home Run Derby, I had asked the managers when he comes in, is he disturbed,” D’Amore said in a phone interview. “He’s recognized by our people, but our people see Alex Ovechkin there, too, they said. We try to give people more of a refuge.” D’Amore said he expects Harper to visit the restaurant again during the Phillies’ two-game stay in the District. “I think it’s likely,” he said. “He named three restaurants there. I think there’s a good chance that he may show up, and if he does, it’ll put smiles on our people’s faces.” “He mentioned the Silver Diner was a home, but one of the elements of diners and especially the Silver Diner, is we’re


The assassination of Jamal Khashoggi

On October 2, 2018, Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. It would be the last time he was seen alive. What has been done in the aftermath?


The Washington Post releases documentary, ‘The Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi’

The Washington Post today released a documentary chronicling the events surrounding the killing of Post Columnist Jamal Khashoggi. “The Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi” examines Khashoggi’s writings, his murder inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and the Trump administration’s response. “Being at The Post, we have access to some of the key voices in Jamal’s story and wanted to build on the reporting and opinions coverage to further shed light on what we know about the events surrounding his death,” said Micah Gelman, director of video at The Washington Post. “The documentary gives an intimate and comprehensive account of how the murder of one journalist has had reverberations around the world.” The 24-minute documentary depicts a gruesome murder of a well-known Saudi journalist and how far powerful people would go to silence dissent. The film features interviews with Washington Post Publisher and CEO Fred Ryan, Khashoggi’s editor Karen Attiah, Post journalists who reported the emerging details, and friends of Khashoggi in Turkey. Also featured on the documentary’s online page is a full timeline of events providing additional context of how the story developed over the course of six months. “The Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi” can be viewed on The Post’s website, YouTube and Amazon Prime Video.


Watch: The aftermath of the Khashoggi assassination

Khashoggi U.S. imposes sanctions on 17 Saudis allegedly involved in killing of journalist Opinion: Saudi Arabia's latest account of Khashoggi's death is shocking in its audacity. Nov. 16, 2018: CIA concludes Saudi crown prince ordered Khashoggi's assassination Nov. 18, 2018: Trump says he won't listen to Khashoggi tape Nov. 20, 2018: Trump calls Saudi Arabia a 'great ally,' discounts crown prince's responsibility for Khashoggi's death President Trump and his administration have been moving between a hard and a soft approach in the case of Khashoggi's disappearance Nov. 21, 2018: Opinion: We do not make the world safer by abandoning our commitment to basic freedoms and human rights Dec. 2, 2018: Saudi crown prince exchanged messages with aide alleged to have overseen Khashoggi killing Opinion: We are Jamal Khashoggi's daughters. We promise his light will never fade. Dec. 4, 2018: Senators accuse Saudi crown prince of complicity in Khashoggi's killing Dec. 11, 2018: Time's Person of the Year: 'Guardians' of the truth, including slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi Opinion: 'I can't breathe': The power and tragedy of Jamal Khashoggi's last words. When repression and impunity reign, no one can breathe. Dec. 13, 2018: Senate votes to condemn Saudi crown prince for Khashoggi killing Opinion: How a chilling Saudi cyberwar ensnared Jamal Khashoggi Jan. 3, 2019: Saudi Arabia to seek death penalty for five defendants in Khashoggi trial Opinion: The unlearned lessons of Jamal Khashoggi's murder Feb. 7, 2019: Saudi Arabia 'curtailed and undermined' investigation into Khashoggi's killing, U.N. expert says Opinion: The Saudi engine of repression continues to run at full speed Feb. 8, 2019: White House declines to submit report to Congress on Khashoggi killing Opinion: Eager to remain cozy with the Saudi regime, the administration is ignoring mounting evidence about Mohammed bin Salman's role in a journalist's murder Feb. 15, 2019: Turkey's Erdogan urges U.S. to confront Saudi Arabia over Khashoggi killing March 13, 2019: Killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was a human rights abuse, State Department says Opinion: Trump is covering up for MBS. The Senate must push for accountability. Opinion: The E.U. must stand for human rights in Saudi Arabia — and justice for Jamal Khashoggi March 29, 2019: Opinion: How the mysteries of Khashoggi's murder have rocked the U.S.-Saudi partnership April 1, 2019: Khashoggi's children have received monthly payments as compensation for father's killing Opinion: It's been six months since Jamal Khashoggi's murder, and Trump has done


Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh takes leave of absence amid scandal

reported her book deal. Under the no-bid deal, the medical system bought 100,000 books at $5 each, according to the Sun. Pugh did not report the earnings on required financial disclosure forms. She amended the forms after the deal was revealed. Hogan, who has been sharply critical of deals between various UMMS board members and the hospital system, said Monday that he finds the allegations against Pugh “deeply disturbing” and is particularly concerned because the private hospital system receives public funding. In his letter to State Prosecutor Emmet C. Davitt, Hogan said all Marylanders should have confidence that public officials follow the “highest legal and ethical standards.” Hogan said he wants to ensure that “these types of problems do not ever reoccur.” The state prosecutor’s office would neither confirm nor deny the existence of investigations. Bentley referred questions about “Healthy Holly” contracts to the mayor’s personal attorney, Steve Silverman, who did not respond to requests for comment. Pugh called the deals with UMMS a “regrettable mistake” at a news conference last week. She returned $100,000 for books that were not produced. The mayor, who choked up at the news conference, said she never wanted to lose the trust of Baltimore residents or hurt the reputation of the University of Maryland Medical System. She told reporters that she was speaking to them “against my doctor’s orders.” She is among seven board members with business dealing with the system, in some cases worth millions of dollars, who have resigned or taken a leave of absence. UMMS president and chief executive Robert A. Chrencik, who has led the system since 2008, was placed on leave last month. Interim chief executive John Ashworth said Monday the system has hired Nygren Consulting, a California-based firm, to review board members’ contracts and implement industry best practices. Monday marked a shift in the scandal, with Pugh for the first time facing rebukes from a range of political leaders. Council member Zeke Cohen said Pugh should step down. “I believe that Mayor Pugh has lost her moral mandate to govern and should therefore resign,” he said. Cohen said Baltimore can move past the scandal. “Baltimore is not broken,” he said. “We know that our city continues to take hits, but we are resilient, and we will bounce back.” State Sen. Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) stopped short of calling for Pugh’s resignation but said it was difficult to see


Khashoggi children have received houses in Saudi Arabia and monthly payments as compensation for killing of father

$10,000 or more to each sibling were approved late last year by King Salman as part of what one former official described as an acknowledgment that “a big injustice has been done” and an attempt “to make a wrong right.” But the royal family is also relying on its wealth to help contain the ongoing fallout from the killing and dismemberment of the prominent Saudi journalist and Washington Post contributing columnist who was targeted for articles that were often critical of the government. A Saudi official described the payments as consistent with the country’s long-standing practice of providing financial support to victims of violent crime or even natural disasters and rejected the suggestion that the Khashoggi family would be obligated to remain silent. “Such support is part of our custom and culture,” the official said. “It is not attached to anything else.” As part of their preliminary settlement, the Khashoggi children were each given houses in Jiddah worth as much as $4 million apiece. The properties are part of a shared compound in which Salah Khashoggi, the eldest son, occupies the main structure. A banker in Jiddah, Salah is the only Khashoggi sibling who intends to continue living in Saudi Arabia, according to people close to the family. The others reside in the United States and are expected to sell their new Saudi properties. Salah, who has been responsible for financial discussions with Saudi authorities, declined to comment on the matter when reached by phone Monday. His desire to remain in Jiddah with his family has contributed to the siblings’ deference to the authorities and caution in their public statements over the past six months. In October, the Saudi government released photos of Salah shaking hands with Mohammed, an image that was meant to show the crown prince offering condolences but was widely seen as an indication of the coercive power the royal family was exerting on Jamal Khashoggi’s children. The writer’s two daughters, Noha Khashoggi and Razan Jamal Khashoggi, published an essay in The Washington Post last year in which they described their father’s hopes for changes in Saudi Arabia but emphasized that he was “no dissident” and did not accuse the crown prince or other Saudi officials of being culpable in his death. Noha did not respond to a request for comment, and Razan could not be reached. The monthly schedule of payments and prospect of eventual multimillion-dollar


Often reviled, coyotes start to gain some supporters

hunter. He said for about $750, he will take hunters out on about 250 square miles of land, set up stands — where hunters will wait — and then call coyotes with sounds that bring them close before being shot. This year, he said, coyotes haven’t been plentiful but “can still be found on every square mile of the land.” He said he has respect for the coyote who, unlike the wolf, managed to adapt and survive without help from the Endangered Species Act. Camenzind said coyotes should engender respect as a truly native species to America. Weighing in at 35 to 40 pounds, they are smaller than wolves and can work in a pack or alone. They are resourceful and hardy. They tend to have an alpha male in a group, and he tends to breed with a single female who will usually deliver a few pups; the other members of the group won’t breed. The biologist said the problem with unlimited hunting of coyotes is alpha males can be killed, leading to other males in a pack who wouldn’t have otherwise bred beginning to produce litters. He said the hunting has the opposite effect of population control and that it instead leads to larger numbers of coyotes — sometimes with females breeding eight to 10 pups per litter. Nature, he said, has its own built-in survival instinct that has helped buoy the coyotes through what predator advocacy groups believe has been a relentless killing of the animals. Near Pinedale — about 90 minutes from Jackson — rancher John Fandek figures he has killed hundreds of coyotes in his lifetime. He grew up in Wyoming, starting as a ranch hand and settling to run his own cattle ranch more than five decades ago. He’s 76 and semiretired now, and he stopped hunting the canids several years ago, deciding instead the land was better served by allowing the coyote to do what it has always done: keep rabbit and ground squirrel populations in check while cleaning up the mess of dead elk and deer. He sees a spot for the coyote in the ecosystem and wants to help them. Inside his house — with the heads of several bucks mounted on the wall — he speaks plainly about ethical hunting. He hunts only for meat and believes animals deserve dignity and a chance to avoid the crosshairs. He walks out


U.S. measles cases surge to second-highest level in nearly two decades

The number of people sickened by measles in the first three months of this year is more than for all of 2018 — and the second-highest number reported since U.S. health officials declared the highly contagious and sometimes deadly disease “eliminated” in 2000. The upsurge, now at 387 cases, reflects outbreaks that have spread to 15 states, including New York, California, Texas and Washington, according to figures released Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That surpasses the 372 reported for all of last year. Many of those outbreaks originated after unvaccinated individuals traveled to Europe, the Philippines and Israel, where the infection is more common, and returned to the United States after contracting the illness. “Europe is even worse now than North America,” said Peter Hotez, an infectious disease expert at the Baylor College of Medicine. “This is all the new normal. Nobody ever thought we’d ever be at this place.” The outbreaks — and the increasingly aggressive public health response to them — have also prompted a spike in activity among anti-vaccine activists. Across the nation and around the world, a global movement that spreads misinformation about vaccines has helped drive down child immunizations, lowering the community immunity that is critical for protection against one of the world’s most contagious diseases. After Rockland County, N.Y., banned unvaccinated children from all public spaces last week as it battles a growing measles outbreak that originated in the Orthodox Jewish community, anti-vaccination activists likened the public health measures to the Nazi persecution of Jews that included forcing them to wear yellow stars. In Austin, Del Bigtree, chief executive of an anti-vaccination group called ICAN, wore a yellow star during a rally last Thursday to identify with parents who decline to vaccinate their children. A spokesman for Bigtree said he took the action “to let the Jewish community of Rockland County know he stands with them.” After photos of Bigtree were posted on Twitter, the official account of the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum in Poland tweeted in response: “Instrumentalizing the fate of Jews who were persecuted by hateful anti-Semitic ideology and murdered in extermination camps like #Auschwitz with poisonous gas in order to argue against vaccination that saves human lives is a symptom of intellectual and moral degeneration.” Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement: “Groups advancing a political or social agenda should be able


Six months after Khashoggi’s murder, Washington Post Publisher Fred Ryan calls for accountability in rare op-ed

Tuesday, April 2, 2019 marks six months since Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was brutally murdered inside the Saudi Arabia consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. In a powerful op-ed, Post Publisher and CEO Fred Ryan calls for “accountability for this abhorrent crime” and “justice for an innocent journalist,” writing: Foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius devoted his Friday column to Khashoggi, writing: Contributor Lee Bollinger addressed how the U.S. could prosecute Khashoggi’s killers in a Sunday column, writing: In addition, tomorrow The Post newsroom will release the documentary ‘The Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi’ which chronicles the events surrounding Khashoggi’s killing, featuring interviews with Post Publisher Fred Ryan, Khashoggi’s editor Karen Attiah, Post reporters who are covering the story, and friends of Khashoggi in Turkey who depict a gruesome murder of a highly-respected journalist and how far powerful people would go to silence dissent. The documentary can be viewed on The Post’s site as well as YouTube and Amazon.


Six months after Khashoggi’s killing, Saudi trial is cloaked in secrecy

After Saudi Arabia acknowledged last year that its agents had killed and dismembered Jamal Khashoggi, the kingdom vowed to prosecute the culprits. The Saudi authorities, as promised, have indeed put on a trial. But it is clouded in secrecy, the court sessions closed to the public and journalists. Every detail of the trial proceedings — their frequency, the names of the 11 defendants and the exact charges they face — is a matter of speculation. U.S. and Western intelligence officials have stood by their assessment that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the operation that ended in Khashoggi’s death. But no single piece of evidence definitively linking the prince to the crime has emerged in the past six months, officials said. In the meantime, some details of the trial have emerged. Diplomats from the United States and several European countries have been allowed to attend, as has a member of Khashoggi’s family, Reuters reported. In several of the court sessions, defendants had pleaded “not guilty,” a U.S. official said. The defendants are said to include two of the most prominent members of the “kill squad” allegedly sent to confront Khashoggi in the Istanbul consulate: Maher Mutreb, the leader of the squad, and Salah al-Tubaigy, an autopsy specialist who is believed to have dismembered Khashoggi’s body. At least one high-ranking Saudi official, Ahmed al-Assiri, is also a defendant, according to Reuters. But Saud al-Qahtani, a close aide to the crown prince, is not on trial, according to people briefed on the case, though the U.S. government has imposed sanctions on him because of his suspected role in the plot. His absence has led to accusations that Saudi Arabia is throwing mostly lower-level soldiers to the wolves rather than aggressively pursuing justice in the case. “The government of Saudi Arabia is grievously mistaken if it believes that these proceedings, as currently constituted, will satisfy the international community,” Agnès Callamard, a U.N. human rights expert who is investigating the killing, said last month in a statement that demanded more transparency from Saudi authorities as they conducted the trial. kareem.fahim@washpost.com


Walmart’s latest tool for ordering groceries: Google assistant

The company has begun selling organic produce, as well as creating “designer" fruits that offer particular flavors year round. Food sales make up more than half of Walmart’s revenue, nearly $200 billion worth of groceries each year, experts say. With the introduction of voice assistants, Walmart Voice Order joins Amazon-owned Whole Foods, which partnered with Amazon’s Echo last year so that customers can shop using voice commands. (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.) Walmart’s new service is available only in locations that offer store pickup (2,100 locations) and delivery (800 locations). Citing estimates from the research firm Cowen, CNN reported that about 13 percent of Walmart shoppers take advantage of curbside pickup. Marcel Hollerbach, the chief marketing officer of the software company Productsup, pointed to a recent study showing that voice services are increasingly popular, but more consumers use them to create shopping lists than order products. “Walmart’s new voice-enabled shopping strategy is smart because it focuses on cart replenishment instead of completing a purchase, which aligns with how consumers want to use voice today," Hollerbach said. “The reality is consumers just aren’t ready for voice purchasing.” “That said, the key for brands today is to build a deeper brand connection with consumers by finding useful ways to weave voice capabilities into their daily lives,” he added. "That way when the consumer is ready to leverage it as a purchasing channel, they’ll already trust the brand will provide them the experiences they want.” Seeking to improve the shopping experience of busy customers, grocery chains continue to experiment with new technologies designed to enhance convenience. In December, Kroger — the nation’s largest grocery chain — announced that customers could have their groceries delivered by an autonomous vehicle with a design inspired by a Formula One racing helmet. This year, Robomart — a Santa Clara, Calif.-based start-up — announced plans to unleash an on-demand, remote-controlled “grocery store on wheels” that would allow customers to shop for groceries in front of their homes. In January, Robomart founder and chief executive Ali Ahmed told The Washington Post that he hopes to partner with other retailers that would lease its vehicles and brand them as their own, creating self-driving grocery fleets. To keep up with autonomous delivery vehicles and voice assistant shopping, Walmart has no choice but to “jump on the voice train to compete effectively,” according to Paul


The Health 202: A major insurer is announcing insulin savings amid heavy Hill pressure

dismiss the lawsuit brought by the Massachusetts attorney general over the company’s role in the opioid crisis. “We are confident the court will look past the inflammatory media coverage generated by the misleading complaint and apply the law fairly by dismissing all of these claims,” Sackler family members said in a statement. The lawsuit “says that individual members of the Sackler family engaged in acts of deception and misconduct to make as much money as possible from sales of OxyContin, a powerful prescription painkiller,” Katie and Lenny write. “Healey accuses the family of disregarding addiction and safety in the name of profit, saying that members of the family directed sales representatives to push high doses of the drug while knowing its potential dangers. The family instead says that it acted in a routine way for members of a corporate board: reviewing voluminous documents, including budget presentations, spreadsheets and reports about Purdue’s nationwide operations.” Members of the Sackler family will pay $75 million in personal funds as part of a $270 million out-of-court settlement agreement Purdue made with the state of Oklahoma last week. — For some patients who had transplants before they enrolled in Medicare, the program may not pay for the anti-rejection drugs needed to keep the body from rejecting a new organ, the New York Times’s Gina Kolata reports. The American Society of Transplantation calls it an “emerging and alarming problem.” “[M]ost organ transplants go to to younger patients. According to the transplant society, 72.3 percent of liver transplant patients, 65.3 percent of heart transplant patients, and 59.7 percent of lung transplant patients are insured outside of Medicare at the time they receive new organs,” Gina writes. “Patients who were not on Medicare at the time of their transplants are required to get their anti-rejection drugs through Medicare’s drug program, Part D, which is handled through commercial insurers.” But those insurers may refuse payment for the medication, claiming that they may not have been approved for use by the patient. Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokesman Johnathan Monroe told the Times the agency is making it a top priority to “to ensure that beneficiaries have access to the medications they need, including immunosuppressant drugs.” — And here are a few more good reads: Today House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said allegations of unwanted touching against former vice president Joe Biden don’t disqualify him from the presidential race:


‘We had to act’: Lawmakers advance changes at UMMS as scandal widens

had already taken a leave from the UMMS board, but he and his sons remained on the boards of affiliated hospitals. “We are kind of in unchartered territory here,” said Carter, who introduced her bill in February after hearing from a minority contractor who could not get work with the system. She never anticipated the scandals that have erupted over the past weeks, she said. If the bills are approved, one-third of the UMMS board members will end their terms by July 1, one-third by Oct. 1 and one-third by Jan. 1. Board members may reapply, but their terms would be limited to five years. The bills would also prohibit board members from using the prestige of their office for their private gain, or that of another person. They do not address how the system awarded its contracts, including the no-bid awards. Carter said she would like to see UMMS make public its meeting minutes and agendas. UMMS, which is not subject to public records laws, has declined to do so. Spokesman Michael Schwartzberg said those records are “considered proprietary business information.” “The issue is not just the nine members on the board that were making contracts with UMMS, but it is the others that sat there, and what they knew,” Carter said. She said improving transparency and accountability is especially important to people in Baltimore, where many struggle under extreme poverty and violence has surged in recent years. “This kind of insider network that is engaging in graft and self-dealing perpetuates the economic divide,” she said. “It’s so important to bring light to this and change how the system operates so people can have hope and think the system isn’t just rigged against them.” Dixon, who was narrowly defeated by Pugh in the Democratic primary in 2016, said she is praying that the mayor gets well soon. Dixon, speaking on WBAL radio Wednesday morning, said she did not want to “pile on” by calling for Pugh to resign. “I am disappointed, and I believe it deserves further investigation,” said Dixon, who was found guilty in 2009 on an embezzlement charge relating to her use as mayor of more than $600 worth of gift cards that were supposed to go to needy families. “Baltimore is in turmoil.” Dixon, citing her love for the city, said in the radio interview that she is considering a possible mayoral run in 2020. rachel.chason@washpost.com


The Special Olympics funding outcry is over, but it’s been crickets over some of DeVos’s other proposed education budget cuts. Think civics, history, arts . . .

The Trump administration has proposed eliminating a $4.8 million program to enhance American civics and history education. It has also called for making these cuts that would eliminate programs: And there are plenty of other cuts the Trump administration proposed for 2020 for the Education Department. They include a reduction of more than 55 percent in federal funds for the Federal Work-Study program, which helps students who have to work while attending college. The other cuts just haven’t gotten the same attention as the outcry over a failed attempt to eliminate federal funding to Special Olympics. Let’s review: President Trump’s Office of Management and Budget proposed the elimination of the nearly $18 million that goes to Special Olympics. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos went to Capitol Hill last week to defend the budget, as she is supposed to do, though during testimony she conceded she hadn’t signed off on that particular decision. The Michigan billionaire has personally contributed to the organization. A hurricane-force public reaction ensued, with social media exploding and news reports airing interviews with Special Olympics athletes saying how worried they were about the proposed cut — even though there was virtually no chance Congress would approve it. The administration attempted to do this the two previous years, and Congress didn’t go for it. DeVos was called cruel and uncaring, and Trump, after being alerted to the public relations firestorm, announced he would allow the money to be added back to his proposed budget. This raises a question that Sasha Pudelski, advocacy director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association, put succinctly in a tweet, asking people to stop talking about “never-gonna-happen” cuts to Special Olympics and “start talking about the real impact” of other Trump/DeVos education budget decisions that will affect millions of people. To be sure, some of the following programs have detractors, who say the initiatives are not as effective as they should be or are too difficult to administer. Trump critics say, however, that the programs’ missions are important, and instead of eliminating or reducing them, they should be improved. Trump and DeVos are proposing to keep the two major K-12 programs — Title 1, intended to help students who live in poverty, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) — at the same funding level as this year. To advocates, that’s not much of a victory, because both are vastly underfunded. Title 1 is


The former head of USAID on the consequences of war and famine

Gayle Smith, 63, is the president and CEO of the One Campaign, a nonpartisan, nonprofit advocacy organization fighting extreme poverty and preventable diseases, particularly in Africa. She served as a top adviser on development issues in the Clinton and Obama administrations, most recently as administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. You have worked in Africa in one capacity or another for decades. How did you first get involved there? I confess, a little bit by accident. I traveled after college with my boyfriend. We went to Greece. And the short story is: We broke up, and I kept going. I went on to Egypt and then Sudan. And the more I saw, the more curious I became. So I became a stringer for the BBC, Associated Press, some papers in Europe. I lived in Sudan but covered wars in Eritrea and northern Ethiopia. And then ran into the biggest famine in modern history — the ’84-’85 famine in Ethiopia. See, I had been traveling with guerrillas behind the guerrilla-held side of the battle lines, the rural areas of both Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, and that’s where the famine hit the hardest. And that shifted me. I had seen things — horrible things. And I think I felt like writing about it was one thing. Doing something about it was better. We talk a lot here about dignity. Dignity and opportunity kind of being what we’re fighting for. When you see a grandmother who’s probably raised six or eight kids and has barely eked out a living working the land, groveling on her hands and knees and eating dirt because that’s all there is, I don’t care who you are and where you came from. Nobody should have to face that kind of indignity. So throughout my career, as a journalist, in NGOs, inside and outside government, I have been a big believer in investing in our common humanity. I think it's in our interest to do so. I think it's right to do so. And it actually works. Going back to traveling behind the lines with guerrillas, how did that start, and were you scared? You know, actually, I wasn’t. I was in Khartoum working as a reporter. And they approached me. They wanted reporters to come see what was going on. Because nobody believed there was a war. In fact, it was a pretty obscure, hidden war.


CIA long relied exclusively on Amazon for its cloud computing. Now it is seeking multiple providers for a massive new contract.

did not return a request for comment. The CIA did not respond to a request for comment that was submitted through the agency’s website. The agency held an industry day for prospective bidders on March 22, according to documents reviewed by The Post and reported about earlier by Bloomberg News. Documents from the industry day note that the system should be able to handle both classified and unclassified information, and incorporate data sources both on the ground and in space. The agency intends to “acquire cloud computing services directly from commercial cloud service providers with established track records for innovation and operational excellence in cloud service delivery for a large customer base,” suggesting the agency wants to turn to a company that already has substantial experience in the commercial technology industry. And the documents noted that who wins the contract should be able to support cloud connections at “tactical edge locations,” suggesting the system will be used for the agency’s worldwide intelligence-gathering operations and not just for its U.S.-based business systems. A preliminary timeline released at the industry day calls for “one or more contracts” to be awarded “no later than July 2021.” The CIA’s new cloud computing effort comes as the Defense Department’s parallel effort, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure or “JEDI” for short, is stalled in a protracted legal battle. At the root of the conflict is a Defense Department decision to turn to just one provider for the JEDI contract, following a similar approach to the CIA’s earlier efforts. The Defense Department has emphasized that, although it will work with multiple cloud providers for its overall mission, the JEDI effort would be bid to just one company in order to make for an easier transition. That decision has been lauded by Amazon and criticized by its competitors Pre-award bid protests from IBM and Oracle were respectively dismissed and denied last year. In a newer bid protest case in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, Oracle is suing the Defense Department and Amazon for what it claims are “conflicts of interest” in relation to Amazon. The Defense Department put a hold on the case while it investigates those conflicts. In the meantime, the Pentagon’s $10 billion JEDI contract, though originally, expected in April 2019, is on hold. Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle have submitted bids. Read more: Former Pentagon official’s business ties to Amazon draw scrutiny


NATO’s biggest problem is President Trump

invoked the Article 5 mutual-defense clause of the treaty. They viewed Osama bin Laden’s attack on the United States as an attack on them as well. NATO allies went into Afghanistan with us where they and partner nations have suffered more than 1,000 combat deaths. Most of those countries remain on the ground with our soldiers to this day. NATO allies have also fought with us in the successful campaign to defeat the Islamic State caliphate in Syria and Iraq. They conduct counterterror operations with us in Africa. The European allies have assumed full responsibility for peacekeeping in Bosnia and the bulk of the burden in Kosovo. U.S. air and naval bases in allied countries also bring the United States a continent closer to contain Russia in Eastern Europe and confront terrorist threats in the Middle East and South Asia. This is a decisive advantage for the United States. The reality is that NATO is a net plus for the United States in political, economic and military terms. In the decade ahead, the United States will fight two battles with authoritarian powers China and Russia. The first is a battle of ideas that will center on Moscow’s and Beijing’s growing confidence in the superiority of their own systems. We will need the full weight of our democratic allies in NATO to repudiate the authoritarian model in this intensifying global debate just as Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan did in the past. NATO allies will also be critical in a battle of technology, as the West competes with a more assertive China in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and biotechnology. The United States has a better chance to maintain its qualitative military edge over China if we enlist the scientific and productive capacity of all our allies in Europe as well as in the Indo-Pacific. NATO remains the great power differential between the United States and Russia and China, which have no real allies of their own. Trump should reflect on a last reality that all his predecessors understood. The United States would be far stronger inside NATO as it faces these challenges than it would be alone. NATO is not just yesterday’s story but is indispensable if Americans want to reach for the elusive goal we have been chasing since World War II: a secure United States alongside a united, democratic and peaceful Europe as its closest global partner.


A well-balanced diet can help keep you healthy. But no single food will lower your blood pressure.

demonstrated that healthy food patterns can lower cholesterol, reduce blood pressure and decrease diabetes and heart disease as much, if not more effectively, as pharmaceuticals. “What we know about diet and health is so solid in the form of dietary patterns,” said Katz. “But when we get to claims about individual foods, step away from your credit card and no one will get hurt.” That’s where we hit the snag in the food-as-medicine concept. Overall dietary patterns are what matters for health, not any single ingredient or compound — but there is profit in misrepresenting that fact. “I see the push toward food as medicine as being a marketing push,” says Marion Nestle, professor emerita of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University and author, most recently, of “Unsavory Truth.” “Marketers try to convince you that one food, one product, is going to make a difference, but that’s not how it works.” Claims of the healing power of individual foods are rampant online, in the grocery store and beyond. I stepped into a smoothie shop recently that has a “Juice Farmacy” section on its menu board. It sells a drink called “Cough Syrup” that will set you back $7.45, and offers a selection of “Rx Shots” that run about $3 per ounce. Its signage asserts that specific ingredients in its smoothies have special healing characteristics, claiming, for example, that turmeric has “medicinal properties that help improve brain function,” and that carrots provide “antibacterial properties that make for a powerful immune boost.” Even if there is a seed of science behind these assertions, they run contrary to the medical movement to adopt a more holistic, long-view culinary approach to health. In fact, this type of marketing achieves the opposite, by bringing a reductionist, pill-popping, quick-fix mentality to food. Approaching food as medicine in this way is not only probably a waste of money, it could be dangerous if people decide to consume turmeric tea or wheatgrass shots instead of their regular prescriptions. Robert Graham, an integrative medicine physician and chef in private practice in New York City sees this issue regularly. He recently had a patient who wanted to start drinking hibiscus tea instead of taking his prescribed blood pressure medication. Graham steered the patient away from the notion of a quick-fix tea cure to a gradual, integrated approach using the DASH diet and including hibiscus tea, with


The Cybersecurity 202: Huawei security chief says ‘U.S. is feeling very insecure in the world’

least highly coercive — when describing why other nations are turning to Huawei for 5G. As described by Jim Lewis, a cyber expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Huawei begins its 5G pitch by offering below-market rates that are made possible only by generous subsidies from Beijing, then threatens a damaged trading relationship if the deal doesn’t go through. “The risk is real, countries understand it, but they fear retaliation,” writes Lewis, who was formerly a top cyber official in the State and Commerce departments. Huawei’s preferred solution, Purdy said, is for the United States and other nations to come up with standardized requirements for 5G security and a transparent method for testing whether companies can meet them. “I think the U.S. is on a path to have the kind of security requirements that are necessary to address risk comprehensively . . . when that day comes, I think we’ll be able to participate because we can meet those requirements,” he said. The U.S. government is, indeed, working on several initiatives to identify cybersecurity risk in government and industry supply chains, but Huawei is unlikely to pass those tests. Whether companies are bound by foreign laws — such as the Chinese cybersecurity law — is a major factor officials are considering as they devise security requirements, Jeanette Manfra, a lead Homeland Security Department official working on the initiatives, recently told me. Meanwhile, Huawei is still meeting with some U.S. decision-makers outside government and is hopeful it will be able to make its case to government officials again soon, Purdy told me. “We certainly have people that we’re talking to to see if we can get folks to talk to us,” he said. “We haven’t given up yet, I’ll put it that way.” PINGED: Congressional Democrats are demanding answers about a Chinese woman arrested last weekend with a malware-infected thumb drive at President Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort. At the top of the list is whether the facilities the president and his associates use to access classified information at the Florida resort are vulnerable to exploitation, my colleagues Karoun Demirjian and Rachael Bade report. The Secret Service will brief leaders of the House Oversight Committee this morning about the incident. The House Intelligence Committee has also requested a briefing. And “in a Wednesday letter to FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), Judiciary Committee ranking


The problems with one-size-fits-all laws on opioid prescriptions

what is happening to the estimated 13 million chronic-pain patients who are on opioids long-term — a concern echoed in a letter by experts who called forced tapering of these drugs a “large-scale humanitarian issue.” Building on this concern, another group of 300 physicians, including three former drug “czars,” released a letter last month warning of the dangers of nonconsensual dose reductions and appealing to the CDC to clarify that their guidelines were not intended as unbending rules. Even in the absence of state or federal laws, they observed, doctors, insurers and pharmacies were treating the guidelines as de facto limits. The Gillibrand-Gardner and Portman bills go even further in regulating acute pain than the existing state laws, which often allow providers to override legal limits case by case. Were those federal bills to become law, patients would have to return to their physician if they needed more than a three- or seven-day supply of medication following a surgery or injury — no easy task for someone who has just had a hip or knee replacement (or who would be financially burdened by additional co-pays). Even cancer patients, whom lawmakers invariably exempt from their rules, are being punished. At a recent nationwide American Medical Association meeting, outgoing president Barbara L. McAneny told a harrowing anecdote: After a pharmacist denied a prescription she had written for one of her cancer patients, incorrectly suspecting the patient was a drug seeker, the patient attempted suicide. The general clampdown on prescribing disproportionately affects women, who suffer more often than men from chronic pain, and people of color, whose pain, studies have shown, is taken less seriously by doctors and nurses. Gillibrand and others are right to point out the dangers of leftover opioids in medicine cabinets across the United States; they are easily diverted or misused. Most people who misuse prescription opioids did not receive them while under a doctor’s care; they stole, borrowed or bought medication that had been prescribed to others. But opioids remain essential medication for millions of people in the United States who are in pain and who use them appropriately as prescribed. And while overprescription may remain a problem in some cases, data suggests it is far less of a problem than it used to be. The number of opioid prescriptions dispensed by pharmacies is at a 15-year low, for example. Today, overdose deaths are driven largely by illicit


Trump’s false claims about Mexico’s immigration system

returned 13,281 individuals to the three Central American countries in the same two-month period, according to SEGOB data. Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard held a news conference on the same day Trump made these claims. Immigration policy has been consistent since President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) took office in December, Ebrard said. “Ebrard says he has NO idea WHAT caused @realDonaldTrump to praise Mexico’s migration policy today, saying it has been consistent since AMLO took office and based on registry of arrivals, respect for human rights,” a Bloomberg News reporter tweeted. Neither the White House nor the Mexican Embassy in the United States responded to our questions. The Washington Post’s Mary Beth Sheridan reported that apprehensions in the United States have been soaring recently, despite controls along Mexico’s southern border, which suggests more Central American migrants are getting through Mexico to the U.S. border. Mexico recently announced plans for a “containment belt” nearly 200 miles from the Guatemalan border, but that’s a far cry from what Trump claimed. The Post reported: Trump also claimed Mexico has the toughest immigration laws in the world. Does it? “Mexico did have an immigration law that made illegal entry into the country a crime, but that law was supplanted by a 2011 immigration law that makes it a civil infraction and tries to balance tough enforcement with the respect for the rights of migrants within Mexico,” Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, wrote in an email. “In that sense, U.S. law, which now does deem illegal entry a crime, is a lot tougher than the current Mexican law.” Laura González-Murphy, who advised officials in Mexico’s National Congress while the 2011 law was being drafted and wrote a book about the process, called it an “extremely humanitarian” policy. “It made the rights of migrants a priority,” she said. “I would say it’s actually a generous and quite progressive law,” said Rachel Schmidtke, a migration researcher at the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute. “It doesn’t criminalize migrants entering into Mexico, although they still might be subject to deportation.” As PolitiFact noted, the White House previously pointed to an article in the Washington Times to support Trump’s claim that Mexico has the toughest immigration laws. The 2010 article discussed another Mexican law, which at the time required that “federal, local and municipal police cooperate with federal immigration authorities in that country in the arrests of


CVS expands same-day prescription deliveries to 36 states

other products within a few hours to homes or offices from 6,000 locations. The company started this service, which comes with a fee, in late 2017 in New York and expanded it to several cities last year. Rival Walgreens also offers same-day deliveries in major cities and plans to expand this year. Both companies also tout deliveries in one to two days. Retailers such as drugstores have been dealing with competition from online giant Amazon, which offers same-day delivery on detergent, toothpaste and 3 million other products nationwide. Amazon last year bought the online pharmacy PillPack, which provides home deliveries. (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) CVS Health, based in Woonsocket, R.I., said Thursday that customers will be able to order the same-day service through the company’s app, or by sending a text or calling the pharmacy. Aside from prescriptions, customers can also have cold remedies, vitamins and baby products delivered. CVS will provide the service through the delivery company Shipt in 36 states and Washington. That service will cost about $8. — Associated Press RETAIL Target again boosts its minimum wage Target is boosting its minimum starting wage for the third time in as many years, distancing itself from rival Walmart in a tight labor market. The cheap-chic retailer will move the wage to $13 an hour in June, providing tens of thousands of workers a raise, the company said, without specifying exactly how many staffers would benefit. This follows $1-an-hour increases in recent years and brings Target closer to the goal it set in 2017 of reaching $15 an hour by the end of next year. “Investing in our team members is essential to keep our business growing and thriving,” Melissa Kremer, Target’s chief human resources officer, said in a company blog post. The move is the latest salvo in an ongoing wage war between the nation’s biggest retailers. The industry is the largest private-sector employer in the United States, and competition for staff has intensified. Walmart has also boosted wages several times in recent years to reach its starting salary of $11 per hour. It has also expanded benefits such as maternity and parental leave. Costco Wholesale, which often leads the retail pack on pay, just boosted its starting wage to as much as $15.50 an hour. — Bloomberg News Also in Business The number Bayer Colorado's legislature — From news services


A goose bit a pedestrian in Maryland

One goose bit a person and other geese became very protective in a parking lot where buses are kept in Montgomery County, officials said. The unusual incident unfolded Wednesday at a bus lot along Crabbs Branch Way in Derwood, where the county parks its vehicles, according to Montgomery County Fire officials. A pedestrian was bitten and was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, said Pete Piringer, a spokesman for the local fire department. Local police said it was a male goose that bit the pedestrian and that it was “surrounded by other geese.” Male geese, experts said, are “known to be protective of their families.” Rescuers said they believe the goose “felt threatened by a combination of the noisy streets, pedestrians walking by quickly on their cell phone, and [it] bit the pedestrian in response,” according to a county news site — mymcmedia.org, which called the incident “Geese gone wild.”


The Health 202: Years after an experimental stem cell therapy blinded patients, the FDA is still trying to stop it

THE PROGNOSIS The Food and Drug Administration promised yesterday to heighten oversight of providers of experimental stem cell treatments, as a Post report detailed the agency’s slow response to a leading stem cell company whose treatments blinded some patients. U.S. Stem Cell had $6.7 million in revenue last year, operates three clinics and has trained doctors at 150 others, making it a leading stem cell treatment provider in the burgeoning industry. In an unusually aggressive action, the FDA is suing to stop its treatments after several reports of serious harm, our colleagues Laurie McGinley and William Wan report. The lawsuit targets just one type of procedure the company offers, a fat-based therapy that involves “extracting a patient’s belly fat, mixing it with an enzyme to break down the tissue and spinning the mixture in a centrifuge to isolate mesenchymal stem cells, which can morph into a variety of cell types. Those cells are then injected into patients’ spinal fluid, bloodstream or joints.” For years, scientists called on the FDA to investigate the clinics. In the meantime, the company has still been allowed to operate; four patients have been blinded and one woman ended up in a coma. Here's what happened to several patients after receiving stem cell injections, from this deeply reported piece by Laurie and William: “It’s frustrating that these clinics are still operating, and surprising that authorities aren’t moving faster — even now,” Albini said. Later that year, the FDA sent its first warning letter to U.S. Stem Cell, charging the company with selling an illegal, unapproved product and of ignoring safe manufacturing practices. The agency also finalized guidance that says the fat-derived treatment is a drug and requires agency approval. The company called the allegations "blatantly false," after the 2017 warning letter. It has also pushed back on the FDA's lawsuit, per William and Laurie: Gottlieb is scheduled to leave his post at the FDA tomorrow, a decision he announced several weeks ago saying he wanted to spend more time with his Connecticut-based family. Laurie reports this morning that he'll return to the American Enterprise Institute to work on drug prices. “The 46-year-old physician, who has been commuting weekly to Washington from his home in Connecticut, said he plans to spend a half-dozen days a month in Washington as a resident fellow at the conservative think tank,” she writes. “Besides that, he said, he has no commitments


What did AG Barr hold back from his Mueller report summary?

Post Reports is the daily podcast from The Washington Post. Unparalleled reporting. Expert insight. Clear analysis. Everything you’ve come to expect from the newsroom of The Post. For your ears. Martine Powers is your host, asking the questions you didn’t know you wanted answered. Listen online. All the things Barr’s summary of the Mueller report didn’t say Democratic lawmakers are not happy with Attorney General William P. Barr after The Washington Post obtained information that his summary of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report omitted certain details. No one in Congress has seen Mueller’s full, nearly 400-page, report on the investigation into President Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 election. Now, Mueller’s team indicates that it’s also not happy with Barr’s summary, saying it leaves out key details. Rosalind S. Helderman covers politics and joins Post Reports host Martine Powers to talk about why the Mueller team isn’t satisfied with the attorney general’s summary. More on this topic: More details on journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s killing Six months ago Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and never walked out. Now, there are more details surrounding his killing. Post foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius was Khashoggi’s colleague. He was also his friend of 15 years. Ignatius says he knows more about his friend’s death six months after his killing. Those details show how Khashoggi never left that consulate. More on this topic: 51 years after MLK’s assassination, we hear from someone who was there On April 4th, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated outside of a hotel in Memphis. Civil rights activist Andrew Young spoke to The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart about what he remembers from that day. More on this topic:


D.C.-area forecast: Mild and dry today, rainy Friday, then on to a warmer weekend

TODAY’S DAILY DIGIT A somewhat subjective rating of the day’s weather, on a scale of 0 to 10. 8/10: EXPRESS FORECAST Today: Tonight: Tomorrow: View the FORECAST IN DETAIL Today is a fine spring day, but the weekend is even finer! There is a price to pay, though, as showers pass through all day Friday. The weekend will have some clouds but enough sun for 70s, so get out and enjoy all the blooms that are bursting forth. Get our daily forecasts on your Amazon Alexa device. Today (Thursday): Tonight: Follow us on Tomorrow (Friday): Tomorrow night: A LOOK AHEAD Saturday Partly sunny skies Sunday promise another fine spring day. Clouds may increase in the afternoon, but highs should still reach the lower 70s. Hopefully there will be enough breaks in the clouds to see the new crescent moon in the west after sunset. A few showers are possible overnight, with lows in the mid- to upper 50s. Confidence: Low-Medium Monday


Venezuela’s health system in ‘utter collapse’ as infectious diseases spread, report says

Venezuela’s health system is in “utter collapse,” according to a report, including the exponential spread of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles and diphtheria and “dramatic surges” in infectious diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis. The report, to be released Thursday by Human Rights Watch and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, is among the few that has sought to quantify Venezuela’s misery, as the country has ceased releasing health and nutrition data and retaliated against those who did. Based on interviews with doctors and other health personnel in Venezuela, conducted by telephone and online; refugees in Colombia and Brazil, including health care professionals; and representatives of humanitarian and international organizations, the report concludes that the United Nations should take the lead providing aid. It calls on U.N. Secretary General António Guterres to spearhead efforts to declare a complex humanitarian emergency, an official designation that would trigger a major, comprehensive effort under U.N. auspices and unlock the mobilization of international resources. Humanitarian aid to Venezuela has been slow, compared with the need, because of the intransigence of President Nicolás Maduro — who has blamed deprivations on U.S. sanctions and refused to allow anything beyond a trickle of assistance to enter the country — and the reluctance of some donors to allow assistance to be distributed by the Maduro government. A U.N. declaration, the reports’ authors say, would put Guterres in a position to press Maduro to allow U.N. agencies to lead and implement a large-scale humanitarian response aid. Guterres has said the United Nations should not join any of the groups of nations promoting various political solutions to the Venezuelan crisis. They include the Lima Group of 14 Latin American nations, which along with the United States and some European countries, has demanded that Maduro leave office in favor of Juan Guaidó, the head of Venezuela’s Legislative Assembly, whom they recognized as the country’s interim president in January. The Trump administration has imposed harsh economic and diplomatic sanctions against the Maduro government, even as it has stockpiled hundreds of tons of food and medical supplies along the Venezuelan border in neighboring Colombia that Maduro has not allowed to enter. A contact group of the European Union and eight E.U. member states, along with four Latin American countries — most of them among the 54 countries that have recognized Guaidó — has called for new elections. Separately, Mexico and Uruguay