Aly Raisman: Conditions at Karolyi Ranch made athletes vulnerable to Nassar

To Aly Raisman, there is culpability in the crummy little details. The showers were moldy, she says, and the food was so repulsive that it seemed calculated to give them eating disorders. “It didn’t sit well in your stomach. Something wasn’t right,” she says. If U.S. Olympic authorities couldn’t be bothered to care about the dirty showers and the lousy diet at the Karolyi Ranch, no wonder they didn’t catch the sexual molester who preyed on her and her gold medal gymnastics teammates for years. From 2001 to 2017, Bela and Martha Karolyi’s Texas ranch was the designated national team training center for gymnastics, an engine that generated gold medals and million-dollar salaries for officials such as former USA Gymnastics president Steve Penny. But for the gymnasts it was a shabby, penny-pinching place, Raisman says, of dorm rooms jammed with old bunk beds covered with stained blankets and sometimes crawling with bugs. “Honestly, it was disgusting,” she says. U.S. Olympic Committee head Scott Blackmun called it “an excellent model for the Olympic movement.” Raisman, now 23, is suing the USOC and USA Gymnastics over that disconnect, alleging the organizations “willfully” refused to “implement appropriate safeguards” at the ranch and in other settings that left her and her teammates vulnerable to the sex crimes of USA Gymnastics’ head trainer and medical director Larry Nassar. The gymnasts were the faces of the Summer Olympics, who brought home individual all-around gold medals in four straight Summer Games and team golds in 2012 and 2016. Yet at the monthly Karolyi camps, “The shower smelled like eggs, and we would bring sandals to wear because it was so disgusting,” Raisman says. “After you showered you were like, I almost feel dirtier than before.” Training camps are supposed to be spartan — even unpleasant — but Raisman said they weren’t even provided with bottled water, and those bathrooms lacked soap. When they ran out, they were terrified to ask for more because U.S. coaches and officials made them believe those who were noncompliant or complained would be left off the team, Raisman says. “Nobody wanted to be the one who was difficult,” Raisman says. “Now that I’m away from the sport it makes me so angry that we were that afraid to ask for soap.” Asked about conditions at the ranch, a USA Gymnastics spokesperson said the organization could not respond “due to pending litigation.” Attorneys


Toys R Us to close all 800 of its U.S. stores

statement on Wednesday. “Consumers could be left in the lurch.” He also urged the Federal Trade Commission to “take an immediate look” at how Toys R Us is handling the winding down of its operations. “The liquidation of Toys R Us is the unfortunate but inevitable conclusion of a retailer that lost its way,” Neil Saunders, managing director of the research firm GlobalData Retail, wrote in an email. “Even during recent store closeouts, Toys R Us failed to create any sense of excitement. The brand lost relevance, customers and ultimately sales.” Toys R Us got its start as a baby furniture shop in Washington’s Adams Morgan neighborhood in 1948. It didn’t take long for Charles Lazarus, who founded the company at age 25, to realize he could make a lot more money selling toys than one-off cribs at Children’s Bargain Town. He renamed his business Toys R Us and created an emporium of exclusive products and ever-rotating inventory. “Lazarus offered toy manufacturers the tantalizing picture of year-round toy sales and the ability to produce 12 months a year,” Eric Clark wrote in “The Real Toy Story: Inside the Ruthless Battle for America’s Youngest Consumers.” At its heyday, Toys R Us had a towering flagship store in New York’s Times Square (now closed and home to Old Navy) and a ubiquitous icon, Geoffrey the Giraffe. Its catchy jingle, with the refrain “I don’t wanna grow up, I’m a Toys R Us kid,” was a long-running television staple. But in recent years, the company lost its footing as retailers like Walmart and Target began selling toys at lower profit margins. Toys R Us, which was saddled with billions in debt, couldn’t invest enough to keep its stores or websites competitive. “We know that customers are willing to pay more for an enjoyable experience — just look at the lines at Starbucks every day — but Toys R Us has failed to give us anything special or unique,” Kelly O’Keefe, a professor of brand management at Virginia Commonwealth University, told The Washington Post this year. “You can find more zest for life in a Walgreens.” Read more: Why neighborhood toy stores are thriving while Toys R Us goes bankrupt High heels are the worst, and women are finally ditching them Kohl’s has a new plan to get you into its stores: Groceries Americans are finally coming back to Macy’s to shop for clothes


Russian described as gun developer for Kalashnikov charged in Las Vegas sting

photo of Spiridonov accepting the hotel delivery is among exhibits filed in federal court in Los Angeles after Commerce Department investigators, who enforce export licensing rules, obtained a warrant in Washington. Federal prosecutors in Washington this week released a criminal information in the case — a type of charging document used only with a defendant’s consent and that signals a plea deal has been reached. A plea is not final until a judge accepts it, and defendants can change their minds. An attorney for Spiridonov, Stewart J. Powell of Los Angeles, said Thursday that his client had cooperated with the government “in every respect,” adding, “I think we’re going to have a speedy resolution.” “He has no military ties, he was formerly a medical doctor, and now he’s a hunter,” Powell said. “He just happens to be a Russian citizen, who has nothing to do with any” other controversies involving Russian entities under U.S. sanctions or investigation. In court filings, prosecutors cite Spiridonov’s social media posts, in which he identifies himself as director of special projects with Kalashnikov. He also has been described online by other firearms industry commentators as a brand manager for the firm’s hunting guns. However, Spiridonov told investigators he has a looser affiliation with the company, prosecutors said. As part of his attorney’s unsuccessful attempt to have his client released on bond, the lawyer filed an undated one-page letter from Kalashnikov defining Spiridonov’s relationship. In the letter, the company stated that Spiridonov “is not a regular employee” of Kalashnikov Concern “and can not be referred [sic] as a representative of the company.” Instead, a company manager named Oleg Ivanov wrote, “Kalashnikov Concern would like to confirm that Mr. Evgeniy [sic] Spiridonov as a member of [Safari Club International] is occasionally invited to participate in the testing and development of the hunting guns” under the company’s Baikal brand, “with certain compensation under temporary contracts.” In a statement Friday, Kalashnikov’s press office added: “Evgeniy Spiridonov was involved as a recognized expert for projects related to hunting and civilian hunting weapons on the temporary basis. . . . We have no idea on the reasons and details of his trip to the US.” Spiridonov has been a member of Safari Club International since 2012 and of the National Rifle Association since 2015, according to materials filed by his attorney. Powell also filed documents and photographs that he said corroborate


Exploding packages tap into simmering tensions over Austin’s racial segregation

AUSTIN — Interstate 35 runs north through the heart of Austin, an informal but symbolically potent line that divides the thriving city. The wide swath of concrete, six lanes thick at many points, demarcates the separation between affluent and predominantly white neighborhoods on the city’s west side — including its downtown and the University of Texas campus — and the east, which has been home to black and Latino residents historically. The three package bombs Police have said they are investigating whether the incidents were racially motivated. But an uncomfortable question has emerged that touches on deep and long-standing racial wounds in a city that prides itself on its progressivism: Would authorities have taken the first bomb — which exploded March 2, 10 days before the other two — more seriously had it exploded on the west side? “A lot of us are just kind of tired of the discrepancies,” said Fatima Mann, the executive director of Counter Balance: ATX, an activist organization that works with low-income and minority groups in the city. “We know that if these bombings would have happened on the west side, there would have only been one. They would have locked down the community and made sure it wouldn’t happen again.” Others have echoed the point, wondering why a week and a half passed — and two other attacks occurred — before police said people should be wary of suspicious packages. And they wonder why the perpetrator is still at large. “If this happened in West Austin, then they would know by now,” said T.L. Wyatt, publisher of the Villager, a weekly newspaper in East Austin. “They didn’t give much attention to it.” The Austin Police Department took days to tell the public the March 2 explosion that killed a 39-year-old construction worker, Anthony Stephan House, had been caused by a package. And police initially classified it as a suspicious death, not a homicide . “We can’t rule out that Mr. House didn’t construct this himself and accidentally detonate it, in which case it would be an accidental death,” Assistant Chief Joseph Chacon said at the time. “How messed up is it that police can make it seem like the person did it themself?” Mann said. “It’s insulting and offensive and tiring.” At a forum hosted by the Austin Justice Coalition and Black Lives Matter Austin on Thursday night to discuss the explosions, one attendee


New Russia sanctions are Trump’s strongest action against Moscow — but far short of what Congress wanted

The Trump administration on Thursday took its strongest action to date to punish Moscow for interfering in the 2016 election, imposing fresh financial sanctions on Russian government hackers and spy agencies. The administration also formally backed Britain’s claims that Moscow is almost certainly to blame for a chemical toxin attack against a former Russian spy living in England who was found comatose along with his daughter earlier this month. The sanctions were the first such actions taken under legislation passed nearly unanimously last year by Congress and follow months of criticism that the White House has been slow to counter Russian aggression. But the steps taken Thursday fell well short of the full penalties Congress authorized and focused on a narrow list of targets rather than the broader range of individuals and entities believed to have played a role in Russia’s efforts to interfere in the election. In both cases, pressure from Congress and allies helped nudge the White House toward a stronger response. Republicans have joined Democrats in urging the administration to penalize Russia more strongly, while suggesting that President Trump set aside concerns about examining the election interference that he initially dismissed as a “hoax.” Lawmakers have been telling the White House for months that Russia will surely try to expand its interference in the upcoming congressional midterm elections. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the sanctions announcement a “long overdue response” but noted that the administration has failed to implement six other mandatory provisions of the law enacted last year, including penalties affecting Russian defense and other industries. “I expect to see additional sanctions in short order against specific Russian entities responsible for undermining our democracy,” he said in a statement. “The longer we wait, we know the Russian government will continue to shift resources to other propaganda factories that spew disinformation and lies.” Menendez also said the Obama administration had already sanctioned many of those on the Trump administration’s list. The White House also faced criticism that it muddied its response to the election interference by saying the penalties were also in response to Russia’s cyberattack last year against Ukraine and other countries, which officials have characterized as “the most destructive and costly” in history. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders would not say Thursday whether the administration considers Russia a friend or foe, instead turning the


So many cartons, so little time: A guide to grocery store eggs

depends on the breed of hen. There’s no nutritional difference, although brown eggs may be bigger, and therefore cost more, because the hens tend to be larger and eat more. Pasteurized One of the biggest risks from raw, undercooked or mishandled eggs is salmonella poisoning. Pasteurization kills the bacteria responsible for the nasty intestinal illness, and in many grocery stores you can find at least one brand of eggs that are labeled as pasteurized. They typically cost more than non-pasteurized eggs. If you’re using a recipe that calls for raw or partially cooked eggs — especially if you’re serving young children, the elderly, pregnant women or immune-compromised individuals — consider going pasteurized. Just keep in mind that the heat used in pasteurizing might cause egg whites to become cloudy and take longer (up to four times as long, according to the American Egg Board) to foam if you are beating them. How the eggs are raised This is where you have to decide whether and how much more you are willing to spend based on conditions for the egg-laying hens. The terms “cage-free,” “free-range” and “organic” are regulated by the government, and often these eggs cost more than eggs from conventionally raised hens. Cage-free laying hens have unlimited access to food and water and are free to roam in their space, though that doesn’t require outdoor access. Free-range hens are required to have the same conditions as cage-free but must also have continuous access to the outdoors. Organic eggs must come from uncaged chickens fed an organic diet and given outdoor access (though a Post investigation found some iffy interpretation of that rule). Choosing between these types of eggs is more of a moral, and financial, rather than culinary decision. A USDA study found no difference in quality among the various types of grocery store eggs, although some other analyses have shown higher levels of certain nutrients, such as vitamins and omega-3 fats, in eggs from hens allowed access to pastures. As to taste? Post food policy columnist Tamar Haspel pitted eggs from her own free-range chickens against those from factory chickens. No one could tell the difference. More from Voraciously: Why you should think big when you buy a cutting board You don’t need to chop like a TV chef to get the job done Skip the 18-piece set. A chef’s knife is the one blade you really need.


No, Congress isn’t gutting Dodd-Frank

and community banks shutter, it has become harder for small businesses and individuals with good (but not perfect) credit to receive loans. Since 2010, Republicans have used this dynamic as an argument for repealing Dodd-Frank. President Trump promised to do the same . At every turn, Democrats united and fought to defeat these efforts. The compromise that the Senate passed this week does not undermine Dodd-Frank. It preserves the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It maintains oversight of derivatives trading. It preserves resolution authority, which allows the government to dismantle large, failing banks to minimize risk to the economy. Just as before, big banks can no longer expect taxpayers to bail them out for reckless decisions. These were, and remain, the essential components of Dodd-Frank. If you believe the critics, this compromise guts Wall Street reform. The facts say otherwise. It is a terrible irony of the Great Recession that the largest banks have become even larger. This bipartisan agreement leaves the largest banks as they are with regard to Dodd-Frank and provides much-needed relief to smaller banks and their customers. It is no coincidence that the bill’s Democratic sponsors come not from major financial hubs, but rural areas where small banks provide a disproportionate share of loans. The Senate agreement is not without flaws, but it locks in the essential features of Wall Street reform. With these modifications in place and reasonable adjustments made to smaller bank rules, Republicans will no longer be able to use the plight of community banks and small businesses to justify an effort to attack the broader law. Now it’s up to the House to take up this bipartisan compromise, which it should pass without changes. As we move forward, Democrats should consider two questions: One, are we going to fight for regulations that don’t accomplish their stated purposes? Two, are we going to let political hyperbole keep us from addressing the legitimate concerns of small businesses, community banks and millions of creditworthy Americans? On issue after issue, voices on the left and right routinely decry modest concessions as a betrayal of principle. More often than not, that principle turns out to be little more than a tactic to garner media attention by casting small differences on policy as cataclysmic. Until this changes, we will struggle to make progress as both parties retreat to their corners instead of doing the unglamorous, vital work of governing.


‘It was insanity’: At My Lai, U.S. soldiers slaughtered hundreds of Vietnamese women and kids

The Post noted. The massacre at My Lai, meanwhile, continued to make news. In early 1970, charges of trying to cover up the slaughter were brought against Major General Samuel W. Koster, who’d served as the commanding general over the My Lai troops but was now the superintendent at the United States Military Academy at West Point. The news shocked the country. Numerous other officers were charged with concealing the killings, but the accusations against them — and Koster — were eventually dismissed. One brigade commander stood trial on coverup allegations, but was acquitted. Calley was the only officer convicted of playing a direct role in the massacre. According to Hersh’s account, eleven other men were charged with murder, maiming or assault with the intent to commit murder, but their cases either fizzled out before trial or they were acquitted. During his trial in early 1971, Calley argued that he was merely following orders — echoing the same lines of the Nazis during the Nuremberg trials. But an Army jury of six men, five of whom served in combat, rejected that defense. On March 29, 1971, Calley was found guilty of the premeditated murder of at least 22 Vietnamese civilians. He was sentenced to life in prison, but Nixon intervened and ordered that he serve under house arrest in a reduced sentence. But Hersh was not done chronicling these crimes. In early 1972, Hersh compiled all of his research and wrote a mammoth two-part series for the New Yorker on the military’s investigation into My Lai. One soldier, Terry Reid of Milwaukee, described to Hersh what he’d seen when the onslaught erupted. Hersh also reported that more than 40 soldiers who spoke to him or government investigators recalled hearing, in advance of the operation, “a specific order to kill civilians.” He quoted one soldier, Larry G. Holmes, who said: “We had three hamlets that we had to search and destroy. They told us they . . . had dropped leaflets and stuff and everybody was supposed to be gone. Nobody was supposed to be there. If anybody is there, shoot them.” Calley was not done with My Lai, either. He kept appealing his conviction and ultimately took his case into the civilian court system. By November 1974, three months after Nixon resigned, a federal-district court judge ordered Calley’s release, having ruled earlier that the enormous publicity surrounding his case prevented


A winning way for Democrats? (Part 2)

Third Way, a group of centrist Democrats, is setting out an agenda it thinks can unify the party, appeal to wayward Republicans and address critical issues relevant to the transition from an industrial to an information economy. Third Way argues: “Right now, America is creating jobs, but they are neither good enough nor spread widely enough to satisfy people. It’s far too difficult to get the skills needed to succeed in a rapidly shifting economy. And the benefits of work have so eroded that too few jobs provide a good life.” (Emphasis in the original.) It has put out 10 policy ideas, many of which would boost Americans living in rural America and the Rust Belt. These include an American investment bank to extend capital to firms in areas where access to capital is difficult. “Participating banks and a diverse group of investors in local communities will select qualifying ventures with additional inducements for overlooked locations and populations: the two-thirds of US counties where the number of businesses declined over the last decade, people of color and women who are ignored by lenders and investors, and communities bypassed by opportunity despite being within booming metros.”) Also on the list is help for small businesses — speeding up patents, reciprocity in state licensing rules and strong antitrust enforcement to address market concentration. There is a strong emphasis on work and work training. Its reemployment insurance, for example, looks to reintegrate laid-off workers as fast as possible: Many of these ideas, as you can see, would find favor with reform-minded Republicans as well as with traditional Democrats. They are also responsive to the concerns of many citizens who have felt left out of global prosperity and therefore have looked to charismatic populists to address economic uncertainty. Democracies are also challenged by authoritarians who claim that democracies are “broke” and that only a strongman can fix things. Third Way’s Matt Bennett, senior vice president for public affairs, acknowledges that this is a problem as well. The first part of our conversation focusing mostly on work in the 21st century can be found here. Here is the remainder of our conversation as we turned to the political realm: Western democracies are in crisis. Are there some items on voting access, transparency in government, removing conflicts of interest, etc. that would find resonance across the spectrum? Yes, and we have a number of ideas in


It’s time to tap the true potential of Maryland’s breweries

To make good beer you need a few basic things: high-quality ingredients, a skilled brewmaster and the proper equipment. Likewise, to make a good brewery you must have a few essentials: good product, a savvy business owner and a regulatory climate that’s conducive to success. While Maryland has an abundance of most of these prerequisites, our state is sadly failing to deliver on the last metric. This is unfortunate, because the state is home to many great brewers and entrepreneurs. In recent years, Maryland such as like Flying Dog in Frederick, Jailbreak in Laurel and Union in Baltimore have received prestigious national awards for their beers. If these companies — and dozens of others fantastic in-state breweries — are going to continue to produce great brews, contribute to the local economy and expand their operations, it’s essential for the General Assembly to modernize our state’s laws and regulations. Thankfully, the General Assembly has a golden opportunity to do so. The House Economic Matters Committee held a somewhat contentious hearing on the “Reform on Tap Act of 2018.” This bill was drafted by Comptroller Peter Franchot after months of reviewing current laws and speaking with brewers, retailers, wholesalers and other stakeholders. At its core, the bill is quite simple: It would allow Maryland breweries to sell more beer directly to consumers from their tasting rooms. Having more direct-to-consumer exposure is absolutely critical, especially for smaller, newer breweries that often have a tough time getting their products into liquor stores, bars and restaurants. The bill would also help larger breweries that are expanding operations, such as the new Guinness facility in Relay. Once completed, this tasting room will be a huge draw for beer lovers from all over the nation and world. It will create new jobs and help establish Maryland as a true beer destination, especially when a trip there can be easily paired with a visit to Heavy Seas brewery, just a couple miles down the road. Both breweries would greatly benefit from better beer laws. That’s why, in addition to removing the cap on tasting room sales, Franchot’s bill would eliminate the ridiculous “buy-back” provision that serves as nothing more than a handout to big businesses and special interests. This provision kicks in when a brewery reaches 2,000 barrels in taproom sales. At that point, it can sell an additional 1,000 barrels to consumers, but only after first selling


The dreams, hopes and everyday lives of China’s people

all trying to run to the top at the same time.” Whether it is filling out a job application, beefing up their profile on a dating app or undergoing eyelid surgery, the goal is to make themselves stand out. Also enlightening is learning that China’s millennials consider censorship more of an occasional annoyance than a major intrusion on their daily existence. They are vastly more concerned with following the rise and fall of property prices, swapping articles and videos among friends in their personal WeChat groups, and finding the best prices on the massive online shopping site Taobao. “We get that we are censored,” says one friend, Cindy. “It’s annoying, but we get what is going on.” Lake clearly has less material to work with, so she supplements the stories of her female friends with her firsthand reportorial exploits, including interviews with various sexologists, a mixer event for singles and a visit to a ba zi expert, a kind of Chinese fortune teller who uses astrological signs to predict fate and destiny. Lake judiciously sprinkles her book with citations and lengthy quotes from dozens of experts, including journalists, historians and anthropologists. So that makes it even odder that she fails even once to cite the obvious inspiration for this book, researcher and author Leta Hong Fincher, whose 2014 book, “Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China,” is considered the seminal work on the same topic. Lake’s exclusion of any acknowledgment of Hong Fincher’s work unleashed a torrent of criticism among the China-watching community on Twitter. On Feb. 16, ChinaFile, the Asia Society’s respected online magazine, announced on Twitter that it was removing an interview with Lake, saying she did not respect scholarly or journalistic principles. Hong Fincher, on Twitter “This is not fun for me. I can’t sleep. I am in agony. I wonder if I should give up writing because I am not getting any rewards for my years of extremely hard work,” Hong Fincher wrote. Her supporters have called it another case of a Caucasian writer expropriating and then erasing the work of a writer of color. In a February statement, Lake acknowledged the influence of Hong Fincher’s research and said she did credit her in earlier articles that appeared in Salon and Foreign Policy in 2012. But she said she deliberately avoided reading Hong Fincher’s book “because I was working on the manuscript for my


Man shot, fatally wounded in Northwest Washington

A man was shot and fatally wounded Thursday afternoon on 16th Street in Northwest Washington, according to D.C. police. D.C. police identified the man as Andre Junior, 43, of Upper Marlboro. Authorities said Robert Edward Green, 27, of Southeast D.C. was taken into custody. He was charged with first-degree murder while armed. Police said they were looking for a second man. A description was not immediately available. The shooting occurred about 1:35 p.m. at 16th Street and Park Road in Northwest, on the border of the neighborhoods of Mount Pleasant and Columbia Heights. Police said the victim was unconscious at the scene and was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries. peter.hermann@washpost.com


When will the sales begin? And other Toys R Us-related questions, answered.

Babies R Us stores have continued to accept them since their September bankruptcy filing. It was not immediately clear what would happen to customers’ layaway plans or baby registries. 3. When will stores actually begin to close? Toys R Us has said it will pay employees another 60 days, which it is required to do by law. But bankruptcy lawyers say some stores could shut down even sooner than that as the company winds down its operations. The closures, bankruptcy experts say, are likely to create mounting headaches for landlords and shopping malls, which are already struggling with high vacancy rates. “You’re looking at hundreds of landlords that will now have big empty spaces,” Snyder said. “That will have an enormous impact on shopping malls and stand-alone centers.” 4. Will the “Toys R Us” name cease to exist? Probably not. Toys R Us is looking for a buyer for its Canadian arm — which is in better financial shape than the company’s U.S. operations — and it still has stores in central Europe and Japan. (The company said this week it would close all of its British stores, and it is preparing to take similar action in Australia, France, Poland, Portugal and Spain.) “The Toys R Us name is not going away — that’s the part of the business that has value,” said Friedman of Debtwire. The retailer is also hoping to find a buyer for its website, as well as some of its more successful U.S. locations. Buyers are showing interest: Isaac Larian, the chief executive of toy giant MGA Entertainment, on Wednesday submitted a bid to buy Toys R Us’s Canadian arm, which includes 82 stores, according to Larian. He added that he is also looking into buying as many as 400 U.S. stores, which he would seek to operate under the Toys R Us name. “There is no toy business without Toys R Us,” Larian said, noting that he sold his first product to the chain in 1979. “It’s a big deal, and I’m going to try to salvage as much of it as possible.” Read more: Toys R Us to close all 800 of its U.S. stores Toymakers say there is ‘widespread panic’ following Toys R Us bankruptcy Why neighborhood toy stores are thriving while Toys R Us goes bankrupt At Toys R Us, hopes for a turnaround rest on a last-minute rush for holiday gifts


The time I took Stephen Hawking to a cowboy bar

[EDITOR’S NOTE: The author of this essay has been placed on leave by the Arizona State University as it investigates allegations of sexual misconduct, which he denies hold any merit. The Post published this piece before becoming aware of his employment status.] I’ll never forget the first time I realized how deeply Stephen Hawking had affected people around the world: It was in the late 1980s, shortly after his bestseller, “A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes,” was published, and we were together in Aspen for a gathering of physicists. I told him about a place I knew that was, at the time, a kind of cowboy bar in Woody Creek, a small town nearby but culturally far removed — a place where Hunter Thompson used to hang out. I asked Stephen if he wanted to stop by, and, ever the adventurer, he said yes. I called the bar and asked whether it was wheelchair-accessible, was told it was, and off we went. Thirty minutes later, we arrived, got out of Stephen’s van, went up a short ramp and went inside. The bar was rustic, with a pool table in the back and several tables up front. The bartender looked up at us and immediately exclaimed: “Well, if you had told me it was Stephen Hawking coming, we would have built a ramp if necessary!” Until then, short of coming in with Albert Einstein, I would have been reasonably certain that no other scientist in the world, even Carl Sagan at the height of his fame, would have been so instantly recognizable. Thirty years later, it makes complete sense. Stephen’s mega-stardom only continued to rise. But in 1988, before his book appeared, it was almost unfathomable that a physicist could be so widely recognized, admired or sought after. Stephen’s science was certainly one reason for his popularity. Working in the same area as Einstein, Stephen had, in many senses, revitalized interest in the general theory of relativity among many physicists by directly confronting what has become the most vexing outstanding problem in theoretical particle physics: How to make two of the towering achievements of 20th-century physics — general relativity and the quantum mechanics theory — consistent with each other. Stephen’s discovery, known as Hawking radiation, held that quantum effects around black holes could cause them to radiate particles and presents a challenge to classical theoretical


A math problem for Pi Day

is moving and full of life. Because of the increase in difficulty, the biological calculation will not be as accurate or consistent as the mathematical one. The historian is requested to discover where the fish was swimming a month ago. And the artist is tasked with capturing what the fish might have imagined and perceived in its ecosystem. Complexity is inversely related to measurability. Scientific marvels surround us: splitting atoms, peering into black holes and manipulating genomes. Yet the 21st century continues to grapple with the basic themes and issues encountered in the humanities over the centuries: gender and race, beauty and acceptance, truth and power. Stories of Black Lives Matter, #TimesUp and fake news still take the front page. This should not surprise us. These problems are not rocket science; they are far more difficult than rocket science. Putting a man on the moon is the easy stuff. Written texts offer clues as well. Profound notions in mathematics and quantum mechanics — dealing with algebraic varieties and space-time curvatures in relativity — are captured by elegant equations and tight notations, wonderfully packaged in a handful of pages. Compare this to, say, sociological scholarship. The eminent philosopher Charles Taylor, in his groundbreaking work “A Secular Age,” invests nearly 100 pages of his 800-page tome just to define and tease out the word secular. The situation becomes more precarious as we move toward the arts, which cannot be summarized by codes and symbolism. There may be very young chess and math prodigies, but there are no literary critics in elementary school. Nor are there artworks of 9-year-olds on the walls of the Museum of Modern Art. Unlike the cleanliness of mathematics and computer science, with its set of axioms and algorithms, a young mind cannot master the intricate natures of philosophy and literature and art. We fail to recognize that science is about the simple “could,” not the complex “should.” Our nation’s STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) programs are doing a wonderful job helping us think about the world substantively (facts matter), clearly (respect logical coherence) and critically (interrogate individual biases). The arts and humanities also embrace these outcomes, but they offer a different set of values needed for probing complex frameworks: appreciating close readings of texts, unpacking the subtlety of rhetoric, embracing multiple ways of knowing and valuing experiences acquired through arduous history. The world would be a better


With a spacecraft in trouble and the White House watching, SpaceX had to deliver

a vital part of the U.S. space program. His presence there would be an endorsement and a signal to Congress. But there was a problem: The Alliance was about to launch a highly classified spaceplane known as the X-37B that would ultimately stay in orbit for months at a time. But doing what? The Pentagon wouldn’t say. The program was secret, which was why the president couldn’t just swing by for a photo op. The National Security Council wouldn’t hear of it. So the White House scrambled. Instead, the president would visit SpaceX, a development that the company welcomed. A presidential visit would represent a public relations triumph over its archrival, even if it was, as Musk said later, “a sheer accident.” An accident that had raised the stakes even further — for Musk and the White House. This was SpaceX’s second official cargo delivery flight to the space station. It had to work, thought Garver, the NASA deputy administrator. They had to find a way to rescue Dragon, and fast. But as they tried to figure out what was wrong, Steve Davis, SpaceX’s director of advanced projects, had begun to prepare for the worst — aborting the mission. “Is the vehicle even functioning enough that you can bring it back?” he wondered. “We weren’t sure. That was the only time we had ever planned for an emergency reentry, which is like a big thing because you have to whip it through airspace. You have to reroute planes in real time. It’s not awesome. And so we were in panic mode.” Be scrappy or die SpaceX had been in panic mode before. In late 2010, on the eve of the Falcon 9’s second launch and the first test flight of the Dragon spacecraft, a last-minute inspection of the rocket revealed a crack in the nozzle, or skirt, of the second-stage engine. “You’re not going to fly with a crack,” Davis said. “We’re like, ‘What do we do?’ ” The normal thing would be to take the rocket apart, replace the engine skirt, reinspect it. And then “you’re up and launching in a month,” he said. No one wanted to lose that much time. Musk had a wild idea: “What if we just cut the skirt? Like, literally cut around it?” That is, what if they trimmed off the bottom as if it were a fingernail? “He went person by person


Man fatally shot in Northwest D.C.; suspect held on charge of first-degree murder

THE DISTRICT Man fatally shot in Northwest A man was fatally shot Thursday afternoon on 16th Street in Northwest Washington, according to D.C. police. They identified the man as Andre Junior, 43, of Upper Marlboro, Md. Authorities said Robert Edward Green, 27, of Southeast Washington was arrested and charged with first-degree murder while armed. Police said they were looking for a second man. A description of that person was not immediately available. The shooting occurred about 1:35 p.m. at 16th Street and Park Road NW, between the Mount Pleasant and Columbia Heights neighborhoods. — Peter Hermann MARYLAND Man gets 40-year sentence in robbery A Baltimore man was sentenced Thursday to 40 years in prison for a home-invasion robbery. Prosecutors said Kevin Darnell Carroll used a GPS tracker to tail a fellow gambler from the Horseshoe casino in Baltimore in 2015 and learn his address in Montgomery County. He returned days later with an accomplice, prosecutors said, broke into the $2 million home and stole $6,000. Prosecutors said that while they were in the house, Carroll, now 46, and his accomplice bound the 14-year-old daughter and 21-year-old son of the man who had been followed. — Dan Morse Prince George's officer charged with fraud A Prince George’s County police officer was suspended without pay after he was indicted on federal mail fraud charges and arrested Friday, authorities said. A federal grand jury charged Adrian Brown, 33, with a scheme to defraud an auto insurance company between September 2014 and January 2015, according to a statement from police in Prince George’s. The FBI and the police department had been investigating Brown since the fall of 2015, when his police powers were suspended, county police said. Brown, of Laurel, is accused of falsely telling an insurance company when he filed a claim that he had bought a vehicle and that it was stolen from an apartment complex, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland. But Brown had never owned the vehicle, according to prosecutors. Brown could not immediately be reached for comment, and online court records were not available Friday afternoon to indicate whether he had an attorney. —Lynh Bui VIRGINIA Man fatally shot at shopping center A 21-year-old man was fatally shot Thursday in Fairfax County, and a suspect was arrested, police said. The shooting occurred at about 7:30 p.m. in the 10100 block of


International law firm associate swaps six-figure job for a career in cake pops

consider a less expensive location.” The visibility helps. Even before the doors opened three years ago, a passerby saw Baked by Yael signs and ordered $8,000 worth of cake pops. The walk-in customers were about 40 percent of sales last year, she said. Those walk-ins have value other than monetary: serving them keeps her motivated. “Placing the operation in a retail storefront lets me add the walk-in business and actually see the smiles on the faces of my customers,” she said. “And every person who comes into the store is an opportunity. That said, catering is where the money is.” Krigman said she needs word-of-mouth and simple marketing to bring in a few thousand more a month to put her in the black. She worries that the zoo tourists and foot traffic don’t see her storefront because of the competition from recognizable brands a few doors away: Starbucks and 7-Eleven. “Our biggest challenge is getting people to walk past the big chains they’re so familiar with and walk into our store,” she said. She has no money for a marketing budget, so her solutions include sending employees across the street to hand out Baked by Yael postcards to zoo visitors, holding kiddie cake pop parties (at $295 for eight) on Saturday mornings, and touting her fresh, hot bagels to anyone who will listen. “On weekend mornings, almost all of our customers come in for bagels and bagel sandwiches. But then they see the cake pops,” she said. “Even if they don’t buy one, we’ve gotten them in the door and have an opportunity to plant the cake pop seed for the next time.” Krigman has been noshing on bagels since she grew up in Annapolis, where her mother taught violin and her father was a computer engineer. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2002 and spent a year in Spain studying nonprofit management on a Fulbright fellowship. She got a job at the D.C. office of White & Case, an international law firm based in New York. She started experimenting with baking her own bagels about 2008. “It came out delicious,” she said. She expanded her ouevre to rugelach, raspberry bars and black-and-whites (we call them half-moons). One popular item was the cake pop, a newfangled dessert on a stick that was the hit of the law office. Her colleagues at White & Case suggested she start a


Here’s a chance to explore Saturn with two members of Cassini-Huygens mission

It’s not every day that you can give a planet its due. And Saturn — the second-largest planet and sixth from the sun — deserves plenty of awe and accolades. The massive planet is almost mesmerizingly beautiful, and its rings have seduced both researchers and amateur astronomers since they were first spotted by Galileo in 1610. Now, you can take your love of the ringed planet to the next level at “An Ode to Saturn” on March 26 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Busboys and Poets at Fifth and K streets NW in Washington. The free event is sponsored by the DC Science Cafe and features two NASA scientists who have devoted their careers to the planet. Michael Flasar and Carrie Anderson don’t just love Saturn — they’ve helped explore it. Both were part of the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and its moons, which met with a spectacular end in 2017 after the spacecraft dipped and dived between Saturn’s rings. In September, it crashed into Saturn’s atmosphere, but not before delivering some seriously valuable scientific data and photographs of the planet and its rings. Flasar and Anderson will discuss the mission and what’s left to discover, and help crush some popular myths about the planet. You might even end up waxing poetic about the planet yourself. Can’t attend the event? You can still feel the love — the Cassini mission website at saturn.jpl.nasa.gov is a resource for all things Saturn.


Saudi Arabia’s ambitious crown prince comes to a Washington in turmoil

tycoons — while further consolidating his own grip on power. He is styled by confidants as a cross between a ruthless, reformist autocrat akin to Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew and a tech-giant “disrupter” (Silicon Valley will feature prominently among his stops). He wants to restructure the Saudi economy and wean it off its decades-long dependence on oil wealth. He wants to shock the system: “You have a body that has cancer everywhere, the cancer of corruption. You need to have chemo, the shock of chemo, or the cancer will eat the body,” the crown prince told my colleague David Ignatius last month. Critics point to the myriad rights abuses and lack of democracy that still characterize Saudi politics. “The key factor to look at is that for the first time in 40 years, a bold leader has emerged in Saudi Arabia, determined to face all the challenges previous leaders have been kicking down the road for decades,” wrote Ali Shihabi, the executive director of the Arabia Foundation, a Washington-based think tank close to Riyadh. “MBS is determined to upend 50 years of incremental, quietist and often reactionary policymaking. As a result, the 32-year-old crown prince has launched a relentless quest to offset decades of lethargy and inaction by his elders so he can drag his country into the 21st century.” But if the crown prince strikes many as a fascinating agent of change, he also occupies a familiar role in the Western imagination. “MBS fits the model of the west’s favorite partners in the Middle East: regime reformists, who promise change but not too much of it. Here is an apparently anti-establishment leader who hails from the very heart of the establishment,” Jane Kinninmont, a Persian Gulf expert at Chatham House, wrote in a new article for Britain's Prospect magazine. “Even while he consolidates his power in the center of a deeply autocratic system, he has adopted a discourse of youth empowerment, portraying the Saudi population as dynamic, entrepreneurial and creative.” Kinninmont warned that Mohammed's ascent could just as easily prefigure a dramatic fall: “Over the past year, Saudis have witnessed a series of once unquestionable power centers turn out to be chimeras, leading people to question their established beliefs more generally. If the young Crown Prince’s reforms fail, will they start questioning MBS himself?” The prince is indeed playing a risky game. When Mohammed meets with President Trump at


How will you know if there’s E. coli in your marijuana? No one’s figured out how to test and regulate it yet.

Most Americans live in states that permit some people to sell, buy and consume cannabis, despite ongoing federal prohibition. Twenty-six states have medical marijuana programs, and nine states explicitly allow recreational cannabis — though cannabis storefronts haven’t opened yet in all of them. And each election cycle, voters expand the number of states that allow marijuana possession and use. Apart from Vermont, where legislators passed a limited law legalizing use, states have changed their marijuana laws by popular ballot initiatives. To most voters, initiatives offer a binary, yes/no question: legalize it or not? But behind that lie a host of regulatory follow-up questions — including questions of how the product’s potency, consistency and safety should be regulated. Of course, black-market producers do not test marijuana for contaminants or offer potency labels for their consumers. Presumably, states will want to do more. And cannabis-testing labs in states with legal marijuana are not yet using uniform standards. Our research shows that could be a problem. Here’s why. What might states wish to test for? Regulators must cope with a rapidly evolving market featuring THC-infused edibles, beverages, tinctures and concentrates, alongside the traditionally heated and inhaled marijuana flower. In doing so, they may wish to consider testing for the following: Who will do the testing? Conventional testing facilities have stayed away from marijuana, given federal prohibition — and an ad hoc industry of cannabis-specific testing labs has emerged. States often regulate testing labs in other settings, such as drinking water, but do not rigorously monitor the marijuana testing industry. Testing presents some complicated questions. Precision is costly, and states haven’t set standards about how much precision is required. Labs have incentives to charge growers lower prices — and, therefore, deliver less precise answers — and to report more THC and CBD, since cannabinoid-rich products sell for more. The questions include: Answers to these questions are all over the map. The state of Washington requires that labs receive accreditations from RJ Lee Group. California and some others require more rigorous accreditation from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Oregon’s labs are accredited by the state’s environmental agency. Nevada alone requires that labs follow the recommendations of an American Herbal Pharmacopoeia document called “Cannabis Infloresence.” Here’s why oversight might be needed My colleague Nick Jikomes and I turned to the state of Washington’s testing data to evaluate the consistency of results across labs. Individual sellers


Retail politics, ruthless crackdowns and youthful drive: As Saudi Crown prince woos U.S., a reputation precedes him

the precise nature of the charges undermined the government’s claims of transparency and led to accusations that authorities had carried out a brazen financial shakedown. A report this month in the New York Times said that many of the detainees, who were held in the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh, were subjected to physical abuse, and that one detainee died in custody, with his body showing signs of abuse. The government called the allegations “absolutely untrue,” the Times reported At home, Mohammed has generated excitement, particularly among the under-30s who make up nearly two-thirds of the population, by easing some restrictions on culture and entertainment and reining in the authority of the so-called religious police who enforced the kingdoms’s ultraconservative norms. Concerts have been held, and movie theaters are set to open later this month. This summer, women will be allowed to drive cars for the first time in decades and attend some sporting events. Under certain conditions, they will be able to join the military, although they still require the permission of a male guardian for many decisions, including to travel abroad. There are several reasons for Mohammed’s rush to modernity. With oil prices low and unlikely to provide the endless wealth on which the Saudi royal family once depended, “if there are no changes, the kingdom is headed toward disaster,” said Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton and frequent visitor to Saudi Arabia who has spent time with the crown prince. “He’s been in a Tesla, and he knows what’s coming down the pike,” Haykel said. “Oil is losing its value. He has a very short span of time to move the country. That’s why he’s in a hurry.” The crown prince also has a short bench of trusted talent. Partnerships with outsiders, better training for those at home, and openings to women are in part inspired by the need to build a new class of Saudi leaders. “If you don’t build human capacity, there is nothing we can do to help them,” Norman Roule, a former senior U.S. intelligence official who served in Saudi Arabia, said at a forum here last week of the Arabia Foundation, a pro-Saudi think tank. “They will be roadkill on the superhighway to transformation.” Haykel described Mohammed as an “optimist by temperament,” a pious man who drinks Coke Zero and has the retail political skills of Bill Clinton. “He shakes


D.C. lawmaker says recent snowfall caused by ‘Rothschilds controlling the climate’

rather than tearing one another down.” White’s video statements appear to echo beliefs, found lurking in corners of the Internet, that the Rockefeller Foundation’s Resilient Cities initiative — which provides grants to cities, including the District, to address environmental and economic problems — is actually part of a secret scheme to control and reduce the population of North America. Some conspiracy theorists also think the Rothschilds, acting in conjunction with the Rockefeller family, have technology to manipulate the weather — for example, by causing freak storms that wreak havoc on people, farms and livestock. In a video posted to YouTube this year titled “Kill Cities — Designed by Rothschild and Rockefeller: Resilient Cities Are Human Death Zones,” Internet commentator Deborah Tavares — a Northern California resident who argues, among other things, that climate change and wireless electricity meters are tools in a plot of global domination — calls the Resilient Cities program a “diabolical” effort to manipulate people. “This a genocide program,” she says. “We are being moved now into what they call ‘resilient cities.’ And it’s important to get this word out, start looking it up: Resilient cities. Understand what this is: This is a plan brought in by Rothschild and Rockefeller.” She adds, “We’re being categorized as lunatics, but we know that the weather is massively and completely, artificially controlled.” Conspiracy theories alleging nefarious plots by elites such as the Rothschilds and Rockefellers — as well as other boogeymen such as the illuminati and Freemasons — have increasingly bobbed to the surface of American politics in recent years. The Republican Party’s 2012 platform embraced what had previously been fringe fears of a 1992 United Nations environmental accord known as Agenda 21, stating that it was “erosive of American sovereignty.” Assertions that the pact was cover for a global plot had become popular among tea party groups battling local, state and federal environmental regulations. Speculation that high-ranking Democratic Party officials, including former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, were involved in a child sex-trafficking ring run out of a D.C. restaurant led to the infamous “Pizzagate” episode in December 2016. A North Carolina man showed up with a Colt AR-15 military-style rifle and a .38-caliber Colt revolver at Comet Ping Pong, a pizza joint in Northwest Washington, saying he planned to investigate the allegations. He fired multiple shots inside the restaurant before police arrested him. No one was harmed. peter.jamison@washpost.com valerie.strauss@washpost.com


This little boy has a disease with no cure. His family is determined to fight back.

The study monitors how the disease affects patients, gathering information in an effort to develop treatment. Other research is underway at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where Albee Messing, a professor emeritus of comparative biosciences, has been studying Alexander disease for more than 20 years. “I was spending most of my time with mouse genetics and basically engineering mice, to study cell biology and development in the nervous system,” Messing says. “At some point in the mid-1990s, we created a mouse, which to our surprise, had lesions in its brain, that I recognized as reminiscent of Alexander disease. And I knew about Alexander disease from my neuropathology training. . . . Even though it’s an extremely rare disease, it’s so distinctive. And so I realized that this mouse provided a clue into a potential genetic basis for the disease.” Messing and his team have connected Alexander disease to a protein called GFAP — glial fibrillary acidic protein. For more than a decade, they have been working on ways to reduce levels of GFAPs in mice. About four years ago, working with scientists from Ionis Pharmaceuticals, they began using oligonucleotides, called oligos. After injecting the oligos into mouse brains, levels of GFAP dropped dropped almost completely, offering hope that the technique could some day be used in humans. The Ledbetters started the nonprofit Grayson’s Ladder to raise funds for Waldman’s study and for further research. They recently had their first fundraising event at their home, attended by four other families who have children with the disease. The families included Jennifer and Christopher Bonsky from Ohio, whose daughter Elise was diagnosed with Alexander disease in 2014. They run a nonprofit group called Elise’s Corner. Brandon and Qwynn White from Knoxville, Tenn., also attended the Ledbetters’ event. Their young daughter, Meris, was just diagnosed in November of last year. And then there’s Charla Bruns from Texas, whose son was diagnosed when he was 4. Cameron has been living with Alexander disease for 16 years. So far, Grayson’s Ladder has raised nearly $100,000. “For us who are so close to it, it’s about investing in Alexander disease,” says Waldman, who was a speaker at the fundraiser, “but I think for the world at large, it’s about investing in the technology that, if it’s perfected in one disease, can translate into all kinds of other diseases.” While working toward a cure the Ledbetters, who


Why Americans still avoid MSG, even though its ‘health effects’ have been debunked

in our research, are friends, family and health-focused blogs and websites,” Meyer said. “I think that erosion of trust in institutions and science is not a great trajectory -- but we are clearly on it." In some ways, Meyer and other experts see the story of MSG repeating -- and deepening -- in the current "clean-eating" trend. Where MSG was once the ingredient to banish, many big food brands are culling all chemical, artificial and genetically modified ingredients at consumers' behest. But most of these ingredients have been used safely for decades. And many improve the nutrition and shelf life of packaged foods. Nadia Berenstein, a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania researching the history of flavor, recently wrote that removing them is often "more about catering to a culture’s fears and biases than the genuine pursuit of better-for-you food." “Sometimes it’s easier to put a 'free from X' label on something than to actually educate consumers about it,” said Lisa Watson, the spokeswoman for the Glutamate Association, an MSG trade group. “Personally I wish food companies would take the longer view.” Watson says her industry is still trying to dig out from the MSG backlash, five decades later. According to Mintel, the number of new processed foods with MSG is decreasing. And sales of products advertised as “MSG-free” are expected to grow 22 percent between 2016 and 2021, according to market research firm Euromonitor. In an effort to push back, Watson and her member companies regularly meet with chefs and nutritionists to talk up the merits of MSG. She has been heartened by statistics that show younger consumers are not quite as adverse to the product as their parents were. She has been glad to see media outlets run debunks of the MSG myth, and celebrity chefs, such as Hugh Acheson and David Chang, vocally embrace the seasoning. The "foodie movement" also has revived interest in cooking that shows off science, said Sarah Tracy, an adjunct professor at UCLA's Institute for Society and Genetics who will publish a history of MSG this year. While Tracy isn't entirely willing to give the seasoning her seal of approval -- it is being researched for its possible role in promoting weight gain, she points out -- she sees other cooks and consumers embracing the seasoning as a sign of their culinary savviness. Lately, Watson said, the Glutamate Association has tracked the


Transcript: Transformers – Artificial Intelligence

with the Coast Guard, for example. That we can’t be sitting in LA at USC and say, “We know better how to drive your boats, so we are going to tell you.” We really need to go beyond the boats in New York and understand how they work and so we can devil up algorithms that are more appropriate to the location. And are done in an interdisciplinary fashion, are responsive to the needs of those who are using it, and so on. Gilbert: Is there also a question of—you touched on Meredith, transparency, but also regulation. So who gets to say whether these—the algorithms being used, the automated approach being selected is fair, and fair to whom? Whittaker: Yes, this is the multitrillion-dollar question. I think we do need shared standards across the industry. I think regulation could absolutely be helpful in some of these cases. I think we need to have sort of a clear-eyed understanding that we need to validate before we try in high-stakes domains. Now, we’re in a situation where the acceleration of commercialized tech has had resources behind it for a couple of decades. We are not in the same situation where the research field that is looking at the nuances of measuring lived-impact across dynamic contextual domains has had the same amount of acceleration. So there’s a real need to center fundamental research on these questions. I think transparency, I would say, is part of the equation. We need to know where these are. We need to know the justifications for their use. We need to know by which standards they were audited, and we need to have clear democratic processes to either accept or reject that use over time. And that’s part of what we proposed in the Algorithmic Impact Assessment framework, which is being led by our law and policy research team. Clark: And this is an area where I think the government has a clear role to play. Earlier today we heard from the senators and we regularly hear from policymakers about how they want to do something about AI. I think measuring and evaluating and assessing how AI is deployed is what government really should be in the business of doing. I would like the government to tell me that it has tested all of the autonomous cars on the road and could give me reports on their performance.


Tougher climate policies could save a stunning 150 million lives, researchers find

2.7-degree threshold that calls for stricter regulations on greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. The higher threshold was a bargain struck by politicians and economists who helped negotiate the global agreement as the lowest-cost approach. As a statement that announced the study said, that strategy “permits emissions of carbon dioxide and associated air pollutants to remain higher in the short-term in hopes they can be offset by negative emissions in the far distant future.” In other words, governments can loosely regulate emissions from power plants, cement factories and other industries in the hopes that technological advancements will reduce future carbon emissions beyond what is imaginable. Shindell said, “That’s a very risky strategy.” It’s akin to loading up on a credit card now in the belief that your future income will be much higher and you can pay later, he said. Greg Faluvegi, a researcher at the Center for Climate Systems Research at Columbia University, and Karl Seltzer, a researcher at Duke, contributed to the study. It was funded by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The researchers ran computer simulations of future carbon dioxide emissions as well as other pollutants — such as ozone and particulate matter — that make it harder for millions of people around the world to breathe, to arrive at different scenarios for its potentially grave effects. Then they “calculated the human health impacts of pollution exposure under each scenario all over the world — but focusing on results in major cities — using well-established epidemiological models based on decades of public health data on air-pollution related deaths,” the statement said. The models calculated about 7 million deaths per year if governments fail to work toward zero emissions by the end of the century, starting today. “There’s got to be a significant amount of progress within the 2020s or it’s too late,” Shindell said. Even for the researchers, it’s a pie-in-the-sky goal, given that South Asian nations such as India, where pollution is among the worst in the world, argue correctly that their per capita use is small compared with historical use in the Western Hemisphere and that they should be allowed time to develop just as other countries did. While politicians, the fossil fuel industry and environmentalists fight, some people who matter in the debate are on the sidelines, Shindell said. “We should have doctors and public health professionals weigh into this. We don’t


Man is fatally shot in Southeast D.C.

time he arrived but died some time afterward. — Martin Weil MARYLAND Shooting victim is Suitland man Police have identified a man who was fatally shot Monday afternoon in Prince George’s County as Nicholas Leonard, 39, of Suitland. Police said they did not think his killing was a random act. A reward of up to $25,000 is available for information that leads to an arrest and indictment in the case. The shooting happened about 4 p.m. in the 6800 block of Drylog Street, in the Capitol Heights area, according to the police. Leonard was taken to a hospital, where he died. As of Monday evening, the police were continuing to investigate. The site of the shooting is on a block lined with trees and one- or one-and-a-half-story single-family houses. — Martin Weil Montgomery delays projects for redesign A united Montgomery County Council voted Tuesday for a transportation package that would redesign a controversial multimillion-dollar road project in an area being eyed for the next Amazon headquarters. The proposal by County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) involves extending the design phase for the Montrose Parkway East project in the White Flint area of North Bethesda by a year to allow for changes in pedestrian and bicycle access. The move, coupled with a delay in another road project, would free up about $61 million in Leggett’s proposed six-year capital improvements program, which the council would have to finalize and approve this year. The school system would get $20 million of that money, while the rest would go to other projects, such as a second entrance to the White Flint Metro station, better access to the Forest Glen Metro station, and design and planning for bus rapid transit, Leggett wrote in a memo to Council President Hans Riemer (D-At Large). — Jennifer Barrios VIRGINIA Man, 40, who died in house is identified Arlington County police are continuing to investigate what they described as a homicide in the Ballston-Virginia Square neighborhood. Police were sent Friday to investigate a report of a possible death. The male victim was found in the residence, in the 4100 block of 11th Place N. He has been identified as John Giandoni, 40, of Arlington. While they are calling the death a homicide, police said the exact cause of death will be determined by the medical examiner. The death is the first homicide in Arlington County in 2018. — Erica Johnston


ISIS kidnapped dozens of Indian construction workers in Iraq. Their bodies were just found.

In 2014, 40 Indian construction workers went missing outside the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. The city had fallen to the Islamic State militant group just days before. Relatives said they received panicked calls from some of the workers, begging for help. Then, for years, nothing. The Indian government urged relatives not to lose hope. But this week, Indian officials confirmed that the bodies of 39 of those workers were found in a mass grave near Mosul. Thirty-eight of them have been identified through DNA tests; ID cards and bracelets traditionally worn by Sikh men also were found nearby. Tests on the 39th victim were continuing, but he also is believed to be part of the group. One of the 40 workers, Harjit Masih, had earlier managed to escape his captors. “With full proof, I can say these 39 are dead,” Sushma Swaraj, India's external affairs minister, told reporters on Tuesday. The Indian government had long suggested that at least some of the hostages could still be alive. For years, though, that message was contradicted by Masih. He repeatedly told reporters that everyone in the group had been killed. According to Masih, the workers were captured by the Islamic State and held for several days. On the day of the slaughter, he said, the men were taken outside and forced to kneel. Then, according to Masih's account, the militants began to shoot. “They were killed in front of my eyes,” he repeated Tuesday from his home in a northern Indian village. Masih was shot in the thigh but managed to escape to Kurdish-controlled Irbil. Indian officials dispute that account, saying he survived by posing as a Muslim from Bangladesh. In a statement, Iraq’s government said it had worked with the Indian Embassy to positively identify the remains using DNA samples. Iraq said it would also coordinate with the embassy to return the bodies to India. The grave may contain other victims, too. The Islamic State, also known as ISIS and Daesh, is accused of executing as many as 500 inmates from a nearby jail in 2014. Dozens of such mass graves have been discovered in parts of Iraq, which had been controlled by the Islamic State. The Iraqi government, hampered by a lack of resources and personnel, has been slow to identify the victims. In December, the Iraqi government declared victory against the Islamic State, more than three years after


Winter may block view of sun at moment of spring equinox

Clouds and sleet, rain and even snow may prevent Washington from seeing the sun Tuesday at one of the pivotal moments of the astronomical year. At 12:15, p.m. eastern daylight time, the sun will be. (or more properly, SEEM to be) poised in a position of equality of illumination between the northern and southern hemispheres. As it does for only two momentous instants each year, it will appear to be directly above the equator, favoring with its life-giving warmth neither the areas of our planet above the equator or those below. But according to the latest forecasts, almost every kind of wintry precipitation in the arsenal of cold weather may prevent us from glancing at the solar orb , as an act of celebration of the moment, and possibly awe at the regularity of Earth’s orbital motion.. Which may be just as well, of course, unless we have held onto our eclipse glasses from last summer. Looking with the unprotected eye upon the solar disk is a prescription for incurring damage to the eye. But this should not prevent a recognition of the moment. Afterward, the sun will seem to cross the equator, and favor us in the northern hemisphere for six months. Then it will cross again in September, at the time of the second equinox of the year. So it may snow. Sleet may fall. And cold rain. But that sun, according to all the laws of physics and astronomy, can not be stopped. If anything can be said with certainty, it is that it will continue on its annual pilgrimage until it stands (or seems to stand) above the tropic of cancer. That will be the moment of the summer solstice. It will come in June. But let us not get ahead of the game. Tuesday is the equinox, the vernal equinox. Whether we see the sun or not, whether we wear galoshes and hooded coats or not. The time will be 12:15 p.m. Martin.Weil@washpost.com


Walmart is adding FedEx Office to 500 of its stores

Walmart is continuing to build on its efforts to become a one-stop shop in the Internet age. The retailer on Tuesday said it is adding FedEx Office locations, where customers can ship packages, drop off returns and pick up deliveries, to 500 of its U.S. stores. The announcement follows a pilot program in which the companies tested FedEx stores in 46 Walmart locations in six years. Under the new program, FedEx Office will expand to about 10 percent of Walmart’s U.S. stores over the next two years. The partnership “builds on a shared goal of providing customers convenience and value, so they can save both time and money,” Brian Philips, chief executive of FedEx Office, said in a statement. In early tests, the companies found that many customers shopped at Walmart after visiting the FedEx store, Phillips told CNBC on Tuesday. Walmart, based in Bentonville, Ark., has long been known for its sprawling supercenters, some of which include vision centers, pharmacies, nail salons, dry cleaners, bank branches, even eateries such as McDonald’s. The addition of FedEx, though, comes as the retailer invests heavily in its online business. Amazon.com, Walmart’s largest rival, now accepts returns at Kohl’s department stores and allows customers to pick up packages at a number of neighborhood stores and lockers. (Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, also owns The Washington Post.) “Offering shipping services makes Walmart stores more relevant to the way customers live and work today,” said Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners, a retail research and consulting firm. “Customers want convenience, whether they’re shopping online or in the store.” The announcement is the latest in a series of partnerships Walmart has unveiled in the past week, as the world’s largest retailer looks to build its online and delivery businesses. Handy, an installation and assembly service, will soon be available at nearly half of Walmart’s U.S. stores. (Amazon and Ikea also offer similar services.) And last week, Walmart announced that it would partner with ride-hailing service Uber to deliver groceries in 100 cities nationwide. “Our busy customers view our stores as a one-stop-shop for all the products and services they are looking for,” Daniel Eckert, a senior vice president at Walmart, said in a statement. Read more: Retailers are hiring more people. One reason: Home renovations. When will the sales begin? And other Toys R Us-related questions, answered. Analysts: Toys R


Can Trump’s tariffs keep China from becoming the global technology leader?

policy weapon” to pressure multinationals into sharing technology with their Chinese partners, according to ITIF. Even before the Guizhou deal, Qualcomm had teamed with China’s largest semiconductor maker and Huawei, a telecommunications vendor the U.S. government says has hidden links to the Chinese government, in a venture aimed at improving China’s chip-making abilities. Qualcomm declined to comment, beyond a 2016 news release that said the joint venture would produce “world-class server chipsets.” The investment illustrates the coercive approach Beijing has used to siphon technology from iconic American companies such as General Electric, IBM and Boeing, analysts said. “This is the price of doing business in China,” Rob Atkinson, ITIF president, said via email. China’s treatment of foreign intellectual property may have been only an irritant when it manufactured low-tech products such as toys or clothing and assembled electronics for export. As Beijing covets global leadership in advanced technology, its industrial policies have grown into a threat to American economic and military pre-eminence. Trade secret theft — most from China — costs the U.S. economy $225 billion to $600 billion annually, a blue-ribbon commission on intellectual property concluded last year. The data-rich digital economy “has created national security vulnerabilities never before seen,” Heath Tarbert, assistant treasury secretary for international markets and investment policy, told the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission earlier this month in a written submission. In 2015, the Chinese government unveiled a $300 billion program aimed at developing dominant national firms in 10 advanced technologies. The made-in-China 2025 blueprint targeted sectors the United States had long dominated, such as semiconductors, and aimed at steadily reducing China’s dependence upon foreign companies. China already has gained ground. Its spending on research and development, measured as a percentage of national output, has quadrupled over the past 20 years and is now about three-quarters of the U.S. share, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. China boasts the world’s fastest supercomputer and leads the United States in the use of technologies such as mobile payment systems. Chinese researchers, spurred by generous government subsidies, apply for almost twice as many patents as their American counterparts, though some are of questionable quality, the St. Louis Fed said. China has long prioritized acquiring foreign technology, including through cybertheft and economic espionage. In December, Micron Technologies accused United Microelectronics Corp. of Taiwan and China’s Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuits Co. of conspiring to steal its


After fourth Austin explosion, police warn of sophisticated ‘serial bomber’

in detail, saying only that they appear to be the sophisticated work of a person or people who know what they are doing — and noting that the bombmaker has been able to assemble and deliver the devices without setting them off. After telling residents to remain wary of unexpected or suspicious packages, authorities are urging broader caution. “We’re even more concerned now that if people see something suspicious, they just stay away from it altogether and contact law enforcement,” said Fred Milanowski, special agent in charge of the Houston division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “Because if they move that package or if they step on that tripwire, it’s likely to detonate.” Milanowski said bombs using tripwires are activated when any pressure is applied to the wires, and he said that can include people “tripping over it or picking up the package.” Investigators have said the attacks might have been motivated by racial bias, since the previous explosions killed two black people and wounded a Hispanic woman, though they acknowledged that this is just one theory. The explosion Sunday injured two white men — one 22, the other 23 — walking through Travis Country, a wealthy neighborhood in southwest Austin, far from the other three attacks. The men were taken to a hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries, and Manley said they were in stable condition Monday. “With this tripwire, this changes things,” said Christopher Combs, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Antonio office. “It’s more sophisticated. It’s not targeted to individuals. We’re very concerned that with tripwires, a child could be walking down the sidewalk and hit something.” Combs said the bureau had brought in more than 350 special agents to help with the investigation, describing it as an “unprecedented response.” Dan Defenbaugh, a former FBI official who spent decades investigating bomb cases, said the use of a tripwire Sunday “dramatically changes the tactics involved.” The shift in method — from a bomb targeting an individual or their family to a device that could kill a random passerby — evokes past attacks that created climates of fear, such as the Washington-area sniper shootings that gripped the D.C. region for weeks in 2002 as victims were shot at random. And, like during the Unabomber’s campaign of sending explosives through the mail, the Austin attacks thus far defy explanation and have come without any


Why Democrats voted to roll back Obama-era banking rules

the legislation to reach Trump's desk, Congress still must reconcile the House and Senate versions. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said this week that he wants the Senate version to look more like the House's, potentially threatening the legislation. But why did so many blue- and purple-state Democrats join the push? Defenders of the bill said they were persuaded by its merits, arguing that it was motivated by the desire to free up capital for small regional and community banks in their states to curb the excesses of the Dodd-Frank bill that President Barack Obama signed in 2010 after the financial crash. “What moved this bill was the longtime belief that there had been reduced access to capital, particularly in rural communities, and every state’s got some of that,” Warner said. The legislation was also supported by both Democratic senators representing Michigan, a swing state that Obama won twice but that Trump took in a huge upset. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) said that he frequently met with representatives of the credit unions and that their push for the bill helped win his support. “Those are critical institutions, particularly in our more rural areas,” Peters said. Opponents pointed to financial contributions from industry members. Over the past six years, the average supporter of the bill received $277,000 in campaign contributions from banks, credit unions and similar industries, more than double the average amount received by opponents of the bill, according to an analysis by MapLight, a nonprofit organization that studies the effect of money in politics. An aggressive lobbying push may have also helped put the bill over the top. The Financial Services Roundtable, a D.C.-based lobbying firm that represents many of the United States' largest banks, devoted a team to pushing the bill and hired outside consultants for the effort. The week of Feb. 28, representatives of the nation's community banks brought thousands of people to Washington to “take every opportunity we could find” to meet with lawmakers and their staffs, said Ryan Donovan, a spokesman for the Credit Union National Association. “There was a lot of one-on-one outreach throughout the year — regular phone calls, regular check-ins to see where the pressure points were, to see where folks might need counsel about the legislation,” said Anthony Cimino, a vice president of the Financial Services Roundtable, noting that the group's focus was mostly on


The CEO of the Trump 2016 data firm was recorded pitching illegal overseas campaign tactics

client to disclose his intentions. They left with grave concerns and did not meet with him again.” Nix was quoted directly: “In playing along with this line of conversation, and partly to spare our ‘client’ from embarrassment, we entertained a series of ludicrous hypothetical scenarios. I am aware how this looks, but it is simply not the case.” It doesn’t seem as though Cambridge subsequently contacted British authorities about its concerns, if this was actually the intent of the meeting. It’s true that there’s no proof that Nix’s and Turnbull’s comments were anything more than bluster. We noted elsewhere that Cambridge is, ultimately, a marketing firm whose primary client is itself. Maybe a willingness to entertain nefarious tactics is simply a way of securing business, and clients are steered away from such behavior once the firm is hired. That said, SCL’s reputation precedes it. In March 2017, Bloomberg outlined various elections in which the company had been engaged around the world and the questionable tactics that had been deployed to its clients’ benefit. In 2005, Slate looked at the then-new firm’s sales pitch, suggesting that it sounded like a company predicated on propaganda. (“If your definition of propaganda is framing communications to do something that’s going to save lives, that’s fine,” the public affairs director told Slate.) Nothing in the Channel 4 report directly implicates the Trump campaign. (The network is releasing another segment focused on the United States on Tuesday.) Cambridge was apparently created in part to address concerns about foreign companies being involved in American elections, but, according to the Campaign Legal Center’s Lawrence Noble, it is legal for a campaign to hire a consulting firm with foreign employees to bolster its campaign efforts. What the story brings to mind more than anything is the track record of Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman. Before joining Trump’s team in early 2016, Manafort had a long history of working on behalf of ethically questionable efforts and regimes around the world: Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines; Mobutu Sese Seko in Congo, and, most significantly, the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who is closely tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Part of the issue, certainly, is that there’s lots of money to be made in unscrupulous international politics. Corrupt regimes tend to be wealthy ones. It’s just remarkable that both Manafort and Cambridge wound up in close orbit of Trump. How Manafort


Local Digest: Fire destroys 116-year-old house in Prince George’s County

MARYLAND Fire destroys historic116-year-old house Fire destroyed a house in Prince George’s County early Sunday that was more than a century old, authorities said. Both floors of the house were engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived around 1 a.m., according to county fire department spokesman Mark Brady. He said the house, in the 18300 block of Queen Anne Road in Upper Marlboro, was 116 years old. One man who was inside suffered smoke and burn injuries that did not appear life-threatening, Brady said. Damage was estimated at $130,000, he said. No cause was known. — Martin Weil VIRGINIA Man is Arlington's 1st homicide of 2018 A man found dead at a home in Arlington on Friday was killed, police said Monday, making him the first homicide victim in the county this year. Police spokeswoman Ashley Savage said Monday that detectives were still trying to reach the man’s family. Nor would Savage say how the man was killed, only that detectives “located evidence” that led them to investigate the death as a homicide. After responding to a 911 call Friday around 7:35 p.m. reporting a possible death, police found the man in a home in the 4100 block of 11th Place North, near Washington-Lee High School. — Rachel Weiner The District Money taken from bank on Capitol Hill A bank was robbed Monday on Capitol Hill, and D.C. police said they are looking for a man and a woman. Police said a man gave a teller a note demanding money about 10:40 a.m. at the Capitol One branch in the 300 block of Pennsylvania Avenue SE. He left with cash and walked away with a woman who had waited outside, they said. The branch is a few blocks from the Capitol and the Library of Congress. — Martin Weil


‘I’m a healer now’: Ex-NFLer Ricky Williams gets into the marijuana business

Ricky Williams, whose NFL career was marked by marijuana use and advocacy — leading to occasional public ridicule — knows that times have changed with regard to weed’s public perception, and he is now moving into the marijuana business himself. But he is no ordinary pot purveyor. Forget the “Harold and Kumar” images you may have of the running back, who failed four drug tests during his career. Williams, like many former NFL players, has long claimed familiarity with the medicinal benefits of cannabis and cannabinoids. It’s just that everyone else is catching on now, with even some NFL leaders signaling that they’re open to researching whether to change medical marijuana’s banned status. Now the former running back is launching his own brand, Real Wellness by Ricky Williams, featuring salves, vape cartridges and tonics that contain “either hemp-derived cannabidiol [CBD], tetrahydrocannabinol [THC] or both.” Williams, 40, was always ahead of many of his colleagues in exploring alternative methods for healing and treating pain. And now, as the Cannabist points out, broader attitudes are changing about pot, with a recent Quinnipiac poll showing that 91 percent of voters favor legalization of medicinal marijuana. The journey for Williams included teaching meditation after his NFL career; he also took a 2004 football sabbatical during which he studied Pranic healing in California. Perhaps it would have been surprising if Williams had not gone into the marijuana business. “I’m a healer now,” the 1998 Heisman Trophy winner told the Cannabist. “I’m excited for that world to converge with cannabis.” Real Wellness, which is launching in California, has products designed for daily use and also includes herbal extracts. Williams and his previously unorthodox interests prompt considerably less laughter now than they did 15 years ago. NFL players are becoming aware of the dangers of opioids and anti-inflammatory drugs, which team doctors formerly freely prescribed to relieve the chronic pain and possibly help with the concussions that result from playing a brutal game. Eugene Monroe, the former NFL lineman, in May 2016 became the first active player to publicly call for the NFL and NFL Players Association to remove cannabis from their list of banned substances. Monroe donated $80,000 to University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins researchers to further study marijuana use in professional football players. “There’s enough anecdotal evidence already to say, ‘Hey, listen, we know it’s not toxic,'” he told The Washington Post’s Adam Kilgore


Trump wants the death penalty for drug dealers. Here’s what would actually work.

two drugs account for the lion’s share of the 64,000 drug overdose deaths in the United States during 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). However, if you eliminated them all, the country would still have a massive problem. The epidemic began two decades ago with legally prescribed opioid analgesics such as oxycodone and hydrocodone. And those drugs caused more than 17,000 overdose deaths in 2016. The good news is that government, the medical community and patients are learning the lessons of unwise past prescription practices, especially the widespread use of opioids for chronic, non-cancer pain. In more recent years, opioid prescribing has begun to decline, from the all-time peak of 782 morphine milligram equivalents (MME) per capita in 2010 to 640 MME per capita in 2015, according to a July 2017 CDC report. That’s an 18-percent decline, which has almost certainly continued, or even accelerated, especially since the CDC published new, more cautious opioid prescribing guidelines in 2016. Predictably, there is now a backlash to the backlash: Advocates for pain patients decry the lack of access to opioids and say they are being made to suffer for the mistakes of others. Such concerns need to be taken seriously — opioids must remain available for cancer pain and other clear palliative needs. Yet these complaints also need to be kept in perspective. Data show wide geographic discrepancies in rates of opioid prescribing (poor, rural counties have higher rates than urban ones), which suggests that objective medical considerations are not the only reason for heavy usage where it occurs. Indeed, the latest research shows that opioids are not the most effective treatment for common forms of non-cancer pain. Quite often, they have been dispensed precisely because more effective alternatives — physical therapy, for example — were not available. Even after recent reductions, doctors in the United States still prescribe legal opioids at three times the 1999 rate. If doctors met the goal Mr. Trump set in his speech — a one-third reduction in opioid prescriptions by 2021 — they would still be prescribing at double the 1999 rate. And the United States would still be administering legal opioids far more frequently than its peer nations in the industrialized world. This country prescribes opioid pain medicines twice as frequently as Germany does, but as bitter experience has taught, that doesn’t make us twice as good at treating pain.


California teacher fired after calling U.S. troops ‘the lowest of our low’

appeared to connect the undetermined outcome of the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the intellectual capabilities of the troops fighting them. “Because we have a bunch of dumbs‑‑‑s over there,” Salcido said in the video. “Think about the people who you know who are over there. Your freaking stupid Uncle Louie or whatever. … They’re not like high-level thinkers, they’re not academic people, they’re not intellectual people. They’re the lowest of our low.” The video appeared to be surreptitiously recorded and was published on Facebook by a woman who said the student who filmed it was a friend’s son. She urged her followers to help her “make this go viral,” and the video spread widely, with millions of views, after it was picked up by conservative media outlets, including Fox News Channel and Breitbart News. Salcido’s disparaging comments sparked harsh condemnation: The school district was deluged by thousands of emails, many from veterans, active-duty troops and military family members, the Times reported. He was also slammed by White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, a retired Marine general whose son, Lt. Robert Michael Kelly, was killed in Afghanistan in 2010. “Well, I think the guy ought to go to hell,” Kelly said in late January. “I just hope he enjoys the liberties and the lifestyles that we fought for.” A special school board meeting following the video’s release was packed by critics, many of them dressed in military uniforms or sporting hats and shirts referencing their service. The backlash led to death threats against Salcido and his family, he told the Times in January, and he has since attempted to explain his comments amid calls from his colleagues to resign. “I don’t think it’s all a revelation to anybody that those who aren’t stellar students usually find the military a better option. … That’s not a criticism of anybody. Anything I said had nothing to do with their moral character,” he said during a February city council meeting. Of the reaction to his remarks, he said: “This is probably the most exaggerated situation I’ve ever seen.” “I do believe the military is not the best option for my students,” he continued. “That does not mean I’m anti-military, because I’m not.” Salcido’s attempted clarification did not pass muster with at least one fellow council member. “He’s disgraced us, disgraced this city, disgraced this nation,” said Councilman Bob Archuleta,


a veteran whose two sons are on active duty, the Times said. Salcido has rejected calls to resign from the council. The Whittier Daily News reported that a petition to recall Salcido is currently being verified by the Pico Rivera city clerk. Pico Rivera, a predominantly Latino city of 63,000, was founded by veterans after World War II and maintains a strong connection to the military, its mayor, Gustavo Camacho, told The Washington Post. “I and my fellow council members strongly disagree with Mr. Salcido’s point of view,” Camacho said in January. “Quite frankly, we denounce his statements.” Camacho estimated that at least 35 percent of Pico Rivera residents had veterans in their families. Salcido has served on the City Council for nearly 20 years and is a former three-time mayor of Pico Rivera. His charge on the council, according the website, is to “continue Pico Rivera’s inclusion into the American mainstream.” But that appears at odds with his recorded rhetoric, which was filled with references to the race and dress of insurgents who have battled U.S. forces. The military was losing to “dudes wearing freaking robes and chanclas [flip-flops] in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he told his students. “The data is in, we don’t have a good military,” he continued. “We couldn’t beat the Vietnamese. They’re a bunch of people this freaking big throwing rice at us.” He also criticized military recruiters in public schools. “It’s a lie that our military is freaking b‑‑‑‑ing,” he said. “So, if you join the military, it’s because you had no other options,” Salcido was heard saying. “It’s because you didn’t take care of business academically, because your parents didn’t love you enough to push you and then you didn’t love yourself enough to push yourself.” A recent study appears to undermine Salcido’s assertion that military service is a dead-end proposition. Nearly 1 in 8 young adults in America did not graduate from high school, but only 1 in 33 veterans did not have a high school diploma, according to a 2017 study from the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. The study evaluated a decade of data between 2005 and 2015, culled from post-9/11 veterans. About half of the post-9/11 veteran population has earned a college degree, compared with 37 percent of the general population, the study said. One reason: The military requires a high school diploma to enlist and


Baltimore hospital faulted by regulator after mentally ill, half-naked woman pushed into cold

In a report released Tuesday, a federal regulator faulted a Baltimore hospital after a mentally ill woman clad only in a hospital gown was filmed being forcibly removed from its emergency room on a cold night this year. In a widely viewed video circulated on social media in January, a mentally ill woman identified by her family only as Rebecca was removed from the University of Maryland Medical Center by security guards. “So wait, y’all just going to leave this lady out here with no clothes on?” Imamu Baraka, who filmed the incident, asked the guards. Rebecca’s face appeared bloody, and she moaned: “Please help me!” In a report dated March 2 sent to The Washington Post on Tuesday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a part of the Department of Health and Human Services, detailed an investigation of “deficiencies of EMTALA” at the hospital — failures to comply with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, a federal law that sets standards of care in emergency rooms. The report detailed the experience of “Patient #1,” a patient who came to the emergency room in January. The hospital declined to identify the patient as Rebecca; Cheryl Chandler, Rebecca’s mother, said it was her. The patient was admitted about 1 p.m. after a fall from a motorized bike, the report said, resulting in a minor head injury. The patient was “found to be free of an emergency medical condition and was cleared for discharge,” according to the report. But about 11:40 p.m., the patient “was resistant to discharge and would not dress,” the report said. She was removed by security “while still in a hospital gown,” and brought back by ambulance just half an hour later. “I do not feel normal, and do not know what normal is,” the patient said. The patient was then taken to a homeless shelter in a taxi without an exam, and was not re-registered. In the report, which leaves space for health-care providers to respond, the hospital described the incident as “an aberration.” “We take responsibility for the combination of circumstances in January that failed to compassionately meet our patient’s needs beyond the initial medical care provided,” Karen Lancaster, a hospital spokeswoman, said in a statement. “While our own thorough self-examination revealed some shortcomings, the regulatory assessment punctuates the necessity to more firmly demonstrate our unwavering commitment to safe, quality, compassionate patient care.” Chandler,