The Washington Post wins 2 Pulitzer Prizes for reporting on Russian interference and the Senate race in Alabama

Post videographers Dalton Bennett and Thomas LeGro recorded the encounter. A few days later, playing a hunch that Phillips worked for Project Veritas, Aaron C. Davis and reporter Shawn Boburg teamed up to track her as she drove from her home to the organization’s offices outside New York City. Bennett and LeGro subsequently recorded Davis’s interview with Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe outside the office as he declined to answer questions about Phillips. The Post also had two finalists in the annual Pulitzer competition: Book critic Carlos Lozada was cited for essays about the cultural and political forces shaping the Trump presidency, and John Woodrow Cox was recognized for his alarming and emotional series of articles about children who have experienced the trauma of gun violence. The New York Times won three awards. In addition to sharing the national reporting prize with The Post and receiving the public-service medal for its reporting on sexual harassment, the newspaper won in the editorial cartooning category for “Welcome to the New World,” a series that followed a Syrian refugee family’s first months in America through illustrations. The series was written by Jake Halpern and illustrated by Michael Sloan. The Times’s Pulitzers had an unusual footnote: reporter Michael Schmidt was a prominent contributor to both the paper’s Russia coverage and its harassment stories, earning him a piece of two Pulitzers in one year — a “rare feat” in the annals of the competition, according to Roy Harris, a historian of the awards. One of the most notable winners this year came in the letters, drama and music portion of the awards, where Kendrick Lamar won for his album “DAMN.” in the music category. The 30-year-old rapper, already seen by many as one of the genre’s greatest of all time, became the first non-classical/non-jazz winner. Other journalism winners included the Press-Democrat of Santa Rosa, Calif., for breaking news reporting for its coverage of historic wildfires; the Cincinnati Enquirer staff in local reporting for its coverage of the city’s heroin epidemic; and the staffs of the Arizona Republic and USA Today network in explanatory reporting for coverage related to President Trump’s proposal to build a border wall. The Pulitzers are awarded annually for newspaper, magazine and online journalism. Separate awards are made for achievement in literature, drama and musical composition. The awards are administered by Columbia University, and are determined by juries of professional journalists. paul.farhi@washpost.com


‘Jungle Jabbah’ was accused of cannibalism and other horrors in Liberia. How a U.S. court brought him to justice.

cases, and citing the comparatively high record of success among the unit’s European counterparts, which prosecute dozens of war crimes cases each year, they’ve labeled the unit risk-averse and ineffective. The one case it litigated under the human rights statutes dates back to 2009. Last year alone, European courts brought 51 cases involving alleged war crimes, genocide or crimes against humanity, according to a report by Trial International , which provides legal assistance to victims of such abuses. Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s panel on human rights and the law, advocated for the statutes Congress enacted years ago meant to make it easier for the government to prosecute war crimes. He has voiced displeasure with the prosecution unit’s leadership over its apparent inaction, an aide said. Nicole Navas, a Justice Department spokeswoman, declined to comment on the scrutiny beyond saying that the unit has been “aggressive” in pursuing leads and “stands ready to use additional statutory tools where appropriate.” In Jabbateh’s case, the unit participated in the investigation with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania but eventually declined to move forward. It’s unclear why. People familiar with the matter have suggested that officials found potential witnesses to be unpersuasive, but Navas disputed that, saying that while she would not discuss this specific case, the unit does not always “need to be co-prosecuting cases.” Linwood C. Wright and Nelson Thayer, both assistant U.S. attorneys in Philadelphia, were determined to try the case. Each has considerable international experience. Thayer, for instance, spent six years prosecuting Bosnian Serb commanders for genocide. “With the Jabbateh case,” Thayer said, “I found myself getting emotional every morning before going into court. When you spend the amount of time that we have with these witnesses and hear what happened to them, you feel a responsibility to do everything you can to see a just result happen.” Along with Homeland Security investigator Mark Gilland, they made 10 trips to Liberia. The prosecution unit’s defenders argue that it is hamstrung by continuing weakness in U.S. law. Indeed, despite Jabbateh’s alleged war crimes, it was never clear that they fell under existing U.S. statutes, as those passed at Durbin’s urging cover only a fraction of the crimes that can be prosecuted in other countries. A broader bill, the 2010 Crimes Against Humanity Act, died in the Senate amid concern


What the classical-music world can learn from Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize

that. As fraught as the response to Lamar’s win seems to have been over the past couple of days, do you see any conversations starting to emerge out of it? Are there lessons you think the naysayers in your professional communities could learn from this? Or does it draw attention to issues, like limited opportunities and downward economic mobility in the field, that no one prize was ever going to fix for everyone? There have been some productive conversations, yeah. There’s an excellent Facebook post by Kate Wagner that’s being shared, where she talks about how if we’re concerned about new music falling by the wayside, we should be worrying more about student loans, unpaid labor, exorbitant application fees and the disappearance of tenure-track jobs, and less about something as elusive and limited as the Pulitzer. I’ve also seen some people argue that it would be better for the Pulitzer to go to classical composers from underrepresented groups than to Kendrick Lamar. I think it’s worth noting that I’ve only heard white people say this. The composers of color I know have been very positive about “DAMN.” winning the prize. Including last year’s winner, Du Yun. But I feel like we’re never going to have a really honest conversation about this until we can talk about our underlying fear of cultural irrelevance. And to talk about that, we need to ask who specifically we want to be relevant to. What would your answer to that question be? For me personally? And for classical and new music more broadly? As for me personally, the people I’m most interested in reaching are other queer people, and fans of surrealism and weird pop cultural ephemera. Which seems to be a common thread among trans composers! I don’t think there’s a single answer for the genre (or genres) as a whole. And it’s silly to imagine that the audience for a Beethoven symphony is going to be the same as the audience for a dense, thorny score by Olga Neuwirth. Just as the audience for Kendrick Lamar is not necessarily going to overlap 100 percent with the audience for Nicki Minaj, or for OutKast, or for Eminem. Absolutely. Though I sure do love Nicki Minaj and OutKast. *Note: Alex emailed me after this conversation had been published, noting that it’s actually three jazz musicians who have won Pulitzer Prizes; Henry Threadgill is the third.


Orchestra initiative will provide support for musicians of color

Orchestras keep saying they want more diversity. Now, they’re putting some money behind that wish — about $2 million of it. On Wednesday morning, the Sphinx Organization, the League of American Orchestras and the New World Symphony announced the establishment of a National Alliance for Audition Support (NAAS), whose specific goal is to help prepare more black and Latino musicians to enter and succeed in auditions for orchestras. NAAS will offer a combination of mentoring, audition preparation through master classes at the New World Symphony, stipends for travel and professional development, and audition previews for orchestras. It is supported by a $1.8 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The 700-member orchestras of the League of American Orchestras will also, according to a League statement, “provide funding, mentoring, and guidance.” Diversity has been a buzzword in the orchestra world for several years. In 2016, less than 2 percent of American orchestra players were African American, and 85 percent were Caucasian. At the just-concluded SHIFT festival, promoting creativity and new ways of thinking, the glaring whiteness of the people onstage was a stumbling block to more than one audience member new to the field. Small wonder that it’s been a challenge attracting talented young black players to such an evidently unwelcoming field, although individual initiatives have been attempting to change the trend. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s ORCHkids program has energetically supported its young members through high school, taking a cadre of them to the Interlochen Arts Academy every summer. And the Sphinx Organization, the lead partner in this new initiative, has been working since its inception to increase and promote diversity in the arts through a wide range of programs, including competitions, funding and outreach. NAAS, however, represents the first industry-wide attempt seriously to address a gap that is increasingly seen as a major barrier to classical music establishing its relevance to 20th-century audiences, with serious collaboration between the leading players in the field. It will take many years to see concrete results — the years it takes for young artists to make their way through the training and auditioning process and, one hopes, into orchestras. But it moves beyond lip service and devotes some money and resources to trying to figure out a solution to a problem that badly needs solving.


The Health 202: Health industry giants get tax windfall. But it’s unclear how it will be used.

edible forms of marijuana after attaining a legal card. Under the Oklahoma proposal, patients could get a medical marijuana license that would allow them to possess up to three ounces of the drug as well as six mature plants and six seedlings, per the AP. OOF: Nearly 100 people were arrested yesterday and charged with distributing heroin and fentanyl in the takedown of a drug distribution network operating in West Virginia and Michigan, “Justice officials said the multistate operation is the latest example of the tough stance that the department has taken under Sessions in combating the opioid crisis,” “Our great country has never seen drug deaths like we’re seeing today,” Sessions said in a statement yesterday. “Under President Trump’s strong leadership, the Department of Justice has taken historic new actions to put drug traffickers in jail and keep dangerous drugs out of the wrong hands.” OUCH: An ailing person's salvation is another family's grief. A rise in organ transplants is linked to a similar rise in drug overdose deaths across the nation, “Although the organs are from people who had risky lifestyles, people who receive such transplants do not appear to have more negative effects over time,” Cleve writes. “That is decidedly good news to the more than 114,000 people who the United Network for Organ Sharing estimates were awaiting transplants Tuesday afternoon — though researchers concede it comes with an asterisk.” “This is not an ideal or sustainable solution to the organ shortage,” researcher Christine Durand wrote in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, where the data were published. — Trump’s pick to head the Department of Veterans Affairs has privately pledged to Democratic Sen. Jon Tester (Mont.) that he would oppose efforts to privatize veterans’ health care, Tester said Jackson made the promise at a one-on-one meeting on Tuesday, but said Jackson had not yet explained his stance to the president. — The man with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, who caught national attention for confronting Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) last year about the Republican tax bill, has launched a new “Be a Hero” campaign targeting Republicans. “Four months after my wife gave birth to a beautiful baby boy named Carl, I was diagnosed with ALS,” Barkan says in the ad. “I was shocked when Congress proposed a tax bill that would take away my health care.” The six-figure buy was designed to create a splash in


Americans like their relationship with Japan. Why? China.

A new poll has found that Americans are broadly favorable toward Japan, with the majority in favor of keeping the relationship between Tokyo and Washington as it is or strengthening it. What makes the relationship so important to Americans? One key factor appears to be Japan's rising neighbor: China. The poll, conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in March, found that when people were asked whether the United States should change its relationship with Japan in the face of “an increasingly powerful China,” 43 percent said that the country should strengthen its relationship with Japan, and 46 percent said that it should keep the relationship the same. One in 10 Americans said they thought Washington should downplay its alliance with Japan to improve U.S. relations with China. Notably, when the Chicago Council asked the same question 10 years ago in 2008, 32 percent of Americans said the country should strengthen its relationship with China, while 54 percent said there should be no change, and 9 percent said it should downplay it. The poll was released after President Trump welcomed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, marking a second high-profile visit to the Florida resort by the Japanese leader. Although both leaders are facing scandals and low approval ratings at home, as well as major disagreements over trade, their views of Japan's role in East Asia align in a number of significant aspects. Most strikingly, Trump has criticized Japan's military dependence on the United States, while Abe has hopes of altering Japan's pacifist constitution. Both leaders have been critical of the threat posed by a rising China — a position held by the majority of the U.S. public, to an extent. In the Chicago Council's polling, 62 percent of Americans view China as a rising military power. However, 39 percent view it as a critical threat facing the United States, compared with 78 percent who said the same of North Korea. Americans were largely optimistic about Japan's ability to deal with world problems, with a total of 62 percent saying that they had a great deal or a fair amount of confidence in the country; in contrast, 41 percent said the same of China. On a personal level, Abe was viewed favorably by 64 percent of Americans, compared with 32 percent who said the same of China's Xi Jinping. A 65 percent majority of Americans described


What U.S. drug policy might look like in a perfect world

state control over certain aspects of retail sales, as in the case of some U.S. states. Turning to marijuana, the striking thing here is the vast gulf in desirability between state control and the current regime of absolute prohibition, as practiced by the federal government and many states. Decriminalization, often touted as a middle-ground approach to dealing with marijuana use, is slightly desirable to complete prohibition but not by much. The researchers even felt that an unfettered free market in marijuana would be preferable to either prohibition or decriminalization. The big factors in the researchers' evaluation of marijuana regulation included potential medical applications, the avoidance of the use of more dangerous substances, and the promotion of family and community cohesion (e.g., putting an end to the drug war that has torn so many families and communities apart). Tradeoff-wise, the only significant downside to a state-regulated marijuana market would be the influence of private industry — this, for instance, is the chief concern of many opponents of full marijuana legalization. But the researchers felt this was significantly outweighed by the benefits of regulated legalization. While state control comes off looking quite good in the analysis of both alcohol and marijuana, it's worth noting that there's a lot of gray area in this regulatory category. It theoretically includes everything from modest restrictions on age to a complete government takeover of the production, distribution and sales of the drug. No regulatory scheme is a panacea. In the case of alcohol, for instance, the drug still contributes to nearly 90,000 deaths each year. This analysis suggests that more lives could be saved via even tighter alcohol regulations, but the researchers agreed that banning booze completely would make things even worse. For marijuana, on the other hand, the striking finding is that the researchers ranked the current federal regime of complete prohibition as quite literally the worst-case scenario. You don't have to look far to see why: each year, hundreds of thousands of Americans are arrested for simple marijuana possession. Civil liberties are violated, sometimes egregiously, in the interest of policing a plant. Users often opt to experiment with dangerous “synthetic” marijuana substitutes, which have led to mass hospitalizations and some fatalities. Medical use is fraught with legal worries. No drug policy is perfect. But for marijuana in particular, this report strongly suggests that few regulatory approaches could be as harmful as our current policy.


Pilot of Southwest flight praised after engine explosion

A Southwest Airlines pilot is being praised for her “nerves of steel” in helping prevent a worse tragedy after an emergency landing Tuesday in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The plane apparently blew an engine, sending metal pieces flying and breaking open a window. The explosion left one passenger dead and seven others hurt. Tammie Jo Shults was the pilot of the Dallas, Texas-bound flight when it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia. The pilot took the plane into a rapid descent as passengers used oxygen masks and prepared for a rough landing. Shults was among the first female fighter pilots in the U.S. military, according to friends and former classmates. Passenger Alfred Tumlinson of Texas praised Shults and her crew for their professionalism. Passengers said she walked through the cabin and talked with them to make sure they were okay after the plane touched down. “She has nerves of steel. That lady, I applaud her. I’m going to send her a Christmas card — I’m going to tell you that — with a gift certificate for getting me on the ground. She was awesome,” Tumlinson said. Shults’s brother-in-law, Gary Shults, said her husband also is a Southwest Airlines pilot. “She’s a formidable woman, as sharp as a tack,” he said, “My brother says she’s the best pilot he knows. She’s a very caring, giving person who takes care of lots of people.” — Associated Press


Haley says ‘I don’t get confused’ after White House official suggests she misunderstood Russia sanctions

White House decided to characterize Haley’s remarks as an error, The Post reported. White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow was asked about the episode during a briefing Tuesday about Trump’s meeting in Florida with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Is there confusion inside the administration about new Russia sanctions, a reporter asked Kudlow. “No. I think the issue here is we have a set of sanctions, and additional sanctions are under consideration but not been determined,” Kudlow said. Haley, he added, “got ahead of the curve. She’s done a great job. She’s a very effective ambassador. There might have been some momentary confusion about that.” Kudlow added that “we have had sanctions. Additional sanctions are under consideration but not implemented, and that’s all.” The Associated Press later reported, citing an administration official, that Kudlow had called Haley to apologize. Despite White house compliments about Haley’s job performance, the episode marked an awkward dressing down of a prominent Cabinet member who speaks to Trump often. Haley has great license to speak freely at the United Nations and frequently represents the administration on television, as she did Sunday to discuss the U.S. and allied airstrikes in Syria. The new Russia sanctions were related to Russian companies judged to support the Syrian chemical weapons industry, Haley had said. Trump on Monday put the brakes on that preliminary plan, which the Kremlin had denounced as “international economic raiding.” Administration officials said the economic sanctions were under serious consideration, along with other measures that could be taken against Russia, but said Trump had not given final authorization to implement them. Administration officials said Monday it was unlikely Trump would approve any additional sanctions without another triggering event by Russia, describing the strategy as being in a holding pattern. Some time after Haley’s comments on CBS, the Trump administration notified the Russian Embassy in Washington that the sanctions were not, in fact, coming, a Russian Foreign Ministry official said Monday. The Trump team decided to publicly characterize Haley’s announcement as a misstatement. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement Monday, “We are considering additional sanctions on Russia and a decision will be made in the near future.” Asked Monday morning why it had taken 24 hours for the administration to walk back Haley’s comments, one White House official said only that there had been confusion internally about what the plan was. anne.gearan@washpost.com


Sessions proposes plan to limit amount of opioids manufacturers can produce

court case in Cleveland, where hundreds of lawsuits against drug manufacturers, distributors and others in the pipeline have been consolidated in federal court. The judge in the case, Dan Aaron Polster of the Northern District of Ohio, ruled last week that the DEA must turn over transactional business data and suspicious-order reports that companies filed for activities in six states from 2006 to 2014. Lawmakers and lawyers say that the data could provide a road map for the opioid crisis, perhaps showing a correlation between shipments of opioids and deaths in communities. “Today we are facing the deadliest drug crisis in American history,” Sessions said to law enforcement officials in Raleigh, N.C. “Approximately 64,000 Americans lost their lives to drug overdoses in 2016, the highest drug death toll and the fastest increase in that death toll in American history.” Sessions’s speech followed another announcement Tuesday that dozens of people were charged with distributing heroin and fentanyl — also opioids —in the takedown of a drug distribution network operating in West Virginia, Ohio and Michigan. Nearly 100 people were targeted for arrest in the operation that dismantled the multistate Peterson Drug Trafficking Organization. Authorities seized enough fentanyl in the ongoing takedown to kill more than 250,000 people, he said. As of April 3, authorities had seized approximately 760 grams of suspected heroin, 167 grams of suspected cocaine and 450 grams of suspected fentanyl. Mike Stuart, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia, said that his state has been particularly affected by the opioid epidemic, made worse by drug traffickers who are bringing drugs into the state from Detroit. “The highest per capita overdose rate and the highest per capita death rate in the country for opiates is right here in the Southern District of West Virginia,” Stuart said. “To a certain degree, Huntington has become ground zero, the epicenter of the opioid crisis. “There’s barely a family in West Virginia that has not been affected,” Stuart added. Last year, the murder rate in Huntington increased 76 percent from 2016, Stuart said. The aggravated assault rate increased 28 percent and the number of rapes rose 24 percent, he said. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said that Sessions’s proposed changes to drug manufacturing quotas are the result of a lawsuit he brought against the DEA to change its quota policies. He said the “perverse system” led to an overabundance


For home buyers on a budget, ‘a nice, quiet neighborhood ’ in Northeast D.C.

$350,000 for it today. “It’s a nice, quiet neighborhood,” she said. Lamond Riggs bubbles with a vibrant assortment of businesses, most within easy walking distance for residents. Within the shadow of the post office are an auto body shop, a union hall for graphic industry workers, a kidney care center, microbreweries and three schools. A short drive down Kansas Avenue leads to Fort Slocum Park. Downtown Takoma Park, with its coffee shops, international cuisine and reputation for social activism, lies just to the northeast. Sankar Sitaraman moved to the neighborhood in 2012 from Columbia Heights. “We couldn’t afford certain areas,” he recalled. “Here, there were a lot of houses we could afford. It’s a very nice neighborhood,” said Sitaraman, who teaches math at Howard. “Most people here are hard-working and striving.” Not “smooshed together”: On North Capitol Street, close to where the street signs transition from a Northeast to Northwest designation, Nick DiCrosta stood at the front door of his duplex in white athletic socks. The 34-year-old father of a small child said he and his wife, Liz, were attracted to Lamond Riggs for its diversity, deciding on a renovated house for which they paid slightly more than $464,000. “We can see the changes happening. But it doesn’t feel Uber-friendly like Shaw or U Street. It’s much more of a community feel.” DiCrosta said the commute to his job at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda makes for a long day. “Unfortunately, I have to do the entire way around the Red Line. It takes an hour and 15 minutes. I’m hoping they’ll get their act together and build the Purple Line,” which will connect Bethesda and New Carrollton. Liz DiCrosta said she drops off their daughter at day care before making the 25-minute drive to her teaching job at Janney Elementary in Upper Northwest. “We’re not smooshed together like rowhouses,” she said. “We have a front yard and a back yard.” Living there: In the past 12 months, 92 houses were sold in Riggs Park/Lamond, said Tanya Slade, an agent with Long and Foster in the Brookland section of Northeast, ranging from a two-bedroom, semidetached brick home for $249,000 to a detached brick property for $760,000. Ten houses are on the market, ranging from a semidetached house for $399,000 to a renovated detached dwelling for $899,000. There are 12 houses under contract, Slade added. Schools: Transit: Crime: realestate@washpost.com


12 things to do in the D.C. area this weekend

Friday, April 20 Washington D.C. International Film Festival 420 Celebration at Gypsy Sally’s The 420 Reggae, Dub and Ska Festival at Tropicalia Capital Hemp 10th Anniversary Party at the Rock and Roll Hotel 'Evicted' at the National Building Museum Saturday, April 21 Frülingsfest: A Spring Garden Festival at the Heurich House Ocelot Brewing Third Anniversary Party Awthentik at Songbyrd DC Beer Festival at Nationals Park Sunday, April 22 Shakespeare's Birthday Open House at the Folger Shakespeare Library Rosé release party at District Winery ‘Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture, 1963-2017’ at the Baltimore Museum of Art — Fritz Hahn, Adele Chapin, Lori McCue, Chris Richards and Savannah Stephens Read more: It’s finally warm! These new rooftop bars are the perfect place to celebrate. Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s virtual-reality voyage is D.C.’s most intriguing experience right now. Sushi Gakyu’s thrills lie beyond the menu


Sleepovers? Feminist tours? Custom beer? Museums get creative to engage new audiences

information, even if it’s totally publicly available information, they immediately cannot keep that secret,” Angelica says. It’s one of the many antics museums and museum-centric businesses are using to challenge their stodgy, buttoned-up reputation and offer something more experiential. And, well, fun. Across the country, you can see a burst of creative approaches within these cultural institutions, all designed to draw in new audiences: yoga classes, pop-ups, custom beer , cat film festivals, nighttime parties with signature cocktails and DJs, dog-friendly days, scavenger hunts and more. The American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan invites adults to unleash their inner Ben Stiller at the A Night at the Museum Sleepover for Grown-Ups. The events regularly sell out, despite the hefty fee of $350 per person ($300 for members), which includes a Champagne toast, buffet dinner, live jazz, flashlight tours, movies — and the chance to wander around and commune one-on-one with Dum Dum (from “Night at the Museum,” which is based on a night there). “They love it and they act just like the kids, honest to God they do,” says Brad Harris, the museum’s senior director of visitor services. Kids, too, have the chance to participate in sleepovers of their own ($145 per person, $135 for members) throughout the year. The museum began offering the sleepovers in 2006, when the film series premiered. This year, Harris says, the facility will welcome its 100,000th overnight guest. Smaller museums can be especially scrappy in finding ways to connect with the community. One that has found remarkable success is California’s Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. Executive Director Nina Simon, who was hired in 2011, says that in the years following the global financial crisis, the facility was struggling. “At the time, we thought it was financial trouble, but it turned out it was much deeper than that,” Simon says. Museum attendance was at about 17,000 a year, and primarily made up of retirees and schoolchildren. Simon knew something had to change. “We said, if we’re going to make this museum successful, if we’re going to make it meaningful in the community, we’ve got to increase the number of people we’re reaching and we have to diversify who they are,” says Simon, who explores the concept of audience engagement and participation in her books “The Participatory Museum” and “The Art of Relevance,” as well as on her blog, Museum 2.0. She


Report: Occupational fraud is siphoning ‘staggering amounts’ of money from small businesses

Internal occupational fraud — schemes that involve employees who misappropriate assets, tamper with checks, skim cash or steal inventory — is a significant problem for businesses big and small. This week, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners released its findings on the state of fraud in corporate America, and the numbers should concern anyone running a business. The association’s biennial research, published in its 2018 Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse, looked at 2,690 cases of occupational fraud at organizations around the world. The average duration of these incidents occurred over 16 months and cost the businesses affected a whopping $7 billion. According to the report, the most common forms of fraud include embezzlement, payroll fraud and reporting false expenses. You might think that this is a mostly big company issue, but it turns out it’s the opposite. While larger companies (those with more than 100 employees) suffered median losses of about $104,000, smaller businesses suffered more. Companies with fewer than 100 employees had an average median loss of $200,000 — almost double that of their larger counterparts, the research showed. “Occupational fraud continues to siphon staggering amounts of money from businesses worldwide, with smaller organizations being hit particularly hard,” wrote Jeff Drew at the Journal of Accountancy. The big question, of course, is why. The answer has to do with resources. Small businesses, like mine, have fewer resources than big corporations. We have fewer internal controls. We have less time to supervise what our employees are doing. We have few, if any, mechanisms for reporting potential fraud, such as hotlines that people could use to leave anonymous tips. (Forty-four percent of frauds were detected this way, the report said.) Being aware of certain behavioral red flags that the association identified is a start. Requiring vacations for all employees is a must, as is having a process for anonymously tipping off owners when an employee suspects a problem. Simple internal controls, such as counting and locking up inventory and performing regular bank reconciliations, is necessary. Bringing in your accountant once in a while to perform spot audits isn’t a bad idea, either. Sure, it’s going to cost you. But the lesson for smaller companies is clear: Internal fraud hits us harder than it does larger companies, and we have to make investments if we want to minimize this exposure.


‘We should see if it works’: Lawmakers want Veterans Affairs to study whether pot is safer than painkillers

unclear whether this initiative has the administration’s support. The White House press office did not respond to requests for comment. During his campaign, Trump declared that he was “100 percent” in favor of medical marijuana, but his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has called it “hyped, maybe too much.” Sessions has said he’s dubious of pot’s viability to treat opioid addiction, even though studies have shown that in parts of the country where medical marijuana is legal and readily available, there is less dependency on prescription painkillers and fewer deaths associated with opioid abuse. Under Sessions, the Justice Department also has blocked the Drug Enforcement Administration from approving requests to grow pot for use in research. Sessions’s stance on marijuana — he’s also sought to crack down on the recreational marijuana industry in states where it is legal — had a “chilling effect” on efforts to move this legislation forward, Walz told The Washington Post. Roe’s support, he added, has been vital. “It’s a researcher’s dream — to have this size of a cohort of veterans to study. Veterans are reporting the relief they are getting and we should study it,” Walz said. “VA’s research arm has a stellar reputation and their partnerships with [the National Institutes of Health] and others makes this a great idea. “We should have the data,” he added. “We should see if it works.” Veterans advocacy groups also pushed to have the issue studied. A survey last year by the American Legion found that 22 percent of the nation’s 20 million veterans reportedly use cannabis to self-treat service-connected medical conditions, including post-traumatic stress and chronic pain. Moreover, 92 percent of veteran households surveyed said they support such research. A VA review conducted last year found that about 15 percent of veterans treated for post-traumatic stress at outpatient clinics reported using marijuana in the previous six months. The legislation’s fate is unclear as many in the GOP, which has majorities in both chambers of Congress, remain skeptical of relaxing marijuana laws. Still, the views held by some longtime Republicans have shifted. Former House speaker John A. Boehner, who once said he was “unalterable opposed” to decriminalizing pot, now serves on the board of advisers of Acreage Holdings, which operates in 11 states, growing and selling legal weed. VA has not taken a position on the bill, said Curt Cashour, the agency’s spokesman. Federal law restricts VA’s emily.wax@washpost.com


The Health 202: Medicare is the name in Democrats’ health-care game

gain ground on the health-care issue in an election year, So Democrats are laying down some markers with these bills, which give them a platform to start testing whether voters can be moved further to the political left on health care. They're betting that in the end, Americans will rally behind the affordable, generous coverage that many seniors enjoy on Medicare. But it remains to be seen whether the political pendulum -- which swung against even the more modest government involvement in health care under the ACA -- is really moving leftward on health care. — Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was readmitted to an Indiana hospital Tuesday evening for further treatment and observation for his case of diverticulitis, “Diverticular disease is the formation of tiny pouches that bulge out through weak spots in the colon. When they become inflamed or infected, the condition is known as diverticulitis,” Lena and Amy note. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a longtime friend of Azar’s, said he communicated early Wednesday with the secretary, who told him that he was receiving intravenous antibiotics and that doctors “didn’t think there was any need for surgery.” AHH: A team of 13 drug policy experts set out across a series of conferences in 2015 and 2016 to answer a question: In a perfect world, what would drug policy look like in the United States? The experts analyzed a range of drug regulation: They also looked at how regulating alcohol differs from marijuana, minimizing health risks, protected human rights and individual liberty and reduced crime and incarceration. The researchers found state control is the best approach for regulating both alcohol and marijuana. Absolute prohibition led to the worst outcomes for both substances, but outcomes were dramatically worse for marijuana. OOF: Just as scientific momentum was building around testing lower doses of cancer treatments to save patients money, companies came up with a way to keep the cost of drugs high, Carolyn explores a striking example: Early clinical evidence found the cancer drug Imbruvica could work at lower doses, and patients could do just as well on one or two pills a day after an initial round of treatment at three pills. But then Janssen and Pharmacyclics -- the companies that sell Imbruvica through a partnership -- came up with a new strategy to sell the drug at tablets


The “Cannabis State of the Union 2018,” annotated

Tomorrow is 4/20, an unofficial day of celebration for marijuana users nationwide. To mark the occasion Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D.-Ore.), founder and co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, released what he's calling the "Cannabis State of the Union 2018." It's a reckoning of the state of domestic marijuana policy and a look forward to the debates we're likely to see in the coming year. The speech covers a lot of ground, so we've annotated it below. CONGRESSMAN EARL BLUMENAUER: For the two decades after cannabis was listed as a Schedule 1 controlled substance, we were spinning our wheels. While a few states decriminalized marijuana, starting with Oregon in 1973, we were basically overwhelmed by Richard Nixon’s misguided War on Drugs. In 1996, with California’s vote to legalize medical marijuana—followed shortly thereafter by Arizona and Oregon—we moved into a new period of activism driven by the will of the voters, not the politicians. Victories for medical marijuana and decriminalization began piling up in state after state. The adult-use victories of 2012 and 2014 in Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and the District of Columbia signaled the shift to broader acceptance and increasingly sophisticated campaigns. The wins in eight of nine states’ elections in 2016 cemented the revolution. The public, and some politicians, finally understood that it was time to end the failed prohibition of cannabis. Whether it was because of the merits of the case for legalization or the power of the politics, or both, people started to get on board. Last year, I founded the bipartisan Congressional Cannabis Caucus to involve more members of Congress with our efforts. There are now dozens of pieces of legislation to end federal interference with state-legal cannabis, to de-schedule cannabis, and to remove barriers to banking and research. If not for the opposition of Republican leadership, we would have already settled many of these issues once and for all. Even with their opposition, my protections to prevent federal intervention in state medical marijuana programs are in place, and we are poised to expand on them in the year ahead. The politics have reached an exciting level, with many candidates across the country embracing ending the failed war on drugs. Over the past six months, I’ve worked to personally connect with dozens of candidates running for office to ensure that they have the facts straight about cannabis and will be on our side in Congress. Even


Skip the road trip: These new wineries are right in D.C.

seven wines, cost $35 and are offered at 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and at 1 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. (Reservations are recommended.) The drop-in tasting bar is open from noon to 9 p.m. daily, and guided tasting flights cost $12 to $15. City Winery: Tours will be offered daily beginning in May. The $35 fee includes a flight of three wines paired with bruschetta. Reservations can be made online. In the future, look for winemaking classes, wine dinners and festivals focused on particular winemaking regions: The first is a showcase of the West Sonoma Coast on Wednesday. (7 to 9 p.m.; $50.) What’s the best reason to go other than wine? District Winery: Ana, the winery’s restaurant, is a destination in its own right. Washington Post critic Tom Sietsema gave it 2½ stars, or “good/excellent,” in a November review, calling it “hands down, the most impressive food and wine pairing in Washington right now.” Ana — short for “Anacostia” — also has a full bar with cocktails and craft beers. City Winery: Beyond the wine, the star is the intimate 300-seat music venue on the second floor. Customers are seated and shushed (a la the Birchmere), and upcoming performers include Joan Armatrading, Shooter Jennings, Eric Roberson and a D.C. JazzFest showcase with the Baylor Project. A stage on the yet-to-open third floor will welcome crowds of 100 for up-and-coming acts. What’s the view like? District Winery: Ana, the restaurant, has outdoor seating with waterfront views. City Winery: The third- and fourth-floor decks, which are set to open next month, offer views of Ivy City and the communities beyond, framed for sunsets. (Just pretend you don’t see the parking lot full of school buses in the foreground.) What are the chances you’ll show up and find a wedding or bachelorette party going on? District Winery: High, but you might not notice. The entire second and third floors of the building, which include the rooftop deck, are reserved for private parties and are rarely open to the public — except for events like Sunday’s rosé release. City Winery: Good. Founder Michael Dorf estimates that they’ll have private events most weeks, though it varies: Some may take over the entire third floor, others may book a private room that looks out over the concert venue or main bar. Still, he says, private events represent more than 30 percent of business. fritz.hahn@washpost.com


FAA orders tests on type of engine that exploded during Southwest flight

The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday ordered inspections of the type of engine that exploded Tuesday on Southwest Airlines flight 1380. The FAA said it will issue an Airworthiness Directive (AD) within the next two weeks that will require inspections of certain CFM56-7B engines. The directive requires an ultrasonic inspection of fan blades when they reach a certain number of takeoffs and landings. Any blades that fail the inspection will have to be replaced, the FAA said in a statement. The agency had already issued an advisory for such inspections; the AD makes them mandatory. The FAA said it is supporting the National Transportation Safety Board in its investigation into Tuesday’s explosion and “is in communication with the manufacturers and airlines on whether any further safety steps or amendments are needed.” The NTSB said Wednesday it will examine whether metal fatigue caused an engine fan to snap midflight aboard the plane, spraying shrapnel and causing a cabin window to be blown out. One passenger died. The FAA has been aware of the problem since a similar incident with a Southwest Airlines plane almost two years ago, and the agency had already begun implementing measures to require more frequent inspections. On Aug. 27, 2016, a Southwest flight from New Orleans to Orlando was flying at cruising altitude when one of its two engines disintegrated, causing a gash in the fuselage. Passengers on that flight said their experience mirrored that of those on board Tuesday’s flight from New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Dallas. They heard “a loud boom and smoke trailing from the left engine, and saw metal flapping after the smoke cleared.” Flight 1380 made an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport. No one was injured on the 2016 flight, but the plane made an emergency landing in Pensacola, Fla. The FAA responded 10 months later with a recommendation that airlines use ultrasound to inspect their engine fan blades. Though most airlines have complied with that counsel, the agency thought the matter significantly urgent that it has begun the laborious federal process to mandate that every airline carry out the inspections. Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said that the plane involved in Tuesday’s incident had undergone an inspection two days before the explosion, but he said he was not aware of the nature of that inspection or whether it included a specific inspection of that engine. Kelly said the plane had flown


This craft brewery made a ‘Breaking Bad’-themed beer. Now, Sony is suing.

Paul) often wore while making crystal meth. The beer’s logo also includes three barrels labeled “hops” in a desert, with a storage truck and mountains towering in the background: all references to the show. This greatly displeased Sony, which claims the direct appropriation is gratuitous. The harshly worded lawsuit states: “Simply put, rather than investing the time, effort and resources necessary to establish their own reputation and identity,” Knee Deep “instead opted to hijack the famous brand identity” of the show for its “own intended benefit.” It goes on to claim that the beer’s label design “threatens to erode the value” of the show “by undermining [Sony’s] continuing ability to attract licensees for such marks and secure compensation for the right to associate one’s products with” the show. Knee Deep chief executive Jerry Moore said in a statement to The Washington Post that he was “surprised by the unexpected lawsuit.” Moore said Sony contacted the brewery in early 2015, when Breaking Bud was originally introduced, “touting their appreciation of our Breaking Bud beer that made gentle fun of their show.” He claims to have received an email from Sony reading, “It seems the Knee Deep team are big fans of ‘Breaking Bad’ and we really appreciate the call out to our very popular show.” “Soon thereafter I spoke with the Sony representative and we discussed the potential benefits of a formal partnership between Knee Deep and Sony, but we ultimately decided not to pursue such a partnership because, among other things, our label has always been meant as a joke and not something seriously connected to the show,” Moore said. “At no point, during those discussions, did Sony ever threaten to sue Knee Deep over the name of the beer. “We are a small brewery and I don’t appreciate the distraction, not to mention the expense of having to deal with something that should have been addressed three years ago if Sony really had an issue with it,” he continued. “At the end of the day, the quality of the beer is what has made Breaking Bud popular and we should all be able to take a joke.” Sony’s lawyers have not responded to The Post’s request for comment on Moore’s claims. Read more: From ‘Riverdale’ to ‘Scrubs,’ here’s what makes a good musical episode John Oliver buys Russell Crowe’s $7,000 leather jockstrap to give to a Blockbuster in Alaska


Martin Shkreli is transferred to low-security federal prison in New Jersey

Shkreli was sent from the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center in New York to the Federal Correctional Institution at Fort Dix. Shkreli was sentenced last month to seven years in prison for securities fraud and fined $75,000. The 35-year-old was found guilty in August of lying to investors in two failed hedge funds and cheating them out of millions. The case was unrelated to the 2015 furor Shkreli caused when he raised the price of a drug used to treat AIDS, malaria and cancer patients by more than 5,000 percent. Amenities at the prison complex include racquetball courts, pool tables and a music room. — Associated Press RIDE-HAILING Lyft announces plans to offset emissions Lyft plans to spend millions of dollars a year to fund projects that would offset the pollution created by its drivers, the company said Thursday. The move could help the second-largest U.S. ride-hailing company draw environmentally conscious customers from rival Uber. As part of the program, Lyft hired a company, called 3Degrees, to oversee carbon-offset investments. Those will include efforts to reduce pollution in auto manufacturing and forest conservation. “We feel immense responsibility for the profound impact that Lyft will have on our planet,” founders Logan Green and John Zimmer wrote in a blog post. “As we continue to grow, we have a greater responsibility to dedicate material resources to our vision and values.” Lyft declined to estimate how much it would spend on carbon offsets but described it as a “multimillion-dollar investment in the first year alone.” — Bloomberg News SPACE INDUSTRY Musk lands a permit to build rocket facility Los Angeles harbor commissioners have approved a permit for Elon Musk’s SpaceX to build a facility on 19 acres of port land to manufacture a Mars rocket that will be so big that it will require an oceangoing barge for transport to launch sites. Musk says the rocket will serve a wide variety of missions, including going to Mars. The permit approved Thursday has a 10-year term and two 10-year options to extend. SpaceX will receive credits to offset about $1.38 million in annual rent in exchange for improvements it makes, including construction of a huge hangar-style building. Credits are capped at $44 million. The deal is expected to be reviewed by the Los Angeles City Council. — Associated Press Also in Business About 3,300 motorcycles Mattel chief executive U.S. stocks fell — From news reports


Police seek man in 3 sexual assaults in Northwest Washington

D.C. police are seeking a man believed linked to three separate sexual assaults in Northwest Washington. In all three incidents, the man is said to have approached a victim and inappropriately touched a woman. The incidents happened on Feb. 4 around 12:55 p.m. in the 1900 block of 39th St. NW, April 6 around 11:10 p.m. in the 3300 block of N St. NW and April 17 around 11:30 p.m. in the 2400 block of K St. NW. The suspect is described as a man who has light skin coloring, facial hair and was wearing a hood or jacket that, in some instances, was pulled over his face. Police are offering a reward of up to $1,000 for any information in the case that leads to an arrest and indictment. Anyone with information is asked to call 202-727-9099. dana.hedgpeth@washpost.com


The Energy 202: Scott Pruitt praises emissions drop but still hasn’t conceded climate change is real

THE LIGHTBULB Scott Pruitt made a head-turning statement Wednesday: He praised the country's reduction of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Why is that surprising? Because the Environmental Protection Agency chief has, quite controversially, not conceded the reality of climate change. The EPA, in its annual report Pruitt, in his tweet responding to the report, attributed the drop to “tech breakthroughs” and took a swipe at the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era plan to reduce carbon emissions from the electricity sector that the Trump team is attempting to unravel. The CPP had yet to take effect, meaning the country never saw what impact, if any, it would have on carbon emissions. Pruitt elaborated in a statement. “This report confirms the President’s critics are wrong again: one-size-fits-all regulations like the Clean Power Plan or misguided international agreements like the Paris Accord are not the solution,” Pruitt said. Here's what the report really shows: Indeed, the glut of cheap natural gas in the United States and elsewhere is the result of breakthroughs in hydraulic fracturing over the past decade. Much of the early research for that extraction technique was paid for by the Energy Department’s Office of Fossil Energy — whose budget, ironically, the Trump administration proposed slashing two years in a row. Also left unmentioned by Pruitt Also, if the natural gas boom is good for reducing carbon emissions, it is terrible for President Trump's oft-touted goal of bringing back coal. But a reduction in emissions was arguably never really an aim for Trump, who has derided climate change as a hoax. Will Trump get any credit for reducing the emissions anyway? — More than 170 lawmakers tell Pruitt to resign. But the resolution is “not likely to go anywhere without Republican support, which it lacks,” — Speaking of the White House: Mulvaney’s comments follow House Oversight Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy’s (R-S.C.) request to interview EPA aides and after Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) called for more information about Pruitt’s use of multiple email addresses. But Politico reports “Republicans appeared divided about how intensely their party should be investigating the embattled EPA chief.” “We need to look at this,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) told Politico. “There shouldn’t be a reason why we shouldn’t look at this.” — Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke signed an order Wednesday calling on the Bureau of Land and Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies


‘She has nerves of steel’: The story of the pilot who calmly landed the Southwest Airlines flight

recovered in fields in Berks County, Pa., 70 miles northwest of Philadelphia International Airport. The wing on the side of the plane where the explosion occurred suffered damage that left it “banged up pretty good,” NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said. The cabin window blew out with such force that none of the materials were recovered inside the plane, baffling investigators, he said. “We didn’t see any shards of glass [that blew in] — I say glass, but it’s acrylic,” Sumwalt said. “We found no evidence at all of any broken acrylic inside.” In the midst of the chaos, Shults deftly guided the plane onto the runway, touching down at 190 mph, saving the lives of 148 people aboard and averting a far worse catastrophe. “She has nerves of steel,” passenger Alfred Tumlinson said Wednesday. When the engine exploded, Tumlinson, 55, was sitting with his wife on the plane’s left side, in the second aisle from the back. The couple from George West, Tex., sent texts to their children, telling them the plane was going down and that they loved them. “Did we think we were gonna make it?” Tumlinson asked, turning to his wife. “No.” “I got another day of my life because of that lady and the co-pilot,” he said. “What do you want to know about [Shults] other than she’s an angel?” Tumlinson described how soon after the explosion, a soothing voice came over the plane’s intercom. “She was talking to us very calmly,” Tumlinson said. “ ‘We’re descending, we’re not going down, we’re descending, just stay calm, brace yourselves,’ ” he recalled Shults saying. “ ‘Everybody keep your masks on.’ ” Finally, passengers were told to brace themselves, he said. “ ‘Everybody, you gotta lean forward — hands up on the seat in the front, you gotta know that you’re coming down, and you’re coming down hard,’ ” Tumlinson said, becoming emotional while recounting the experience. “But she didn’t slam it down. She brought the bird down very carefully.” The plane stabilized on the runway and, then, a moment of relief. “She was so cool when she brought that down into the Philadelphia airport,” Tumlinson said. “Everybody just was applauding. I’m just telling you they were just applauding. It was amazing that we made it to the ground.” The passengers were instructed to remain calm while medics came on board. Soon after, Shults came into the cabin


One person is dead after engine fails on Southwest flight, forcing emergency landing

airline said the flight was diverted after the crew reported problems with an engine that damaged the plane’s fuselage. Southwest Chairman and CEO Gary Kelly, in a conference call with reporters, said the plane was last inspected Sunday, but did not elaborate as to whether Southwest mechanics or the Federal Aviation Administration did that inspection. He called the 737 engines “proven, very reliable.” He said the plane’s pilot has been with the airline since 1994. “The 737 is a workhorse of the airline industry,” he said. “I think [the crew] handled the aircraft magnificently.” In an earlier statement the airline said, “We are deeply saddened to confirm that there is one fatality resulting from this accident. The entire Southwest Airlines Family is devastated and extends its deepest, heartfelt sympathy to the Customers, Employees, Family Members, and loved ones affected by this tragic event. The incident disrupted travel at the airport for several hours. The FAA issued ground stops for Philadelphia — meaning flights bound for the city could not depart their originating airports — that stretched several hours. Aboard the plane, passengers witnessed a terrifying sequence of events. Joseph Marcus, 24, was seated near the front of the plane when he heard an explosion and a loud sound coming from the back of the plane. He said he looked out the window and saw the engine on his side of the plane was completely black. “The engine was totally done. Nothing was happening,” said Marcus, who is chief executive of an app development company in Manhattan. Immediately, oxygen masks dropped from overhead. People started screaming and crying. Marcus could hear a commotion behind him, which he later learned from other passengers was the sound of them trying to help a woman who was being sucked out of the shattered window. The plane started to tilt toward the left, the side where the explosion occurred. “It was pretty chaotic,” he said. “I was just trying to make sure everyone was okay. I was trying to be positive and make sure I could help in any way.” The flight attendants were on the intercom repeatedly, ordering passengers to brace for impact. Passengers grew silent because the masks were over their faces; they could not breathe otherwise, he said. “We landed somehow. The pilots did an unbelievable job, and thanks to them we made it out of there,” he said. Once the plane


How to make sense of our collapsing global order

to build networks to respond to global warming. What they all want is more immediate and practical information. Thinkers can lead us, instead of disagreeing endlessly over whether we are in crisis, by moving on to define more specific aspects of our troubles — “flaws,” “weaknesses” or “outdated practices” — and identifying responses. It should be easy to say what the specifically important aspects of the liberal order are, and what is happening to them. It isn’t. The policy advocacy world could urgently use a catalogue of formal and informal norms and institutions, with maps of who is attacking and defending them. We also need structural thinking about which norms depend on which, and which are most foundational. In the United States and internationally, analysts don’t have an adequate vocabulary to describe different schools of thought and groupings of policy preferences among publics, elites and political actors. We need to build this vocabulary and to start to map out how people fall into different clusters. Journalists have had no end of trouble pinning down whether candidate Donald Trump, and now President Trump, is a “hawk” or a “dove,” an “isolationist” or a “warmonger.” Other axes would help. We also need to understand who is influencing whom, and how policy ideas are shifting and adapting as they spread across different communities. Scholars could contribute enormously here. We have stunningly little in the way of comprehensive systemic monitoring and analyses of what norms, standards, laws, regulations and processes are being reversed, altered or abandoned. Political scientists in Bright Line Watch and other such initiatives are doing important work at the domestic level, but more is needed in granular detail on specific policy areas. There is next to nothing at the level of international politics, or covering the intersection between international politics and domestic implementation. The author is aware of just one effort to track changes in U.S. government law and practice relevant to climate change, for example; and of no efforts to track changes relating to the U.N.’s Women, Peace and Security agenda and its implementation in the United States. There are multitudes of great student research projects and groundbreaking analyses waiting to happen — or be lost. As political circumstances change, such academic efforts could have enormous value. We are blessed with several distinct literatures that consider aspects of this question: political reform; conflict prevention/resolution/peacemaking/peacebuilding; and the theory of nonviolent social


Who is Sarah Sellers? The Boston Marathon runner-up is a 26-year-old full-time nurse.

was essentially an anonymous runner competing against the biggest names in the sport Monday. When a race official told Sellers she finished second, she figured that meant in her age group. Sellers views the professional runners she beat as idols, not peers — “not only the American women, but also the international field,” she said. “Obviously the conditions were the wild card that everyone got dealt, but I think it played to my advantage,” Sellers said. “Looking at my time going into the race, I shouldn’t be on the same page as any of the top 20 women. … They’re in a different league than me.” But for one day, Sellers could say she was among the best. She earned $75,000 for her second-place finish, which she said would go toward paying off her and her husband’s student loans. “I honestly didn’t think I would have anything to celebrate,” Sellers said. Her coach, Weber State’s Paul Pilkington, told her to go out conservatively, and for the majority of the race, Sellers hung back. When the fourth-place woman, Rachel Hyland, made a move around Mile 20, Sellers followed. As others started to fade, Sellers said she felt strong in the final stretch. She ran her second 13.1 miles faster than her first. “I think the biggest thing is her mental toughness,” Pilkington said. “She’s a little bit taller, so you’d think the wind would be detrimental, but she’s really strong.” Sellers wants to qualify for the “A” standard for the 2020 Olympic marathon trials (2:37:00) and said her Boston performance gives her confidence. She has no plans to scale back on her nursing job — “It’s really rewarding and gives me perspective on life,” she said — and intends to run another marathon this fall. To celebrate, she said she’ll treat herself to a few leisurely activities she didn’t have time for before Boston, like mountain biking and running on trails. On Wednesday, she will return to work a nursing shift, living a life similar to the one she did before. Except now, fewer people will have to wonder who Sarah Sellers is. Correction: More on the Boston Marathon: Desiree Linden becomes first American woman since 1985 to win the Boston Marathon Five years ago, I caught the Boston Marathon explosions on camera. Here’s what I remember. The Japanese once ruled the Boston Marathon. A war bride’s son recalls the slurs.


Will our next war be fought among the stars?

challenging U.S. primacy in space — potentially threatening satellites used for military communications, targeting and battlefield management. “I cannot think of a military mission that does not depend on space,” Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson told the symposium, warning that “Russia and China are developing capabilities to disable our satellites.” Gen. David L. Goldfein, the Air Force chief of staff, repeated like a mantra the phrase “Always the predator, never the prey,” in describing how his service views its mission in space. An arms race in space, as dreadful as that sounds, is already underway. As the throngs at the symposium attest, it will be a bonanza for the Pentagon and its contractors. But there’s broad agreement among analysts that the vulnerability of U.S. systems to attack is real. “The threat is quite serious,” says Robert O. Work, who was a deputy defense secretary in the Obama administration. He notes that Russia and China have demonstrated the ability to jam space communications, blind optical sensors with lasers, launch direct-ascent anti-satellite weapons and operate co- orbital anti-satellite weapons. Work says that when the Pentagon first described space threats to President Barack Obama in June 2013, officials warned him that the space arms race “has already started.” “For the last 10 years, our competitive advantage in space has eroded steadily,” argues John Hamre, a former deputy secretary of defense who heads the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “There is genuine alarm at the scale and momentum of the activities of our adversaries,” he says. Though there’s broad agreement that the United States needs to defend its space-based assets better, there’s a political argument about who should have responsibility for that mission. The Air Force, not surprisingly, insists that it should take the lead. Goldfein told the symposium that the Air Force now is responsible for 90 percent of the military’s space activities, and that it will bring to future space operations “the same passion and sense of ownership we apply to air.” But some skeptics in Congress and the Trump administration argue that the United States needs a new “space force” to oversee the emerging domain of battle. The House proposed last year that this space component should be quasi-independent of the Air Force, the way the Marines operate alongside the Navy; the Senate disagreed. President Trump seemed initially to favor a separate space force, but officials say the administration is


A history of marijuana laws in the United States

Since the 1970s, state lawmakers and residents have been changing the way people can — or cannot — legally consume, buy and sell pot. Here’s how.


Why these extraordinary sea-hunting people in Asia can dive hundreds of feet on a single breath

Before diving as deep as 230 feet under the sea, the Bajau people put on a pair of wooden goggles. They pick up a set of weights. Then, they take one very big breath. And they hold it for five minutes or longer. Commonly called Sea Nomads, the indigenous Bajau people have lived for thousands of years off the coast of Southeast Asia, near Malaysia and the Indonesia archipelago. They commonly live in houseboats, spending hours each day hunting fish or other sea creatures underwater. For centuries, these extraordinary free-diving abilities mystified scientists, as the source of the Sea Nomads’ intuitive breath-holding talents remained unknown. But now, a group of geneticists and biologists from the University of Copenhagen and University of California at Berkeley, among others, believe they finally have an answer: The secret lies in the spleen. On Thursday, findings published in the journal Cell revealed that the Bajau people may have developed a genetic advantage for diving thousands of years ago via natural selection, as evidenced by their abnormally large spleens. When we dive into the water, or even dunk our heads into a barrel to bob for apples, our bodies activate what’s called the “diving response” as we hold our breath. The spleen plays a key role in that process, because it is in charge of storing red blood cells. During the diving response, the spleen contracts, then injects oxygenated blood cells into the circulatory system, acting as the fuel partly responsible for allowing us to hold our breaths. The larger the spleen, the longer we can dive, the study hypothesized. The spleens of the Sea Nomads were found to be approximately 50 percent larger than spleens the researchers measured in other nearby indigenous people, the Saluan. The Saluan are ancestrally similar to the Bajau, Fernando Racimo, an assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen, told The Washington Post. “The Bajau have this subsistence that depends on marine foods, and they’ve been known to have this lifestyle for more than a thousand years,” Racimo said. “They’re pretty incredible: They can dive for very long periods of time for more than 70 meters, with nothing but a set of rustic wooden goggles and a set of weights, nothing like the equipment we would use today. The Saluan diverged from them about 15,000 years ago, and they are not known to have this marine lifestyle. So the idea was


State Department strikes reproductive rights, ‘Occupied Territories’ from human rights report

continued to have deaths related to unsafe abortion, maternal mortality, and coercive family planning practices, including coerced or unethical sterilization and policies restricting access to entitlements for women with more than two children,” it added. Several activist groups criticized the decision to remove the phrase, saying it illustrates a tendency to downplay violations in some countries while taking others to task. “Reproductive rights are human rights, and omitting the issue signals the Trump administration’s latest retreat from global leadership on human rights,” said Joanne Lin, head of advocacy and governmental relations for Amnesty International USA. Another significant change was made in the section dealing with Israelis and Palestinians. Previous reports included a lengthy section devoted to Israel and the Occupied Territories. Last year’s report mentioned human rights problems and said the Israeli government took “some steps” to punish officials who committed abuses. This year, the section is titled “Israel, Golan Heights, West Bank and Gaza.” The introduction to it notes that the State Department sought an Israeli response to allegations of abuse and that Israel “did maintain generally that all incidents were thoroughly investigated and parties held accountable, as appropriate, according to due process of law.” State Department officials said reports issued by other parts of the government no longer refer to the West Bank and Gaza as the Occupied Territories and that the human rights report is simply catching up to what is now standard practice in the administration. The human rights report is considered an authoritative source for conditions in almost 200 countries around the world, excluding the United States. It includes how countries approach subjects such as arbitrary arrests, government corruption, treatment of ethnic minorities and freedom of the press. “Promoting human rights and the idea that every person has inherent dignity is a core element of this administration’s foreign policy,” acting secretary of state John J. Sullivan said in making the report public. Sullivan, in remarks to reporters, called out several adversaries that the Trump administration has tangled with, including China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. Sullivan described them as “forces of instability” due to their human rights abuses. Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said those countries, plus Syria and Venezuela, are the world’s worst violators of human rights. “The release of the report warns abusive governments that the United States is watching them, and it reminds the victims of human rights violations


Craft breweries roll out their dankest beers for 4/20

April 20 is a day to toast and get toasted, if you work for a brewery. Brewers honor the date — which is known as 420, the high holiday for marijuana users — with pot-punny beer names, especially for IPAs. You see, cannabis and hops are relatives, and both get their flavors and aromas from compounds called terpenes. That’s why brewers like to describe super-hoppy IPAs the way that they might talk about marijuana: “dank,” “resinous,” “sticky.” There are also hazes, a style of beer that has an opaque appearance, like juice — but also the name for a family of cannabis strains. There’s a lot to work with there. We tried seven beers in the video above that you could share with your buds on April 20. Some of the names are pretty, uh, blunt. There’s Founders Brewing’s Redankulous, and Wicked Weed Brewing’s Lieutenant Dank, a nod to the film “Forrest Gump.” Stone’s Enjoy by 4.20.18, a beer brewed specifically to be drunk on or before April 20, is described as “devastatingly dank” on its can. Sweetwater’s 420 claims to be named after a never-built interstate in Atlanta, but we all know what it really means. And Purple Haze by Abita is an ode to Jimi Hendrix’s most famous song, as well as a famous strain of cannabis. Others are a little more obscure. Stillwater’s Tangerine Haze doesn’t have any weed jokes on its label, but it’s a reference to another strain of cannabis. And Lagunitas’ Waldos’ Special Ale, as my colleague Fritz Hahn wrote last year, is a tribute to “a group of 1970s high school students in San Rafael, Calif., who regularly met at 4:20 p.m. to search for a rumored nearby patch of potent plants” and who are responsible for the “holiday.” “The body is full, sweet and sticky — ‘the stickiest of the icky,’ you might say.” None of these beers contain cannabis, because federal law prohibits brewers from mixing weed and alcohol. But some brewers are experimenting with nonalcoholic beers that are infused with cannabidiol, which lacks the psychotropic qualities of cannabis. And the inventor of the popular beer Blue Moon is launching alcohol-free beer infused with THC, the compound in marijuana that gets you high. According to USA Today, the beer is “designed to mimic the effects of booze. Its developers say the drink will ‘hit’ the user at the same pace as


The bloody history of April 20: Mass murders, a ‘fake news’ war and environmental disaster

Yorker. In 1961, April 20 marked the end of the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, an ill-planned attack on Fidel Castro’s government organized by elements of the U.S. government. The botched invasion left 118 anti-Castro Cuban rebels dead and another 1,202 captured. The date also marked a grim milestone in Northern Ireland. On April 20, 1974, the country’s “Troubles” — a violent conflict between Protestants, Catholics and British soldiers — notched its 1,000 death when the body of James Murphy, a Catholic, was found dumped on a roadside. In the United States, the most high-profile April 20 incident arrived in 1999, when high schoolers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold attacked the hallways and classrooms of Columbine High School. The pair, who committed suicide in the attack, had originally planned the shooting for April 19. The date was pushed back after a local drug dealer failed to provide them with ammunition on time, the Guardian has reported. Eight years later, on April 20, 2007, William Arthur Phillips Jr. walked into NASA’s Johnson Space Center with a gun. He killed a supervisor before taking his own life. April 20, 2010, marked the start of one of the largest ecological disasters in U.S. history. On that date, an explosion tore through the Deepwater Horizon exploration rig in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 crew members. The blast caused 3.19 million barrels of crude oil to spill into the gulf over the next 87 days, The Post reported. The spill and cleanup would eventually cost BP $61.6 billion. The latest catastrophes to fall on the date have happened overseas. Bhoja Air flight from Karachi to Islamabad went down during its landing on April 20, 2012. The crash, blamed on the weather, claimed all 127 passengers and crew. A year later, a 6.6 magnitude earthquake hit China’s Sichuan province on April 20. More than 150 people were killed and 5,700 injured in the natural disaster. And last year, a gunman attacked Paris police with an AK-47 on the Champs-Elysees on April 20. One officer died in the attack and two others were wounded before Karim Cheurfi took his own life. The shooter was reportedly inspired by the Islamic State. More from Morning Mix: Lois Riess, sought in the deaths of her husband and look-alike, is captured after nationwide manhunt ‘Absolutely despicable’: Boater picked up stranded Hawaii flood victims, demanded money to save them, authorities say


What are the odds of a former fighter pilot being at the controls of your plane?

Southwest Airlines Capt. Tammie Jo Shults personifies a dying breed. The icy calm Navy veteran, who told air traffic control “we have part of the aircraft missing, so we’re going to need to slow down a bit” while her plane limped along with an exploded engine and a blown-out window, comes from the last big generation of military-trained pilots. The pipeline that brought Shults and fellow fighter pilot/media obsession Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger into the cockpit of commercial airlines is drying up. Thanks to rising commercial demand and changes in how the military recruits and retains its pilots, a third of private-sector U.S. pilots have military backgrounds. That’s down from more than 80 percent in the 1960s. Shults and Sully joined the military when it was still the dominant career path for aspiring pilots. Shults was one of the Navy’s first female fighter pilots and flew the F/A-18 Hornet before leaving in 1993. Sullenberger flew the Air Force’s F-4 Phantom II before leaving for Pacific Southwest Airlines in 1980. Veterans like Shults and Sully are becoming increasingly rare in commercial aviation, and their numbers are set to fall further. Pilots with experience in the Air Force, Navy or Army skew far older than their civilian-trained counterparts, and thus will be hitting 65 — the mandatory retirement age for commercial pilots — sooner and in larger numbers. Military pilots often spend their 20s and sometimes 30s in the service, but they’re underrepresented even in the 35-50 age ranges. Shults is 56. Sullenberger was 57 when US Airways Flight 1549 splashed down between New York City and New Jersey after losing power in both engines. He's now 67. Built by a military majority Military pilots were the lifeblood of the airline industry as it grew, along with Americans’ appetite for travel, in the postwar era. “The military was considered the primary method of gaining flight experience for a later career at the airlines,” said Louis Smith, president of FAPA.aero, a pilot-focused career consultancy. Airlines preferred military pilots for many of the same reasons as today. The services recruit the best prospects they can find, and vet them with care — which makes a pilot’s extensive background checks far easier for their future employers. The military’s rigorous training weeds out all but the most promising candidates — of more than 90 recruits in Smith’s class, fewer than 50 made it through. And, on top


How Brexit could kill Northern Ireland’s peace accords

of terrorist offenses, usually Catholics. Defendants lost their rights to a jury trial; their cases were heard by a single judge with lower standards of evidence. Having ECHR’s human rights framework was critical to Catholic support of the agreement. Without it, nationalists may withdraw their support for the agreement. Brexit may also upend the economic integration between Ireland and Northern Ireland. For example, many popular brands of whiskey, butter, cheese and milk cross the border several times before the final product is ready for market. A hard border could make cross-border production more difficult and lead to higher prices. Unionists’ and nationalists’ differing attitudes toward Brexit are already straining relations. Although a majority of Northern Ireland voted to remain in the E.U., 85 percent of nationalists voted to stay — 40 percent of unionists did. In fact, the DUP was the only party in Northern Ireland to campaign in favor of Brexit. Like Scotland, which also voted against Brexit, Northern Ireland will be dragged out of the E.U. against its will, further antagonizing nationalists, who dispute the legitimacy of Northern Ireland’s inclusion in the U.K. Perhaps most important, Brexit has the potential to wreck Northern Ireland’s power-sharing institutions. After Prime Minister Theresa May called snap elections last June, the Conservatives lost their majority in the British Parliament and, as a result, formed a “confidence and supply agreement” with the DUP to stay in power. Although the DUP never signed the Good Friday Agreement and holds only a narrow majority in Northern Ireland, it now holds the balance of power in the British Parliament. That makes it impossible for the British government to be a neutral arbiter in disputes between the DUP and other parties in Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Assembly was suspended in January, and the two parties have been unable to form a government since. Without a functional government, Northern Ireland can’t articulate its interests in Brexit negotiations. It also cannot accomplish the basic tasks of governing and, thus, may soon find itself under direct rule from the British government — a potentially perilous situation, given that sharing power in the assembly was critical to winning nationalist support for the agreement. Brexit will profoundly change the agreement and could weaken the willingness of some parties to support it. The agreement may survive, but its parties will have to reimagine it for a post-Brexit world. Kimberly Cowell-Meyers Carolyn Gallaher


The Health 202: Alex Azar is surrounding himself with industry insiders

gave the drug a positive review, saying clinical trials showed it was effective at reducing seizures, and side effects, including possible liver complications, could be managed,” Laurie writes. “The precise mechanism by which CBD reduces seizures isn’t known, the FDA said.” The drug does not contain THC, the psychoactive component in cannabis, meaning it won’t get users high. — Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer will introduce legislation to decriminalize marijuana, the first time that a leader of either party in Congress has endorsed a rollback of one of the country’s oldest drug laws, “First, I’ve seen too many lives and families ruined because of the criminalization of marijuana,” Schumer said in a statement to The Post. “Too many people caught with small amounts have spent far too much time in jail. Second, this has had a disproportionate effect on communities of color. But the bottom line is it’s just the right thing to do. People should have this freedom.” "Marijuana legalization, which spent years as a fringe political cause, has become increasingly popular with all voters and increasingly embraced by Democrats," — Yesterday, Maile Pearl Bowlsbey, the 10-day-old daughter of Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) made history as the first baby to join her parent in the Senate chamber for a vote. — Republican lawmakers across the country are backing unusually ambitious abortion restrictions this year, Mississippi’s governor just signed the nation’s earliest abortion ban, prohibiting abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Iowa’s state Senate is trying to go even further and stop abortions at around six weeks. And 20 Ohio lawmakers have proposed outlawing all abortions, even if the woman’s life is in danger. “Federal courts have immediately blocked many of these antiabortion laws, including Mississippi’s,” Mary writes. “But they still have a purpose: to set up legal challenges to Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationally, at a time when Trump could appoint the justice who helps overturn it.” “Trump has given hope to the pro-life movement,” said Ron Hood, a Republican state representative who introduced the total abortion ban in Ohio. — A few more good reads from The Post and beyond: Today Coming Up “Only 27 Tuesdays left until the election,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CAlif.) said, joking Trump is one of the best organizers for the Democratic Party: “We need the wall,” Trump said after meeting with the Joint Interagency Taskforce:


Shifting views on marijuana highlight just how differently people of color are impacted by drug laws

in assisting veterans, especially in the midst of an opioid epidemic. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced Friday that he was also changing his stance on marijuana. He said that his bill to decriminalize it will “inject real dollars into minority and women-owned businesses to ensure those disproportionately affected by marijuana criminalization can benefit from this new economy.” Attitudes have obviously evolved on marijuana on a national level. Washington, D.C., and nine states have legalized recreational use of the drug. And many others allow some sort of medical use. Legal marijuana sales exceeded $9 billion in 2017, according to an industry estimate. The Washington Post previously reported that polls show that more than 60 percent of Americans favor legalizing marijuana completely and more than 90 percent are in favor of legal medical use. But not all Americans have benefited from this shift in attitude. Some are still dealing with the consequences of strict drug laws. Sen. Kirsten Gillbrand (D-N.Y.) noted the disparity in how marijuana laws affect people of color, as well as low-income people. “Black and Latino people in NYC are arrested at TEN times the rate of white people for virtually the same rate of marijuana usage. Along with Cory Booker and Sen. Sanders, I’m cosponsoring a bill to legalize and decriminalize marijuana. Raise your voices and join us in this fight,” she tweeted. A Drug Policy Alliance report showed that arrests for offenses such as possession under the age of 21, public consumption and other still-illegal actions related to marijuana are higher for black people. Vox reported that several studies have found that even in places where pot is legal, black people are still more likely to be arrested for marijuana offenses compared to white people. In Colorado, according to a 2016 public safety report, the marijuana arrest rate for whites and Hispanics is comparable, but the marijuana arrest rate for African Americans is almost three times that of whites. The relationship between the disproportionately high incarceration rate of black people and the role race plays in this country's history with drug decriminalization is likely to continue to be a conversation as Americans revisit U.S. drug laws. How the opioid epidemic has ravaged rural, mostly white areas has captured national attention. But how people of color in urban areas have been treated by this country's drug laws appears to be a lesser concern right now.


E. coli outbreak warning expands to all types of romaine lettuce

became sick at Anvil Mountain Correctional Center in Nome ate lettuce from whole heads of romaine from the Yuma growing region, the CDC said. Symptoms of infection include bad stomach cramps, diarrhea (often bloody) and vomiting. Occasionally, more serious complications can occur, including kidney failure. CDC said consumers should throw away any lettuce if they're unsure what kind it is. They also should not buy or eat romaine lettuce at a grocery store or restaurant unless they can confirm it is not from the Yuma area. No common grower, supplier, distributor or brand has yet been identified, and product labels often do not identify growing regions, officials noted. The number of cases of illness has grown in the last several days. On Tuesday, a 66-year-old woman in New Jersey, Louise Fraser, filed a lawsuit in federal court against Panera Bread after claiming that she ate contaminated romaine lettuce there and then had to be hospitalized for two weeks. As of Wednesday, the CDC reported 53 people were infected with the outbreak strain. Among the hardest hit states are Pennsylvania, with 12 reported cases, and Idaho, with 10. The case count includes one of the infected Alaska inmates; the remaining seven cases there will be included when the CDC provides its next count update, which is expected next week. Romaine lettuce is sometimes packed in the field and shipped directly to restaurants or grocery stores. Other times, it is taken to a central processing plant, where it is packed under different brands before being sent to retailers, according to Bill Marler, a Seattle-based personal injury attorney who focuses on food-borne illness litigation and is representing several people sickened in the outbreak, including Fraser. The different ways that romaine lettuce is harvested could make identifying the specific origin of contamination more difficult, Marler said. As of Wednesday, the hospitalization rate for this outbreak was about 58 percent, much higher than the 30 percent normally associated with infections involving E. coli O157: H7, according to a CDC update sent to clinicians Thursday. Health officials are working to determine “why this strain is causing a higher percentage of hospitalizations,” the notice said. State and local health officials are continuing to interview sick people to ask about the foods they ate and other exposures before they became ill. Most E. coli are harmless and actually are an important part of a healthy human intestinal tract.


Cannabis Quiz: How much do you know about the science of marijuana?

because studying cannabis is so difficult. Truth is, there’s a lot science doesn’t know. 1. Many states allow medical marijuana. What can it do? A. Manage pain. B. Reduce nausea. C. Reduce some type of seizures and muscle spasms. D. All of the above. Correct answer: D. All of the above. Cannabis has been used medicinally for thousands of years to treat conditions such as pain, inflammation and depression. It was a surgical anesthetic (!) in ancient China, and it was used to ease diarrhea during the 19th century cholera epidemic to prevent dehydration. But as modern medicine changed from plants to powders and pills, cannabis fell out of favor. The first U.S. federal law against it was a tax act in 1937, and it was criminalized in 1952. Because the federal government still considers it illegal with “no currently accepted medical use,” researchers who want to study it have to jump through all sorts of regulatory hoops. That means we don’t have a lot of the high-quality evidence, obtained in clinical trials, that we expect with most medicines. A huge problem, researchers say, is that the only U.S.-grown cannabis that scientists can use in clinical trials comes from the government’s pot farm at the University of Mississippi. It has little variety and isn’t representative of what commercial growers are selling. Still, more and more research is being done. A 2017 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine documented “conclusive or substantial evidence” that cannabis can help reduce pain, nausea and muscle spasticity related to certain diseases. Additional strong evidence indicates that cannabis products may be useful for other physical and psychological conditions as well, such as seizures in children, loss of appetite, sleep problems, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. Cannabis is most likely safer than alcohol for recreational users, and it may reduce opioid use. It can have adverse side effects, too, especially for heavy smokers, including respiratory problems, memory impairment and an increased likelihood of abusing another drug. 2. What's the difference between medical cannabis and recreational cannabis? A. The medical version requires a doctor’s prescription. B. The recreational version requires a budtender’s prescription. C. The medical version is more tightly regulated. D. There is no difference. Correct answer: D. There is no difference. The smokable dried plant material and its many other forms (liquid, concentrate, edible, etc.), are not approved or tested by the


Is marijuana decriminalization possible in the Middle East?

marijuana cultivation represents a pillar of peasant farmers’ livelihoods. In 2014, Morocco’s Party of Authenticity and Modernity, whose founder Fouad Ali El Himma is a close adviser to King Mohammed VI, released a draft law to legalize marijuana cultivation for medicinal purposes but maintain a ban on recreational use. In Tunisia, the government doubled down, passing a law in 2015 reaffirming Law 52. At the same time, human rights groups and civil society activists, escalated calls for reform. These civil society organizations highlighted how Law 52 targets young men from marginalized communities — and called attention to the economic and social costs. Often, those with past drug convictions — however minor — have no path toward reintegration into the Tunisian workforce. While the members of Tunisia’s different political parties did not agree about whether to fully repeal Law 52, a consensus formed around reducing prison sentences for first- and second-time offenders accused of marijuana consumption. On March 15, 2017, Tunisia’s government issued regulations allowing judges to pardon defendants as soon as their judgment is announced so that prison time is avoided. Law 52 was modified — and judges now have discretion in sentencing for the first two drug offenses. They can consider mitigating circumstances and recommend alternatives to prison, such as medical evaluation and treatment. On May 15, 2017, a criminal court in Tunisia handed down the first modified sentence: a suspended prison sentence of one year and a 1,000 TND fine. Human rights groups and civil society activists commended the change but also endorsed further changes, arguing that judicial discretion has its own limitations and risks. Since then, several of the government ministers expressed a need for further reform. Leading members of Ennahda, the main Islamist political party, also expressed support for reform. While many say they want to reduce harsh sentences, full decriminalization of marijuana-related offenses appears a very distant prospect. Pathways to building greater public support In ongoing public opinion research in Tunisia, we examine the public’s support for or opposition to criminal justice reform policies. In July 2017, we fielded a public opinion survey asking respondents to report the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with a variety of policies proposed to address violent extremism in Tunisia. Although our question framed decriminalization in the specific context of extremism and prison overcrowding, the results indicate that, given that framing, approximately 60 percent of respondents oppose decriminalization


Rescinding the Russia sanctions plan is worse than never announcing it in the first place

Regarding the April 17 front-page article “Trump halts plan for new sanctions against Russia”: Rescinding sanctions on Russia sends a message to the rest of the world that the United States will allow just about any bullying, brutish behavior. It’s worse than never having imposed sanctions at all. It suggests that there was some time when our country considered the behavior intolerable, but reconsidered and now finds it acceptable. If President Trump has a national security reason for having made this decision, he needs to quickly and clearly articulate it. If Mr. Trump has personal reasons for halting the new sanctions, he is unfit for office. Eileen McClure Nelson


Maryland open houses April 21-22

#201 9717 Whitley Park Pl #th-10 4314 Rosedale Ave 10600 Kenilworth Ave #k-203 5328 Merriam St 5715 Bradley Blvd 4409 Chestnut St 5225 Pooks Hill Rd #1327s 4808 Moorland Lane #711 5225 Pooks Hill Rd #1522s 5225 Pooks Hill Rd #810s 9309 Wisconsin Ave 10101 Fleming Ave 4801 Broad Brook Dr 10421 Montrose Ave #m-2 9825 Old Georgetown Rd 4701 Monaco Cir 20815 6820 Wisconsin Ave #3011 20816 5615 Knollwood Rd 5913 Cranston Rd 5814 Madaket Rd 6005 Wynnwood Rd 7111 Woodmont Ave #918 6103 Cromwell Dr 5308 Waneta Rd 20817 8911 Saunders Lane 6620 Elgin Lane 6517 Persimmon Tree Rd 7130 River Rd 8033 Herb Farm Dr 8920 Burdette Rd 9206 Town Gate Lane 6020 Dellwood Pl 9400 Eagle Ridge Dr E 9301 Burning Tree Rd 9301 Burning Tree Rd 7208 Eagle Ridge Pl 6508 Greentree Rd 6004 Cairn Ter 9513 Bulls Run Pkwy 6204 Wedgewood Rd 6824 Melody Lane 6726 Selkirk Ct BOYDS 20841 21707 Seneca Ayr Dr BRINKLOW 20862 3 Brighton Knolls Ct BROOKEVILLE 20833 21311 Denit Estates Dr 2614 Brighton Dam Rd 2444 Astrid Ct BURTONSVILLE 20866 4258 Tazewell Ter CHEVY CHASE 20815 3211 Pauline Dr 4620 Park Ave #1107e 8506 Loughborough Pl 6 Leland Ct 4006 Underwood St 4601 Park Ave #1513 5205 Lawn Way 3318 Shepherd St 7 Hesketh St 6600 Kennedy Dr 4620 Park Ave #1504e 3410 Taylor St 6300 Brookville Rd 7310 Delfield St 11west Irving St 15 E Irving St CLARKSBURG 20871 11777 Skylark Rd 23101 Cypress Spring Cir 11903 Chestnut Branch Way 23005 Winged Elm Dr 25371 Lynwood Farm Ct 25375 Lynwood Farm Ct 25346 Lynwood Farm Ct 12504 Horseshoe Bend Cir #232 12500 Grand Elm St DAMASCUS 20872 26117 Woodfield Rd 10507 Sweepstakes Rd 26 Kings Valley Ct 10441 Carlyn Ridge Rd 10514 Santa Anita Ter DARNESTOWN 20874 13332 Manor Stone Dr 15000 Poplar Hill Rd 20878 16413 Montecrest Lane DERWOOD 20855 7209 Phelps Hill Ct 17412 Applewood Lane GAITHERSBURG 20877 110 Deer Park Dr 8307 Boundary St 8116 Irwell Ct 16621 Alden Ave 116 Meem Ave 20878 908 Highland Ridge Ave 401 Suffield Dr 111 Thrift St 12216 Morning Light Ter 210 Strummer Lane 708 Beacon Hill Ter 152 Thurgood St 738 Lake Varuna Mews 14623 Keeneland Cir 12109 Bayswater Rd 118 Hart Rd 11904 Fernshire Rd 733 Kent Oaks Way 122 Kendrick Pl #34l 20879 18721 Calypso Pl 19504 Ridge Heights Dr 18726 Falling River Dr 9064