OneWeb wants to rebuild the Internet in space, connecting billions not on the Web. Can it succeed?

Greg Wyler was visiting the satellite operations center, located improbably in a Tysons, Va., high-rise, to pump up the team, to tell them the moment has come. Smiling and radiating a childlike energy, Wyler gushed earlier this month that the system they’ve built is “amazing,” that they are “going to democratize space.” “It’s a huge step forward for space, a step forward for the world,” he said to applause. After years, Wyler’s dream to beam the Internet from space to remote corners of the world is finally here, he said. On Wednesday afternoon, the first six of his company’s satellites were launched from a remote launch site in French Guiana, a key step toward building out a constellation that could eventually reach nearly 2,000. If Wyler’s plans are successful, what he and his fellow executives at OneWeb envision is nothing short of revolutionary: becoming one of the world’s largest providers of Internet service by building the architecture in space, allowing the billions without access to WiFi to finally use the Web. Wyler founded the British-based company in 2012. “The ultimate goal is to connect every school in the world, and bridge the digital divide,” Wyler said in an interview after his pep talk. “We’re bringing connectivity and enabling it for people around the world, and in rural populations.” If successful, remote areas all over the world, from Alaska to Africa, that are out of reach of fiber optic cables could suddenly join the world of Google and YouTube, a feat Wyler and others believe could be transformative. But building the backbone of the Internet in orbit is no easy task. Others have tried to put up constellations of communications satellites, only to fail spectacularly. The enormous cost is only outmatched by the risks of putting up hundreds of spacecraft in orbit. There are plenty of business school case studies of past failure, such as Teledesic, a company funded by Bill Gates in the mid-1990s, wireless executive Craig McCaw and a Saudi prince that failed after costs soared into the billions. Attempts by Iridium and Globalstar, which both ended up in bankruptcy, also illustrate how difficult the endeavor can be. “OneWeb’s concept of ubiquitous global broad band is deeply compelling,” said Carissa Christensen, the chief executive of Bryce Space and Technology, a consulting company. “However, the underlying business case for OneWeb is still highly uncertain, and I’ve not yet seen a


Russia edges into nuclear talks ahead of Kim-Trump summit

HANOI — Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov inserted himself into the high-stakes nuclear talks between the United States and North Korea ahead of the second meeting between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Vietnam’s capital on Wednesday. Lavrov told reporters during a visit to Vietnam’s commercial capital, Ho Chi Minh City, earlier this week that the “Americans are seeking our advice” on the negotiations and that Washington should end its strategy of issuing ultimatums to Pyongyang. The Russians and Chinese have long sought a bigger role in the negotiations akin to the Six Party Talks for North Korea that took place during the George W. Bush administration. And last year, Moscow went so far as to secretly offer Pyongyang a nuclear power plant in exchange for the dismantling of its nuclear and ballistic missile program. On Wednesday, Trump tweeted that he believed Russia, as well as China, Japan and South Korea would be “very helpful” in securing a nuclear deal with Pyongyang. The specifics of Lavrov’s claim that the United States was seeking advice from Moscow were not clear, and U.S. and Asian diplomats said privately that Moscow is a bit player in the negotiations. Still, the two Cold War adversaries have discussed North Korea recently, including a February meeting between the State Department’s special representative for Korea policy Mark Lambert and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Burmistrov, and an October meeting between Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and Special Envoy for North Korea Stephen Biegun. Given its proximity to North Korea and the need to cooperate over sanctions, Russia has been a natural player in denuclearization talks for previous U.S. presidents, but Trump’s warm rhetoric to Moscow and the country’s interference in the 2016 election have raised concerns in Washington about any role for the Kremlin in the high-stakes negotiations. Analysts have said Russia’s interest stems from its desire to build an energy link between Siberia and the Far East by using North Korea as an energy foothold. Russia and China have angered the United States by proposing a loosening of U.N. Security Council sanctions on North Korea — moves the United States wants to forestall until Pyongyang completely dismantles its nuclear program. Lavrov said that Washington’s maximalist approach “won’t work, and I think the Americans have realized that such ultimatums will not force people to disarm.” “First it would be necessary to build


The Health 202: Republicans appear open to the administration’s Medicare threat to the pharmaceutical industry

it. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Kamala D. Harris (D-Ca.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also co-sponsored the bill when Booker first introduced it in 2017, but the measure was never brought up for a vote, our Post colleague David Weigel reports. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who is considering his own presidential run, and Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.), who could join the pack too, are also co-sponsors. “It’s not enough to simply decriminalize marijuana,” Booker said in a statement announcing the new version of his bill. “We must expunge the records of those who have served their time. The end we seek is not just legalization, it’s justice.” “Any of them would be the first nominee of a major political party to endorse the legalization of marijuana; Sanders, as a candidate in 2016, had called for the drug to be decriminalized,” OOF: Amid an anti-vaccine movement and measles outbreak nationwide, an Arizona state lawmaker took to Facebook to criticize the state for pushing vaccinations. “Dearest friends and people of Arizona, it seems we are prepared to give up our liberty, the very sovereignty of our body, because of measles,” Townsend wrote. “I read yesterday that the idea is being floated that if not enough people get vaccinated, then we are going to force them to. The idea that we force someone to give up their liberty for the sake of the collective is not based on American values but rather, Communist.” A state House committee recently advanced three bills that could make it easier to get exemptions from vaccination requirements. But Arizona Gov. Dough Ducey (R) has threatened to veto legislation that would mean fewer vaccinations. “I’m pro vaccination. I’m anti-measles,” Ducey told reporters this week, the AP reports. “I’m not going to sign any law that doesn’t’ promote or extend vaccinations in the state of Arizona…We want to see more of our kids being vaccinated rather than fewer.” In an interview with The Post, Townsend acknowledged the studies supporting vaccines but defended her right to opt out of them. OUCH: Amy Klobuchar, one of the senators seeking the 2020 presidential nomination, may have compromised her reputation as a consumer defender by advocating strongly for the medical device industry, "During her time in the Senate, Klobuchar has advanced proposals championed by the medical device industry that some consumer advocates claim would put patients’ safety at risk, “Klobuchar has


Saudi prosecutor indicts women’s rights activists held for nearly a year without charge

that about a dozen women’s rights activists are in custody. It was not immediately clear whether the indictments were evidence of Saudi Arabia’s intent to vigorously pursue legal charges or a way for the authorities to release the activists under the cover of a judicial process — and, by doing so, dispense with what has become a public relations problem for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s day-to-day ruler. The kingdom’s human rights record has come under withering scrutiny in the months since Saudi agents killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October. Human rights monitors, U.S. lawmakers and others have demanded an investigation into the killing as well as closer attention to Mohammed’s policies, including his crackdown on domestic critics and rivals. A resolution introduced by a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers in February called on Saudi Arabia to “immediately and unconditionally” release the women’s rights activists. The announcement of the Saudi indictments came days after Mohammed met with Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser. A White House statement on the meeting, held Tuesday, made no mention of Khashoggi or the detentions of the women right’s activists. In May, Saudi authorities began arresting activists who had campaigned to lift a female driving ban and accused them of undermining national security by colluding with unnamed foreign entities. Human rights groups dismissed the accusations as baseless and said the arrests — which came just weeks before the driving ban was lifted — were aimed at preventing Mohammed from being overshadowed in the public consciousness as a champion of women’s rights. Amnesty International said in a recent report that 10 of the activists were “tortured, sexually abused and subjected to other forms of ill-treatment” during the first months of their detention in a secret facility. Alia al-Hathloul, whose sister, Loujain al-Hathloul, is one of the detained activists, tweeted Friday that her sister recently had been “forced” to sign a royal pardon — a possible sign authorities could be moving to release her. In an interview, Alia said Loujain had told her family during a visit this week that prison authorities had placed new furniture in her cell, without explanation, a move that raised the possibility authorities are preparing to bring in some kind of official delegation to check on her condition. Hathloul was given a dresser and a new bed, she told her family. kareem.fahim@washpost.com


Petsitting in Ecuador

me to spend 10 days with Fischer in Quito. I started pulling together a packing list, placing dog treats before party dress. I Because Becky and Kip had to work, I spent only a few hours with the family before they had to catch their evening flight to Florida. She and Fischer, plus her two young children, waited for me outside their apartment in neutral territory. The two-year-old, part-Irish wolfhound rescue with the soft gray curls, long Modigliani face and lanky limbs jumped up on me — a welcome-to-the-pack greeting. Becky led me upstairs to their spacious three-bedroom apartment with giant picture windows. She pointed out the important features, such as the TV and remote, coffee maker and dog food container. Then she took me to the rooftop deck overlooking Pichincha, the active volcano that fences Quito in. As Fischer peered at the barking dogs below, I scanned the Andean peaks for a sign of the awakening giant. On our way to dinner, we took a quick spin around the neighborhood, an affluent residential area with a light dusting of businesses (mainly related to food, beauty and cars); an American international school, where Becky and Kip teach; and the U.S. Embassy. Becky showed me her go-to spots for fruit, sundries, sandwiches and a cheap massage. She assured me that the area was safe and the stray dogs were friendly, if not a little messy. While waiting for pizza at an Italian restaurant, she shared a longer version of the bio that appeared on the TrustedHousesitters website. Nearly three years ago, she and Kip moved to Quito from Portland, Ore., to teach math and biology, respectively. They were flying to Florida to drop off some of their belongings before their next teaching assignment in Abu Dhabi. The five of them will leave Ecuador for the capital of the United Arab Emirates this summer. I was curious about Becky’s history with TrustedHousesitters. She said she learned about the company through the expat community and uses the service for longer trips. She said she felt confident with the interviewing process — that she can speak with a potential sitter FaceTime-to-FaceTime — and has a strategy for determining the applicant’s priorities: Did the person ask more questions about Quito or Fischer? (Her family has also searched for petsitting opportunities around Latin America but they are often limited in this region of the world.) “I


The Technology 202: Consumers advocates want Washington to tackle ‘Wild West’ of DNA test kits

from allowing discrimination in targeted advertisements “The Senator is focused [on making sure] that as Congress tackles the issue of protecting Americans’ data privacy, our government is also guarding against potential forms of digital discrimination in areas ranging from housing and employment to lending and access to resources,” a spokesman for Cortez Masto told the Verge. The legislation would give the Federal Trade Commission power to define what constitutes discriminatory behavior in targeted ads and data practices and would “extend the FTC’s civil penalty authority for violations of those rules,” the Verge reported. — A small group of activists is voicing opposition to Amazon's planned headquarters in Crystal City in the Washington region “The opponents want to discuss concerns that the influx of well-paid new residents will raise housing costs, add to congestion and displace low-income families,” my colleagues wrote. — Meanwhile, Cuomo is trying to convince Bezos and other Amazon executives to come back to New York after the company canceled plans to build headquarters there — Facebook is working on a plan to develop a digital coin for WhatsApp users But Facebook and other companies such as Telegram and Signal that intend to launch cryptocurrencies could face several obstacles in their endeavors. “The lack of a central authority over cryptocurrencies — a government or a bank — has made them useful to criminals and scammers, and the designs of the computer networks that manage them make it hard to handle significant numbers of transactions,” Popper and Isaac wrote. — More technology news from the private sector: — A political action committee has run robo-calls impersonating President Trump's reelection campaign but hasn't directed any of the money that it raised to the president's reelection efforts — Irish Data Protection Commissioner Helen Dixon said her agency plans to finish the first of seven probes into Facebook this summer — More technology news from the public sector: — Workers for Google appeared with a group of Democratic lawmakers who announced a bill that would put an end to forced arbitration — More news about tech workforce and culture: — Tech news generating buzz around the Web: — News about tech incidents and blunders: — Today in funding news: Today: Coming soon: Trump and North Korean official contradict each other after summit collapse: See The Weather Channel’s immersive mixed reality segment in action: Airbus, OneWeb launch satellite for rural area high-speed Internet:


Readers critique The Post: Larry Hogan, Hillary Clinton and the art of capturing pure joy

unhindered by rules to minimize impacts, there are few treaties, laws or regulations requiring assessment of actions on the moon or Mars. The adverse environmental impacts we have witnessed on Earth would be expected there: Pipelines will leak and pollute, waste will be “lost” into crevasses, dust from blasting will coat solar panels, precious resources will be wasted by inefficient first users, and sustainable best use will fall to pressures for quick profits. Regulation through law may be impractical. A better alternative would be for involved companies, such as SpaceX and Blue Origin [Blue Origin founder Jeffrey P. Bezos also owns The Post], to self-regulate by establishing industry standards, best practices and protocols to assess potential impacts, minimize extraterrestrial environmental damage and mitigate where needed. Self-regulation would be quick to initiate, practical to companies’ needs, effective and responsive to novel environments, and it would boost investor confidence, helping avoid a need for government regulation should the public demand it. Let’s not repeat the “frontier” cycle of environmental damage followed by regret. William R. Kramer The writer is an extraterrestrial environmental analyst for HDR Inc., an architectural, engineering and consulting company. ● Transcending the Sports section The Feb. 20 Sports article “Hijabs and hoops” was informative and moving. The Muslim girls on this high school basketball team are to be congratulated for their courage and dignity in the face of bigotry and abuses from opposing players and their fans. Congratulations are also due to their coach, their teachers and their parents. The article let the (powerful) facts tell the story. Although the article was published prominently on the front page of the Sports section, it merited front-page placement. This was much more than a sports story. David Meyer ● Stunningly dismissive What stunning language to describe a U.S presidential candidate who won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes in the 2016 election, a candidate who is among the best-qualified nominees ever for U.S. president. According to a throwaway comment from Ian Birrell, a British political speechwriter who gave his opinions on Brexit and Trump in his Feb. 19 Tuesday Opinion essay, former first lady, senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton is “a Democrat who epitomized Washington cronyism” [“Which is worse: Brexit or Trump?”]. Has Birrell been listening to fake news? Perhaps he has never heard about Russian influence in the election. There must be some explanation. Birrell’s words


How Amazon could change the country’s grocery game

Reports that Amazon is launching its own line of grocery stores raised eyebrows about how their debut could ricochet through America’s trillion-dollar grocery industry. Amazon owns Whole Foods, but that business revolves around higher-priced natural and organic groceries. Now as its rivals amp up their own grocery delivery and pickup services, experts say Amazon could be forging a path to lock into another part of customers’ shopping habits -- and convert those people to Prime members along the way. On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon plans to open its first grocery store in Los Angeles, possibly by year’s end. The Journal reported that Amazon had signed leases for at least two other grocery locations that could open early next year. Sources told The Journal that the company was looking into locations in San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Amazon is also reportedly looking to buy regional grocery chains, according to The Journal. Amazon declined to comment. (The company’s founder and chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, owns The Washington Post.) Amazon’s stock was up nearly 2 percent Friday afternoon on the news. Meanwhile, Kroger’s was down 4.3 percent, and Walmart’s was off 1 percent. Amazon planted a flag in the grocery sector in 2017 when it bought Whole Foods for $13.7 billion. The deal gave the retail giant a foothold in brick-and-mortar stores nationwide, and expanded options for the company’s pickup and delivery programs. Amazon sells its Echo and other devices in Whole Foods stores, and Prime members can access discounts on some groceries and delivery services. Plus the merger handed Amazon troves of data on grocery sales. Much of Amazon’s consumer data stems from what people shop for online. But in a physical store like Whole Foods, that data includes the choices shoppers make in person. On Thursday, Whole Foods co-founder and chief executive John Mackey said the company would be rolling out new store formats, though he didn’t offer details. In an interview with the Texas Tribune, Mackey said the merger had played well for Whole Foods -- even comparing it to a “marriage.” The Journal reported that the new Amazon grocery stores wouldn’t compete directly with Whole Foods stores, and that they would sell a wider selection of products. In the past year, the company also has spread its fleet of Amazon Go stores, a kind of bodega meant for seamless shopping. The


Foods co-founder and chief executive John Mackey said the company would be rolling out new store formats, though he didn’t offer details. In an interview with the Texas Tribune, Mackey said the merger had played well for Whole Foods -- even comparing it to a “marriage.” The Journal reported that the new Amazon grocery stores wouldn’t compete directly with Whole Foods stores, and that they would sell a wider selection of products. In the past year, the company also has spread its fleet of Amazon Go stores, a kind of bodega meant for seamless shopping. The stores have no cashiers or checkout lines. Shoppers scan their phones on a turnstile when they walk in. Cameras and sensors throughout the store follow customers as they mill through the aisles, tracking what items they pick up or put back. Once they’ve found all they need, shoppers walk back out through the turnstiles at the front of the store, they are charged and their phone generates a receipt. Meanwhile, analysts have had their eyes on Amazon’s grocery game. In a December report, analysts at Cowen said they expected Amazon’s grocery presence to boom over the next few years. Analysts wrote that as shoppers buy more food and beverages online, and as Amazon expands it brick-and-mortar footprint, the company could pass Kroger and secure the No. 2 spot in national grocery sales, behind Walmart. Amazon laid a foundation for its grocery strategy through Prime, Amazon Go stores and other grocery pick-up options. Then it bought Whole Foods and rose from 17th place in the U.S. food and beverage grocery market to sixth, according to Cowen. Amazon’s next act: a dual push in online grocery plus a wider brick-and-mortar fleet, Cowen’s analysts wrote at the time. Brian Yarbrough, an analyst with Edward Jones, said the sweet spot for Amazon would be locking in shoppers who make basic purchases time and time again. And if Amazon can persuade those shoppers to buy new Prime memberships, they’ll keep building a loyal customer base that sustains itself on groceries. Plus, Whole Food’s share of the national grocery business is still relatively small, Yarbrough said. If Amazon is looking to dominate in the space, it will have to expand beyond expensive, natural and organic products into the mainstream. “The main thing is driving that Prime membership," Yarbrough said, "and giving [customers] a ton of selection at a good value.”


NASA needs SpaceX to prove it can fly astronauts safely. Saturday’s test flight a ‘critical first step.’

feats as landing and reusing rocket boosters, usually discarded after each use. A failure, however, would be devastating. Two SpaceX rockets have exploded: one in 2015 while flying cargo to the space station and another on the launchpad in 2016 ahead of an engine test fire. The company has bounced back from those failures and flown nearly 70 successful missions. But recently the Air Force inspector general announced it is reviewing the certifications granted to SpaceX that allow the company to fly national security missions, a key source of revenue. NASA officials said that although they are confident about the flight, and have signed off on it after multiple flight reviews, SpaceX must still address several technical issues before flying people later this year. SpaceX also said it is ready. The company has done “an incredible amount of testing to make sure that everything is safe and ready to go,” Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX’s vice president for build and flight reliability, told reporters Thursday. Still, the company has a lot of work to do before it flies humans, officials said. NASA and SpaceX are still studying the pressure vessels inside the rocket’s second-stage fuel tank that led to an explosion in 2016, before an engine test firing. NASA’s Gerstenmaier said last week that the teams have completed a statistical analysis of the problem. Now, he said, NASA and SpaceX are examining the “physics behind” the possible source of ignition when fibers around the tank break free and generate heat. “So now we're going back and we're proving to ourselves that this breaking is so unlikely that it's not going to be a concern to cause the ignition event and cause the problem moving forward,” he said. Gerstenmaier said thrusters on the spacecraft can also "break free and liberate and come out” if they get too cold. He said that although the problem can be prevented by keeping the propellant “at a certain temperature,” SpaceX may need to redesign that part, as well. He said finding technical challenges was a typical part of the testing process to see how the spacecraft operates and fix any problems before flying people. Overall, he said the vehicle is in “very, very good shape." “I’m very comfortable with where we’re headed with this flight. I fully expect we’re going to learn something on this flight. I guarantee you everything will not work exactly right. And that’s


André Previn, musical polymath and Oscar-winning composer and conductor, dies at 89

in Los Angeles and other major venues. Mr. Previn worked with drummer Shelly Manne on one of the first jazz albums of a Broadway score, for “My Fair Lady” (1956), which sold hundreds of thousands of copies. In addition, Mr. Previn accompanied Doris Day on an album, “Duet,” that brought out the pop star’s sexy, swinging side. The magazine JazzTimes called the now-classic release, made in 1961, “exquisite.” Despite his renown in Hollywood, Mr. Previn said his transition to concentrate more intensively on classical music was rocky because he was not accorded what he considered his full due as a “serious” musician. “There’s a small group of music critics in the States who will forgive you anything — jazz, a long prison term, or what have you — anything but scoring a Hollywood musical,” he told the New York Times in 1968. He began by recording piano and chamber-music pieces for Columbia Records that won him a guest conductorship with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. From 1968 to 1979, he was principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, where he had been expected to bring a hip young audience into classical music. He recorded complete cycles of the symphonies of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Sergei Prokofiev, among others. To promote the LSO, Mr. Previn appeared on the beloved British TV comedy show “Morecambe and Wise,” allowing his name to be mangled as “Mr. Andrew Preview.” From 1976 to 1984, he was music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and was credited with improving the playing standards enormously, all while also hosting the public television series “Previn and the Pittsburgh.” His tenure as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the late 1980s was stormy, mostly because of quarrels with the orchestra’s strong-willed manager, Ernest Fleischmann. Throughout his conducting career, Mr. Previn continued to compose. A 1970 concerto for classical guitarist John Williams was “a warm, approachable work with enthralling passages,” Edward Greenfield, music critic for the Guardian, wrote at the time. His other works included a piano concerto commissioned by conductor and pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy, a cello sonata written for Yo-Yo Ma and an opera based on Tennessee Williams’s “A Streetcar Named Desire,” written for soprano Renée Fleming. “Streetcar” (1998) was Mr. Previn’s largest work. The opulent score was generally admired, but it seemed something of a mismatch with the fierce, primal Williams play. Put another way,


Anyone could have seen Trump’s failure in Hanoi coming. Except Trump.

of fissile material for nuclear weapons, but it is an important site. In exchange, North Korea demanded what it described as “partial” relief from sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council. Trump objected, insisting that Kim would have to close other sites involved in the production of nuclear weapons before any sanctions could be lifted. This outcome comes as a surprise. North Korean officials have been clear for months that they were willing to close Yongbyon in exchange for “corresponding measures” and — working with China and Russia — North Korea has been making it clear that those corresponding measures included sanctions relief. For months, it has been clear that North Korea was offering to close the nuclear facilities at Yongbyon and only those facilities. Other facilities, including a uranium enrichment plant near Kangson that my colleagues and I helped identify, were never on the table. So why did U.S. officials think they were? For some months, others and I have been concerned about the degree to which South Korean and U.S. officials have been misrepresenting public statements by Kim. Those misrepresentations naturally raised questions about whether the administration’s characterization of Kim’s private comments was accurate and, if not, whether those officials were fooling us — or themselves. For example, in a recent speech at Stanford University, the Trump administration’s special envoy for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, flatly asserted that North Korea had privately offered to close much more than just Yongbyon. His reasoning was strange: He explained that he believed North Korea was offering to close facilities beyond Yongbyon because “in describing to us their commitment to dismantle and destroy their plutonium and uranium enrichment facilities, the North Koreans have also added the critical words ‘and more.’ ” At the time, this seemed to be an absurdly specific reading of a vague phrase. “And more” might mean so many things, or even nothing at all. But Biegun was apparently willing to fly Trump halfway around the world to Hanoi based on the idea that it represented a commitment to declare other secret facilities and abandon them. Hanoi confirms what we might have imagined all along. Biegun was wrong. When the United States tried to press North Korea on this imaginary commitment to close “more” locations, the North Korean position remained the same as it has been since the fall: Sanctions relief in exchange for the shutdown on the


The ’heartbreaking‘ decrease in black homeownership

an issue, too, as more financially strapped buyers struggle to save for a down payment. All home buyers face these hurdles, but they disproportionately affect African Americans, said Jessica Lautz, director of demographics and behavioral insights at the National Association of Realtors (NAR). “Half of all African Americans to the market are first-time buyers,” Lautz said. “So grappling with student debt and affordability issues generates a much greater barrier to homeownership.” Discrimination is also playing a role, said Lisa Rice, president and chief executive of the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA). [Home buying while black] A study by the group found that real estate discrimination was pervasive in at least a dozen major metropolitan areas, including the District. African American testers posing as home buyers were often denied information about special incentives that would have made the purchase easier, and were required to produce loan preapproval letters and other documents when whites were not. The alliance also settled a federal fair housing complaint in 2017 alleging that real estate agents in Jackson, Miss., were discriminating against black clients and steering people away from high-value areas and into segregated communities based on race. “When buyers of color face discrimination in the marketplace, it can discourage them from the whole process,” said Rice, who estimates that a quarter of all African Americans experience some level of bias in housing. Securing a mortgage is also more challenging for African Americans, data show. In 2017, 19.3 percent of black applicants were denied a conventional home loan, compared with 7.9 percent for whites, according to the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The refinancing market saw similar differentials with blacks rejected on 39 percent of their applications and whites on 22.9 percent. Lenders insist the gap reflects wealth disparities among racial groups, with minorities generally having lower credit scores and less cash for down payments. But Antoine Thompson, executive director of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB), the oldest black real estate trade association in the country, said the disparity reflects historical and structural problems. “In some cases, even when blacks have higher credit scores, they were often offered worse financing terms than less-qualified whites,” he said. “So it’s hard to argue that bias isn’t a factor.” Historian Richard Rothstein, a housing policy expert at the Economic Policy Institute, said that even though fair housing advocates should be applauded for policing discrimination, a stronger


Mexico approves plan to create 50,000-strong force to combat cartels

guard, we think this is the way we’re going to guarantee the peace and tranquility of the country,” López Obrador said in February. The new force will largely be used to fulfill traditional police responsibilities, officials said, and it will have a five-year limit. It initially will consist of 50,000 soldiers, federal police officers and marines. Once the majority of state legislatures approve the national guard — a near certainty given that López Obrador’s party controls many of them — it is expected to begin operations in mid-March. But it remains unclear exactly what the force will do: Will it detain low-level criminals or focus instead on a concerted fight against drug cartels? In theory, it is charged with doing both. López Obrador likened the force to U.N. peacekeepers — an analogy that confused many here, given that Mexico’s security problems are a far cry from the civil wars typically mediated by the United Nations. Beginning in 2009, then-President Felipe Calderón tried the approach of going after cartels, which prompted a wave of violence as cartels fractured and fought one another for territory. In recent years, the military also has been accused of human rights abuses, including killing 22 people in a warehouse in the town of Tlatlaya in 2014. Seven soldiers were charged in the massacre, but only one served a jail sentence. “What worries me most is that we’re basically accepting that Mexico will be a country policed by the military for the foreseeable future,” said Esteban Illades, the editor of Nexos magazine. “After 12 years of fighting cartels, this government that once promised a different approach still hasn’t found a sensible solution. They’re just repeating what they’ve been doing.” The national guard is also an attempt to fix another major problem that has exacerbated Mexico’s security challenges: Many consider local police agencies to be among the country’s most corrupt and dysfunctional institutions. In some cities, including Acapulco, officials deemed the local police so corrupt that they disarmed the entire force. The national guard will report to a civilian leader, but much of its leadership will remain in the military. Where local police often have maintained quiet connections to local criminal groups, the hope is that the national force will be a more effective and more honest enforcement arm, managing everything from highway checkpoints to high-level investigations of drug trafficking. The federal police are generally considered more reliable.


Does Asheville, N.C., live up to its ‘Dog City, USA’ claim?

a beer store with communal tables and more than a dozen taps. I sampled a sour beer made with apricots before deciding on a perfectly spicy locally brewed ginger beer. At the table, Carr distributed freeze-dried liver treats. A man wearing flannel walked in with a young basset hound, ears sashaying along the floor. “He’s the official mascot of Hi-Wire Brewing,” the man told us, as his dog pestered Hammy. “Murphy, no,” the man said, rolling his eyes. “Don’t even start.” Our next stop was Catawba, a brewery and tasting room in South Slope. Here, you can order Buxton Hall Barbecue from next door, so it’s fair to say that canine noses were in overdrive. A foursome next to us ordered beer flights, and Hammy stared longingly at the 16 little glasses. The two Chihuahuas sat on laps, and the humans, predictably, talked about dogs. On our way out, we passed a group walking into the brewery. “Oh, a dog brigade!” an elderly woman exclaimed. “Did they go eat barbecue?” The sun had warmed the air, and we walked, two by two, leaves crunching under our feet and paws. One of the many joys of waking with a dog — especially a scent-driven hound — is the slower pace. Naturally, we could have done that with our own six legs, but I enjoyed the tour for the same reasons that foodies and drinkers enjoy food and beer tours: expertise, insider tips and camaraderie. Of course, dogs experience cities differently — namely through their noses. On the tour, they explored things we didn’t, like the base of a light post, and were downright spellbound by the smells of the stylish stencil-letter trash and recycling cans. All four snouts went skyward as we passed Vortex Doughnuts, and each dog stopped to greet a white Labradoodle named Pumpkin as we cut through an alley. Meanwhile, they had zero interest in the buskers we humans appreciated at every corner, even the man who was playing spoons. In Pack Square Park, our pack walked by turkey and pig statues that mark the path once taken by farmers driving their livestock to market. Some dogs posed with the statues, but it was all too much for Hammy, who vigorously pulled away from a bronze piglet roughly his size. Adjacent to the park, we settled down on comfy patio chairs under large umbrellas at Twisted Laurel. The


‘He tells me he didn’t know’: Trump defends Kim Jong Un over death of Otto Warmbier

HANOI — President Trump on Thursday defended North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over the death of American college student Otto Warmbier, whose family says he was “brutally tortured” while imprisoned in North Korea and died in 2017 after being flown back to United States in a coma. The president condemned the “brutality of the North Korean regime” following Warmbier’s death at 22, but he took a softer stance toward Kim at the conclusion of their second summit. “I don’t believe he would have allowed that to happen,” Trump said. “It just wasn’t to his advantage to allow that to happen.” Trump said that he spoke to Kim about the death of Warmbier — whose family has called it a murder — and that Kim “feels badly about it.” He said the North Korea leader, who rules the country with an iron grip, knew about the case but learned about it only after the fact because, Trump suggested, “top leadership” might not have been involved. “He tells me he didn’t know about it, and I take him at his word,” Trump said. Richard Cullen, the attorney for Fred and Cindy Warmbier, who in December won a $501 million judgment against North Korea for the death of their son, said the couple probably will not say anything publicly about the president’s comment. Trump’s defense of Kim mirrors his willingness to take the word of autocrats in other cases despite the findings of his own government or experts, particularly when confronting the leader is not what Trump sees as in his political interest. Trump has not agreed with his intelligence community’s assessment that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — who as the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia has forged an alliance with the administration — ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October. Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributing columnist, was reportedly cut up with a bone saw, and messages later showed that the crown prince had plotted in the past to kill him. The Saudi government has blamed the operation on a rogue band of operatives who were sent to Istanbul to bring Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia. Trump has repeatedly said that the crown prince has denied any involvement in Khashoggi’s death while emphasizing his own view that preserving the United States’ relationship with Saudi Arabia is most important. “Maybe


Federal auction sells leasing rights on thousands of acres of prime sage-grouse habitat

extraction, did not respond to a request for comment. Wyoming is home to about 40 percent of the world’s sage grouse, whose mating dance is one of the most spectacular of any bird. As many as 16 million grouse once populated western plains. But coinciding with increased energy development, their numbers declined by more than half between 2007 and 2013, a study by the Pew Charitable Trusts found. Today there are fewer than 500,000 sage grouse in this country, and five states in their historic range no longer have any. Rutledge, who also serves as director of Audubon’s Sagebrush Ecosystem Initiative, became involved in conservation plans to safeguard the birds’ habitat 14 years ago, when it was clear their populations were plummeting. The work was done in conjunction with state conservation agencies, the BLM — which controls a majority of that habitat — and a consortium of ranchers and other private landowners across nearly a dozen states. The protections took effect during the Obama administration after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided not to place sage grouse on the Endangered Species list in 2015. The goal was to stabilize or grow populations so the bird would not have to be considered again for Endangered Species Act status. Restrictions on core grouse-management areas remain in place. They stipulate that well densities cannot exceed an average of one per 640 acres. In addition, no construction on the surface is allowed within six-tenths of a mile of a lek — the territory where males gather to strut and attract females during breeding season. Some leks in Wyoming draw hundreds of birds. “A single well is not a huge impact on a lek if it is sufficient distance away,” Christiansen said. “But several wells may be allowed because the restrictions call for an average over a large area.” Grouse return to the same lek, year after year, for their months-long mating ritual. After mating, hens find nesting spots near the leks to lay their eggs. Roads, traffic, noise and other activity associated with drilling can disrupt both. Conservationists fear the Bureau of Land Management will be more willing to grant waivers and exceptions to the restrictions in the future. “And it won’t affect only the grouse,” Rutledge said. “They are the bellwether for all the species — more than 350 of them — that depend on the sagebrush steppe for their habitat.” national@washpost.com


Mike Pence: It’s time for Congress to establish the Space Force

history of the world stronger still. Over the past 60 years, the United States has assembled the world’s largest, most sophisticated constellation of military and intelligence satellites. And we have forged the technology to leverage U.S. power in space here on Earth, giving our war-fighters and intelligence community a strategic advantage and increasing the agility, precision and lethality of our military. But the domain of space, once desolate and uncontested, is now crowded and confrontational. As the Defense Intelligence Agency detailed in a recent report, China and Russia are aggressively developing and deploying capabilities — including anti-satellite weapons, airborne lasers, menacing “on-orbit” capabilities and evasive hypersonic missiles — that have transformed space into a war-fighting domain. While our adversaries have weaponized space, too often we have bureaucratized it. Organizational inefficiencies that plague our space military authorities, war-fighting capabilities, acquisition programs and personnel policies stifle our ability to meet the rapidly evolving threats in space. Responsibility for our national-security We’ve known about this problem for decades. A 1994 General Accounting Office report warned of these “fragmented responsibilities.” In 2001, the Rumsfeld Space Commission stated that America’s military and intelligence agencies are “not yet arranged or focused to meet [our] national security space needs.” In 2008, the Allard Commission bluntly observed: “No one’s in charge.” For too long, these warnings have been ignored. But in this administration, we are no longer just studying the problem — we’re starting to fix it. And the Space Force is the solution. At the president’s direction, the defense secretary is already establishing a unified combatant command for space that will centralize the command-and-control structure for space war-fighting. It will also develop and implement the unique strategy, doctrine, tactics, techniques and procedures our armed forces need to deter and defeat a new generation of threats in space. But to ensure the success of our war-fighters in this new domain, Congress must modify Title 10 of the U.S. Code to establish a new branch of our armed forces that is responsible for organizing, training and equipping space forces, including both combat and combat-support functions for offensive and defensive space operations. For that reason, the defense secretary’s proposal calls on Congress to establish a chief of staff and undersecretary for space, and to consolidate existing uniformed and civilian personnel involved in military space activities into the new Space Force. The first-year cost to stand up a lean, focused Space


I smoked weed with my son. We’re closer now.

wrong with him. When he turned 18, he took himself off prescription meds. Cannabis remained his treatment of choice, and he used it daily. It was the only substance that eased his anxiety, leveled his mood and helped him sleep, he said. To me, that sounded like addict-speak, a rationalization for a consuming dependency. I encouraged him to consult a psychiatrist and reconsider prescription drugs, which were both better-researched and covered by insurance. At the same time, I clearly hadn’t done a great job in making decisions for him, so perhaps I needed to trust him to make his own. By then I’d read more about marijuana and mental health, absorbing complex and sometimes contradictory studies. Some suggested that marijuana might alleviate symptoms of anxiety and depression, others that it might moderately contribute to them, and some found no association at all. Given such mixed evidence, if my 18-year-old son believed that smoking weed helped his anxiety and mood, who was I to judge? In the three years since he began treating himself solely with cannabis, I’ve become increasingly comfortable with his choice. Nearly two-thirds of Americans support marijuana legalization, and a growing chorus is hailing its therapeutic benefits. Recreational marijuana use is now legal in 10 states and the District of Columbia, and an additional 23 states allow the sale of medical marijuana. The illnesses approved for treatment with weed (including pain amelioration) vary by state but most often include glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, epilepsy and cancer. However, many lists also cover mental-health disorders; 21 states allow weed for patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and in 2018 Pennsylvania became the second state, after New Jersey, to approve marijuana as a treatment for opioid addiction. What if smoking weed is keeping my son from much greater harm? What if he’s simply an early adopter, and marijuana eventually becomes a widely embraced treatment for the kinds of mood swings and anxieties he experiences? Some researchers But critics have attacked Berenson for conflating correlation and cause and relying too heavily on anecdotal evidence. In 2017, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published a comprehensive review of the health effects of cannabis, and its conclusions about the links between marijuana and psychosis were far more nuanced. The report found “moderate evidence” of a statistical association between regular cannabis use and increased symptoms of mania in people diagnosed with bipolar disorder, for example.


Butterflies aren’t expendable. Our brittle reality depends on them, too.

natural products, oxygen and any other number of basic life functions. These same plants need insects to such a degree that the absence of the latter makes our world untenable. If we lose insects, then we would simultaneously lose enormous percentages of our plants, as well as swaths of birds, mammals, freshwater fish and countless other groups. Consider just one of the myriad ways in which insects support our survival. Of the nearly 300,000 species of flowering plants, around 90 percent of these rely on an animal pollinator to complete their reproductive cycle. Approximately 200,000 species of animals provide this critical service, 199,000 of which are insects, pollinating everything from our heavy contingent of crops to mighty forests, deserts, prairies, tundras and everything in between. As insects are disappearing, plants everywhere are experiencing a diminution in natural pollination. Without these critical animal species, the basic reproduction of these plants would be compromised and, for many, would grind to a halt. These plants are our foodstuffs (every third bite of food is the product of such pollination), the timber for our homes, the source and templates for many of our pharmaceuticals, and the natural products from which we derive so many other materials. The world’s forests generate the very oxygen we breathe. Beyond pollination services, insects are also the food of many birds, mammals and fish — their lives sacrificed to sustain those of tens of thousands of other more conspicuous species — species that in their own way go on to support us. In such a fashion, even pests such as mosquitoes are necessary to sustain life. Without insects, all of these would perish. Insects underpin, often unseen and ignored, the essential processes of our world. We can no longer afford to be cavalier about saving those species with whom we share this world, including insects. Our indispensable pollinators, most of whom are insects, are disappearing. Our Jenga tower is teetering, and the brittleness of our reality is becoming more apparent. Choosing to save the National Butterfly Center is a microcosm of the larger choice we face in saving ourselves. We need to become disentranced when it comes to insects, awakening to the reality that our very lives are dependent on their success and survival. The loss of insects confronts us with famine, economic turmoil, pandemics and the toxification of our atmosphere. Anything that jeopardizes insect success undermines our own.


The Big Number: 1,807 calls to poison control centers about herbal supplement kratom

The herbal supplement kratom, made from the leaves of a Southeast Asian plant and used by some to manage the pain of opioid withdrawal, has been the source of a growing number of calls to poison control centers in the United States. The centers reported 1,807 calls in a seven-year span, rising from 13 in 2011 to 682 in 2017, according to research published in the journal Clinical Toxicology. Sixty-five percent of those calls were made in 2016 and 2017. Kratom is legal in most states but not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration because it is a supplement, not a drug. Besides being used to relieve pain or ease the effects of opioid withdrawal, it also is taken as a mood booster to help with anxiety or depression. It is usually taken as a pill or capsule, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, but some people chew kratom leaves or brew them into a tea. The FDA has warned people to avoid using any kratom-containing products because of risks associated with its use, including “evidence of kratom compounds with opioid properties.” The FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have both warned that a rare strain of salmonella has been linked to some kratom-containing products. In a 2018 statement, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said that the agency recognizes the need for “alternative treatments” for opioid addiction and chronic pain. “However, to date, we . . . are not aware of any evidence that would meet the agency’s standard for approval” of kratom for medicinal purposes, he said in the statement. The newly published research found that 52 percent of those who called poison control centers for kratom-related concerns had what the researchers called a serious medical outcome, including 11 people who died. Others experienced a rapid heart rate (tachycardia), a seizure, high blood pressure (hypertension), confusion, nausea and vomiting or agitation and irritability. These health conditions were more common among people who used kratom with another substance, including caffeine, alcohol and cocaine. — Linda Searing


I’m a scientist studying brain illnesses. Now I’m a lock-in, living with one of them: Lou Gehrig’s disease.

I cannot speak, walk or use my hands anymore. I am unable to move my limbs or vocalize a grunt. I communicate with my eyes, using my gaze on a specialized computer screen to write a letter at a time. I am unable to extend my neck or swallow. I drool incessantly, choking on my secretions several times a day. Deep breathing is a thing of the past. Even simple breathing is done with the help of a machine. I am a physician and a scientist and built a career studying brain diseases, and now I am living with one of the diseases that I study. I am just 40 with an amazing wife and two beautiful children. And as miraculous as my life is — in so many ways — I welcome death. On Feb. 17, 2017, I received a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Six months later, I was confined in a wheelchair. One year later, I was locked-in. One-and-a-half years after my diagnosis, I was started on a noninvasive ventilator. For now, from my new perch, I am certain that dying is easier than this living. The irony is that I had just started working on ALS when my symptoms started, and the findings that are still percolating in my lab at the University of California at San Francisco could change what we know about this insidious and still fatal disease. So I don’t stop. I can’t stop. I spend my days conducting research on, thinking about, living and breathing all things ALS. No longer able to perform experiments or collect any data, I mine big, publicly available data sets searching for answers. Thanks to the generosity of my colleagues and the research community, my lab has constructed a database that houses anonymized genetic, imaging, clinical, epidemiology and biomedical research data from more than 4 million people worldwide, across 70 different diseases, including ALS. By leveraging this data and statistical tools, we have developed, we are making inroads into ALS. We have found, for instance, that the genetic basis of ALS may be polygenic, meaning that several genes work together to increase disease risk. This polygenic architecture can be further partitioned into different genetic clusters, each of which is associated with a unique molecular function. This means that every person with ALS has a unique genetic fingerprint that may provide


SpaceX successfully launches spacecraft designed for astronauts

to the private sector its transportation to what’s known as low Earth orbit. In 2014, as part of the “commercial crew” program, the agency awarded contracts worth a combined $6.8 billion to SpaceX and Boeing to develop spacecraft capable of flying up to four astronauts to the station at a time. While NASA has continued to fly probes and robots into deep space, and has even landed on Mars, the inability to fly humans has remained an embarrassment for an agency that beat the Soviet Union in the Cold War space race to the moon. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket blasted off at 2:49 a.m. Saturday from pad 39A, the same launchpad that hoisted Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon and many of the space shuttle missions as well. Speaking to reporters after the launch, Musk said he was “emotionally exhausted” after the flight, which he said was “super stressful. But it worked — so far.” He said the flight was the culmination of 17 years of “an incredible amount of hard work and sacrifice." SpaceX has used the site to ferry cargo and supplies to the space station. But despite all its successes, the company has yet to fly astronauts. SpaceX and Boeing originally planned to make their first flights with people within a few years of receiving the contracts but both programs faced technical challenges and funding issues from Congress. NASA said it is on the verge of recapturing some of the national pride that has been a hallmark of its human spaceflight program since the beginning of the Space Age. Boeing is scheduled to follow SpaceX’s flight with an uncrewed test launch of its Starliner spacecraft as early as next month. SpaceX plans to fly its first mission with astronauts by July. Boeing’s first flight with people is scheduled for August. Bridenstine said he was “100 percent confident” those flights would happen this year. But he stressed it was more important to move deliberately so “we get it right.” Many officials have warned that, since the program is still in the test phase, the schedules are likely to slip, perhaps even significantly. NASA astronaut Douglas G. Hurley, slated to be on the first SpaceX test flight with humans, said the prospect of the mission “is pretty exciting.” Saturday’s flight “is the next critical step in putting people on Dragon,” he said. “I can’t begin to explain


Unwise and unnecessary: Opioids for wisdom teeth extractions

percent,” Rake says. “We were misled.” In 1999, the same year Rake’s brother was treated for cancer and started on Percocet, the Department of Veterans Affairs ordered physicians and nurses to regard pain as “the fifth vital sign,” meaning it would be routinely considered along with pulse, blood pressure, temperature and respiration. Pharmaceutical companies convinced clinicians that pain needed to be extinguished. Drug manufacturers marketed opioids to dentists such as Rake as safe and effective — while the conventional wisdom of the time deemed them as rarely if ever addictive, according to a history of the opioid epidemic published last year in Pain and Therapy. Rake bought it. Even after witnessing her brother’s descent, she believed she had to continue to prescribe opioids. In 2016, the musician Prince was found dead from an overdose of fentanylin his Paisley Park studio. A fan, Rake knew the legendary artist to be a vegetarian and a practicing Jehovah’s Witness who eschewed drugs and alcohol. She couldn’t help but wonder whether doctors trying to help him manage chronic pain had fueled his fatal opioid addiction. “After the loss of Prince, I just drew a line in the sand that I’m going to change my prescribing practices,” she says. Although she worried that curbing opioid prescriptions would leave her patients hurting, she says she has seen no increase in pain complaints. Patients, pain and caution The lesson for dentists and doctors is to pause before prescribing opioids, says Scott Hadland, a pediatric addiction specialist at Boston Medical Center’s Grayken Center for Addiction Medicine. “Dentists and doctors want what’s best for their patients,” he says. “Much of the opioid crisis was really born out of providers not wanting their patients to suffer from pain.” But, he says, all too often practitioners prescribe opioids when nonopioid pain relievers would do the job. Hadland works with addicted youths. Many of them got hooked on opioids after a well-meaning doctor or dentist prescribed painkillers for a sports injury, a minor surgery or a wisdom tooth extraction. “It’s clear that many young adolescents and young adults are first introduced to opioids through a prescription after a procedure, and many will ultimately end up being on that opioid for the long term — which is a setup for addiction,” he says. In an age of Yelp reviews, health-care providers might be particularly eager to try to do whatever they can to


The bizarre and brilliant rules for naming new stuff in space

the members of the overall working group and, once approved, are published in the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. Among the most recent additions are Hippocamp, a tiny moon of Neptune discovered with the Hubble Space Telescope, and Statio Tainhe, the landing site where the Chinese spacecraft Chang’e 4 touched down on the far side of the moon — a first for humanity. “Hippocampi” are the horselike sea monsters that drove Neptune’s chariot in ancient myth; “Tianhe” comes from the ancient Chinese name for the Milky Way. Having themes “minimizes the chance that someone will want to give the same name to two different features on two different bodies because the themes will be different on each,” Williams said. “It also ties things together. If you know your mythology . . . you can immediately tell what body it’s on and what type [of feature] it is.” Lately, space scientists have needed to learn more than just Greek and Roman myth. As secretary for the Working Group for Small Body Nomenclature, Williams said he has sought to diversify the themes asteroids and other small objects to reflect the “changing life experiences of the astronomers that are naming them.” He is particularly proud of asteroids named for popular musicians. “Not the sort of teeny-bop noise that you get,” he said, “but people who are as worthy as the great classical composers,” such as Jimi Hendrix, Billie Holiday and David Bowie. Minor planets — any body in orbit around the sun that is not a planet or comet — are the most freewheeling of solar system objects. With a few exceptions, most new asteroids can bear any name that is not offensive or overtly commercial or political. These space rocks carry the names of mathematicians, chemists, engineers, high school teachers, the members of the Beatles and the British comedy group Monty Python, all three Bronte sisters, runner Jesse Owens, actress Zsa Zsa Gabor and activist Malala Yousafzai. But even the indulgent members of the minor planet community have their limits. In the 1980s, when astronomer James Gibson christened a newly discovered asteroid with the name of his cat, Mr. Spock, “certain people — I’m not going to mention any names — felt that was inappropriate,” Williams said. “So now that is strongly discouraged.” But the IAU does not change names once they are chosen. The asteroid 2309 Mr. Spock circles the sun still.


Women may soon have to register for the draft. It’s long overdue.

A federal judge’s ruling last month that the exclusion of women from Selective Service registration is unconstitutional has returned an age-old debate to the forefront: Does making the military more inclusive threaten military preparedness? Critics have long alleged that integrating formerly excluded groups into the military advances social equality at the expense of military efficiency. This basic claim has been used repeatedly throughout U.S. history to oppose women, as well as African Americans and LGBTQ Americans, serving in the military, never mind compulsory service. But in each of these cases, the fundamental premise behind the charge has been 100 percent false. Drafting women cannot turn the military into a social experiment, because the military has always been a social experiment. The inseparable nature between national defense and domestic social concerns ensures that who serves will always reflect social judgments and values that go far beyond military necessity. Each time the military has used a conscripted force, it has engaged in social engineering. No military draft has ever required universal service. That is why it is called Selective Service; the draft selects those who, by virtue of their sex, age, physical and mental abilities, educational background and work skills, will best meet the military’s needs. Those deemed more valuable to the home front have been granted exemptions and exclusions. In many cases, those exemptions and exclusions hampered military efficiency for the sake of social concerns. During the Civil War, both the Union and the Confederacy used conscription to preserve the social and racial order by allowing the wealthiest members of society to buy their way out of service. Wealthy men could pay a flat fee or offer a substitute in lieu of service. The Confederacy also exempted one white man on a plantation for every 20 slaves in an attempt to stave off potential slave revolts. These exemptions did little to bolster either side’s military forces. Instead, they led poor men to allege, not for the last time, that they were fighting a rich man’s war. Conscription was a social laboratory again during both world wars. The Selective Service Acts excluded farmers, steelworkers and cod fishermen, to name but a few examples, not because they would not make good infantrymen but because their labor was deemed more essential to the home front than to the military. Mostly white local draft boards handed out the exemptions, though, and their racial, ethnic and


The Cybersecurity 202: Commerce Department’s pitch at RSA: Companies should publish ‘ingredients’ for their technology

THE KEY SAN FRANCISCO — A top Commerce Department cybersecurity official is attending the tech security industry’s biggest annual sales conference this week with a sales pitch of his own. Allan Friedman, who leads cybersecurity initiatives at the agency’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, thinks companies could make the entire technology ecosystem dramatically more secure just by publishing a record of all the software that goes into their products. In other words, he wants every piece of technology in the United States to have a public “ingredients list.” And just like ingredient lists at the grocery store help consumers make smarter decisions about what they eat, the equivalent in software will help companies make smarter decisions about what they buy and how they protect it, he told me. And he wants to convince companies he meets with at RSA that being more transparent about their software — which can be complicated for legal and competitive reasons — could actually help them improve the services or products they offer clients. “This is about making it easier and cheaper for anyone across the ecosystem to be aware about what they’re using,” Friedman said. The problem is there’s not much incentive for any individual company to start publishing these ingredient lists — which NTIA calls a “software bill of materials.” The benefit only comes when a lot of companies are publishing the lists and the entire software ecosystem is more transparent. If government can convince companies it’s in their best interest to work together on software transparency — and help them figure out an efficient and standardized way to do it -- that will make a bigger difference than government trying to force a change, Friedman told me. “In a world where no one is asking for this, people are not going to provide it, and in a world where there aren’t tools to do this, no one’s going to ask for it,” Friedman told me. “Rather than asking nicely for someone to get into the cold pool or go pushing people in the cold pool, government is helping people to hold hands and jump in together.” The Software Bill of Materials project is the latest example of how the government is trying to fundamentally reshape how people and companies manage cybersecurity through conversations and consensus-building rather than mandates. The Homeland Security Department, for example, is working with industry sectors on ways to


Assad must release all of his American hostages

for saying he believed Kim Jong Un’s claim he was unaware of Warmbier’s treatment. On Saturday, Trump said, “I love Otto.” The accurate tally in Syria would be Assad 1, Trump 0. The Assad regime is believed to have executed 26-year-old Illinois native Layla Shweikani in 2016 after a quick “trial” and didn’t notify her family until late last year. In the wake of that tragedy, other families of Syrian Americans thought to be held by the Assad regime are speaking out. In January, the family of 61-year-old Syrian American therapist Majd Kamalmaz, who was detained in a regime-held area in February 2017, decided to go public about his case. The Czech government told his family that the Syrian regime had acknowledged they were holding Kamalmaz, but then later said the Syrians had changed their story. Kamalmaz was visiting family in Damascus when he was picked up at a regime checkpoint. He suffers from diabetes and other health problems; so far there’s no information about his current condition. The Kamalmaz family held a rally last week in front of the White House, trying to raise awareness about their missing patriarch. The Kamalmaz family also met with administration officials and lawmakers about the case, including Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.). The family has roots in both Iowa and Arkansas. Hill brought Kamalmaz’s son, Khalid, to the president’s State of the Union address last month. “I’m not too political, but my father wasn’t, either,” Khalid Kamalmaz said. “They might be holding him as a political pawn, to try to use him for other deals. But he’s just a humanitarian.” The names of the other Syrian Americans believed to be held by the Assad regime are kept secret in accordance with their families’ wishes. And while each story is unique and information about them is scarce, the FBI, State Department and other agencies are all engaged in trying to track them down and bring them home. Some believe that the American hostages must be included in any political negotiation with the Assad regime over the future status of Syria and its participation in international organizations as a member of the world community. “The way this movie ends is in Geneva,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who speaks to Trump often about Syria. “So we would expect that any solution to the Syria problem would include the return


He said the explosives were for model rockets. Now he has been charged in a deadly bombing.

space and half the operating costs. “Some months he would have to loan Krajnyak money to cover all of the costs,” the affidavit states. “Other months, she made enough to cover the costs.” After the explosion, Beal contacted authorities after seeing the destruction on the news. He consented to a search of his property, according to the affidavit. In a pool house and garage structure on his property, authorities discovered cardboard tubes, batteries, 130 pounds of explosives and other chemicals, black powder, as well as two handguns and a shotgun. Beal told investigators that the devices were related to his rocket hobby, as well as a device he designed for his neighbor’s gopher problem. But the federal affidavit noted that the evidence collected from Beal’s property was “not consistent with that of a model rocket.” Nevertheless, two weeks after he was charged with possessing an unregistered destructive device, the charge was dropped. “Further examination by the Federal Bureau of Investigation raises questions as to whether the devices meet the statutory definition for a ‘destructive device,’ ” the U.S. attorney’s office stated in court documents, according to the Times. In a strange twist, Beal’s arrest in the explosion has reportedly drawn investigators to take a look at his wife’s death in 2008. According to the Long Beach Press-Telegram, Christine Beal died in Long Beach, Calif., after a large piece of furniture fell on her as she and Beal were trying to move it. The coroner, however, said the cause of death was “undetermined,” and noted “chronic lead intoxication” as well as “pancreatitis, electrolyte imbalance and other undetermined factors” in the woman. On Sunday, Long Beach authorities told the Press-Telegram that they were reassessing her death. The Times reported that Beal attempted to claim a $21,225 life insurance payout from his wife’s death but that the claim was denied at least once. It is unclear whether he ever received the money. “The cause of death was undetermined so it was a coroner’s case,” police spokeswoman Nancy Pratt told the paper. “Right now, detectives are taking a look at it.” More from Morning Mix: At least 23 dead in Alabama as tornadoes hit the Deep South, leaving ‘catastrophic’ damage He stars in a new film about infiltrating an ICE detention center. Now ICE has locked him up again. Michael Jackson’s estate battles assault claims in ‘Leaving Neverland’ with the star’s classic concert videos


Jeremy Corbyn is thoroughly indecent

Labour is not just about Jews. Anti-Semitism is a societal cancer that eventually devours its host, a harbinger of irrationality, democratic failure and other ominous trends. Britain’s official opposition party being overtaken by anti-Semites is worrisome enough. If this pernicious organization were to win power, the future health of British democracy itself would very much be in doubt. For this reason, the nine MPs who quit Labour should be lauded for their honesty. Unlike their erstwhile colleagues on the opposition benches, who privately say that Corbyn cannot be trusted to run the country while publicly campaigning for a Labour victory at the next election, these courageous few have opted out of this dishonest and dangerous charade. Corbyn is the problem, and a political party will not be able to extirpate its anti-Semitism as long as an anti-Semite leads it. For more than three years, commentators on both sides of the Atlantic have observed Labour’s travails with disappointed bewilderment, failing to comprehend the clear connection between Corbyn’s hard-left politics and the miasma of conspiracism, illiberalism and anti-Semitism that invariably comes with it. A New Yorker article last year was emblematic, lamenting the repeated outbursts of anti-Semitism from Corbyn supporters but ultimately concluding that Corbyn himself is a “decent man.” But a decent man would stop and ponder what it is about his ideology and political style that persuades so many of his supporters to heap vile, misogynistic and anti-Semitic abuse upon one of his female colleagues. Not only has Corbyn not done this, he has also not even bothered to meet with Berger, his former shadow health minister, in well over a year. The scourge of anti-Semitism has torn apart two of the most important progressive organizations in the West, the Labour Party and the Women’s March. Anti-Semitic statements by leaders of the latter eventually caused it to splinter, with many local chapters distancing themselves from the national group. As for Labour, it will not be redeemed until it is Corbyn and his acolytes, and not Berger and her colleagues, who feel unwelcome. Read more: The Post’s View: There’s no good way out of the Brexit disaster Carl Bildt: A second referendum could help avoid a Brexit meltdown George F. Will: Brexit shows how direct democracy can be dangerous Bronwen Maddox: How the Brexit drama is changing Britain Amanda Sloat: Sacrificing peace in Northern Ireland is not acceptable price for Brexit


The Health 202: Senators say they’re serious about tackling surprise medical bills

bills that might catch them unawares. It’s the truly surprise medical bills that the lawmakers are going after — the bills patients can’t avoid even after doing their due diligence. “We’re trying to come up with something which holds the patient harmless but is fair to both parties,” Cassidy said. AHH: An 18-year-old who got vaccinated against the wishes of his anti-vaxx mother has been invited to speak before lawmakers who are examining what is causing outbreaks of preventable disease. Ethan Lindenberger from Ohio is set to testify Tuesday in front of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee alongside experts in the field. “I’m looking forward to speaking in Washington, D.C.,” Lindenberger said in a YouTube video over the weekend announcing his scheduled appearance. He also shared the news on Twitter: “Lindenberger’s story has caught on amid a measles outbreak that has affected dozens of people in the United States, prompting increasing scrutiny of parents who do not get their children vaccinated,” our Post colleague Kayla Epstein writes. “The teenager said he lived for years without being vaccinated because of his mother’s belief in vaccine conspiracies. So Lindenberger began to do his own homework, consulting scientific research and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” In the Pacific Northwest, 68 people have contracted measles amid the ongoing outbreak, according to the Associated Press. Meanwhile in the state of Washington, lawmakers want to pass a bill that would limit exemptions people could seek for vaccination requirements, but they face opposition from members of the anti-vaxx movement who believe vaccines lead to health conditions such as autism, Kayla writes. OOF: Centers for Disease Control director Robert Redfield is planning to travel to the Democratic Republic of Congo this week, Stat News’s Helen Branswell reports, as the ongoing Ebola outbreak is now the second-largest ever recorded. There have been 888 people infected by the outbreak as of last week, and 557 who have died. CDC spokeswoman Kate Grusich did not confirm the plans to Stat, saying the agency doesn’t confirm specific travel locations to “protect the safety of CDC staff, including leadership.” The director-general of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is set to travel with Redfield, Helen reports. Last year, the agency withdrew workers from the region affected by the outbreak because of security concerns, and those concerns have continued, she adds, as “two medical groups that were running


Here’s how perpetrators of crimes in Syria are being prosecuted

and the IIIM will be replicated as tools of global justice. There is now an IIIM for Myanmar, also known as Burma, for example. Meanwhile, evidence of atrocities committed in Syria and collected by CIJA and the ECCHR continues to be used in war crime trials in Europe. Taking Responsibility It is ironic that a Syrian perpetrator of war crimes traveling to Europe is more likely to be prosecuted than a Westerner who traveled to Syria to perpetrate atrocities returning home. No Western state is eager to prosecute their own nationals who went to fight for the Islamic State and committed crimes abroad. This is due to at least two reasons. First, the political discourse in many of these countries reflects prevalent fears that returning Islamic State fighters, as well as refugees more generally, will undermine public safety. The potential return of fighters is not seen as an opportunity to achieve justice for atrocities committed by Islamic State so much as a threat to national security and a burden on the state. As a result, governments often view the repatriation of these fighters as political kryptonite. Second, there are legal hurdles to prosecuting returning fighters who have committed atrocities abroad. These cases are difficult to investigate from London, Washington or Ottawa. In addition, evidence that has been gathered by states may be inadmissible in court or may consist of intelligence provided by partner states that these countries are not authorized to submit at trial. As a result, many of those who have returned are ‘monitored’ by law enforcement bodies rather than prosecuted, adding to the fear that the returning fighters pose a threat to their ‘home’ countries. The fact that hundreds of former Islamic State combatants are in custody in Kurdistan, Syria and elsewhere represents a rare opportunity: the chance for states to pool their resources, set up an internationalized or hybrid court, and hold perpetrators to account in a comprehensive manner. Perhaps this would require a prosecutorial strategy that focuses on using plea agreements to generate effective evidence and build stronger cases for the most senior perpetrators. Setting up such a tribunal in the region would offer accountability close to where victims and survivors reside and where evidence still needs to be gathered. At the same time, investigators could work to gather and collate evidence of crimes by other actors in Syria and Iraq, including opposition and government forces.


Kronos Quartet plays music from travel ban countries as political protest, but lets its Western roots take over

It was a gesture of political protest: On Saturday night, the Kronos Quartet played the music of composers from countries named in President Trump’s original travel ban at the historic synagogue at Sixth and I. Kronos is the 45-year-old quartet known as one of the earliest classical groups to take a rock-band-like approach, playing music mainly by living composers and often in response to current events in a quest to bring classical music more securely into today’s world. So this Washington Performing Arts concert — which was not limited only to ban-affected countries, but also included music by a few other Muslim artists — was not at all a departure. Indeed, one of its problems was that it didn’t depart far enough. The first piece, “Mugam Sayagi” by the Azerbaijani composer Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, who wrote it for Kronos in 2003, began in darkness, with the cellist Sunny Yang intoning a throaty solo line. It was a pregnant beginning, opening up a world of possibilities, including the question of what might happen next. Then the lights came up and revealed the three other players, and we were back in the familiar world of Western concert music, with four people playing on a stage; we weren’t, after all, traveling as far as we thought. (This is no diss on Ali-Zadeh’s piece, itself an eloquent travelogue in several sections, building to impassioned group playing including a small gong and taking refuge in a lyrical quiet movement for violin before fading back out into the night of the cello.) The resulting evening was an Arabic/African/Middle Eastern panorama, with color and exotic scales shaped and restrained by the corset of Western instrumentation and Western presentation. We’ve come a long way from Mozart’s “Turkish” interpolations or the “orientalism” of 19th-century France — or have we? This concert was presented in a spirit of collaboration and admiration, and culminated in a set of five songs (plus an encore) by the remarkable Iranian singer Mahsa Vahdat, her voice dusky and thrilling, her still body and stylized hand gestures underlining the emotional immediacy of the singing. (A new recording that Vahdat and her sister Marjan made with Kronos, “Placeless,” will be released later this month.) Yet the concert also represented an aestheticization, at best, of a range of different traditions, smoothing over their differences in the general sameness of framing. In each piece, the immediacy of folk or pop


Senate panel warns of dangers of anti-vaccine movement

cases have jumped because of gaps in vaccination coverage. For the first time, the World Health Organization listed vaccine hesitancy as one of the top 10 global threats of 2019. UNICEF warned recently that global cases of measles are surging to alarmingly high levels, led by 10 countries that account for more than 74 percent of the total increase, and several others that had previously been declared measles free. Ukraine, with more than 35,000 cases in 2018, tops the list of countries with the largest increase in cases from 2017 to 2018. The Washington state outbreak is believed to have started with a U.S. traveler to Ukraine who brought the disease back to Clark County, Wash. In recent years, there have been several large sustained measles outbreaks in Britain, Germany, France and Italy, all popular tourist destinations for U.S. travelers. In the United States, part of the problem for clinicians and nurses in talking to parents about vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles and whooping cough, is that few people have firsthand experience with these illnesses. As public memory of the terror of measles epidemics has faded, however, doubts about vaccines have grown — often stoked by discredited and fraudulent research claiming a link between the shots and autism. The latest evidence unequivocally denying any link between autism and the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella came Monday in a paper published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Measles is highly contagious, remaining for as long as two hours in the air of a room where an infected person has been. While the illness often begins with cold-like symptoms and a rash, infected people may fall victim to additional complications, including pneumonia and, in more severe cases, inflammation of the brain known as encephalitis and even seizures. Anti-vaccine narratives do particularly well on social media because personal anecdotes and sensational content play better than the dry recitation of scientific facts, according to a study last year. Anti-vaccine proponents are a small minority, but on social media they may appear to be the majority. Medical professionals and lawmakers have been pressuring companies like Facebook and Google to take action against anti-vaccination content in the name of public safety. Pinterest has been suppressing search results on vaccinations since December. Google’s YouTube has said it would begin removing videos with “borderline content” that “misinform users in harmful ways.” Amazon also appears to have removed


Measles vaccine doesn’t cause autism, says a decade-long study of half a million people

can’t intentionally vaccinate people or prevent them from vaccinating to study the effects, which would be unethical.” He offered that assessment on the eve of a U.S. Senate hearing on vaccines and the outbreak of preventable diseases, where he is scheduled to give expert testimony Tuesday alongside public health officials and other researchers, as well as a teenager, Ethan Lindenberger, who got vaccinated against the wishes of his parents. Though the study was not intended to coincide with the congressional inquiry, the results did come at a critical juncture. Measles cases are multiplying, causing experts to warn that a nationwide outbreak is possible. Six outbreaks are ongoing in the United States, according to the CDC. Seventy-one people have been infected in Washington state, where an outbreak took hold this year in Clark County, an area across the Columbia River from Portland, Ore., that researchers call an anti-vaccination “hot spot” because of the high rate of nonmedical exemption from required vaccines. The virus has similarly been spreading globally. An unvaccinated French 5-year-old recently reintroduced the disease to Costa Rica, which had been free of measles for five years. An outbreak in an Orthodox Jewish community in New York began when an unvaccinated child returned home after acquiring the disease in Israel, where a major flare-up is occurring. The World Health Organization reported 72 deaths from measles in Europe last year. In 2015, a woman in Washington state died of pneumonia after contracting measles. It was the first U.S. death from the disease since 2003. Measles is highly contagious, remaining for as long as two hours in the air of a room where an infected person has been. While the illness often begins with cold-like symptoms and a rash, infected people may fall victim to additional complications, including pneumonia and, in more severe cases, inflammation of the brain known as encephalitis and even seizures. It is precisely the success of the measles vaccine — rendering these conditions rare, at least in the United States — that has enabled a small but fervent opposition movement to take root, Omer said. “It is in some sense a victim of its own success,” the Emory professor said of the vaccine, which became available in the United States in 1963. “It’s hard to see the benefit if you don’t see the disease.” Suzinne Pak-Gorstein, a pediatrician in Seattle and a professor at the University of Washington,


Saudi Arabia is torturing a U.S. citizen. When will Trump act?

Khashoggi is no longer able to ask such impertinent questions. He was assassinated in Istanbul by a hit squad that intelligence reports say was dispatched by the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. But Khashoggi’s question remains relevant. Mr. Fitaihi, founder of a medical center in Jeddah, is still a captive. It is not known precisely why, and he has never been charged, although the New York Times quoted a friend saying he was being pressured to give evidence against a relative. He has been tortured during his captivity. He was reportedly grabbed from his room at the Ritz, slapped, blindfolded, stripped to his underwear, bound to a chair, shocked with electricity and whipped so severely that he could not sleep on his back for days. The Times said his lawyer has written to the State Department that the doctor “is in fear for his life, that he cannot take his situation any longer, and that he desires all possible help.” The Associated Press quoted the lawyer as saying Mr. Fitaihi is now in a prison hospital after suffering “an emotional breakdown.” Mr. Fitaihi earned his medical degree from George Washington University and holds a master’s degree in public health from Harvard University. On another front in Mohammed bin Salman’s drive to crush critical voices, Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor announced charges Friday against a group of female activists who campaigned to give women the right to drive — a right that Mohammed bin Salman conferred after they sought it. The activists have been jailed for nearly a year, during which Amnesty International says they have been tortured and sexually abused. They did nothing wrong and should be released unconditionally and immediately. In the New York Times Magazine on Sunday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, asked about the crown prince’s role in the Khashoggi murder, declared that the United States would “hold everyone that we determine is responsible for this accountable in an appropriate way, a way that reflects the best of the United States of America.” A doctor with U.S. citizenship was tortured and held without charge. Women who stood for human dignity and equality were jailed and tortured. A journalist was killed. Yet President Trump and his administration — including his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who last week met with the crown prince — are loath to act. That does not reflect the best of the United States of America.


Can America’s ties to Europe be saved?

second thing, and I say this as a European, is that the European Union is not about the death of the nation-state. It’s about allowing the nation-state to better flourish by having a framework of cooperation that delivers better outcomes for our citizens than would be the case if our member states acted separately. My European identity is complementary to my Irish identity — not a substitute to it. I think that’s the strong view of all Europeans. And Ireland has never had a stronger international profile or a stronger sense of national identity than we’ve had since we joined the European Union. It has amplified our sense of self in ways that the claustrophobic bilateral relationship with Britain perhaps didn’t permit. Speaking of which, what has the lurch toward Brexit meant for the E.U.? The U.K. is a part of Europe, has contributed hugely to the European Union, and I think the idea that they would leave is something to be deeply regretted. But they’ve taken their decision and we have to work it through. It is interesting that today, support for the European Union is at an all-time high, as well as support for the euro. One of the things that has emerged from the Brexit debate is that suddenly, people are recognizing all the things the U.K. is losing by leaving. But there’s genuine discontent, still. We’re seeing populist protests in various countries, and far-right or anti-establishment parties across the continent are expected to do well in the May elections. The polls still show that at least 70 percent of Europeans will vote for basically centrist parties. I think this narrative about the rise of populism needs to be seen in context. I remember the recent results for the [far-right] Sweden Democrats — people made it sound like it’s the march of the right. But they got 18 percent of the vote. I’m absolutely not saying that there isn’t an issue, that there isn’t a growth of these anti-establishment, populist parties. But it is not quite such a rise in the polls as the reporting makes it seem. The European Union is a democratically inclusive project, and I don’t think that’s going to fundamentally change, because that’s where the center of gravity remains. Want smart analysis of the most important news in your inbox every weekday along with other global reads, interesting ideas and opinions to know?


4 in 10 Africans are deeply committed to democracy. That’s the good news.

The bad and good news comes in almost daily. Increasingly authoritarian regimes clamp down on dissent in Tanzania and Zambia, and Togo’s Gnassingbe dynasty teeters as its opponents are bloodied in the streets. But democratic elections carried the day in the Gambia, where strongman Yahya Jammeh was forced to cede power without a shot being fired — and in Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf respected term limits and passed the torch. Meanwhile, in Uganda, Afro-beat pop star Bobi Wine has become a symbol for popular resistance and could threaten Yoweri Museveni’s three-decade rule. In Ethiopia, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed appears to be leading change with breathtaking speed, while Zimbabweans still wait — and demonstrate — for the democracy they were promised after Robert Mugabe was forced to step down. What’s going on with democracy in Africa? The research network Afrobarometer finds some answers in its latest analysis, based on face-to-face interviews with more than 45,000 Africans in 34 countries. The wide-ranging interviews, conducted with nationally representative samples between late 2016 and late 2018, covered more than two dozen questions on democracy, elections and political freedoms. Most Africans still say they want democracy. Fewer are getting the democracy they want. And even fewer insist enough on improving their democracies that they’re likely to help their nations guard against authoritarian backsliding. Let’s look more closely at the numbers. A strong majority of Africans — fully 68 percent — think democracy is the best system of government. Even larger majorities object to various forms of authoritarianism: 78 percent oppose presidential dictatorships, 74 percent oppose one-party rule and 72 percent object to military rule. About four out of 10 Africans, or 42 percent, “demand democracy,” meaning they hold all four of these pro-democratic views at the same time. These committed democrats are most likely to be found among urban residents, men, and people who have middle-class jobs, a university education, a strong interest in politics, and a habit of reading newspapers and using the Internet. Across 18 countries for which we have data going back more than a decade, popular demand for democracy has declined by six percentage points over the past five years — but is still five points higher than it was in 2005. In the 34 countries surveyed in 2016/2018, on average about half, or 51 percent, see their countries as functioning democracies, while only 43 percent are satisfied with how well


Kvass, celtuce and a few other ‘new’ good-for-you foods

Just when you’ve finally learned how to pronounce quinoa (it’s keen-wah in case you’re late to the party), you’re about to encounter a new batch of healthful foods and drinks with names reminiscent of a word scramble. These products are not actually new — rather, like quinoa, they are ancient edibles being rediscovered and gaining popularity for the way they fit into today’s food landscape. Several have crossed my radar lately in articles, on my Instagram feed and in conversations at culinary events, and they have ultimately landed in my kitchen. They may not have reached the shelves of every supermarket yet, but they are trending in that direction. Kvass (Kvahs) Kvass might be the next kombucha. Both are ancient, fermented, lightly fizzy beverages that can be rich sources of probiotics and are popular with home-brewers. With bottled kombucha having gone mainstream and all-things-fermented gaining traction, there is reason to believe kvass could be next. Kvass is a tangy, savory, briny beverage that has been a staple drink in Russia for centuries. It’s traditionally made by fermenting bread with yeast, water and flavorings such as lemon and raisins; modern variations are made from beets and other vegetables. Some microbreweries, such as the Beaver Brewing Company in Beaver Falls, Pa., serve it, and you can find it in bottles at health food stores, online and in Eastern European shops. As with kombucha, look for products that are labeled “raw” and specify the presence of live cultures to get those gut-friendly bacteria, because pasteurization renders probiotics inactive. Also check the alcohol content — some kvasses have scant amounts and others can have 3 to 4 percent alcohol content, nearly as much as a light beer. Celtuce (Sell-tus) When I interviewed Jessie Price, the editor in chief of EatingWell magazine, about her favorite road-trip snacks this past summer, she declared celtuce one of her new finds. I had never heard of it, but soon after that conversation I spotted it at a farmers market; then I saw it on a list of top food trends from Supermarket News. Also known as celery lettuce, asparagus lettuce or Chinese lettuce (because it is popular in China), celtuce is a two-for-one vegetable with a thick, crisp celery-like stem and lettuce-like leaves, both of which may be eaten raw or cooked. (When I tried it, I peeled the thick stems to get to their tender center, and