Want to raise empathetic kids? Try spending time in nature.

is just the right thing to do.” Kevin Coyle, the NWF’s vice president of education, says: “The research tends to show that even very young kids can develop a real sense of caring about things other than themselves, like wild animals. They develop tolerance toward other things and develop a sense of empathy. That’s a good thing overall.” Mizejewski and Coyle agree that parents who want their children to grow into adults who value and care about others should take time to explore nature with them, because caring about nature can translate into being more compassionate and caring toward other people. Here are three strategies for using the natural world to raise empathetic children. Create an awareness of backyard wildlife. Why? Learning about and observing nature can contribute to your child’s sense of empathy. How? Coyle advises parents to think about teaching kids empathy with the help of nature as they would any other learning experience. The first stage is awareness. Give your child something to focus on, such as a mother raccoon you might come across if you’re out early, a bird’s nest or even ordinary insects. Talk about how the wild animals living around us deserve respect and understanding as they care for themselves and their young, just as many humans do. Try this: Help backyard wildlife. Why? Now that your kids understand the wildlife around them a little better, they will begin to connect what they know to others in general. When a child contemplates what raccoons, butterflies or native songbirds need to survive, the thought process builds empathy, according to Coyle. How? Kids need help from parents to put what they know into action and make the connection between something they do and the benefits to someone else. For example, brainstorm with your young child about ways she could help bees, such as creating a simple watering station for pollinators. Try to develop her understanding that there is a direct relationship between her action and helping to meet another animal’s survival needs. Try this: Plan meaningful outdoor experiences. Why? Simply getting outdoors is so basic yet so important for your kids’ growth as an empathetic human, Mizejewski says. It might not sound like a big deal, but spending time in nature with your child can be hugely significant in how your child ends up relating to the natural world, and to others. How? Focus on interpreting


Honey, I shrunk our income gap

gap was more like half a foot. He too, had given into the temptation to cheat a little, adding a few inches. The sum of our little fudges was a wild distortion of reality. And why am I sharing this story? Because of an interesting little bit of news from the Census Bureau: Couples where the wife earns more than the husband systematically overreport his income and underreport hers. It’s not an enormous gap — it looks like husbandly income tends to be overreported by about 3 percent while wifely income is underreported by 1.5 percent. But together, that could skew the data significantly, both in the number of people who are reporting that the wife earns more and the size of the gap they report. For example, in a couple where the wife actually earns 10 percent more than the husband, the self-reported gap would cut that number almost in half. This is, obviously, an example of a sexist double standard; in a society where males are still often defined by their ability to be “breadwinners,” couples are clearly uncomfortable with new economic realities. And apparently they are frequently resolving that discomfort by lying about it — not with flagrant lies, but with little cheats that nudge them in the direction that better conforms with social norms. The discrepancy is the latest example of how self-reported data tends to skew toward what the respondent would like the data to be, rather than what it actually is. People overreport voting, and they underreport their weight. And some measures, like individual income, can be both overreported and underreported, with higher-income people cheating down toward the mean, and lower-income people cheating upward. These sorts of fibs are generally harmless, of course. When the cute guy from Spanish class and I realized our joint dissembling, we had a laugh, and we went on a few more dates. But when it comes to data, the distortion can warp our understanding of the world. Worse, it can end up reinforcing norms that are outdated — if you’re part of a wife-earns-more couple, and the intentional misreporting by others makes you think your relationship is a bizarre outlier, rather than increasingly normal, maybe you’ll feel strange and isolated. And then maybe you, too, will lie to researchers rather than admit you’re a freak. I could exhort people not to lie in pursuit of “normalcy” — and


VA doctor shortage fueled by management issues, poor pay

The Department of Veterans Affairs gets good grades for effort, but it still has much work to do in the recruitment and retention of physicians to serve those who faced death for their country. When the Government Accountability Office says “challenges remain,” it means an agency has problems — in this case, too few doctors. Pay is an issue, but so is the department’s personnel management. A recent GAO report about the Veterans Health Administration, the component providing health care through 1,252 facilities, including 170 medical centers, outlines three major management troubles related to its doctor shortage: These points indicate that part of the problem lies with the agency inadequately diagnosing personnel problems, making it difficult to solve them. “VHA hires more than 2,800 mission-critical physicians annually,” Debra A. Draper, GAO’s director of health care, told a House Veterans’ Affairs subcommittee hearing last month. “Yet, physicians have consistently been identified by VHA as a critical staffing priority due to recruitment and retention concerns.” She told the panel that the agency didn’t know how many contract doctors it uses and had limited information on the number of its physician trainees. The result — “VHA data underestimated the total number of physicians providing care in its medical centers, leaving it unable to ensure that its workforce planning processes sufficiently addressed gaps in staffing.” Garry Augustine, Washington executive director of Disabled American Veterans, urged VA to develop a more “systematic approach” to personnel management. “The VA needs to do a better job of determining shortages and developing a plan to fill vacancies,” he said during a telephone interview. The American Legion called the shortage “a critical issue.” “By not adequately staffing VHA, VA’s capacity to serve veterans suffers and forces more veterans to seek health care in the private sector at greater cost to the American taxpayers,” said Legion spokesman Joseph M. Plenzler. “We strongly urge the Department of Veterans Affairs to fill these vacancies with highly qualified health-care providers as quickly as possible. Our veterans deserve it, and our overstretched VA employees deserve it.” There were 1,673 vacant physician positions as of March, according to data that VA provided to the Federal Insider on Friday. In all occupations departmentwide, the personnel shortage was 33,642, about 90 percent in health services. Peter Shelby, the former assistant secretary of the VA Office of Human Resources and Administration, tried to shine a more favorable light


Does it matter that Trump didn’t distinguish between England, the U.K. and Great Britain?

a sovereign state consisting of four individual countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. And Great Britain is an island comprised of the countries of England, Scotland and Wales. As Morgan noted on Twitter, most Americans likely cannot explain the difference between England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. But the leader of the free world is not most Americans. The person in that position is usually is expected to have a level of geopolitical knowledge that exceeds that of the average American — even if part of that leader’s appeal is his ability to connect with the average American. When pressed by Morgan, Trump claimed he does know the difference, but his original quote renders that dubious. And it would be particularly reasonable to expect a president whose mother was from Scotland and a great admirer of the queen to show a clear understanding. It should be pretty obvious why someone leading America’s trade, national security and other foreign policy initiatives should have a basic grasp of some of the most influential states in the world. But this comprehension is particularly critical when that leader makes criticizing these states’ leaders, business communities and inhabitants a hallmark of his presidential campaign and foreign policy approach after occupying the White House. And Trump continued that approach last week. At a news conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May, Trump said about immigration in Europe: Moments later, May, who many would argue knows Europe better than Trump, disagreed. She said: One could argue that one’s view on the impact of immigration on Europe, and specifically the U.K., is a matter of opinion. But the most helpful opinions are formed on a bedrock of facts, especially when it comes from those in global affairs, where these opinions can have real consequences. It is concern about statements like these, which critics say are not well-formed, that led tens of thousands of U.K. residents to protest Trump’s visit and to call for their own lawmakers to speak out against Trump’s recent positions on NATO, Brexit, immigration and other foreign policy issues with real ramifications. The president of the United States is expected to critique the policies of other nations, especially when they are believed to be working against America’s best interests. But that criticism would be better received when coming from a leader who shows an understanding of the subject on which he is opining.


Who are you going to listen to, the president of the United States or the United States?

than his words.” Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, drew the distinction on Twitter with a slightly sharper tongue. That divide between president and presidency is recognized in the United States as well, nowhere more obviously than on the issue of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The idea that Russia had worked to influence the vote that year was first posited by U.S. intelligence agencies during the administration of Barack Obama, but confidence in that culpability only grew once Trump was inaugurated. On Friday, a grand jury considering findings by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III indicted 12 Russian nationals believed to work for the country’s intelligence service on charges that they’d hacked the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman. That indictment joined another in which 13 Russians and three Russian companies were charged with trying to influence the election on social media. Members of Trump’s Cabinet, members of his party in Congress and those running the intelligence agencies in his administration have repeatedly argued that Russia did attempt to interfere with the election, with one aim being to benefit his campaign. Trump himself, though, tried for a long time to deny that Russia had interfered with the election at all, apparently concerned that such an effort would undermine his legitimacy as president. When he asked Russian President Vladimir Putin if he had interfered last year, he touted Putin’s denials and lamented that Putin was “insulted” by the implication. Recently, he’s seemingly acquiesced to the idea that Russia was culpable, choosing instead to blame the Obama administration for it happening in the first place. The investigation into that interference, of course, is a biased “witch hunt” in his view, one that has resulted in nearly 200 criminal charges and guilty pleas. For months, though, there was that weird tension: Trump’s people were saying something different than Trump himself. We’d seen other examples of this, like the State Department under former secretary of state Rex Tillerson disagreeing with Trump’s foreign-policy pronouncements. Nowhere was it more prominent than on Russian interference, though. In one weird way, this divide between Trump and his administration worked to Trump’s advantage. When Congress passed sweeping new sanctions meant to punish Russia for its actions, Trump had little choice but to grudgingly sign them into law. (They were belatedly implemented in part earlier this year.) When a former Russian intelligence official was


The backlash from Trump’s Britain visit will be felt for years to come

President Trump’s catastrophic visit to Britain began with a political scandal of his own creation. In an interview with the Sun, a British tabloid, the U.S. president slammed the British prime minister, Theresa May, and supported her rival. He criticized her conduct of Brexit, the most contentious issue in British politics, and used inflammatory language about immigration, the second-most-contentious issue in British politics. The story appeared just as May was hosting a black-tie dinner for him at Blenheim Palace. Trump then took it all back, dismissing the journalists who had accurately reported his words as “fake news” and offering some flabby support for May. In response, the Sun published the full audio recording of the interview online — and loudly supported its original story with the front-page headline “FAKE SCHMOOZE.” The interview seemed like a diplomatic fumble. But it was not. All of the views Trump expressed were in fact consistent with the previous actions of his administration. John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, has recently met with pro-Brexit members of Parliament — in effect, a party within the Conservative Party — to ask how he could help their cause. Behind the scenes, Trump’s team has lobbied Britain on behalf of Tommy Robinson, a violent white nationalist and co-founder of the fringe English Defense League, who is now in prison. This open, partisan, U.S. intervention in British politics is unprecedented, going well beyond President Ronald Reagan’s political flirtation with Margaret Thatcher or President Bill Clinton’s friendship with Tony Blair. Trump is supporting not the elected British leader but rather her internal party rivals as well as an extra-parliamentary racist fringe that has very little support in Britain but that matters to U.S. alt-right activists, the core of Trump’s base. The result: Tens of thousands protested. A vast balloon, caricaturing Trump as a giant orange baby in a diaper, flew over London on Friday and Edinburgh on Saturday. Smaller anti-Trump gatherings took place in Glasgow, Belfast, Birmingham and elsewhere. A paraglider sailed over his Scottish golf course, flying a banner that described him as “below par.” The aftermath may well be even more important. According to polls taken before this visit, 77 percent of Britons have an unfavorable view of the American president, a figure very close to the disapproval numbers for Vladimir Putin, whose thugs have actually poisoned British citizens. Seventy-four percent of Britons described the U.S. president as “sexist”;


World Digest: July 15, 2018

people were killed in a similar attack last month. Sunday’s bombing occurred about 4:30 p.m., officials said, as workers with the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development were leaving for the day. Witnesses told local news outlets that the explosion was big, disrupting rush-hour traffic and ending a period of relative calm in the nation’s capital since the June attack and two attacks in April that killed 85 people, including nine Afghan journalists. Officials did not know why the same ministry had been attacked twice in less than a month, but in both cases, the bomber waited for the workday to end. The attack underscored a report released earlier Sunday by the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan that found 1,692 Afghan civilians have been killed in the first six months of the year, more than in any comparable period during the past decade. — Antonio Olivo and Sharif Hassan HORN OF AFRICA Concert highlights end of Ethiopia-Eritrea war The leaders of Ethiopia and Eritrea, official rivals just weeks ago, embraced warmly Sunday to the roar of a crowd of thousands at a concert in the Ethiopian capital celebrating the end of a long state of war. Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, clasping his hands over his heart, addressed the crowd in Ethiopia’s official language, Amharic, on his first visit to the country in 22 years. “Hate, discrimination and conspiracy is now over,” Isaias, 72, said to cheers. “Our focus from now on should be on developing and growing together.” The Eritrean leader repeatedly praised the “able leadership” of Ethiopia’s new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, who in his own speech thanked Isaias for his “courageous gesture” in accepting the offer of peace. The concert in Addis Ababa highlighted the end of hostilities between the arch-foes in East Africa, which fought a bloody border war from 1998 to 2000 that killed tens of thousands. The antagonism ended last month when Abiy announced that Ethiopia would fully accept a peace deal originally signed in 2000, and Eritrea swiftly responded. “The reconciliation we are forging now is an example to people across Africa and beyond,” Abiy, 41, said. Isaias arrived in Ethiopia on Saturday, reciprocating the Ethiopian leader’s trip to Eritrea the previous weekend that led to the restoration of diplomatic, telephone and transport ties. — Associated Press Myanmar mine accident kills at least 15: Hundreds of migrants rescued at sea: — From news services


In MLB All-Star week, Metro workers empower leaders to strike

to subway stations, which labor leaders said happened without required consultations. Jeter called the custodian issue the “last straw.” Since Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld took over the transit system in November 2015, union members have held regular demonstrations at Metro board meetings, voicing their opposition to cuts to jobs and open positions, fare increases, service cuts and a shift toward private contractors over union workers. The agency has been beset by chronic safety and reliability issues that, along with other factors, have driven down ridership. The resulting revenue losses triggered fare increases and cutbacks in service. Labor disputes and contract matters are intended to be resolved through grievances and binding arbitration. But after Metro threatened to discipline anyone who showed up late following the Thursday “late-out,” Jeter issued a veiled strike threat to Wiedefeld. “In addition, if you make good on your threat to suspend ANYONE for three days for a single miss, ALL OF LOCAL 689 WILL BE TAKING A 3 DAY SUSPENSION,” she wrote in an email to the general manager. The union also circulated a petition calling for Wiedefeld to be removed from office. In an email to Jeter, Metro Chief Labor Relations Officer John M. Gilman laid out the stakes of an escalation. “The collective bargaining agreement and the Compact prohibit concerted actions by the union to disrupt the services Metro supplies to the public,” the email said. “We demand that Local 689 cease and desist from any further illegal action and that you immediately instruct your members to arrive on time for work and to comply with all standard operating procedures.” Forty years have passed since the last Metro workers’ strike. A week-long work stoppage in 1978 that disrupted commutes across the region centered on Metro’s failure to provide cost-of-living increases of 20 cents an hour that were agreed upon as part of a labor contract. A U.S. District Court judge ordered the workers to return to the job or face contempt-of-court citations. Two Metro employees were later found guilty of contempt of court and were fined $100 apiece. They also faced Metro penalties ranging from suspension to dismissal, The Post reported at the time. On Sunday, the line of workers waiting to vote wrapped partly around the building at the first of three scheduled meetings at the Local 689 union hall in Forestville, Md. Workers chanted “Wiedefeld has got to go!” faiz.siddiqui@washpost.com


For NSO, a subtle Tchaikovsky goes a long way

It’s easy to see why pianist Inon Barnatan is becoming an in-demand musical collaborator in the nation’s capital. The New York-based chamber musician-turned-soloist, who made a surprise National Symphony Orchestra debut in March as a last-minute substitute, plays with a profound sense of artistry that elevates the performers around him and also draws in listeners. In his first scheduled concert with the NSO on Saturday evening at Wolf Trap, Barnatan brought forth his best lyrical and poetic chops for Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor, Op. 23. Under guest conductor Bramwell Tovey, the NSO played with a brooding tenderness that complemented the pianist’s interpretation of the impassioned work. Barnatan placed the opening salvo of chords with care, making them ring out with quiet determination. Other pianists go the route of keyboard pyrotechnics to create an overt passion that is anchored in orchestral intensity. But the NSO’s stance in this concerto was all about subtlety, and the performers remained ever vigilant about the soloist-orchestra balance. Barnatan’s silky pianism encouraged the NSO musicians to respond in kind by creating a dreamy landscape for his extended melodic lines. Because of that sensitivity, the piano’s crystalline upper-octave notes and iridescent trills could always be heard above the orchestral fray, even in the darker moments. In the middle andantino, Barnatan engaged in a playful dialogue with the instruments, and that colorful back-and-forth carried into the finale, where a jaunty and jubilant orchestra brought it all to a brilliant conclusion. Featuring the Washington Chorus and a quartet of fine Wolf Trap Opera soloists (soprano Yelena Dyachek, mezzo Zoie Reams, tenor Richard Trey Smagur and baritone Thomas Glass), the NSO gave Beethoven’s “Choral” Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125 a luminous if somewhat methodical performance. style@washpost.com


Food recalls explained: Why it seems like food contamination is on the rise

states of salmonella infections tied to pre-cut melons, with 34 hospitalizations. The recent spate of illnesses raises food-safety questions. Here’s a primer on what you need to know. Q: A: Q: A: "The interesting thing about these bacteria is that they mutate very quickly, which is a great thing for disease detectives," said Jory Lange, a Houston-based attorney who specializes in food-safety cases. "Because of that rapid mutation, there's a genetic fingerprint that makes it easier to trace." But that doesn't mean authorities necessarily know the full extent of a problem. For every reported case, there are 20 unreported ones, Lange said. "The reason that's so concerning [is that] without identifying the problem, we can't fix it," he said. Q: A: Q: A: Take, for example, out-of-season packaged, pre-washed produce. It has gone through several steps — from the field to the processor, the packager, the distributor and then the grocer, with the possibility of contamination at each step. "Fifty years ago, you would have gotten lettuce from a farmer in your state; now it's coming from California and Arizona on a much larger scale," said Matthew Jon Stasiewicz, an assistant professor of applied food safety at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It's not just coming from farther away, it's coming from fewer and larger distributors. "When you get food on a larger scale, it's not inherently any riskier, but if there's a problem, the potential harm is magnified," Stasiewicz said. Q: A: Increasingly, experts are using genome sequencing, which relies on the DNA fingerprint of the food to help determine its source. A national database at the CDC known as PulseNet uses that DNA fingerprint to link illnesses to one another and try to determine the source of the outbreak. The challenge is that experts can't narrow down exactly where the contamination began — the field, the packing and processing plants or the grocery store. New technologies are being developed to make it easier and quicker to track food from the field to the grocery store. Q: A: Currently, companies are only required only to report where they obtained a food product and the customer for their product, not the entire distribution process. "Food is something that can get contaminated at any step of the process," Lange said. "One plant and one fruit . . . if you have a problem, that problem can spread." — Chicago Tribune


Most Americans want to make it easier — not harder — to vote

By wide margins, Americans say “too few people voting” is a major problem in the election system and voice support for measures that would make it easier to vote, including automatic voter registration. In a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute, 67 percent of the public said too few people voting was a major problem, with bipartisan agreement from 58 percent of Republicans and 78 percent of Democrats. More Americans cited it as a concern than any other issue, including foreign interference, media bias, the influence of wealthy individuals and votes cast by ineligible people. But the survey shows gaps between Democrats and Republicans on key areas of concern. Eighty-two percent of Democrats, for instance, said the influence of wealthy individuals and corporations was a major issue, a concern shared by 42 percent of Republicans. Republicans, for their part, were much more concerned (81 percent) than Democrats (41 percent) with the issue of media bias against certain candidates. Despite the support for automatic voter registration, however, it is worth pointing out that most Americans also support restrictions on access, like voter ID laws. A 2016 Gallup poll, for instance, found that 4 in 5 voters supported voter ID provisions. Taken together, the PRRI and Gallup numbers show that when it comes to voting rights, the typical voter may occupy a space that does not align neatly with either Democratic or Republican orthodoxy: a preference for expanding voting access as much as possible but with safeguards in place to verify who is voting. In line with the shared concern over too few people voting, the PRRI survey found broad support for a number of policies intended to expand voting access. More than 70 percent of Americans, including 64 percent of Republicans and 82 percent of Democrats, say people convicted of felonies should be able to vote after they have served their sentences. More than two-thirds, including 52 percent of Republicans and 83 percent of Democrats, supported a policy that would automatically enroll citizens to vote when they visit the Department of Motor Vehicles in their state. And 61 percent, including 42 percent of Republicans and 74 percent of Democrats, support allowing citizens to register and vote on the same day. Voter preferences on these issues are notable for being considerably more permissive than the laws in many states. Seventeen states plus the District of Columbia offer same-day registration and


Brexit campaigners broke electoral law, watchdog group alleges

The Vote Leave campaign was the official face of the 2016 effort to persuade Britain to leave the European Union — an effort that succeeded. "Leave" won nearly 52 percent of the vote in the contentious Brexit referendum that year, and Britain is slated to leave the E.U. next March. But on Tuesday, the Electoral Commission, an independent watchdog group, said it had found "significant evidence" that Vote Leave broke British electoral law. The commission said the group did not properly declare the extent of its coordination with BeLeave, a pro-Brexit youth group; by spending about $887,000 through BeLeave, Vote Leave thus allegedly overspent its legal $9.2 million limit. That money reportedly went to Aggregate IQ, a Canadian digital-marketing firm. The commission's findings came with fines: about $26,270 for Darren Grimes, the founder of BeLeave; and $80,000 for Vote Leave. Both Grimes and Vote Leave campaigner David Halsall have also been referred to the police for allegedly filing false reports about their campaign spending. In a statement posted on Twitter "Politicians say they want young people to engage with politics," he wrote. "I was 22 when I got involved in a referendum I felt passionately about. I did nothing wrong." Vote Leave said in a statement that the commission's report "contains a number of false accusations and incorrect assertions that are wholly inaccurate and do not stand up to scrutiny." But Bob Posner, director of political finance at the Electoral Commission, said his organization had "found substantial evidence that the two groups worked to a common plan, did not declare their joint working and did not adhere to the legal spending limits." "These are serious breaches of the laws put in place by Parliament to ensure fairness and transparency at elections and referendums," he said in a statement. Did overspending affect the outcome of the Brexit vote? That will be difficult to determine. But Shahmir Sanni, a Vote Leave campaigner-turned-whistle-blower told the BBC that the additional money "can make all the difference." As The Washington Post's William Booth and Karla Adam reported in March, "Sanni said he and Grimes were based in the Vote Leave headquarters; were advised by Vote Leave staffers, including [Prime Minister Theresa] May’s now-senior adviser; and relied on Vote Leave’s attorney, who helped them incorporate the BeLeave group." Lawmaker Chuka Umunna told Parliament on Tuesday that "we cannot say with confidence that this foul play did


A cleaning lady went to her car to get a mop and was attacked by 80,000 bees

her neck and her hair.” Donning protective gear would take too long, the firefighters decided, so they sprung into action without it. The emergency responders grabbed a carbon dioxide fire extinguisher and began spraying the bees that were attacking the woman, who was now barely conscious. “It’s so horrific, I will never lose the memory of seeing her just swatting at whatever she could,” neighbor Cynthia Emmets told CBS affiliate KCAL. Wilson said first responders were “spraying, and they were freezing the bees as they were kind of hovering and landing on us.” They stopped the brunt of the attack. But when they got the woman to the hospital, she was still covered in bees. She was also in critical condition, having been stung more than 200 times. Her son told firefighters she is expected to survive, although her recovery will be arduous. “When you get somebody stung hundreds of times, [bees] injecting that venom, you’re going to have a serious issue,” OCFA Capt. Tony Bommarito told KNBC. “Anybody, allergy or not, is going to be in serious condition after that.” Two of the firefighters were also stung. They were treated and released from the hospital and returned to work As The Washington Post’s Dan Eggen reported in 2000, African honey bees were brought to Brazil decades earlier to increase honey production, but were accidentally released into the wild. They crossbred with domestic honeybees and have been making their way north ever since. “They crossed into Texas . . . and have since invaded Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and California,” Eggen wrote. “The bees are territorial and aggressive and are known for their habit of swarming and attacking a victim repeatedly. The insects can become agitated by vibrations from as far away as 100 feet and can pursue a victim for more than a quarter-mile.” The African bees look similar to their docile European-descended cousins, according to the Arizona Republic. Their temperament is what gives them a rotten reputation. “They are very aggressive, and they will sting in great numbers,” Nancy Troyano, an entomologist with Western Exterminator, told the newspaper. “And they will pursue a threat for up to a quarter of a mile.” People being attacked should run away as fast as possible, but jumping in water is not a good idea with Africanized bees. They will patiently wait for their victim to surface, then renew the attack. A


Astronomers discover 12 more moons of Jupiter, including an oddity

Our solar system's oldest and biggest planet, Jupiter, has many moons. And astronomers have just announced the discovery of a dozen more. On Tuesday, the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center published the orbits for 12 newfound Jovian moons — bringing Jupiter's total to 79 moons, said Scott Sheppard, a scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in D.C. Sheppard did not set out to detect new moons. His team at Carnegie, along with collaborators at the University of Hawaii and Northern Arizona University, was hunting for objects far beyond Pluto. “We're But cosmic serendipity placed the moons in front of their telescope. During their survey in March 2017, the astronomers realized that Jupiter had moved into their field of view. The Blanco four-meter telescope, at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, is equipped with a camera able to spot very faint objects. This proved to be quite helpful, as the unknown moons around Jupiter are small and dim. “We were able to go a little bit fainter than anyone has been able to go in the past,” Sheppard said, “and that's why we were able to find these new moons.” Jupiter's moons range in size from shrimpy satellites to whopping space hulks. Galileo discovered the first four of Jupiter's moons, all huge, in 1610. The largest Galilean moon, Ganymede, is bigger than the planet Mercury. Those moons orbit close to Jupiter and travel in the same direction as the planet spins. The moons Sheppard spied are farther-flung and tiny, each no more than two miles in diameter. One moon detected by Sheppard and his colleagues is the smallest Jovian moon ever discovered. They named it Valetudo, after a daughter of Jupiter and the Roman goddess of hygiene and personal health. Gareth Williams, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and director at the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center, predicted that “t But he said he expects astronomers will discover more tiny moons in the coming decades. As for the number of satellites that orbit Jupiter, Williams said he dreads “to think how many objects are in the hundred-meter range.” Size isn't a requirement to be a moon — there's no such thing as a dwarf moon. Not yet, anyway. “Right now the only definition of a moon is something that orbits the planet,” Sheppard said, as long as it isn't human-made. Astronomers group Jupiter's moons by


Obama’s South Africa speech, annotated

that Nelson Mandela represented in many ways set the terms of international political debate. It doesn’t mean that vision was always victorious, but it set the terms, the parameters; it guided how we thought about the meaning of progress, and it continued to propel the world forward. Yes, there were still tragedies — bloody civil wars from the Balkans to the Congo. Despite the fact that ethnic and sectarian strife still flared up with heartbreaking regularity, despite all that as a consequence of the continuation of nuclear detente, and a peaceful and prosperous Japan, and a unified Europe anchored in NATO, and the entry of China into the world’s system of trade — all that greatly reduced the prospect of war between the world’s great powers. And from Europe to Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, dictatorships began to give way to democracies. The march was on. A respect for human rights and the rule of law, enumerated in a declaration by the United Nations, became the guiding norm for the majority of nations, even in places where the reality fell far short of the ideal. Even when those human rights were violated, those who violated human rights were on the defensive. And with these geopolitical changes came sweeping economic changes. The introduction of market-based principles, in which previously closed economies along with the forces of global integration powered by new technologies, suddenly unleashed entrepreneurial talents to those that once had been relegated to the periphery of the world economy, who hadn’t counted. Suddenly, they counted. They had some power; they had the possibilities of doing business. And then came scientific breakthroughs and new infrastructure and the reduction of armed conflicts. And suddenly a billion people were lifted out of poverty, and once-starving nations were able to feed themselves, and infant mortality rates plummeted. And meanwhile, the spread of the Internet made it possible for people to connect across oceans, and cultures and continents instantly were brought together, and potentially, all the world’s knowledge could be in the hands of a small child in even the most remote village. That’s what happened just over the course of a few decades. And all that progress is real. It has been broad, and it has been deep, and it all happened in what — by the standards of human history — was nothing more than a blink of an eye. And now an


The facts missing from Trump and Putin’s news conference

huge amount of money, $400 million as a contribution to the campaign of Hillary Clinton. Well, that’s the personal case. It might have been legal, the contribution itself, but the way the money was earned was illegal.” (There’s no evidence that Browder or his associates contributed $400 million to Clinton’s campaign.) In 2017, Browder testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that, from 1996 to 2005, his firm Hermitage Capital “was one of the largest investment advisers in Russia,” with “more than $4 billion invested in Russian stocks.” His investment firm “named and shamed” oligarchs who stole from shareholders — an effort, Browder said, that Putin initially supported. That changed in 2003, he testified, and Browder was expelled from Russia just over two years later. After the falling-out with Putin, Browder hired Magnitsky, a Russian tax accountant, to investigate a suspected theft from his Russian companies. Magnitsky was arrested and died in prison in 2009 under suspicious circumstances. Browder’s advocacy of Magnitsky’s case led Congress to pass the 2012 Magnitsky Act, which bars Russian officials believed to be involved in the accountant’s death from entering the United States or using its banking system. In response, Russia blocked U.S. parents from adopting Russian children. Since then, the Kremlin has gone to great lengths to discredit Browder. In 2013, a Russian court sentenced him in absentia to nine years in prison for failing to pay $500 million in taxes. He was put on trial in absentia again in 2017. Putin said the United States should help Russia investigate Browder, but he renounced his U.S. citizenship and resides in London. We previously drew up a list of all known contacts between Russians and Trump campaign advisers. Several Trump advisers met with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, during the campaign, including Michael Flynn, who later resigned as Trump’s national security adviser for failing to fully disclose those contacts to Vice President Pence. Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty on Oct. 5, 2017, to lying to federal agents about his contacts with people with connections to the Russian government during the campaign. The Washington Post reported that Manafort during the campaign “offered to provide briefings on the race to a Russian billionaire closely aligned with the Kremlin,” Oleg Deripaska. The House intelligence committee’s Republican majority released a report that found “no evidence” of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. But the report said investigations


Why, now that I’m a parent, does summer break feel so much shorter?

in February, the planet’s least appealing vacation month for 6,000 years and running. And an informal poll of people eating cereal in my kitchen indicates that we’d happily trade those October and (heavy sigh) February breaks for increased time at the pool. Your stats on all this will be different, of course, depending on which of the country’s 9 million school calendars you follow. If you’re one of the more than 3,700 schools on a balanced calendar, with breaks distributed throughout the year, you may have only a two-week sunshine hiccup during the summer. (You could kill an otherwise useful day sampling social, educational and financial arguments for and against modified calendars, and a second one endeavoring to find a consensus on a “normal” schedule. In short, you’ll learn people like to argue a lot and come away otherwise unsatisfied.) Balanced-calendar proponents make good arguments about summer slides, competitive disadvantages and the difficulties that working families face in securing summertime child care. We’ve dealt with all of them. We’ve also dealt with burnout and overscheduling and the steady drip of scholastic and extracurricular pressures and, of course, infinitely prolonged and miserable Midwestern winters. Which brings me to this hot take: It is not unpleasing, on the whole, to occasionally have to basically deal with nothing more than the steady drip of ice cream. If I am sentimental about summer, it’s because summer here in Indiana is a frustrating magic trick. It just shows up one day, quite out of nowhere, generally two or three weeks before spring. It doesn’t arrive so much as barge in the front door with its startlingly instant sun and Caribbean humidity. Frankly, it’s a mess. Indiana is the borderline personality disorder of state weather systems. Someone last year posted an image of a forecast that contained, in a single week, every possible weather icon. (America: “No state can have every type of weather in a week.” Indiana: “Hold my beer.”) So once summer arrives, we pounce on it, in the hungry way that you do when you know something is temporary, even though you know it ruins the gift you’ve been given. Summer is not for pouncing. Summer is for . . . the opposite of pouncing, whatever that is. I would look it up, but it’s summer — such research seems like a lot of work, and I am drinking sweet tea. And with


23 injured after basketball-sized ‘lava bomb’ crashes through roof of Hawaiian tour boat

sea,” the company says on its website. “See, Hear & Feel the heat from your front row seat onboard one of our world class catamarans.” According to Hawaii News Now, the boat had left with 49 passengers and three crew members on board and had been touring the area around Kapoho, an unincorporated section near the island’s coastline where the lava explosions from ongoing eruptions at the Kilauea volcano have destroyed hundreds of homes and filled in a popular tide pool bay last month. But with timely evacuations and public attention, few have been injured seriously. A video posted by Hawaii News Now reporter Mileka Lincoln taken from another tour boat captures a massive lava explosion in the water that she said affected the other boat. “It’s unclear how close [Capt. Shane] Turpin’s tour boat was to the Kapoho lava ocean entry when the explosion happened, but eyewitnesses report the boat appeared to be ‘very close,’ ” she wrote, noting that the Coast Guard recently changed the mandatory safety perimeter required around ocean lava entries from 100 to 50 meters for the tour operators. State officials and police said they were investigating the incident. U.S. Geological Survey volcanologist Wendy Stovall told USA Today that lava bombs can result from the interaction between lava with the ocean, as water turns into steam and causes the lava to explode. Government officials have also been warning about the dangers of laze, a potentially dangerous mix of hydrochloric acid, steam and tiny glass particles in the air that results from the interaction of the lava and the water. Turpin told the Associated Press that the group had been about 250 yards from the lava. “As we were exiting the zone, all of a sudden everything around us exploded,” he said. “It was everywhere.” He said that the crew did not pick up on any warning signs before the explosion. The volcano’s eruption on Hawaii has been an ongoing emergency on the island since May, sending thousands of residents from their homes, destroying hundreds of structures and captivating the world through arresting images showcasing Earth’s raw destructive power. The lava also created a small island meters off the coast this week. Read more: How a woman swerved off a 200-foot cliff and survived 7 days trapped on a secluded beach Elon Musk, insisting he helped in Thai cave rescue, calls actual rescuer a ‘pedo’ A


Putin just confirmed the human rights sanctions are working

of 1999’s Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty between the United States and Russia. “Options abound.” During a phone interview, Browder told me he was thrilled to be the subject of Putin’s proposal. It shows, Browder says, that Putin is annoyed by his legislation, the Magnitsky Act, which has been used to sanction Russian officials for human rights abuses each year since it was passed in 2012. The act is named after Browder’s accountant and lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, who was tortured in a Russian prison and died there in 2009. “This is an incredibly powerful tribute to the power of the Magnitsky Act. This shows I’ve found Putin’s Achilles’ heel, that he’s very rattled by it,” Browder said. “For a guy who’s supposed to be a former KGB spy, he’s got a terrible poker face.” Despite Trump’s public and private disdain for human rights promotion, his administration has continued to issue sanctions under the Magnitsky Act, which was expanded to cover all countries in 2016, not just Russia. The State Department issued the most recent Magnitsky sanctions earlier this month. The Russian government’s outrage over the law has been deep and consistent. Their initial response was to ban Americans from adopting Russian children. There has also been a fierce anti-Magnitsky lobbying campaign in Washington for years, led in part by Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who has close ties to Yuri Chaika, the prosecutor general of Russia. Relief from Magnitsky sanctions was the ask that Veselnitskaya and her cohorts brought to the now-infamous June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort. As mentioned above, the Russians have artificially linked the adoption issue, which became part of the cover story about the meeting, to the Magnitsky legislation. Putin claimed on Monday that Browder contributed heavily and secretly to Clinton’s campaign. That’s the same “dirt” Veselnitskaya was offering the Trump team. There is no public evidence that the assertion is true. Veselnitskaya was working on the anti-Magnitsky case with Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned the Christopher Steele dossier. But Fusion was working for an American law firm that had Veselnitskaya as a client. That work was unrelated to the dossier, though Trump defenders have sought to conflate the two. The point is, from Putin down to Veselnitskaya, the Russian government and its proxies are working hard not only to get rid of the Magnitsky sanctions,


Trump repudiates U.S. intelligence community by according equal weight to Putin

be recognized as one by the President.” At several moments Monday, Trump seemed to nod approvingly as Putin disputed American claims against Russia. “Who is to be believed and . . . who’s not to be believed,” Putin said, a line that closely tracked Trump’s position. At one point, Putin seemed to be mocking the United States — offering to help American investigators pursue their theories about Russian culpability, while imposing a condition that he knew the United States could never abide. Putin said members of Mueller’s team could travel to Moscow and be permitted to witness Russian authorities question the defendants named in the latest U.S. indictment. “This kind of effort should be a mutual one,” Putin said, meaning that Russia would then expect to be granted entry to the United States to take part in questioning of CIA officers and others that the Kremlin suspects of interfering in Russian affairs. Trump leaped at the proposal. “What he did is an incredible offer,” Trump said. “I think that’s an incredible offer.” Trump made his statements in front of senior members of his national security team, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who previously led the CIA. Many senior officials in the administration are baffled by Trump’s position but attribute it to his inability to accept any claim that might devalue his win over Clinton in the 2016 election. He gave new credence to that theory Monday, launching repeatedly into unprompted discourses about the magnitude of his win. “That was a clean campaign. I beat Hillary Clinton easily. . . . And it’s a shame that there could be even a little bit of a cloud over it,” he said. The stream of outbursts came as part of a summit that Trump has pursued since the moment he took office with the foreign leader he most frequently lavishes with praise. Trump’s denials stretch back to before he was president and are now effectively “baked in” to his relationship with Putin, a former U.S. intelligence official said. “He made it all about him and not Russia’s attack on our democratic system,” said another senior official, who was distraught over the spectacle of a U.S. president siding with an adversary power against his own intelligence leaders. For some, the press conference was reminiscent of Trump’s comments after last summer’s protests in Charlottesville, in which Trump said that racist marchers and counterprotesters shared


Trump impeachment odds hit record after Helsinki, says Irish bookmaker

Place your bets. Not on the World Cup. (Didn’t you hear? France triumphed.) Not on your favorite thoroughbred. (The Kentucky Derby isn’t until next spring.) No, punters in Britain and Ireland are putting up money 2 to 1 on President Trump’s impeachment, according to Paddy Power, a bookmaker that manages betting shops in Britain and Ireland and that runs Ireland’s largest telephone betting service. New confidence appears to stem from Trump’s appearance Monday in Helsinki, where he stood beside Vladimir Putin and seemed to take the Russian president’s word, over that of his own intelligence agencies, that the Russians had not interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. When he found himself under an avalanche of bipartisan criticism Tuesday, Trump said he accepted the intelligence community’s findings and sought to explain away his earlier remarks using syntactic somersaults. “What this whole Moscow gruel has taught us is that the Donald is still the biggest ticket in town — and people love to bet on his downfall,” said Lee Price, a spokesman for Paddy Power. The gambling site has capitalized on the unpredictable nature of the Trump presidency, offering bets on scenarios such as “When will Sean Spicer leave/get sacked as White House press secretary.” The odds that Trump is impeached are now 2 to 1, or 33 percent, Price told The Washington Post, compared with 4 to 1, or 20 percent, on Monday before the news conference. “Given the complexity of the impeachment process, that’s an unprecedented price in terms of how short it is,” Price said. “No president in modern history has had such short odds.” Betters also think there is a decreased chance that Trump finishes his first term and an increased chance that he resigns. Price said that Trump’s undoing has been a popular bet ever since he took office: “Since Trump’s inauguration, we’ve had more bets on his impeachment than we’ve had on any Brexit market, any U.K. election market, or any of the other 100 or so specials we have on-site about the president.” Gambling laws differ across U.S. states but mostly restrict betting to sports and games of chance. A comparable assessment of odds is therefore elusive. Away from betting houses and in the halls of Congress, however, talk of impeachment was muted. Democrats sought to make hay of the president’s performance, seeing an opportunity to gain ground in midterm elections. But beyond longtime proponents


Does legal weed make police more effective?

November 2012 in Colorado and December 2012 for Washington. While recreational markets in these states didn’t open until 2014, provisions allowing for personal possession and use took effect shortly after the votes were certified. The chart above shows violent crime clearance rates before and after legalization in Colorado in Washington. Clearance rates were falling in both states before legalization. Afterward the decline stabilized in Colorado and began to reverse itself in Washington. The authors note that no similar shift happened in the country as a whole. The researchers stress, however, that the data can’t prove conclusively that legalization directly caused the changes in clearance rates. There could have been other changes to policing in those states during that time period, such as increased use of overtime hours, the implementation of new policing strategies or a more aggressive focus on certain types of crime. They note, however, that no other major changes to public policy happened in those states that would affect clearance rates in the way they observed. “We think the argument that legalization did in fact produce a measurable impact on clearance rates is plausible,” they conclude. Property crime clearance rates show a dramatic reversal in Colorado, with a brief boost in Washington followed by a continuation of the prior trend. The authors also looked at trends for some specific types of crime, most notably burglary and motor vehicle theft. “The clearance rate for these two offenses increased dramatically postlegalization,” the authors found. “In contrast, national trends remained essentially flat.” Going beyond simple visual comparisons, the authors ran a number of statistical tests that largely confirm the findings hinted at in the charts: “While there were both immediate and longer term differences between states which legalized and the rest of the country in terms of crime clearance rates, the long-term differences are much more pronounced, especially in Colorado.” Advocates for legalization have frequently argued that freeing police from the burden of low-level marijuana enforcement would allow them to devote resources to more serious crimes. The Washington State researchers say their findings support this idea: “Our results suggest that, just as marijuana legalization proponents argued, the legalization of marijuana influenced police outcomes, which in the context of this article is modeled as improvements in clearance rates.” They note, furthermore, that “there were no crime types in either state for which legalization appeared to have a negative impact on clearance rates.”


Chuck Liddell snacks on frozen treats at Ice Cream Jubilee

Hey, isn’t that . . . Chuck Liddell, with family and friends at Ice Cream Jubilee? The professional MMA fighter stopped by the Navy Yard joint Tuesday afternoon and snacked on sundaes. (Is ice cream part of his training diet? If so, sign us up.) “The Iceman,” as he is often called, happily posed for a photo. When his car service arrived, Liddell demonstrated his strength by carrying a hefty amount of items out of the store, including a stroller and two or so bags in one hand, and approximately four bags in the other, according to an impressed insider.


The hope for cessation of Ethiopia-Eritrea hostilities

The July 14 editorial “Hope in the Horn of Africa” correctly praised the end of hostilities between Eritrea and Ethiopia, but it erroneously characterized the 2002 boundary ruling by an independent arbitration panel in The Hague as awarding territory to Eritrea. The ruling made minor border adjustments to both countries and, at the time, was accepted by Eritrea as part of the cessation of hostilities agreement to submit the dispute to “final and binding arbitration.” Encouraged by the United States, the Ethiopian government at the time, undemocratic and with a miserable human rights record, reneged on that commitment. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Martin R. Ganzglass The writer was pro bono legal counsel to the Eritrean People's Liberation Front in the United States and was counsel for the Eritrean Embassy.


What veterans of the last financial crisis have to say about the next one

thousands of companies and led to millions of foreclosures. “This is the same kind of thing we were seeing in 2005 and 2006,” Bair said. Some of them said the public’s fury at the government bailouts and Washington’s move to restrain regulators could make it impossible for policymakers to intervene, Paulson said. In 2008, he asked Congress for an unlimited credit line to try to stop the banking panic. They eventually settled on a $700 billion fund, known the Troubled Asset Relief Program, that was used to stabilize the system. He questioned whether the public or political leaders would ever allow that to happen now, given the populist grip that has taken hold of the country. The financial crisis reached its peak 10 years ago, a global banking panic that shook stock markets, wiped out thousands of companies, erased trillions of dollars in savings and drove unemployment from 4.7 percent to 10 percent in 24 months. To arrest the panic, the Bush and Obama administrations used controversial and — at times — barely legal methods to flood financial markets with taxpayer money. Most of this money flowed directly to banks, not homeowners, causing a populist revolt. Bernanke, Geithner, Paulson and Bair succeeded in preventing another Great Depression, but the populist blowback to their actions created scars that persist today, fueling class warfare that has permeated through multiple elections. It also led Congress to strip away some of the emergency powers the government used. For example, the government retained the ability to extend money to a specific company but it became much harder to set up a broader emergency lending program without approval from Congress. And now the Trump administration has launched a wave of deregulation through banking and other industries, clipping the scope of the consumer protection agency created after the crisis and limiting the reach of the Federal Reserve. Now, some of the people who led the response to the crisis fear a weakened regulatory system could prove inadequate to stop the next panic, whenever it comes. The government has, “on net, a somewhat weaker emergency arsenal to deal with the extreme financial crisis” than it did 10 years ago, Geithner said. He said the government needs other powers to respond, such as the ability to make emergency loans across the banking system to stem a bank run or panic. He said that flexibility is now constrained, in part


Army abandons legal effort to expel an immigrant soldier on path to citizenship

He was deemed to exhibit honorable service as recently as May and earned a recent promotion, says his lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia. The suit claimed the Army violated its own policies by not explaining why he was separated or giving him a chance to respond. The Army’s discharge also violated constitutional protections of due process under the Fifth Amendment, the lawsuit claimed. The Army said in the Monday filing that it would “comply with the applicable law and regulations governing administrative separation of soldiers.” Margaret Stock, a retired Army officer who designed the MAVNI program and is now a practicing immigration lawyer, said she estimates that “dozens” are in the same position as Calixto — discharged with no explanation or recourse. It was telling that the Army reversed its decision instead of opposing the injunction, she told The Post. “It’s disturbing you have to file a lawsuit to get the Army to follow its own regulations,” Stock said. The Pentagon heightened security checks necessary for immigrants to enlist in September 2016 over concerns that the program could be exploited by foreign infiltrators. The Pentagon has refused to acknowledge whether any MAVNI recruits have been charged for threatening national security, but has said 20 have been investigated since 2013 for unspecified reasons. The new measures have triggered a maelstrom of bureaucratic entanglements since 2016. Recruits have waited for months to get cleared. More than 1,000 recruits had to wait so long that they lost lawful status, exposing them to potential deportation. Some fled or sought asylum to avoid returning to countries where they face persecution or that forbid foreign military service. In other instances, some enlistment contracts were canceled nationwide in an apparent and broad misunderstanding of rules that allowed recruits to wait an additional year for the military to finish the checks. Some Army recruiters reinstated contracts for immigrants shortly after receiving inquiries from The Post in September. Critics of the increased measures have said the barriers are unreasonably high for a population with valid visas already vetted by the departments of State and Homeland Security. This story incorrectly stated the Pentagon had not released information on threat investigations. It has been updated. Read more: How the Pentagon ending its deal with immigrant recruits could hurt the military The Pentagon tried to kill a program for immigrants. Mattis thinks it can be saved.


Afghan president seeks to soothe concerns over video showing government soldiers beating prisoners

shows that human rights violations have gone unchecked within his administration. “For me as the commander in chief of the armed forces, any treatment of security and defense forces which are in contradiction with the enforced principles and laws of the country, by no means is acceptable,” Ghani said during a news conference. “We are all responsible and I assure you that the violators will be dealt with.” A steady wave of protests has rolled through a portion of northern Afghanistan near the Uzbekistan border since the arrest of Qaisari, a protege of Afghan vice president Abdurrashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek. Dostum, a lion of Afghanistan’s civil war during the 1990s who has been living in Turkey after he was accused in 2016 of ordering the sexual assault of a political rival, has called for Qaisari’s release, further energizing the street protests. On Sunday, more than 100 protesters marched through the streets inside Faryab and two neighboring provinces that also have large Uzbek populations, with some setting up tents and others staging sit-ins outside government buildings. Meanwhile, critics accused Ghani on social media of trying to cover up abuses committed by the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces to stay in the good graces of Afghanistan’s NATO funders. “Please listen to what the Afghan people say,” Amrullah Saleh, the head of Afghan intelligence services under former president Hamid Karzai, wrote on Twitter to NATO leaders. “They say don’t allow @ashrafghani under the false pretext of fight against corruption to turn the ANDSF into his private GESTAPO and SS.” Ghani has held firm on Qaisari’s arrest, although during his news conference Sunday he hinted at a possible deal with Dostum, saying the vice president’s return to Afghanistan is “very possible.” “This issue has a legal aspect and the attorney general will investigate it,” Ghani said. Human rights groups said a transparent investigation into the abuses shown in the video is critical if the Ghani administration wants the United States and other major backers to continue to take it seriously. Belal Seddiqi, a spokesman for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, which is part of the government, said nobody should be allowed to get away with such behavior. “Afghan security forces are responsible to safeguard peoples’ rights,” Seddiqi said. “They do not have the right, under any circumstances, to violate human rights. No one has the right to act like this.” antonio.olivo@washpost.com


These ‘eggs’ are made from mung beans. Could they pass for the real thing?

labeling,” according to the Los Angeles Times. A Bloomberg News report alleged that the company ran a scheme to buy its own product back from stores, over which the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice launched an inquiry, which was later dropped. Just’s products are vegan, but they’re not just for vegans. In fact, cooking instructions sent by the company suggest scrambling Just Egg with milk or butter. If you have mung bean “eggs,” you don’t have to worry about them being cage- or cruelty-free. The company says that the production “requires less water and fewer carbon emissions,” and that the product has no cholesterol. Those who might not have any interest in a vegan lifestyle can still make occasional substitutions, and that could have a positive effect on our food systems and on individual health. Just has gotten several chefs on board: José Andrés has endorsed the product. In the District, chef Todd Gray of Equinox has incorporated it into his popular vegan brunch. Washingtonian magazine wondered whether Just Egg could be the next Impossible Burger, the plant-based burger that is showing up in more and more restaurants. And the chain Veggie Grill just adopted the product for its meatless breakfast burritos. The company debuted the product last year at the San Francisco restaurant Flore. Just Egg is beginning to be available in stores, and it will soon be available for online purchase from Jet.com. The suggested retail price for a 12-ounce bottle is $7.99. Okay, so the product doesn’t taste exactly like eggs. In our blind taste test, it was immediately obvious which plate of scrambled eggs was the real deal and which was the Just Egg. Naturally, the mung bean egg lacks a bit of the richness and fat that you get from a real yolk. The flavor is more akin to a tofu scramble — not bad, just different. The product can also be used in other recipes, both sweet and savory, that call for eggs. The texture is slightly denser than a soft-scrambled egg, but it’s not wildly unfamiliar. Definitely close enough to fool your taste buds into eating a more plant-based diet, if you’re trying to cut back on animal proteins. You could scramble it with some veggies or herbs to pump up the flavor. Or, uh, some cheese. More from Voraciously: Camel milk is full of nutrients and it’s growing


Outrage erupts over Trump-Putin ‘conversation’ about letting Russia interrogate ex-U.S. diplomat Michael McFaul

the United States to interrogate Americans, Wray said, “That’s probably even lower on our list of investigative techniques.” McFaul served as U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, a tumultuous period in relations between the two countries. President Barack Obama signed the Magnitsky Act into law in 2012, prompting retaliation from Russia that included banning U.S. adoptions of Russian orphans. McFaul was often the target of anti-American attacks in the Russian media and said he ended up being Putin’s “personal foe.” “Putin has been harassing me for a long time. That he now wants to arrest me, however, takes it to a new level,” tweeted McFaul, who is now a Hoover fellow at Stanford University and the director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. “Even during the Stalin era, the Soviet government never had the audacity to try to arrest US government officials. Think about that.” “I hope the White House corrects the record and denounces in categorical terms this ridiculous request from Putin,” McFaul wrote. “Not doing so creates moral equivalency” between a legitimate “US indictment of Russian intelligence officers and a crazy, completely fabricated story invented by Putin.” Many U.S. lawmakers and former diplomatic officials came to McFaul’s defense on Twitter, and the hashtag #ProtectMcFaul was trending late Wednesday. “Let’s recall why Putin began making outrageous, false accusations against @McFaul,” tweeted Samantha Power, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. “Mike stood up for human rights and against Russian oppression. That terrified Putin. The fact that @realDonaldTrump won’t stand up for an American patriot is a travesty.” Susan E. Rice, Obama’s former national security adviser, described the White House’s statement regarding Putin’s request as “beyond outrageous.” “Amb. McFaul served our country honorably and with full diplomatic immunity,” Rice tweeted. “If the White House cannot defend and protect our diplomats, like our service members, they are serving a hostile foreign power not the American people.” Speaking to CNN’s Don Lemon on Wednesday, James Clapper, former director of national intelligence, described the potential of such an exchange with Putin as “crazy.” “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Clapper said. “To turn over any U.S. citizen, particularly a former ambassador, for the Russians to interrogate him? You’ve got to be kidding.” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) suggested that turning over McFaul for questioning would be grounds for impeaching Trump. “Take this to the bank, @realDonaldTrump: you turn over


As explosive new Russia revelations hit Trump, Republicans throw him a lifeline

THE MORNING PLUM: For many months, leading Republicans have practically pleaded with President Trump in public to avail himself of a simple escape hatch on the Russia scandal: If you just acknowledge that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, and take seriously the prospect that Russia will do it again next time, there won’t be a scandal anymore. You have an easy way out, Mr. President. Why not just take it? But the latest explosive revelations from the New York Times will make that posture much tougher to sustain. Or, at least, that’s what should happen. Instead, it’s perfectly plausible that Republicans will continue to throw Trump that lifeline for as long as possible, which in practice means abdicating on the use of congressional authority to force the full truth about this saga out into the open, even as learning the truth grows ever more urgent. The Times reports that in January 2017, two weeks before his inauguration, senior intelligence officials privately presented Trump with extensive evidence that Vladimir Putin had personally ordered the campaign of cyber-subterfuge and information warfare that worked to tilt the 2016 election to Trump. If true, as many were quick to point out, then all of Trump’s subsequent dismissals of the Russian sabotage effort amounted to a much more active coverup on behalf of Putin than we knew. This week, after special counsel Robert S. Mueller III rolled out a July 13 indictment that tied the Kremlin directly to an effort to sabotage American democracy that demonstrated extraordinary scope and reach — including a massive cybertheft crime directed at one of the two major American political parties — Trump stood next to Putin and sided with him as he denied the Russian attack. In response, leading Republicans called on Trump to accept the intelligence community’s consensus view to the contrary, to denounce Putin’s interference and to take seriously the prospect of more to come. The Republican approach has been to set the threshold for an acceptable Trump response at the point of acknowledgment that the Russian interference effort did take place. In this arrangement, as long as Trump takes that minimal step, there is no need to talk much about why Russia interfered (to elect Trump), or about the fact that the Trump campaign eagerly sought to benefit from that Russian interference, or about why Trump lied to cover that up. There is no need


Trump’s next tariffs could cost U.S. in race for self-driving cars

“We’d have to scale back our research — have to look at moving that research into other parts of the world that are lower cost.” The proposed auto tariffs are emerging as a case study of the way protectionism saps innovation and growth, a concern that Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome H. Powell noted this week in congressional testimony. “Countries that remain open to trade have higher productivity; they have higher incomes,” Powell told the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday. “A more protectionist economy is less competitive, less productive. We know that.” The United States has long been a magnet for innovation, thanks to strong protections for intellectual property, the rule of law and an entrepreneurial culture. Amid Trump’s “America First” policy, which he says will return lost manufacturing jobs to the United States, the nation may be losing its attractiveness. In the first quarter, the U.S. received $51.3 billion in foreign direct investment. That was the lowest figure in four years and represented a sharp decline from nearly $90 billion during the same period one year earlier and $147 billion in the first quarter of 2016, according to the Commerce Department. “The numbers have fallen off a cliff,” said Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute of International Economics. “Over time, this erodes R&D. This erodes American competitiveness at a very fundamental level.” Research into the technologies needed to make self-driving and electric vehicles a consumer staple is expected to be so costly that most companies will base their main development work in a single location, industry executives said. General Motors has warned that the tariffs “could delay breakthrough technologies and threaten U.S. leadership in the next generation of automotive technology.” The industry’s long lead times for new products mean the stakes are high. If the tariffs raise costs or disrupt supply chains in a way that encourages companies to base their advanced mobility research elsewhere, “we will have little opportunity to recoup these losses for a decade,” Ann Wilson, senior vice president of government affairs for the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association, plans to tell Thursday’s hearing. Republican lawmakers have generally supported Trump’s tariffs, but the auto proposal is stirring talk of curbing his power to levy them. “These tariffs are dangerous. These tariffs are going to cost us jobs. These tariffs are going to lower our family incomes. These tariffs are going to undo much of the


Man shot and killed in Southeast Washington

A 26-year-old man was shot and killed Wednesday evening in Southeast Washington. D.C. police said Cheyenne Washington, who lived in the neighborhood, was fatally shot around 5 p.m. in the 4400 block of E Street SE. When officers arrived after a report of gunshots, they found a man with several wounds. The victim was pronounced dead on the scene. Police said they are trying to find a suspect or suspects and a motive in the case. A reward of up to $25,000 is being offered for any information that leads to an arrest and conviction in the case. The D.C. region has seen 148 homicides so far this year, according to tracking done by The Washington Post. Of those, 79 have been in the District, including 45 in the Southeast section of the city. dana.hedgpeth@washpost.com


Putin’s push to interrogate U.S. officials Russia accuses of crimes, explained

central to both the relationship between the Trump administration and Putin’s government and, less directly, to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. At its heart is the man referred to by Haberman, Bill Browder. Browder once ran a company called Hermitage Capital Management that had large investments in Russia until 2005. That year, Browder was prevented from entering the country by Russian authorities. Many of his assets were subsequently seized and, in 2007, ownership of several holding companies was transferred to a new owner — a tactic that the Times describes as having “flourished” under Putin. The new owner received a tax refund of $230 million from the government after new lawyers for the companies admitted, without Browder’s knowledge, to fraudulent activity that erased Hermitage’s profits. Fifteen such cases resulted in a total judgment of more than $1.2 billion against Hermitage. Browder hired a lawyer named Sergei Magnitsky to investigate what happened. Magnitsky uncovered the chain of events above, learning that it was perpetrated by government officials and members of the Russian mafia. Among those involved in taking over the company were corrupt police officials, subordinates of whom later arrested Magnitsky for tax fraud. Magnitsky was jailed. He died in prison after failing to receive adequate medical care for an illness. Magnitsky’s death prompted Browder to push for some sort of accountability. In 2012, Congress passed the Magnitsky Act, imposing new sanctions against those involved in the takeover of Browder’s business, including people close to Putin. President Barack Obama signed it into law. This was not popular with Putin. In response, the Russian government posthumously convicted Magnitsky of the fraud charges, charged Browder with tax evasion in absentia and instituted a ban on U.S. parents’ adoption of Russian children. You probably see where this is going. Last month, the country’s prosecutor general, Yury Chaika, pledged not to let Browder “sleep peacefully,” saying that he thought “Russia and Russian citizens will make more powerful moves soon.” Chaika is the person apparently referred to in a June 3, 2016, email from music publicist Rob Goldstone to Donald Trump Jr. That message indicated that the “Crown prosecutor of Russia” — presumably Chaika — had met with Aras Agalarov, the father of Goldstone’s client Emin Agalarov. The elder Agalarov had been provided “with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary [Clinton] and her dealings with Russia,” Goldstone promised.


Highlighting the devastation in South Sudan

I thank The Post for focusing attention on the devastation happening in South Sudan and the Kush Democratic Majority Party’s campaign to turn things around. The Post did a wonderful job with the July 8 Metro article “A ‘Lost Boy’ no longer,” about my campaign. The Virginia Council of Churches brought me and several other Lost Boys to the United States. I would never have made it to where I am today without the council’s support. Also deserving thanks is the Baptist General Convention of Virginia for giving me a forum to tell the truth about slavery historically and currently in Africa. There is a lot of misinformation, and the West needs to know the truth from those of us who were actually enslaved. We have learned a great deal during this campaign, especially the value of the cellphone. Young Africans may not have electricity, but they do have cellphones. When we schedule interviews, they walk for hours to reach a generator so they can charge their phones and listen in. The Post has given generous coverage of South Sudan with not only this article but also regular coverage of what is going on there. Bol Gai Deng The writer is a candidate for the presidency of South Sudan.


Transcript: The Cyber 202 Live

productize this solution so that we can sell it to you and you can deploy faster. But ultimately, our core mission, our core purpose as a company, is how we advance the way we live and work, and at the core of that is not only protecting ourselves, but making our contribution, so we can provide sustainable technologies and ultimately a moral code, particularly as we think about embedded technologies like AI, how they are utilized the right way. And this is a very important aspect that obviously is becoming a big debate—you get the case of Norman here, but the reality, we need to think about this in the context of the society and the way we live, but ultimately also, protect the business, and then make that contribution to the society in a way that, honestly, has to be accelerated. So, unfortunately, we only have a little time, but I’m really proud of the work we are doing. We are here to help you in any way, shape or form. We already have solutions available to the market. Please engage us with your toughest problem. We would love to help you. So with that, I would like to now pass it back to The Washington Post, because our time is up. All right? Thank you very much. Is the United States on the Right Track on Cybersecurity? [APPLAUSE] Leonnig: Good morning, everybody. I’m Carol Leonnig, and I’m a national investigative reporter at The Washington Post, and I’m really pleased to be here today with Mike Rogers and Chris Painter. This week President Trump, lawmakers and the national security community have been discussing Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, and I’m really delighted to welcome these leaders in their field to talk about it. I also want to say, in a free-wheeling way, that I don’t think we could have timed this event better, based on the Monday through Friday that we’ve just experienced. Mike Rogers was the Republican Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee until 2015, and earlier in his career was an FBI agent. He’s now a national security commentator on CNN and the host of a popular show, “Declassified,” which explores the stories of American spies. Chris Painter, also with us, was the former Coordinator for Cyber Issues at the State Department, where he was the nation’s top cyber diplomat, serving under both President Trump and


Drone captures beautiful views of Maryland sunflowers

Rows and rows of sunflowers fill the fields at the McKee-Beshers Wildlife Management Area, in Poolesville, Md., a 30-minute drive from Washington. The fields, accessible by a short trail, are a seemingly endless mass of bright, yellow flowers peeking up from tall, green stalks reaching toward the summer sun. The flowers are planted to attract mourning doves, which will feed on the seeds after the fields are mowed later in the summer. This year’s sunflowers were planted by hand May 3, according to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Sunflowers also provide food for other songbirds and mammals. The fields are open to the public, but picking the sunflowers is prohibited. They are now starting to droop a bit after peaking earlier this month.


There’s been a historic shift in Ethiopia-Eritrea relations, and this new book explores the countries’ rebellions

can influence the intensity of civil war violence, impact of violence against civilians, the duration of civil wars, state failure and postwar behavior of insurgent groups, e.g., when they have transitioned into political parties. To study rebel fragmentation, Woldemariam compiled an original data set on 171 African rebel organizations that operated between 1946 and 2006. In his analysis of publicly available sources, Woldemariam finds a third of these rebel organizations fragmented at least once, with some fragmenting multiple times. Woldemariam conducted years of research in Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Sudan, Europe and North America. His deep case studies of Ethiopian and Eritrean rebel organizations draw on more than 85 interviews with ex-combatants, ex-government officials and civilians who lived through the conflict, as well as thousands of pages of archival material. One chapter in the book studies the Somali civil war, drawing on more than 40 interviews with government officials, rebel organization veterans and NGO employees who engaged with rebel organizations. Woldemariam’s aim in “Insurgent Fragmentation” is to understand why rebel organizations come apart. He argues that territorial gains or losses lead rebel organizations to fragment. Gaining territory can erode cooperation and lead to factional infighting in rebel organizations while losing territory can undermine the credibility of the rebel organization’s ability to achieve its goals. Stalemates, on the other hand, lead to greater cohesion and unity in rebel organizations. Using the example of the Eritrean Liberation Front (referred to by Eritreans as “Jebha”), Woldemariam shows territorial losses in 1967 led to commitment problems and ideological struggles within Jebha whereas rapid territorial gains in 1975 triggered infighting within Jebha’s leadership. By contrast, Woldemariam finds no factionalism or fragmentation between 1971 and 1973, when Jebha experienced a territorial stalemate. While “Insurgent Fragmentation in the Horn of Africa” may not speak much to the recent thaw in relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia, Woldemariam’s expertise in the region is deep and compelling. A solid study of rebel organizations, “Insurgent Fragmentation” offers accessible histories of rebel organizations in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia (as well as a history of the formation of the Eritrean state, in Chapter 3). Beyond the book, a prescient research article by Woldemariam published earlier this year suggested the recent selection of Ethiopia’s Abiy created an opportunity for improved Ethiopia-Eritrea relations. Anyone interested in learning more about either country, their relations to each other or about rebel organizations more broadly, should follow his work.


What’s really behind Putin’s obsession with the Magnitsky Act

return, he was arrested and held in detention without trial for almost a year. He was beaten and died on Nov. 16, 2009, at Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina prison under mysterious circumstances. Officials involved in his case received awards and promotions. In a chilling act worthy of Kafka, the only trial held in the Magnitsky case was a posthumous sentencing of himself — the only trial against a dead man in the history of Russia. It was then that Browder turned from investment to full-time advocacy, traveling the world to persuade one Western parliament after another to pass a measure that was as groundbreaking as it would appear obvious: a law, commemoratively named the Magnitsky Act, that bars individuals (from Russia and elsewhere) who are complicit in human rights abuses and corruption from traveling to the West, owning assets in the West and using the financial system of the West. Boris Nemtsov, then Russia’s opposition leader (who played a key role in convincing Congress to pass the law in 2012), called the Magnitsky Act “the most pro-Russian law in the history of any foreign Parliament.” It was the smartest approach to sanctions. It avoided the mistake of targeting Russian citizens at large for the actions of a small corrupt clique in the Kremlin and placed responsibility directly where it is due. It was also the most effective approach. The people who are in charge of Russia today like to pose as patriots, but in reality, they care little about the country. They view it merely as a looting ground, where they can amass personal fortunes at the expense of Russian taxpayers and then transfer those fortunes to the West. In one of his anti-corruption reports, Nemtsov detailed the unexplained riches attained by Putin’s personal friends such as Gennady Timchenko, Yuri Kovalchuk and the Rotenberg brothers, noting that they are likely “no more that the nominal owners … and the real ultimate beneficiary is Putin himself.” Similar suspicions were voiced after the publication of the 2016 Panama Papers, which showed a $2 billion offshore trail leading to another close Putin friend, cellist Sergei Roldugin. Some of the funds in his accounts were linked with money from the tax fraud scheme uncovered by Magnitsky. Volumes of research, hours of expert testimony and countless policy recommendations have been dedicated to finding effective Western approaches to Putin’s regime. The clearest and the most convincing answer


Theresa May and E.U.’s Brexit negotiator question whether each other’s position is workable

the English Channel have built their economies upon. Supporters of a hard, decisive departure from the E.U. counter that May’s compromise plan means “a Brexit in name only.” After her latest proposals agreed upon two weeks ago by her cabinet at a meeting at Chequers, her country estate, May was stunned by a string of high-level defections, seeing her once loyal Brexit secretary and top negotiator, David Davis, resign, followed a day later by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. In his resignation speech before the House of Commons, Johnson said May’s Brexit risked sentencing Britain to an endless term of “economic vassalage” to Europe. He decried May for creating a “fog of self-doubt.” “Given that in important ways this is Brexit in name only, I am of course unable to support it, as I said in cabinet at Chequers, and am happy to be able now to speak out against it,” Johnson said, though he offered no better plan of his own. “It is not too late to save Brexit,” he said. “We have changed tack once and we can change again.” The remarkable fact remains that neither Britain nor the E.U. has figured out how to preserve an open border after Brexit between the Republic of Ireland, which is a member of the E.U., and Northern Ireland, which remains a part of the United Kingdom. London and Brussels agree there should be no hard border in Ireland — and that the 30 years of civil strife and sectarian violence in Ireland was ended in part by having an open, invisible border. Today cars, trucks and people move freely between north and south without even seeing a customs agent or an immigration official. “We can’t solve it on our own,” May said in her speech. “But nor can we wash our hands of any responsibility for it.” European negotiators, alongside the Republic of Ireland, proposed a “backstop” agreement, by which Northern Ireland would remain in the European customs union and tariff protocols until a new and still unknown technological fix could be found to preserve a frictionless border in Ireland. May said this would isolate Northern Ireland and effectively create a border down the Irish Sea — something the prime minister said, “I will never accept.” Katie Hayward, an expert in cross-border cooperation at Queen’s University Belfast, said that the two sides “still can’t agree on fundamental points” and are wary


Afghan officials investigating 14 civilian deaths after battle that involved U.S. airstrikes

KABUL — Afghan officials Friday were investigating the cause of at least 14 civilian deaths in northern Kunduz province after a battle with the Taliban that involved U.S. airstrikes. Mohammad Radmanish, a spokesman with the Afghan Defense Ministry, said joint Afghan and U.S. airstrikes occurred in the Chahar Dara district of Kunduz during a battle with Taliban forces Thursday. “The Ministry of Defense is deeply saddened,” Radmanish said, adding that high-ranking officials within his department were traveling from Kabul to investigate. Lt. Col. Martin O’Donnell, a NATO spokesman, said in an email that the United States carried out airstrikes in the area in support of Afghan troops. But “on-the-ground assessment of those strikes reveals no indications they caused civilian casualties,” O’Donnell said. Mohammad Yusuf Ayubi, a member of the Kunduz provincial council, said the people killed — including women and children — belonged to three families who lived less than 100 yards from a government base. “I do not know who carried out the airstrikes, but these people were killed in the aerial attack,” Ayubi said. Kunduz, where Taliban forces have a strong presence, has been the site of civilian deaths caused by airstrikes in the past. In April, Afghan airstrikes killed 36 civilians — most of them children — at an all-male religious ceremony in the Dasht-e-Archi district, according to a United Nations report. The report contradicted initial government claims that the attack targeted a Taliban stronghold. In 2015, a U.S. gunship plane fired on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz city, killing at least 30 people, including doctors and patients. U.S. officials later said that those involved did not realize the buildings they targeted were a hospital. Sixteen people were disciplined in that incident, but the Pentagon found that it did not amount to a war crime because it was not intentional. So far, 2018 has been a record year for civilian deaths in Afghanistan. A recent report by the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan found that 1,692 Afghan civilians were killed in the first six months of the year, more than in any comparable period during the past decade. antonio.olivo@washpost.com


Five bald eagles found dead on Maryland farm died of poisoning, officials say

Five bald eagles and a fox found dead on a Maryland farm more than a year ago died of poisoning, according to federal officials. The animals were found in January 2017 on a farm in Easton, Md. The new revelations about how they died came after radio station 1430 WNAV in Annapolis filed a Freedom of Information of Act request with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for details in the case. The animals were killed by ingesting carbofuran, the same banned pesticide said to have killed 13 bald eagles found in 2016 at another farm in Federalsburg, Md. According to an article on WNAV, pathology reports found that the eagles and fox found dead in Easton “died of carbamate intoxication.” It went on to say, “Carbofuran was detected in the upper gastrointestinal tracts of all the animals.” There have been several incidents in recent years in Maryland of bald eagles being found dead. One instance that gained national attention was at the 100-acre farm in Federalsburg where 13 bald eagles were found dead. It was one of the largest single die-offs of bald eagles in Maryland in recent decades. In another case, five bald eagles were poisoned in Delaware in 2016. Finding out who poisoned the birds could be difficult. Authorities in the Federalsburg case sent the birds’ carcasses to a specialized lab in Oregon for analysis, and a $25,000 reward was offered. But officials ultimately said they did not have enough evidence to charge and prosecute anyone. It is illegal to use carbofuran, but eagle experts said that even though stores are banned from selling the pesticide, some people still have it stored and use it later to kill rodents or other unwanted pests. Once an animal dies, the eagles — which are scavengers — eat their carcasses and become ill. That appears to be the case in the Easton deaths. According to WNAV, experts found that most of the bald eagles had carbofuran in their stomachs. Carbofuran is considered to be a highly toxic pesticide. It is particularly harmful to birds and is banned by the Environmental Protection Agency. Small pieces of carbofuran may look like grain seeds to birds. In the case of the Easton animals, the Fish and Wildlife report said “fox tissue” was found in the food that the eagles had ingested, so they likely ate the fox that had also eaten the poison.


Background investigator pleads guilty to falsifying reports

access to classified information or be involved with national security and other sensitive topics. Danielle Courtney Jahn, Gross’s attorney as listed in court records, declined to comment. — Dan Morse Hospital gives 'all clear' after shooting scare People evacuated parts of MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Northwest Washington on Thursday after a report of an active shooter, but by noon officials said they found no ongoing threat, and people were allowed to return to work. The report came in to authorities at 10:19 a.m. The center is at 110 Irving St. NW, at the intersection of North Capitol Street and Michigan Avenue. D.C. police said in an email at 11 a.m., “Although we received a call for an active shooter, it has been determined that the situation was for threats.” Some buildings on the campus were evacuated, but people were given clearance to return by 11:30 a.m. So Young Pak, a spokeswoman for MedStar Washington, said around noon that the hospital facility had resumed normal operations. “No weapon was seen and no injuries occurred,” she said. — Michael Brice-Saddler and Dana Hedgpeth Man is shot, killed in Southeast A 26-year-old man was shot and killed Wednesday evening in Southeast Washington. D.C. police said Cheyenne Washington, who lived in the neighborhood, was fatally shot around 5 p.m. in the 4400 block of E Street SE. When officers arrived after a report of gunshots, they found Washington wounded. He was pronounced dead on the scene. Police are trying to find a suspect or suspects and a motive in the case. A reward of up to $25,000 is being offered for any information that leads to an arrest and conviction. The D.C. region has seen 148 homicides so far this year, according to tracking by The Washington Post. Of those, 79 have been in the District, including 45 in the Southeast section of the city. — Dana Hedgpeth Man arrested in 3 sex assaults Authorities said they have arrested and charged a 21-year-old man in connection with several incidents of sexual assault last weekend in the Woodley Park and Friendship Heights neighborhoods of Northwest Washington. D.C. police said Michael Watters of Northwest was arrested and charged with three counts of misdemeanor sex abuse. The incidents happened on Sunday between 12:15 p.m. and 1 p.m., according to police. One incident occurred in the 2300 block of Calvert Street NW in the Woodley Park area.