Study raises questions about efficacy of morning sickness pill endorsed by Kim Kardashian

7,200 pages of data from a clinical trial in the 1970s that had never been made public before. The information was obtained from the FDA through the Freedom of Information Act and is part of a global initiative by the scientific community to bring to light or restore invisible and abandoned trials (RIAT). The effort began in 2013 following a call by Peter Doshi, then a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University, and others for researchers to publish data sitting around on their computers or in file cabinets. Science magazine described it as a “stark warning” to drug companies that if they don't publish their data, others will. Nav Persaud, a family physician and researcher at St. Michael's Hospital who is the main author of the new analysis, said the trial in question was key to obtaining the drug's approval in Canada, where it is sold as Diclectin. The old clinical trial was conducted by Merrell-National Laboratories, which no longer exists, and involved 2,308 patients at 14 clinics in the United States who were in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy who complained of nausea or vomiting. They were randomized into eight groups that tested different medications. Women were asked to take two tablets at bedtime and, if necessary, another in the morning and midafternoon for seven nights. Doctors were asked to note the frequency of vomiting and hours of nausea. In the medical literature over the past few decades, Persaud said that this study, which was never finished, had been referred to as being a success but with no details. However, he said, when he looked at the raw data it contained critical flaws, including the fact that some information that was supposed to be obtained during patient visits was not, the criteria for reporting improvement were unclear, outcome data was unavailable for 37 percent of participants in the placebo group and about 30 percent of the patients were lost to follow up despite the fact that the trial lasted only a week. In an interview, Persaud called these “unusual and striking problems.” Ron Vaillancourt, a spokesman for Duchesnay, which sells the drug in Canada (Duchesnay USA sells it in the United States), said that it is the only prescription medication for the treatment of nausea and vomiting of pregnancy approved by Health Canada and that its two active ingredients are “the most studied drug combination used in pregnancy.”


NASA’s newest missions will explore the solar system’s asteroids

MESSENGER, the first (and so far, only) orbital survey of Mercury; Dawn, which is studying the two biggest objects in the asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres; and the Kepler space telescope, which has found thousand of exoplanets orbiting far-off stars, including nearly two dozen in the “habitable zone.” “We’ve explored terrestrial planets, gas giants, and a range of other bodies orbiting the sun,” Jim Green, NASA's planetary science director, said in a statement. “Lucy will observe primitive remnants from farther out in the solar system, while Psyche will directly observe the interior of a planetary body. These additional pieces of the puzzle will help us understand how the sun and its family of planets formed, changed over time, and became places where life could develop and be sustained — and what the future may hold.” An artist’s conception shows the Lucy spacecraft, left, and the Psyche mission, right. (SwRI and SSL/Peter Rubin) Pysche and Lucy were selected from a shortlist of five proposals. Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging (or DAVINCI, because there’s no better way to win over NASA than a convoluted acronym) would have sent a probe on a 63-minute descent through the atmosphere of Venus. Another Venusian mission, the Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy mission (VERITAS), would map the planet’s surface and search for water and signs of geologic activity. The last, Near Earth Object Camera, would have launched an infrared space telescope to seek out potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids. Though not selected, NEOCam will get an additional year of funding, NASA said, suggesting that the telescope could be built someday. Both Lucy and Pysche will seek to reveal the secrets of the solar system’s beginnings. The six Trojan Asteroids to be explored by Lucy are dark bodies thought to have been pulled into orbits near Jupiter during the early days of the solar system, when planets were still forming and migrating into their current positions. “These small bodies really are the fossils of planet formation,” said Harold Levison, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and the principal investigator for the Lucy mission. They are made of the same material that existed in the early days of the solar system, and are thought to contain important organic molecules. Psyche, meanwhile, can provide clues about what happens inside a planet’s core. The 130-mile-wide asteroid is made of mostly iron


Scientists say the global ocean circulation may be more vulnerable to shutdown than we thought

In this visualization of the Earth's oceans, distinctive white lines trace the flow of surface currents around the world. Intense future climate change could have a far different impact on the world than current models predict, suggests a thought-provoking new study just out in the journal Science Advances. If atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were to double in the future, it finds, a major ocean current — one that helps regulate climate and weather patterns all over the world — could collapse. And that could paint a very different picture of the future than what we’ve assumed so far. The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, or AMOC, is often described as a large oceanic conveyor belt. It’s a system of water currents that transports warm water northward from the Atlantic toward the Arctic, contributing to the mild climate conditions found in places like Western Europe. In the Northern Atlantic, the northward flowing surface water eventually cools and sinks down toward the bottom of the ocean, and another current brings that cooler water back down south again. The whole process is part of a much larger system of overturning currents that circulates all over the world, from pole to pole. But some scientists have begun to worry that the AMOC isn’t accurately represented in current climate models. They say that many models portray the current as being more stable than real-life observations suggest it actually is. Recent studies have suggested that the AMOC is weakening, although there’s some scientific debate about how much of this has been caused by human activities and how much by natural variations. Nevertheless, the authors of the new study point out, many climate models assume a fairly stable AMOC — and that could be affecting the predictions they make for how the ocean will change under future climate change. And because overturning circulation patterns have such a significant effect on climate and weather all over the world, this could have big implications for all kinds of other climate-related projections as well. “This is a very common and well-known issue in climate models,” said the new study’s lead author, Wei Liu, a postdoctoral associate at Yale University, who conducted the work while at the University of California at San Diego. “I wanted to see, if I use a corrected model, how this will affect the future climate change.” Liu and colleagues from the UC-San Diego and the University of


How Trump could really disrupt NASA and the space program

landing, resource utilization, communications, crew psychology and more. Yet the moon-Mars question actually may not be the most consequential fork in the road for NASA. If the Trump folks want to be really disruptive, they could veer more dramatically toward commercial contracts and away from traditional contracts. They could favor "New Space" vs. "Old Space," to be overly simplistic about it. (Disclosure: Among the most prominent entrepreneurial space companies is Blue Origin, which, like The Washington Post, is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.) The landing team at NASA was recently expanded to include several people associated with commercial space. Among them: Alan Stern, whom readers will recognize as the leader of the New Horizons mission to Pluto. A few years ago, Stern formed a company aspiring to create commercial flights to the moon. The Trump folks could conceivably take the radical step of killing the SLS rocket -- the Space Launch System, a descendant of the heavy-lift rocket pushed a decade ago by the George W. Bush administration under its Constellation program. Obama officially killed Constellation, but elements survived, protected by several powerful senators. Those include the SLS and Orion, a crew capsule now in its second decade of development, with a price tag north of $10 billion. The idea is, the SLS will launch Orion into outer space, and Orion will orbit the moon, and the astronauts will return to Earth, and then they'll do that a bunch more times. It’s hard to kill big space programs that cost a lot of money. Think: stakeholders. Think: too big to fail. But there’s this other avenue of attack in space, which is to let the private companies design, build and own the hardware and then for the government to pay those companies for access to space. This is already happening with cargo going to the International Space Station, and in the next few years, U.S. astronauts will fly "commercial" into orbit. SpaceX is already building a huge rocket called the Falcon Heavy. The George W. Bush administration pushed commercial space, which helped SpaceX get going, and then Obama doubled down on it. So this is a bipartisan concept, to the extent that anything in Washington is bipartisan. The problem is that it won’t make some of the big aerospace contractors happy. And that means it won't make some powerful lawmakers happy. Follow the money, someone once said. ***** Novelist


Why is healthy food so expensive? Maybe because we expect it to be.

Consumer Research, we found that consumers do tend to believe that healthy foods are in fact more expensive. While this may actually hold true in only some product categories, we discovered that many consumers tend to believe this relationship holds across all categories, regardless of the evidence. Consumers appear to have a lay theory, or an intuition, that healthy foods are more expensive. Discussions around food deserts — low-income geographical areas with limited access to affordable nutritious foods — also suggest that healthy foods are indeed more expensive than unhealthy ones. The marketplace and the media appear to have taught most U.S. consumers to expect foods with special health properties to command a premium price. While this is the case in some instances (for example, the USDA notes a price premium for many organic foods), in other cases, a general positive relationship between price and healthiness may not exist. A lay theory, in psychology, is the term for a nonexpert’s belief about how the world works. We can have lay theories about how everything from self-control to intelligence works; these lay theories influence how we behave. Consumers also have lay theories about food: for example, believing that unhealthy foods are tastier, regardless of whether this is objectively true. In our research, we document a new lay theory consumers have about food: that healthy foods are more expensive. In other words, unlike other research exploring whether there is a true relationship between food health and price, we were interested in understanding how this belief (regardless of whether it is objectively true) influences our food choices. Across five studies, we showed that even in food categories where there is no relation between price and health, the healthy = expensive intuition affects how consumers make decisions about food. Diving deeper into understanding what’s going on in the mind of the consumer, we wanted to know: Do higher price points drive consumers to think of something as healthier? Or do cues about healthiness lead consumers to believe that the price is higher? In our studies, we found that the intuition seems to operate in both directions. That is, in our first study, we showed that when consumers were presented with price information only, perceptions of the healthiness of a breakfast bar varied with the price: higher price = healthier, lower price = less healthy. Similarly, when given a nutrition grade of an “A-,” the


Education alone doesn’t prevent terrorism. Here’s what else you need.

the Somali plan’s major goals is increasing access to schooling. But is that the right approach? New research from Mercy Corps, the organization I work for, questions this assumption. Here’s how we did our research. Our research tested the hypothesis that getting an education would reduce participation in and support for political violence. We conducted our research in Somaliland. (Somaliland is considered an autonomous region of Somalia by the international community, but people there declared it an independent republic in 1991.) Al-Shabab is less active in Somaliland, but because it borders Somalia, violent extremism could easily spill over. News outlets have reported that Somaliland youth have been implicated in recent deadly attacks, leading the government to crack down on al-Shabab cells. We compared 298 out-of-school youth, ages 15 to 21, with comparable 504 young people who attended secondary schools constructed and supported under Mercy Corps’s USAID-funded Somali Youth Learners Initiative program. Given the sensitive topic, we used cutting-edge survey methods to get young people to more truthfully answer questions about whether they were involved in or supported violence. We were surprised by the results. Formal education did indeed reduce the likelihood — by 16 percent — that young people would themselves get involved in violence. However, it increased support for political violence by 11 percent. In other words, secondary school youth were more likely than out-of-school youth to think that a political cause justified the use of violence. More education may actually increase support for violent extremism. Digging deeper, we realized that under certain conditions, education can heighten the frustrations that lead to support for political violence. For example, in Somaliland, young people in formal education were less optimistic about their employment prospects — and they were more likely to believe that the government was not doing enough to provide education. Violent groups may exploit this dissatisfaction and pessimism to gain young people’s support. So how can governments (like the new one in Somalia) discourage violent extremism? Our research offers some clues. In addition to improving access to formal secondary education, Mercy Corps’s program helped young people get involved in civic activities like community service campaigns, including beautifying their schools and organizing events to raise awareness about pressing issues facing youth, such as illegal migration. That combination — education plus civic engagement opportunities — had a striking effect: Among this group of 242 young people, both participation and support for


Tillerson’s Hill tour: No new friends, but some sympathy on Russia sanctions

of state. On Russia, Democrats plan to argue that Tillerson is a Kremlin crony who would be in sync with Trump’s praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump’s frequently-expressed admiration for Putin has created a backlash within even his own party that is especially problematic as lawmakers investigate the intelligence community’s accusations that Russia pursued election-related hacking to help get Trump elected, findings Trump has vehemently discredited. Tillerson’s advocates on the Hill have been working to convince their colleagues that his views on Russia are actually far more nuanced than those of the president-elect. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who has said it would be “hugely problematic” if Tillerson were aiming to dismantle sanctions the U.S. slapped on Russia, has stepped out to defend Tillerson. He argued in an interview last month that Tillerson actually “has a standard view of Russia’s malicious activities,” that would come across during his confirmation hearing as “certainly different, if you will, than the pictures of him toasting Putin with champagne.” Back in 2014, Tillerson “understood that Russia needed to be punished,” Corker recalled from previous conversations with the nominee, but said he objected to the across-the-board U.S. approach to restricting Russia’s energy, banking and defense sectors with no consideration given to companies like Exxon with active contracts to work in Russia. Exxon estimated that sanctions cost the company about $1 billion in lost revenue. As Corker tells it, Tillerson pointed to the European sanctions on Russia, which grandfathered in existing contracts, as a model he could respect. “He understood that Russia needed to be punished, but he also understood that the Europeans were doing their sanctions in such a manner that was going to benefit their energy companies over U.S. energy companies,” Corker recalled. “He was just making sure people understood that.” Tillerson brought up those same concerns about the disparity with Europe over grandfathering clauses in his meeting with Cardin on Wednesday, according to the senator. “He said that he fully understands why America proposed sanctions, he wanted to make sure it was fair,” Cardin said. “I did make my point, that America is always going to lead. We’re always going to be asking more from our European partners, because that’s where we are.” Moving through the Capitol, Tillerson did not respond to a question about how his meetings with senators were going or acknowledge the reporter who asked it.


Just about everything you buy came at the expense of an endangered animal

species — in the hope of helping to focus the work of conservationists who track the effect of human trade. The researchers, Daniel Moran of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and Keiichiro Kanemoto of Shinshu University in Japan, laid relatively new global supply-chain databases over the habitats of endangered species listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and BirdLife International. That identified areas the scientists call threatened biodiversity hot spots. The research was published this week in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. The trade routes that threaten biodiversity “Biodiversity hot spots is a well studied topic, and it is known that the last reserves of biodiversity are harbored in a small number of places,” Moran said Wednesday by email. “Economic pressure, even at the margin and in small increments, exerts pressure at these places. Almost any human pressure at the places, unless very well managed, will have a big impact on species there.” Logging in Brazil to create products that wind up in the United States, for example, cuts down trees used by red-face spider monkeys. Fishery trade and gold mined and bound for Japan affects mangroves off Papua New Guinea that are home to diverse plant species and an endangered sea cow. A hydroelectric dam that traps water to irrigate agriculture, including trees that produce palm oil exported to other parts of Europe and the United States, threatens the Iberian lynx. Product demand in the United States also affects “marine hot spots off the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica and Nicaragua at the mouth of the Orinoco around Trinidad and Tobago,” the study says. “The European Union drives threats [in] hot spots outside Southeast Asia in the islands around Madagascar: Réunion, Mauritius, Seychelles. “Despite much attention on the Amazon rain forest, the U.S. footprint in Brazil is actually greater in southern Brazil, the Brazilian Highlands, where agriculture and grazing are extensive, than inside the Amazon basin, although impacts along the Amazon river itself are high,” the study notes. A coffee shop owner serves a few cups in Cranberry, Pa. (Keith Srakocic/AP) Because human encroachment on animal habitats has pushed wildlife together, a small degree of impact resonates widely. “For threats driven by U.S. consumption, the 5 percent most intensively affected land area covers 23.6 percent of its total impact on species, and at sea the 5 percent most intensively impacted marine area


Dreaded ‘stomach flu’ wreaks havoc on families — and it’s only going to get worse

also rely on a surveillance system that gets faster real-time assessments. Any outbreak reported to nine state health departments across the country is reported to the CDC within seven days. Suspected and confirmed norovirus outbreaks reported to CDC 7 days after being reported to 9 state health departments. Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Norovirus is typically spread through vomit and stool. People become sick by eating food or drinking liquids that are contaminated with norovirus, by touching surfaces or objects contaminated with the virus, and then putting their fingers to their mouth, or by caring for or sharing food or eating utensils with a sick person. Most people who are sick from norovirus get better in one to three days. People are most contagious when they are sick and during the first few days after symptoms have gone away. There is no specific medicine to treat the illness. To prevent dehydration, drink plenty of liquids to replace fluids lost from throwing up and diarrhea. Severe dehydration may require hospitalization for treatment with intravenous fluids. There are many different types of norovirus, so yes, you can get sick from the virus many times in your life. Being infected with one type may not protect you against others. For people planning to attend the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump or the Women's March on Washington the next day — both events likely to draw hundreds of thousands of people — public health officials are stressing the importance of frequent hand-washing and staying home if you're not feeling well. To prevent norovirus infection: - Wash hands thoroughly with soap and water, especially after using the toilet or changing diapers, and always before eating, preparing or handling food. Alcohol-based hand sanitizers can help reduce the number of germs, but they're not a substitute for washing with soap and water. - Wash fruits and vegetables and cook seafood thoroughly. - If you're sick, don’t prepare food or care for others who are sick for at least two days after symptoms stop. - Clean and disinfect potentially contaminated surfaces. - Immediately remove and wash clothes or linens that may be contaminated with vomit or stool. Read more: Parents are insisting on doctors who insist on vaccinations New data shows a deadly measles complication is more common than thought How medical detectives raced to save a man from a rare, “universally lethal” disease


Thank goodness for these conscientious objectors to GOP lunacy

Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), left, and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) at a news conference. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) We cannot deny that, to our chagrin, many Republicans in a frenzy to ingratiate themselves with President-elect Donald Trump and chase after the affection of his cultlike following have abandoned all pretense of principle. One need only watch Fox Non-News nighttime hosts (we do not recommend it for those of weak constitution) to see cringe-worthy fawning over WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and attacks on the credibility of our intelligence community. You would be forgiven for thinking you had stumbled across the official Russian propaganda outlet, RT. (When Trump undercuts them — as he did on the ethics office debacle or seems to be doing in urging a replacement for Obamacare, not just “repeal and delay” — Republicans scramble for cover.) Nevertheless we would be amiss if we left the impression that there are no conscientious objectors on the right. Here are a few: The National Taxpayers Union. Lighthizer is a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom, a prominent law firm with an active trade remedies and enforcement practice, where he filed countless anti-dumping and countervailing duty petitions on behalf of United States companies seeking protection from foreign competition. Specifically, Lighthizer has been a long-time lawyer and lobbyist for U.S. Steel, the largest domestic steel manufacturer. On Nov. 14, 2016, just a week before he was named to Trump’s USTR transition team, Lighthizer filed an anti-dumping petition on behalf of U.S. Steel, seeking protection from carbon and alloy pipes imported from Romania. … This could be an indication that the administration will pursue enforcement actions rather than exploring new opportunities to reduce tariffs domestically and abroad. Trade liberalization is essential for American prosperity and we hope it will be a high priority for Trump and his deputies. Still, Lighthizer’s nomination for USTR is a potentially ominous sign that Trump’s misguided trade rhetoric on the campaign trail was not bluster. And of course, that is precisely what Trump’s trade policy amounts to: an anti-trade policy of tariffs, protectionism and preferences. (Remember when conservatives railed against gimmicks such as sugar subsidies?) The National Taxpayers Union is at least consistent in its advocacy. Packard tells Right Turn that “NTU has been beating the pro-trade drum the last couple years. Along with Cato [Institute], we’ve basically taken the lead on the issue among center-right free market organizations.” He


How one company eliminated food waste: The ‘landfill can no longer be an option.’

A worker at Baldor processes mangoes. (Courtesy of Baldor) Those carrot tops you’ve lopped off are not garbage. Your snapped-off green-bean stems are not scraps. They are what Thomas McQuillan, sustainability director for Baldor, a specialty foods and produce distributor, calls sparcs — “scraps” spelled backward and pronounced like “sparks.” And sparcs, despite popular assumption, are often just as edible as the rest of the fruit or vegetable. “The narrative around food that we don’t traditionally eat is all negative,” said McQuillan, whether it is the recently in vogue “ugly” produce or the yuck-inducing name “trash cooking.” “Instead of calling this trim or byproduct, let’s come up with a name for it.” It worked for the slimehead, a fish we now see on restaurant menus as orange roughy. It worked for Archibald Alexander Leach — you probably knew him as Cary Grant. And McQuillan is hoping the rebranding effort will make a dent in this country’s huge problem with food waste. It’s already working at Baldor. The company, which provides produce and specialty goods such as caviar and olive oil to the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast’s food-service industry, no longer produces any organic food waste as of this year, thanks to some clever reuse initiatives. For the company’s Fresh Cuts program, which offers pre-sliced, diced or otherwise prepared vegetables, Baldor saves all of its sparcs (though the company stylizes it with a capital C, “SparCs,” to “help make the word stand out,” McQuillan said) for human or animal consumption. Previously, these edible and nutritious pieces of fruits and vegetables would have been discarded. Carrot skins and tops, strawberry tops, odd-shaped pieces of watermelon and other fruit and vegetable pieces are sold at 30 cents a pound — about half their usual value — to Misfit Juicery, a D.C. company that cold-presses perfectly-edible “ugly” produce into juice. Other vegetable odds and ends are sold to Haven’s Kitchen, a New York restaurant and cooking school that uses them for sauces, soups and broths. Baldor is also experimenting with other creative reuses. McQuillan says the company is dehydrating sparcs and turning them into a dried vegetable blend that he compares to bouillon. Baldor plans to make it available for its clients and retailers by the end of 2017. Other sparcs that are less useful to humans, such as cantaloupe rinds or mango pits, are sold in enormous bags at 5 to 12 cents per


FTC chair Edith Ramirez on CES, the future of the agency and how you can win $25,000

The Washington Post sits down with FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez before the start of CES 2017 to discuss data security and the FTC under a Donald Trump presidency. The Federal Trade Commission announced Thursday that it has filed a complaint against D-Link, a router and Web-connected camera maker, alleging that it does not adequately protect consumers from hacks. D-Link, however, said in a statement to The Post that it denies the claims. "The security of our products and protection of our customers' private data is always out top priority," the company said. Ahead of that announcement, FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez sat down with us at CES to talk about why consumers should pay attention to the security on all their devices, why she wants to pay out $25,000 to someone with a good idea and how she thinks the FTC will operate under President Donald Trump. The FTC confirmed that Ramirez (D) and other senior FTC officials have had preliminary meetings with members of the Trump transition team. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. We've previously spoken here about security and the Internet of Things (IoT). What evolution have you seen on that front? Data security, broadly speaking, continues to be one of the biggest issues that we face as a nation. You see consumers increasingly using connected devices in their homes — connected appliances, using fitness and other wearables — and it's becoming more of an issue. I'm sure you read about, in October, the Mirai botnet attack where you saw malicious code being used to basically take over insecure Internet devices. That's a very significant problem. That [attack] exposed and brought a lot of attention to the issue. I think industry and consumers need to be paying more attention to it. You announced a security contest for Internet of Things devices on Wednesday. What led to that decision? Oftentimes you have manufacturers who are creating default passwords — for instance, the password issue was what allowed the Mirai botnet attack. Another issue you often see is that because the [IoT] devices are often low-cost and small, they really have limited processing power. So, updating and patching oftentimes doesn't happen. That creates security vulnerabilities. We just announced [Wednesday] an initiative where we are giving out a cash prize of $25,000 to anyone who will come up with a device that will help consumers easily identify and


Half billion-dollar plans for RFK Stadium site include sports center, market, RFK memorial

In a rendering from architects OMA, an enclosed food market, in the foreground, would accentuate an RFK Stadium campus with more playing fields than parking lots. (Courtesy Events DC) Several parking lots around RFK Memorial stadium would be turned into a $490 million complex comprised of a spacious sports center, community market and a new memorial to Robert F. Kennedy under a new proposal by the District’s sports and convention agency. Built in 1961 and originally named D.C. Stadium, RFK is expected to largely empty by 2018 or 2019 when the D.C. United professional soccer team moves into a new stadium on Buzzard Point in Southwest Washington. Officials at Events DC, the quasi-independent convention and sports manager, unveiled broad concepts for re-purposing the 190-acre site east of Capitol Hill in April. In a Thursday night meeting with residents, officials planned to drill down on those plans, laying out an array of recreation and community facilities sought by neighbors that they said would largely be paid for by taxes from the city’s booming hotel and restaurant industries. Rather than focusing on how to return the Redskins to the RFK site or build a new home for the Washington Wizards and Capitals — two ideas that remain possibilities for the center of the site — the plans focus on community amenities to replace surface parking lots to the north and south of RFK originally built to accommodate Redskins and baseball fans. [RFK Stadium site offered as home for Redskins or maybe Wizards and Capitals] Max Brown, a businessman named to chair Events DC by Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), said the mission was to determine “what can we do now in the next two to five years on this site to capture the economic development that has been happening in the city.” Working with Dutch architects OMA and local consultants Brailsford and Dunlavey, Events DC plotted a cornucopia of attractions led by three multi-purpose athletic fields, a 47,000-square-foot food market hall and a 350,000-square-foot indoor sports complex that could feature indoor lacrosse, paintball, bowling, go-karting, video-gaming, trampolines and batting cages. (Via Events DC) The plans also call for three new pedestrian bridges connecting the RFK land across the Anacostia River to Kingman Island and to the River Terrace neighborhood on the far side of the water from Capitol Hill. Brown and Gregory A. O’Dell, president and chief executive of Events DC, said


This Kremlin leader bragged about tipping a U.S. presidential election

recovered from the plane's wreckage quickly proved otherwise. The U-2's pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was taken prisoner and put on trial for espionage, eventually being sentenced to a decade in a Soviet prison. Powers's fate became a point of tension in the Cold War, ruining a planned summit in Paris between the superpowers. Making matters worse, an American RB-47H reconnaissance bomber was shot down by Soviet forces in July and the Soviets took the two survivors captive. As tense as things were, Khrushchev believed those events also gave the Soviets a small amount of influence over that year's presidential race between Nixon and Kennedy. "I expressed my opinion to the leadership: The United States government has asked us to release Powers," Khrushchev wrote in his memoir. "Now is not the time to do it." Noting that the two candidates were at a "stalemate," Khrushchev recalled saying that if Powers or the other Americans were released before the election, it could give Nixon a boost. It would be better to wait until after the election, the Soviet premier thought. "My comrades agreed, and we did not release Powers," he wrote. "As it turned out, we'd done the right thing. Kennedy won the election by a majority of only 200,000 or so votes, a negligible margin if you consider the huge population of the United States. The slightest nudge either way would have been decisive." The two Americans on the RB-47H were released just days after Kennedy's inauguration. Powers was eventually released in 1962, swapped for a Soviet intelligence officer, Vilyam Fisher, who was serving a prison sentence in the United States for espionage (that exchange was later portrayed in the Stephen Spielberg film "Bridge of Spies"). The American pilot spent the rest of his life tainted by accusations that he had been too weak-willed in the face of Soviet interrogation, though the CIA's own report found he had acted honorably. He died in 1977. According to Khrushchev's account, Kennedy laughed when he brought up his role in the 1960 election. "You're right. I admit you played a role in the election and cast your vote for me," Khrushchev's memoir has Kennedy saying. Another account, however, from former Soviet ambassador Oleg Troyanovsky, suggested Kennedy wasn't so sure about the idea that Moscow had helped him win the election. Despite the seeming politeness of the conversation — Khrushchev's memoir describes Kennedy in Vienna


Did U.S. aid win hearts and minds in Afghanistan? Yes and no.

A nurse weighs a child at a U.S.-funded clinic on Sept. 7, 2011 in Farza, Afghanistan. (John Moore/Getty Images) Over the past decade, U.S. military expeditions have increasingly used development aid to undermine popular support for insurgents and extremist groups, and pacify turbulent areas. But does this tool work in conflict zones like Afghanistan? My new research published in the American Political Science Review provides evidence that aid spending by the U.S. military in Afghanistan in many cases produced violent backlash from insurgents against troops and civilians. Aid distributed in districts under the control of coalition forces reduced violence. But aid distributed in contested districts of Afghanistan actually increased the level of violence carried out by insurgents against both civilians and the U.S. military. To test how aid projects affect insurgent violence, I examined 5,936 projects in Afghanistan during 2008-2010 under the Commander’s Emergency Response Program (CERP), which provided development aid funds to U.S. military commanders to use in their local area of operations. I also looked at more than 46,000 security incidents reported by an independent nongovernmental organization network and 30,000 incidents reported by the U.S. military. From 2012 to 2013, I spent seven months in Afghanistan, carrying out dozens of interviews about the patterns of violence in the country. The U.S. military has aimed to win hearts and minds in the past In past conflicts, notably during the Vietnam War, the U.S. military carried out nonmilitary activities aimed at winning the support of an occupied population, such as training self-defense groups or offering medical care. In the early 2000s, this tactic was extended to development aid projects. A decade before Gen. James Mattis became Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, he huddled with Gen. David Petraeus at the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., to hammer out a new counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine for the U.S. military. By 2006, U.S. interventions had produced nominal victories against the Taliban in Afghanistan and against Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. But the strongest military on the planet found itself mired in extended nation-building projects — amid rising levels of armed insurgency. In response, Petraeus, Mattis and their staffs developed Field Manual 3-24, which formalized a COIN approach that emphasized winning the hearts and minds of civilians, rather than simply defeating enemies on the battlefield. CERP was an important part of this new approach. Here’s the logic: Local communities are


My three maddening, futile years inside the broken Senate confirmation process

is political: Appointments are one way senators can fight a president from the other party. But the problem is also bureaucratic: Overwhelmed and understaffed federal agencies are doing a very poor job vetting so many candidates in an efficient way. Many wait months and sometimes years for consideration, if they are ever considered at all. One Obama administration ambassadorial nominee died more than two years into the process, with her nomination still in limbo. We don’t often hear from those whose nominations wither on the vine, even though there are more and more that do. It’s frustrating and humiliating, but you don’t want to be seen as a whiner or a loser. There’s always the possibility of a “next time,” and in any case, you are essentially powerless to do anything about the process. But a new cycle of nominations at all levels is about to begin, and some may want to know what the meat grinder is like from the point of view of the piece of meat. * * * * * * * * After the 2008 election, I was nominated and confirmed for the position of assistant secretary of defense for public affairs — the first openly gay individual to be confirmed for a senior position at the Pentagon. At that time, Democrats controlled Congress, and the process was relatively quick and painless, though it involved filling out many forms about my past activities. I concluded my Defense Department service in 2012. Late the following year, a State Department appointee approached me regarding my potential interest in a Democratic vacancy on the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy , a small bipartisan board that, since 1948, has been charged with advising the administration and Congress on the effectiveness of U.S. public-diplomacy activities. As with other government commissions, its positions are uncompensated and part-time; they offer opportunities for qualified citizens to apply their talents for public benefit. I expected things to unfold relatively smoothly. My previous confirmation process had been straightforward, I was not being nominated for a senior or controversial position, and it was an unpaid slot, designated for a Democrat. I had been thoroughly investigated only a few years back for the Pentagon job, and tradition called for my being paired with a Republican commission nominee for confirmation purposes. At least three Senate Republicans have suggested blocking a President Hillary Clinton's Supreme Court nominee indefinitely.


Chinese tech firms look to CES as a launchpad for the U.S.

that has caught the attention of Chinese firms, Dong said. "These companies are very much aware of the political environment; the incoming president made clear that it's going to be a different ballgame with U.S.-China relations," he said. Here again, there seem to be echoes from the 1980s, he said. Chinese companies fear that the government will enact protectionist barriers similar those encouraged by American firms decades ago in the face of flourishing Japanese technology and automotive companies. In fact, some firms have faced resistance from the United States because they are based in China. Huawei in particular has been the focus of scrutiny in the United States, with politicians in 2012 questioning whether the firm was using its telecom network hardware to help spy for the Chinese government. Huawei strenuously denied that accusation, which was fueled by complaints from its U.S-based competitors, and no concrete proof was made available to the public. But, Dong said, those accusations may have contributed to the company's troubles in getting a foothold in the States. “Huawei has been successful everywhere except the United States,” Dong said. And, he said, other Chinese firms looking for a U.S. expansion will likely face similar questions from politicians. With some serious headwinds facing their goals of breaking into the U.S. market, analysts said that marketing is the key way for these firms to reach their intended audience as they continue to make their case that high-performance doesn’t have to mean high price. Llamas said that some Chinese firms have found early success, even without becoming household names. Alcatel, a subsidiary of the Chinese giant TCL, became the No. 4 smartphone vendor in the United States for most of 2016 by focusing on bringing higher-end technology to mid-market phones. But he is skeptical that Chinese firms will be able to make considerable headway in the all-important U.S. smartphone market any time soon — even though Huawei has said publicly that it wants to overtake Apple as the world's second largest smartphone maker in the next two years. Such a lofty goal would require it to gain a substantial foothold in the United States. A more realistic goal, Moorhead said, might be for Huawei to aim to become the third-largest smartphone maker in the next three years. "It's a long-term play," he said. "It is still going to take a couple of years for them to make a dent."


America’s $6.7 billion marijuana habit, mapped

that there's considerable variation in the prevalence of marijuana use by state. In the 2014-2015 period (years are paired for state-level data to provide bigger sample sizes), nearly a quarter of people in places where recreational pot is legal -- like D.C. and Colorado -- used some form of marijuana at least once a year. That's nearly double the national average, and it's close to three times the rate for the most pot-abstinent states, like Alabama, Mississippi and Iowa, where around 8 or 9 percent of people age 12 and older use pot yearly. Generally speaking, the Northeast and the West Coast are the two major marijuana hotbeds in the country. Marijuana use between the coasts is generally lower, with the notable exception of Colorado. The state-level data shows that places with the most marijuana use generally have some form of legal medical or recreational marijuana available. This is likely a two-way street: places with lax attitudes about marijuana use are more likely to approve legal marijuana, and marijuana availability probably leads to more lax attitudes about use. It's also instructive to compare the map of marijuana use against the national drinking map. One notable difference is that people in the northern plains states are heavy drinkers, but more abstemious when it comes to pot. There are similarities too. Alabama and Mississippi are in the bottom tier of states on both alcohol and pot. New England, on the other hand, ranks high on both measures. Public health experts generally wag their fingers at folks who drink a lot, smoke a lot, or even worse -- do both. Yet New England consistently ranks among the most healthy regions of the United States, taking into account a variety of measures like poverty, immunization, education, medical care and yes, drug use. Conversely, drug- and alcohol-averse Southern states usually show up at the bottom of those rankings (thank God for Mississippi, as the old social science adage goes). None of this is to suggest that high rates and drug and alcohol use are driving good public health outcomes in the Northeast. But the data above are a helpful reminder that it's generally a bad idea to look at any public health metric in isolation. Voters in California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada just approved recreational marijuana use. Here's what they can learn from Washington, Colorado and Oregon, states where marijuana use has already been legalized.


What to expect at work in 2017

Robots at the Shandong Cultural Industries Fair in China. The robots are named "Alpha" and are connected to cellphones that instruct them to perform different actions. Could they be coming for your job in 2017? (Getty Images) Like so many things for the year ahead, many changes coming to the workplace are surrounded by questions. If Congress repeals or replaces the Affordable Care Act, what will that mean for employee health insurance? Will companies still have to publish the potentially embarrassing CEO-to-worker pay ratio, or will that part of the Dodd-Frank act be repealed, too? Will my employer or state join the bandwagon of those that have recently expanded paid parental leave? And of course: When will the robots come for my job? The answers to many of these questions are unknown. Congressional Republicans have already begun trying to dismantle the health-care legislation, although what they would replace it with is anyone's guess. Many think the pay-ratio rule is at risk. Paid parental-leave expansions are likely to keep growing at the state and employer level, but when and where is unclear. As for the robots, it depends on whom you ask: While many believe automation will swiftly replace some types of jobs — say, paralegals and assembly-line workers — others think the invasion will creep in, with automation changing how people do many jobs but not replacing workers outright. "In 2017, it's very rare we'll see a robot or artificial intelligence system do all the things someone does in their job," said Michael Chui, a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute and co-author of a forthcoming report on automation. "That will be extremely rare in 2017." So what can we expect will happen in the workplace in 2017? We asked several human resources experts and employment lawyers to make predictions about the coming year — the changes they think we'll be talking about regarding compensation, benefits and how bosses manage their people. (Or perhaps seem more like Big Brother: Get ready for a few to experiment with location-based tracking of workers, experts say.) Six predictions they made for the year ahead: 1. More companies will eliminate the once-a-year pay raise For many workers and their employers, it's long been a corporate rite of passage: the 2 or 3 percent annual merit raise that arrives, like the holiday turkey or list of New Year's resolutions, with the passing of another year.


TEST POST: Camels unhappy with tassels

fourth estate. hot news doctrine church of the savvy open newsroom data visualization natural-born blogger crowdsourcing metered model newsroom cafe Journal Register, advertising the notional night cops reporter in Des Moines SEO AP AOL trolls hyperhyperhyperlocal ProPublica Storify, future of context advertising Google+ syndicated nonprofit go viral dying. A.J. Liebling Knight Foundation CPC content farm Clay Shirky Frontline synergize dying Like button Jeff Jarvis, production of innocence Encyclo Aron Pilhofer analog thinking link economy Walter Cronkite died for your sins if the news is that important, it’ll find me. Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago welcomed a Bactrian camel calf on May 9. They named the calf Alexander Camelton. Get it? reporting twitterati vast wasteland lede Colbert bump CNN leaves it there Jeff Jarvis prostate try PR Marshall McLuhan production of innocence YouTube Jurgen Habermas, DocumentCloud serendipity gutter Politics & Socks page recontextualize CTR hot news doctrine trolls Andy Carvin. WikiLeaks church of the savvy TBD Andy Carvin Fuego Dayton for under $900 a day TweetDeck Dayton for under $900 a day Journal Register social media optimization, Andy Carvin plagiarism Walter Cronkite died for your sins cancel my subscription every dog loves food the medium is the message newspaper HuffPo, masthead Gutenberg parenthesis gamification WaPo open source hyperhyperlocal #twittermakesyoustupid curmudgeon. David Cohn discuss stupid commenters attracting young readers cognitive surplus algorithms gutter Buttry, digital circulation strategy WaPo digital first Pulse Marshall McLuhan Knight News Challenge digital circulation strategy TechCrunch, put the paper to bed AOL stream audience atomization overcome DocumentCloud he said she said. the medium is the massage Colbert bump hyperlocal WordPress plagiarism advertising in the slot rubber cement Walter Lippmann information overload, attracting young readers pay curtain we will make them pay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction mathewi Clay Shirky Flipboard Arianna, a giant stack of newspapers that you’ll never read Quora WordPress social media audience atomization overcome nonprofit inverted pyramid Knight Foundation. stupid commenters Google News Buttry Like button newspaper strike church of the savvy Fuego link economy recontextualize SEO Paul Steiger, Knight News Challenge The Daily YouTube try PR Jurgen Habermas in the slot 5% corruption Dayton for under $900 a day content is king. Pulse explainer Wikipedia startups Article Skimmer anonymity Encyclo hackgate 5 praise erasers & how to avoid them anonymity, copyright Romenesko cops beat Reuters every dog loves food Ushahidi net neutrality Reuters Wikipedia, Jeff Jarvis prostate discuss we


A bright new star will burst into the sky in five years, astronomers predict

colleagues. The location of what may become one of the brightest stars in the sky. (Larry Molnar) For KIC 9832227, the orbital period is currently just under 11 hours, he said, and “as that period gets shorter, we infer that the separation between the stars is getting smaller. Hence they are spiraling in together.” The astronomers first presented this star’s red nova prognostication at the January 2015 American Astronomical Society meeting, but the predictions teemed with unknowns. “The core of this [new] scientific presentation is that we have done two strong tests and that our hypothesis [from 2015] is holding up,” he said. “We have eliminated the alternative interpretations and we have also refined the predicted time to 2022, plus or minus one year.” To refine the prediction, the astronomers examined a recent red nova — a star called V1309 Scorpii, discovered in September 2008. Using V1309 Scorpii research (conducted by Polish astronomer Romuald Tylenda) as a sort of cosmological blueprint, Molnar and colleagues found similar characteristics — from before the earlier explosion occurred. Like the current candidate, V1309 Scorpii was a contact binary star and — similarly — its orbiting period (the time it took for the two stars in the binary system to spin around one another) decreased. Scientists had noted a changing light curve, all evidence of impending eruption. This quest to comprehend red novas began when Molnar and then-Calvin College student Daniel Van Noord attended a presentation by astronomer Karen Kinemuchi of Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, that asked if KIC 9832227 was a pulsing or binary star. Van Noord, who has since graduated, began dedicated observations at the Calvin observatory, where he found the orbital period shrinking. The two spinning stars share a communal atmosphere “like two peanuts sharing a common shell,” Molnar said. Beyond what humans can see with the unaided eye, KIC 9832227 is currently a 12th magnitude object, which means it's pretty dim. When it explodes sometime around 2022, “we expect it will reach second magnitude at the brightest,” Molnar said, where it will be among the brighter stars in the sky. “We truly favor the merger hypothesis. … Now is the time to broaden our work and study the system more fully to … know what leads to a stellar explosion,” Molnar said. “Like many science stories, this one is gradually unfolding.” A look at the best photos of space.


How much marijuana was sold in 2016? A lot!

While some activists are planning to give away marijuana on Inauguration Day, other entrepreneurs are taking a different approach: making a ton of money from it. According to Governing.com, 29 states and the District of Columbia have or will soon have laws legalizing marijuana in some form. Use of recreational marijuana is legal in eight states. As its popularity has grown, so have profits. In 2016, sales of legal marijuana in North America totaled $6.7 billion–an increase of more than 30 percent–according to a report from Arcview Market Research. The number is projected to rise to $20.2 billion by 2021. Debra Borchardt, who covers retail and cannabis for Forbes, contends that the growth is larger and faster than even the dot-com era and also quoted Arcview’s editor-in-chief who said “the only consumer industry categories I’ve seen reach $5 billion in annual spending and then post anything like 25 percent compound annual growth in the next five years are cable television (19%) in the 1990’s and the broadband internet (29%) in the 2000’s.” Regulatory resistance, particularly at the federal level, is waning. Jeff Sessions, the potential attorney general, is opposed to cannabis, but has other fish to fry. Recently Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) asked the federal Financial Crimes Enforcement Network for additional guidance to help banks serve the growing number of marijuana merchants (many banks have been reluctant to serve this industry due to existing federal statutes). Growth is being fueled by the rising popularity of marijuana-infused concentrates and edibles. But what’s not included in these numbers are the billions being generated by indirect industries that are also profiting from the cannabis boom, including those that sell accessories, machinery and equipment, pesticides and real state. Let’s not also forget the lawyers and lobbyists who are battling to spread legalization throughout the country. Investments, particularly in testing and growing technologies are “pouring in” said Arcview’s CEO in the Forbes article. “Twenty-one percent of the total U.S. population now live in legal adult use markets,” said Dayton. For entrepreneurs, investors and opportunists, the marijuana industry could be a new dot-com boom.


The beer tastings and parties you should check out in January

the Eleventh Labor, a Berliner weisse barrel-aged with apricots. To mark the brewery's 25th anniversary — which was actually on Dec. 26 — ChurchKey is putting 25 Schlafly beers on tap, including a trio of brewpub-only offerings. Co-founder Tom Schlafly and longtime brewer Stephen Hale will meet and greet fans at the bar. 5 p.m. 1337 14th St. NW. No Sleep 'Til Brookland at Smith Public Trust, Many Washington-area craft beer events showcase heavy metal or bluegrass bands, but that's not the case at this celebration of “D.C.'s golden age of craft brewing” organized by Smith Public Trust owner and noted craft beer enthusiast Miles Gray III. While you sip beers from DC Brau, 3 Stars and Atlas Brew Works, DJ Jahsonic of the long-running Main Ingredient and Axel F parties will curate a mix of golden-era hip-hop. Attendees are asked to RSVP. 7 to 11 p.m. 3514 12th St. NE. Great Raft Brewing at ChurchKey, Before Shreveport, La.-natives Andrew and Lindsay Nations opened a brewery in their home town in 2013, they lived in Washington where, among other things, Andrew was the editor of DCBeer.com. They've brought their beer back to Washington on occasion — most notably to two editions of the SAVOR festival — and this is another chance to taste a half-dozen Great Raft brews, including Grace and Grit imperial IPA and You, Me and Everyone We Know, a saison aged with peaches. 5 p.m. 1337 14th St. NW. IPA Insanity at Smoke and Barrel, Here's a cool idea: A new charity called H.O.P.S. (Helping Oppressed Peoples Survive) is looking to use craft beer to raise money for people in need. Its first event in Washington, IPA Insanity, features a variety of IPAs and double IPAs from local and national breweries. Organizers won't announce the full beer selection until the week of the event, but they're hoping to have some cult and ultra-fresh offerings. No matter the lineup, drafts cost $5, and all of the proceeds benefit the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian organization that helps refugees. 5 p.m. 2471 18th St. NW. Inauguration ESB release at Port City Brewing Company, On Election Day, Port City Brewing Company opened the “polls” at its Alexandria brewery and allowed visitors to select the style of its next one-off beer: a Belgian-style Dubbel or an English-style Extra Special Bitter, or ESB. The winner of the popular vote was the ESB,


Why Elon Musk has so much riding on SpaceX’s upcoming rocket launch

addition to the goals of Mars and resuming the nation's manned spaceflight program, the company also has a massive backlog of launches that was delayed while the company was grounded during its four-month investigation. The stakes for this flight, then, are huge, said Todd Harrison, the director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They’ve got to prove it and restore confidence in their system on this flight,” he said. “If they have another failure, it’s going to stop them dead in their tracks.” On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration cleared the way for SpaceX’s launch. The agency accepted SpaceX’s investigative report on its rocket explosion, closing the case, and issued it a launch license. On Thursday, Musk tweeted that SpaceX successfully performed an engine test firing and wrote that, “All systems are go for launch next week.” Originally, the launch was scheduled for Sunday, and it was unclear why the schedule slipped a day to Monday. Earlier this week, the company said the cause of the September explosion was traced to a problem with a pressure vessel in the second-stage liquid oxygen tank. The tank buckled, the company said, and supercooled liquid oxygen pooled in the lining. The fuel was ignited by breaking fibers or friction. SpaceX said in the short term, it plans to change the way it loads fuel. Eventually, it plans to change the design of the pressure vessels to prevent buckling. Every launch carries the risk of failure, said Jim Muncy, the president of PoliSpace, a consulting firm. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is a “proven vehicle,” he said. SpaceX continually tries to innovate, and had been super cooling its fuel to make it more dense so that the rocket could carry more of it. The extra fuel was necessary as the company began flying its rocket boosters back to land — or to ships at sea — so that they could be reused. But taking such advanced steps — no one had ever successfully landed an orbital-class rocket before — can cause problems, Muncy said. “As you try to increase performance, you find out if you’re pushing the envelope too far,” he said. “They’re clearly pulling back and not pushing the envelope as much with this launch.” The launch, which would carry 10 Iridium communications satellites to orbit, is scheduled for Monday at 1:22 p.m. Eastern time — weather permitting.


The Limited is closing all of its 250 stores

Limited, declined to comment. A spokesman told the Associated Press that the company will shut its stores by Sunday and that the closures would result in about 4,000 job cuts. The Limited was once a cornerstone of one of retailing’s most formidable empires. Founded in 1963 by Leslie H. “Les” Wexner, the store was a 2,000-square-foot box named for its limited assortment of women’s apparel. The business mushroomed quickly, perhaps an early harbinger of an era in which specialty stores became a dominant presence in regional shopping malls and began to steal thunder from department stores. As The Limited mushroomed, so did Wexner’s ideas: He opened Express, a trendier women’s clothing chain, and Structure, a men’s shop. His company, which today is called L Brands, briefly owned Lane Bryant, Abercrombie & Fitch, Lerner New York and other concepts. It sold off The Limited in 2007, but remains the corporate parent of Bath & Body Works as well as Victoria’s Secret — a chain that Wexner scooped up for $1 million in 1982. Liz Dunn, chief executive of retail consulting firm Talmage Advisors, says The Limited has suffered from its inability to keep up with trends. Shoppers, Dunn said, are “looking for really fast fashion, for things that are hyper-relevant to what’s going on in fashion right now — and as inexpensive as possible.” The Limited’s sensible office attire doesn’t quite fit that bill. The retail environment has proved challenging for a variety of stores: Sports Authority went out of business in 2016, shuttering more than 460 locations in U.S. malls and strip malls. PacSun, Aeropostale and American Apparel each have filed for bankruptcy protection in the past year and are aiming to reorganize and revive their businesses. Macy’s announced this week after a disappointing holiday season that it would aim to cut costs in part by closing some stores and slashing 10,000 jobs. Earlier, on Nov. 28, The Limited had filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) notice in its home state, Ohio, indicating that a mass layoff was imminent. In a letter to employees that was disclosed as part of the notice, executives said “product misses and massive shifts in retail shopping trends have been especially difficult for the company’s business, and the company is dealing with significant debt obligations.” In October, rival women’s brand Chico’s announced that it had poached The Limited’s chief executive, Diane Ellis.


Thousands of Marines fought in southern Afghanistan. Now, the service is going back.

as it rotates home, Turner said. Marines were pulled from Helmand in October 2014 as part of President Obama’s planned withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan, but Afghan forces have struggled mightily there to maintain security against a resilient Taliban. Turner said the Marines who will deploy are a seasoned, senior force, about half of whom have deployed to Helmand at least once before. The senior ranks of those involved reflect the mission, which primarily calls for advising senior Afghan army and police officials. “We had to pull very senior Marines in all functional areas to match up with their counterparts and really provide a level of expertise,” Turner said. “Because the Afghans have made some good progress on a lot of these areas. . . . It’s not a simplistic mission. They’ve really gotten to a point where our level of advising needs to be pretty sophisticated to match where their capabilities are.” Marine Brig. Gen Roger Turner, left, meets U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in October during a site survey ahead of his unit’s deployment there this spring. (Defense Department) Marine officials began preparing for the deployment last fall, with Turner and others visiting Afghanistan in October. The Washington Post reported a Marine deployment to Helmand was likely then, but the service did not confirm it until Friday. The task force’s headquarters will be formed primarily from members of 6th Marine Regiment at Camp Lejeune, N.C., with other advisers coming from across the service to fill specific needs. Senior Marine officials did not say why the service will take over the mission in Helmand, but it is expected that there could be several rotations of Marine task forces there in coming years. “We will do this mission as long as we are required,” said Lt. Gen. William D. Beydler the commander of Marine Forces Central Command. “We are preparing for that now.” Marines were among the first combat forces in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Several infantry units were deployed there through 2006, but the service pulled nearly all of its forces out then as the Iraq War dominated resources and attention in the Pentagon. By 2008, Marine combat troops were back in Afghanistan. Two Marine infantry units arrived in Helmand province, joining British forces in an increasingly violent area. Obama dramatically expanded the amount of Marines there with a decision in late 2009 as part


Google spinoff Waymo has built its own self-driving sensors

Waymo's chief executive introduced the company's self-driving car technology at the AutoMobili-D conference, which was held before the opening of the 2017 North American International Auto Show. DETROIT — Google’s autonomous driving spinoff, Waymo, has developed sensors that pair with its self-driving software, potentially opening the door for the company to sell a comprehensive system that automakers build into future car models. Google initially built its self-driving software on a prototype car outfitted with sensors, cameras and other hardware from outside suppliers. But to build a more affordable and sophisticated system capable of fully autonomous driving, the company decided it needed to create both halves of the technology, executives said. The announcement comes just weeks after Japanese automaker Honda said it would incorporate Waymo’s technology into some of its vehicles. The companies said that deal was centered on research rather than producing vehicles for market, Bloomberg News reported. Chrysler has already adapted its Hybrid Pacifica minivan to use Waymo’s self-driving hardware and software, and one of those vehicles was put on display for the news media Sunday. This month, a fleet of 100 will begin driving on public roads in California and Arizona. Waymo chief executive John Krafcik did not outline specific plans for selling the self-driving sensors in a keynote address Sunday at AutoMobili-D, an automobile technology conference that began the day before the North American International Auto Show is set to start here. “Today we can imagine our self-driving technology being applied in a variety of ways: personal transportation, ride hailing, logistics, last-mile solutions for public transport, just to name a few,” Krafcik said. Krafcik also reported Sunday that engineers had to take control of the car while driving in autonomous mode less often in 2016 than the previous year, an indicator that the technology has improved. In 2015, engineers intervened 0.8 times for every 1,000 miles. In 2016, that number fell to 0.2 times. It has been previously reported that Google was rolling back plans to build its own car, although the company initially developed a self-driving prototype, called Firefly, that had no pedals or steering wheel. The company has touted the potential for self-driving technology to reduce fatal car collisions and assist those incapable of driving on their own. “To solve these challenges, we’re thinking bigger than a single use case, bigger than a particular vehicle, bigger than a single business model,” Krafcik said. Google spun


It’s not just fake news. Even real news can warp political perceptions.

shut out of that payoff. In some cases, community groups have begun attacking their home areas, agitating for their own payoff. That includes the fighting in Western Equatoria that has gone on for about a year, although it is often unclear who is fighting whom and what exactly their link to the SPLM-in-opposition might be. We do know that some of the members of these armed groups were once arrow boys. Which factors might have contributed to this development with the arrow boys? Our research can help answer this questions. Is information a good tool to build a state? When South Sudan achieved independence, many international actors thought they knew what South Sudan needed: state building. You can find that in the U.N. peace mission mandate, the OECD principles for South Sudan, and publications of the United States Institute of Peace. The term means different things to different people, but most observers agree that, at a minimum, the state should hold a monopoly on violence. Only the state can legitimately use physical force, through an army, a police force or prisons. Further, many in the international community, such as the United Nations, believe that to be involved in running democracy, citizens need to be able to learn about their world through the news media. In fact, U.N. peace missions routinely build and operate radio stations in conflict zones. Following this theory, there were radio broadcasts about LRA movements to help citizens stay safe. These broadcasts continue, although the LRA has not seriously threatened the area since roughly 2012. But these radio messages are backfiring. Here’s how. How information and media erode the state monopoly on violence and hinder state building. In the conventional vision of state building, knowledge about LRA threats ought to prompt listeners to take political action. They might lobby the government for more protection or vote against politicians who refuse to help. In this scenario, information helps build the state. Instead, we found that the radio broadcasts about LRA movements spur fear in citizens, leading them to feel they’re still under imminent threat — even while acknowledging there had hardly been any LRA attacks for a long time. Nobel laureate psychologist Daniel Kahneman and colleague put a name to this: availability. People tend to believe something is likely to happen if we can easily recall an example of it. Being permanently reminded of the LRA made it


Methane may not last long in the atmosphere — but it drives sea level rise for centuries

stream of cooler water flowing back toward the equator. This process carries heat all over the world. When heat goes into the ocean from the atmosphere, it tends to get caught up in this overturning circulation, which carries it all over the planet, Solomon explained. It can take a time scale of hundreds of years before the heat is released from the water back into the air. The study underlines the importance of curbing greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible to avoid an even longer sentence, the authors note. In fact, they included a separate modeling experiment in their study that demonstrates the significance of early climate action. In the late 1980s, nations around the world agreed on an international treaty called the Montreal Protocol, which aimed to protect the earth’s ozone layer by phasing out certain damaging chemicals — notably, chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons. (The treaty was recently updated to include the phasing out of hydrofluorocarbons as well.) The researchers decided to investigate what would have happened to the oceans if this treaty had never been adopted. So they ran two simulations in which ozone-depleting emissions were allowed to continue at high levels until the year 2015 and the year 2050, respectively — then they cut the emissions off. The model indicated that, if not for the treaty, we would have seen about 3.7 centimeters, or 1.4 inches, of extra sea-level rise by the year 2100 — and nearly 14 centimeters, or more than 5 inches, in the 2050 scenario. This experiment shows what the world avoided, Solomon said. Recent discussions about climate mitigation strategies have begun to include the possibility of carbon dioxide removal — a form of geoengineering that would use technology to “A scenario that reduces atmospheric temperature cannot be assumed to simultaneously eliminate future sea-level rise, due to the time scales associated with release of stored energy in the ocean,” they note in the paper. However, the technology isn’t developed enough for wide-scale use. For now, the researchers suggest that the best strategy is to follow through with commitments to halt greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, keeping in mind that their influence on the planet will far outlast our lifetimes. “It’s really quite an achievement that the world has to celebrate that we did agree on the Montreal Protocol,” Solomon said. “And the challenge now is for us to think about other gases.”


Not all Republicans on board with Democrat’s bill to sanction Russia

activities, including their conclusion that Putin ordered the hacking operation in the hopes of aiding Trump. Trump has downplayed those conclusions, and praised Putin as “very smart!” for not retaliating against Obama’s sanctions. His comments – the latest in a string of kind words the president-elect has offered Putin — drove a schism in the GOP between those who derided Trump for disparaging the intelligence community and those prepared to excuse his reaction. The sanctions in Cardin’s bill are mandatory — which means the Trump administration would be forced to impose them if they passed, although the administration can frequently waive mandatory sanctions on a case-by-case basis — and would apply to anyone who helps Russian cyber intrusions, supports the Russian defense or intelligence sectors, or makes certain investments in the development of Russian oil, natural gas, civil nuclear and pipeline projects. The Cardin measure codifies all of the sanctions the Obama administration has imposed against Russia over its intervention in Ukraine and alleged hacking activities. It also establishes that the United States will never recognize Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea — something Trump has suggested he might do — or the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, territories that tried to break away from the country of Georgia with Russia’s support. The bill would authorize $100 million for State Department programs to improve civil society, invest in anti-corruption and democratization projects in Europe; and $25 million for a Homeland Security-directed program to educate the public about cyber security threats and fake news. It also directs the Treasury Department to establish a new task force to focus on financial crimes linked to Russia. But the GOP is as divided about those proposals as they are about about Trump’s response to allegations about Russia’s election-related hacking. Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who also sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, said that “if you can get sanctions to work, I’m all for ‘em” — but expressed “concerns about sanctions strengthening Putin’s hand because he uses that [to] solidify his domestic support.” Johnson and is counterpart in the House, Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), have both said they do not intend to investigate the allegations of Russian hacking in their committees, deferring to the intelligence committees. Senate Armed Services Committee member Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), who used to chair the subcommittee with jurisdiction over cyber security,


In legal action, Metro blames D.C. Fire for L’Enfant Plaza smoke casualties

in a substantially longer exposure to smoke by passengers on Train 302, thereby exacerbating the nature and extent of each passenger’s injuries,” Metro alleged in the legal filing. To add to the confusion, the District’s emergency radio system was not functioning inside the tunnel. (That, too, was the District’s fault, Metro argued: In the days before the smoke incident, “the District delayed providing access to this site for WMATA’s technicians because … it was not convenient,” Metro wrote.) But, if the District’s battalion commander had coordinated with Metro officials, they would have been able to use the working Metro Transit Police radios to communicate with emergency responders inside the tunnel, Metro said. Instead, the commander sent messengers running in and out of the tunnel, which wasted precious time as passengers found it increasingly difficult to breathe. D.C. Fire spokesman Douglas Buchanan said Tuesday morning that the agency is still reviewing the court documents. “We will determine if it is appropriate for us to respond upon the completion of this process,” Buchanan said. The communication gap also prolonged the process of shutting down the third-rail so that passengers could be evacuated, Metro argued. The cross-claim alleges that the commander appeared to willfully ignore information coming from Metro about the fact that people were stuck inside the train in an increasingly perilous situation. “The Metro Transit Police Deputy Chief tried to communicate this critical piece of information to the Incident Commander several times, and each time the Incident Commander rolled up his vehicle window and drove off instead of engaging a fellow agency senior official,” Metro’s lawyers wrote. In an accident report released last May In total, the cross-claim alleged 10 counts of indemnity and contribution to the incident based on negligence. Metro’s lawyers want D.C. to be held financially responsible for any damages that are awarded to the L’Enfant Plaza victims. But Metro’s lawyers are also insisting that the lawsuit brought forth by Glover’s family and the surviving victims should be dismissed altogether. They argued that critical decisions made before, during and after the crisis — about tunnel fan ventilation systems, about the electrified third rail, and about radio equipment — were “difficult choices” that were “fraught with public policy considerations” that should grant Metro immunity from being held liable. “These were governmental decisions of a discretionary variety that are entitled to immunity protection,” Metro said in the motion to dismiss.


A rare disease gave him tree branch-like hands. After 16 surgeries, he can finally see his fingers.

Abul Bajandar of Bangladesh, dubbed Tree Man for the massive bark-like warts on his hands and feet, sits at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital in January 2016. (Munir Uz Zaman/AFP/Getty Images) When the warts first appeared in his teens, speckling his hands and feet, Abul Bajandar wasn’t concerned. Cutting away the unsightly growths himself was too painful, he told AFP, so Bajandar sought medication from a homeopath and herbal specialist in his poor, coastal Bangladeshi village. That just made them worse. But it wasn’t until his early 20s, after he’d worked for years as a rickshaw driver and married his wife, that the warts took on a bark-like appearance and began to rapidly multiply. By age 25, his hands looked like an overgrown bramble. People began calling him “Tree Man.” He could not work, or feed himself, or brush his own teeth. Bajandar was in pain. His family, which had consulted doctors in India but couldn’t afford treatment, was desperate for answers. Bajandar relaxes with his family in a hospital ward. (Sam Jahansam JahaNn/AFP/Getty Images) So when a television station was in their village covering municipal elections, Bajandar approached them for help, reported the Daily Star. “At first I thought he was asking for money,” Sunil Das, SATV bureau chief, told the Daily Star. “But when he showed me his hands I realized I had never seen anything like that before.” Soon, the man’s story became an international sensation, inspiring monetary donations from around the globe and a team of doctors and plastic surgeons at Dhaka Medical College Hospital to treat him free of charge. “I want to live like a normal person,” Bajandar told CNN last February. “I just want to be able to hold my daughter properly and hug her.” Doctors diagnosed the man with epidermodysplasia verruciformis, a rare genetic disease that makes people especially susceptible to human papillomavirus and developing skin tumors. According to AFP, Bajandar was only one of four people in the world to be diagnosed with the illness, which subjects its victims to a lifetime of growths. In this report from March 2016, Abul Bajandar begins his round of surgeries that will eventually give him back his hands. The rare disease covered his hands with tree-bark like growths. In January 2016, surgeons at the hospital performed tests on Bajandar’s warts to ensure they could be removed without damaging his major nerves or causing other


Inauguration Day: How do I get to work in D.C.?

map of closings and restrictions produced by the U.S. Secret Service for the inauguration. Map shows traffic restrictions in central Washington for the 2017 presidential inauguration. (Secret Service) The Secret Service also has provided a long list of individual street closings. You will see that as a downloadable pdf on this Web page. Many people still remember the extensive road and bridge closings for the 2009 inauguration — and not in a good way. Many will remember that Virginia drivers were virtually cut off from Potomac River access to the District. The 2017 map and the closings list look much more like the less restrictive 2013 plan. Don’t let your guard down. It’s still going to be tough to move about central Washington on Thursday and Friday. And if you moved to the area since 2013, you are about to see the most extensive network of blockades, fences, closed roads, detours, motorcade delays and pedestrian scrambles that you’ve encountered in the nation’s capital. A big crowd waits to enter L’Enfant Plaza Metro station after the 2013 swearing-in ceremony. (Robert Thomson/The Washington Post) Q: Day Before Inauguration. DG: There’s a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, a concert at the Lincoln Memorial and the start of the string of inaugural balls. But if you’re doing MARC to Metrorail on Thursday, you should be okay. In fact, taking rail transit on Thursday and Friday is the best bet — unless you can telework. Metrorail will be operating on its regular schedule on inauguration eve. Inauguration Day service begins at 4 a.m. and continues till midnight, with near rush-hour levels of service scheduled till 9 p.m. Peak fares also will be in effect until 9 p.m. Regular parking rates will be in effect at Metro lots and garages. Five stations will be closed for security on Friday: Mount Vernon Square, Archives, Federal Triangle, Smithsonian and Pentagon. About 50 Metrobus routes will be slowed or detoured by the central security zone. Traffic highlights People concerned about travel in central Washington should look over the full list linked above, but here are some routes on the list that travelers are most likely to be concerned about. According to the official schedule, closings begin at 3 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 19, and continue until 6 p.m. Jan. 20, unless otherwise noted. - 14th Street Bridge: The regular lanes are open to all traffic, but drivers will be


How an ‘abuse-deterrent’ drug created the heroin epidemic

of OxyContin abuse before 2010, the authors reasoned, that would be a strong indicator that the reformulation drove more Oxycontin users to abuse heroin. And that's exactly what they found. "States with the highest initial rates of OxyContin misuse experienced the largest increases in heroin deaths," they write. "Results show that this differential increase in heroin deaths began precisely in the year following reformulation." Moreover, prior to 2010, there was no correlation between OxyContin abuse and heroin mortality. "Both the levels and trends in heroin deaths were nearly identical across states with high or low initial rates of OxyContin misuse before 2010," the study found. The study determined that the OxyContin reformulation was indeed successful at reducing OxyContin abuse. But, "each percentage point reduction in the rate of OxyContin misuse due to reformulation leads to 3.1 more heroin-related deaths per 100,000." The authors are confident the effects they observe are from the OxyContin reformulation and not from other efforts to crack down on prescription painkillers during that time. They controlled for the presence of Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs in different states and found it had little effect on their numbers. They also re-ran the numbers to exclude Florida, as well as states like Kentucky and West Virginia, where people were known to buy drugs from Florida's "pill mills" which were largely shut down in 2010. But even then, their observed effect remained. Overall, they estimate that the OxyContin change was responsible for 80 percent of the increase in heroin mortality after 2010. They stress that the change didn't appear to have any effect on the total number of overdose deaths observed after 2010 -- if fewer people died from OxyContin, more were killed by heroin. The overall trajectory essentially remained unchanged. The authors position the effects of the OxyContin reformulation as a lesson in the limits of "supply-side" drug policies -- those that attempt to reduce drug abuse by cutting the supply of abused drugs, rather than the demand. "The findings from this study provide yet another example of how supply-side strategies alone are inadequate for dealing with the drug problem, particularly when substitute drugs exist," they write. "That doesn't mean supply reduction is bad, you just need broader supply reduction policies," said co-author David Powell of the RAND Corp. in an interview. With the OxyContin reformulation, "they were basically just taking out one component of this abuse chain." The


Study suggests Earth once had many moonlets — until they merged to form the moon

This narrow-angle image taken by NASA's Cassini shows the moon in August 1999. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) The moon is the most obvious and familiar object in Earth's night sky — constant, consistent, predictable in its monthly cycles and its daily rising and setting. Astronomers understand the moon's movements so thoroughly that even a break from the routine, like an eclipse, can be anticipated 1,000 years in advance. But we don't know the moon as well as we think. In fact, for years, astronomy has been in an uproar over the origin of Earth's only natural satellite, grappling to make sense of a model that seems increasingly unsatisfactory. Now, a team of Israeli researchers has shaken up the debate by offering an entirely new explanation, published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience. They say the moon isn't a single chunk of rock but an amalgamation of nearly two dozen “moonlets,” one that was formed during a steady bombardment of Earth by several smaller bodies. It's a major departure from the “giant impact model,” which was once the standard explanation for the moon's existence. That hypothesis proposes that the satellite came about during a single, violent collision between Earth and a hypothetical protoplanet called Theia. Theia sideswiped our planet roughly 4.4 billion years ago, scattering debris that eventually coalesced into the moon, which drifted away and started to circle the Earth. The model explained the moon's modern migration — it's still receding, at a rate of about 4 centimeters per year. But it also had a problem: In the early 2000s, scientists examining lunar rocks brought back by the Apollo astronauts found the chemical composition of the moon was eerily similar to that of Earth. Its elements had the same ratio of isotopes as many on Earth do — and virtually no traces of Theia. How could a giant object create the moon and leave nothing behind? “The whole giant impact model had been put into crisis several years ago,” Sarah Stewart, a planetary physicist at the University of California at Davis, told The Washington Post last year, “to the point where people thought it might be completely wrong because we couldn't make it work in its details.” Scientists added other elements to the hypothesis in an attempt to resolve that chemistry issue. Maybe Theia was chemically identical to Earth? Maybe the collision vaporized both bodies, mixing their ingredients until they


12 Washington restaurants you probably haven’t tried yet

at TapaBar. (Dixie D. Vereen for The Washington Post) TapaBar “Good ingredients, minimally fussed over, translate to food you want to return for,” The Post's Tom Sietsema writes. The traditional Spanish small plates are the way to go here, including lamb and pork meatballs, tortilla española and mushroom croquettes. 4901-A Fairmont Ave., Bethesda. A sampling of spreads at Ambar. (Dixie D. Vereen for The Washington Post) Ambar The reliable Balkan spot on Capitol Hill now has a sister location in Clarendon. It's loud, but the service is great. You can also expect an appealing menu with such dishes as stuffed cabbage and beef-and-veal kebabs. 2901 Wilson Blvd., Arlington. The Backroom at Kingbird. (Dixie D. Vereen for The Washington Post) Backroom at Kingbird Choose from a three- or four-course tasting menu from chef Michael Santoro, who also is responsible for the food in the main dining room at Kingbird, inside the recently renovated Watergate Hotel. Sietsema calls the experience “civilized and sophisticated.” 2650 Virginia Ave. NW. Pillowy blocks of fried tofu sit in a pool of house-made dashi at Himitsu. (Dixie D. Vereen/For The Washington Post) Himitsu Dining at this tiny restaurant in Petworth feels like visiting good friends. The two young partners, alums of José Andrés's restaurants, are turning out excellent cocktails and interesting food with a Japanese influence. 828 Upshur St. NW. Smoked octopus at Ruta del Vino. (Deb Lindsey for The Washington Post) Ruta del Vino Another new, successful addition to Petworth, this spot is devoted to Latin American food and wine. Featured attractions on the menu range from ceviche and chile relleno to carne asada and roast chicken. 800 Upshur St. NW. Lobster jambalaya at Fish by José Andrés at MGM National Harbor. (Jennifer Chase for The Washington Post) MGM National Harbor The three celebrity-chef concepts at the new casino and resort in Prince George's County are all worth a visit. Marcus Samuelsson's Marcus is most interesting when dishes feature his Ethiopian heritage; Michael and Bryan Voltaggio's Voltaggio Brothers Steak House is a modern twist on a traditional steakhouse; and José Andrés's Fish celebrates the bounties of the sea. 101 MGM National Ave., Oxon Hill. Read more: - The restaurants Tom Sietsema loved the most in 2016 - The most exciting restaurant and bar openings planned for 2017 - These are our 15 favorite dishes of 2016 - The month of December in restaurant openings and closings


This is the Nazi-apologia war novel that apparently inspired SEAL Team 6 combat tactics

deployed troops. A 2006 analysis from AbeBooks, a website that was then sending new and used reading material to deployed troops, showed that “Devil’s Guard” was among the top 10 novels supplied to U.S. troops in Iraq, according to the Telegraph. Others included “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” by J.K. Rowling, “Lonesome Dove,” by Larry McMurtry, and “Mostly Harmless,” by Douglas Adams, according to the report. The book, though billed as a historical account, has been derided by historians as mostly untrue and overly sympathetic to the Nazis, especially the SS. In an early section of the book, Wagemueller spares a group of Americans and casts his fellow SS soldiers’ war crimes in the Battle of the Bulge as being no worse than organized crime in the United States or similar actions by U.S. troops. The book is correct that soldiers on both sides were responsible for brutality during the war. But units in the SS, especially the SS Einsatzgruppen, were responsible for the mass murder of tens of thousands of civilians in Eastern Europe and Russia as part of Adolf Hitler’s final solution. In an early chapter of the book, Wagemueller’s unit rounds up the family members of supposed Viet-Minh guerrillas to use as human shields so that their convoy won’t be attacked as they proceed through a contested area. “I was resolved to show the enemy that terror, brutality, and cold-blooded murder were not their monopoly, a Communist privilege, and that at least my battalion was ready to pay them tit for tat. They understood no other language,” Wagemueller says. In a way, it’s not surprising that the “Devil’s Guard” became a favorite book among members of the most famed Special Operations unit in modern U.S. history while its members fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. The country’s military leaders were pushing a doctrine that focused on winning “hearts and minds,” but troops on the ground were frustrated by an enemy that used unconventional tactics such as roadside bombs to attack Americans. The book became a way for troops to fantasize about ignoring rules of engagement. When asked for comment about the book’s notoriety and its propensity to encourage war crimes as a viable tactic, Navy Capt. Jason Salata, a spokesman for Naval Special Warfare Command said in an email that, “all members of Naval Special Warfare are required


Food stamp recipients will soon be able to order groceries online

Customers leave a Safeway store in 2014 in San Francisco. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) Beginning this summer, some Americans who receive food assistance will have a new way to feed their families. The Agriculture Department said that it will test a program that allows people on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — SNAP, known as food stamps — to order groceries online through various retailers. The ability to shop online could bring healthful food into food deserts, low-income areas where fresh food is not readily available. “Online purchasing is a potential lifeline for SNAP participants living in urban neighborhoods and rural communities where access to healthy food choices can be limited,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a news release last week. The program will be tested in seven states, including Maryland. The USDA has partnered with several local and national retailers for the two-year pilot, including Hy-Vee and FreshDirect. In Maryland, SNAP recipients will be able to choose among Amazon, Safeway and ShopRite. Participants will be able to use SNAP to pay for eligible items, but delivery charges will come out of their own pockets. Bread, meat, fruits and vegetables are permitted; household items, beer and cigarettes are among the prohibited goods. (Disclosure: Amazon and The Washington Post share an owner.) The program also stands to improve the lives of SNAP recipients who do not have cars and who may have to walk miles to a grocery store. And while come critics of the program might wonder about recipients’ access to the Internet, Wonkblog’s Rachel Premack reported in July that connectivity is less of a problem than transportation: Access to at-home Internet is somewhat more common among the poor than access to a car — 88 percent vs. 79.6 percent. Take Mobile, Ala., where a third of residents are both below poverty level and live farther than half a mile from the nearest supermarket. Ninety-one percent of those below the poverty line have Internet access, and only 76 percent have a car. The option of home-delivered groceries, assuming the Internet access is fast enough to use the websites of grocery providers, could make life less stressful. Poor families might also choose to shop online for the same reason middle-class families do: They’ll get extra time to spend at work or with their families, instead of shopping at a brick-and-mortar store. “On the most basic level, time spent with children is


America’s first ‘clean coal’ plant is now operational — and another is on the way

actually having an experience in installing a [carbon capture and storage] technology in existing coal plants will have a pretty significant application in the current plants that exist throughout the country, and for that matter, throughout the world.” But there is another coal plant near completion in the United States that will also capture carbon dioxide — but using a very different approach. It’s the Kemper Plant, being operated by Mississippi Power, a subsidiary of Southern Co., and expected to be operational Jan. 31. This plant has been designed to turn lignite, a type of coal, into a gas called syngas, stripping out some carbon dioxide in the process. The syngas is burned for electricity and the CO2 is then again shipped to an oil field to aid in additional oil recovery. Thus, at Petra Nova the capturing of carbon occurs after the coal has been burned — or “post-combustion” — whereas at Kemper, it happens beforehand. The arrival of Petra Nova and Kemper comes as the incoming Trump administration will have to try to deliver on sweeping promises made to the struggling coal industry. It remains unclear if that will involve any type of support for carbon capture technology or for the industry, but Trump did allude to “clean coal” while campaigning. The two very different plants together mark the arrival of a technology, often called “CCS” for short, that has been heralded as essential to the future of coal burning in particular (though it has many other applications), but has struggled despite considerable subsidies from the U.S. Department of Energy. Several projects have seen their Energy Department funding withdrawn, but these two now stand at or near the finish line. According to The Energy Department provided grants totaling $ 190 million to the Petra Nova facility, which cost $1 billion overall. Kemper is a considerably more expensive project, representing a $6.91 billion expenditure for a massive plant with a capacity of 582 megawatts. That includes $270 million in support from the Energy Department, also as part of its Clean Coal Power Initiative. The Department hailed the news Tuesday. “As the world’s largest post-combustion carbon capture system, the Petra Nova project confirms that carbon capture and storage technologies can play a critical role in ensuring the nation’s energy security and providing good jobs for American workers, all while helping us reduce carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants,” said Christopher