The new buzz: Scientists are using weather radar to devise detailed bug maps

As meteorologists are all too aware, not everything that shows up on their radar is related to weather. Sometimes, it’s a flock of geese or a traffic jam. In other instances, the suspicious storm turns out to be a mass migration of grasshoppers, millions of mayflies hatching at once or an angry horde of flying ants. While forecasters normally try to remove the bugs from their data, a group of meteorologists are now joining forces with insect researchers to study them. The collaboration, called BioDAR, has an ambitious goal: to monitor levels of flying insect activity in near real time across the entire United Kingdom. If things go well, they hope to scale up this effort to other countries. By bringing the observational powers of modern meteorology to bear on bugs, the researchers hope to create a new pipeline of data that can inform basic science, pest management and conservation efforts. The idea for the project came about in December 2016, when University of Leeds insect ecologist Christopher Hassall and atmospheric scientist Ryan Neely III were chatting at a gathering for academics from different disciplines. “I work on bees, and Neely said, ‘I see bees in my radar data all the time, and we throw that data out,’” Hassall recalled. “That moment of horror for me is I think what formed the beginning of the collaboration,” Hassall said in an interview. Neely agreed that it would be better to put the buggy radar data to use than to ignore it. Three years later, the two have amassed a dozen collaborators and partners at institutions around the world. They’ve received nearly $1 million in funding from the Natural Environment Research Council in the United Kingdom to spend the next three years developing algorithms that use radar data to characterize and track insect populations. With some additional seed funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the researchers are also partnering with the national weather agencies of Rwanda, Mali and South Africa to try to use local radar data to track crop pests like the fall armyworm. In a typical radar setup, an antenna is used to shoot invisible microwave radiation through the air. As those microwaves strike particles, like raindrops, they bounce, creating echoes that are picked up by the radar. Those echoes reveal information on the number and size of the particles and their speed, all of which is fed


Christopher Rouse, expressionistic composer who won Pulitzer Prize, dies at 70

Christopher Rouse, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer known for unpredictable, expressionistic works that immersed listeners in a world of anguish, terror and sensuous beauty, died Sept. 21 at a hospice center in Towson, Md. He was 70. The cause was complications of renal cancer, said Carol Ann Cheung, a publicist with his music publisher, Boosey & Hawkes. Dr. Rouse’s final work, Symphony No. 6, is scheduled to premiere Oct. 18 with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and conductor Louis Langrée. As recently as last week, Dr. Rouse was still polishing the score, according to his friend Joel Puckett, a composer who taught alongside Dr. Rouse at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. “Even at the very end, he was assessing the moves and structures and tricks he’s used before, still trying to find new ways to crack the nut,” Puckett said. Rare among modern composers for achieving both critical acclaim and popular success, Dr. Rouse wrote chamber and vocal works that were performed around the world and taught for more than two decades at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. But he was best known for his symphonies and concertos, which featured a sound that cellist Yo-Yo Ma once described as “spiritual without being sentimental, deeply felt without sentimentality.” Trained in the 1960s and ’70s, an era of heady experimentation in classical music, Dr. Rouse drew on the twelve-tone serialism taught by his professor Richard Hoffmann, the neoclassical principles of pianist Robert Palmer, the rigorous formalism of composer Karel Husa and the avant-garde instrumentation of his private instructor, George Crumb. But he broke with many of his mentors and peers in his love for the romantic tradition of composers such as Johannes Brahms and Dmitri Shostakovich, and for his use of electric guitars and rock motifs. He quoted the rock bands Jefferson Airplane and Moby Grape and made headlines for his eight-person percussion piece “Bonham” (1988), written as an ode to the late Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham. In hard-rock fashion, some of his scores were so loud that fortissimo was said to be marked with six Fs, instead of the usual two. That boisterousness contributed to a 1985 incident in which a member of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, where Dr. Rouse was a composer in residence, filed a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, saying his music was too loud. “To me, loud dynamics have to


Trump says he is worthy of a Nobel Prize ‘for a lot of things’ — but isn’t treated fairly

President Trump claimed Monday that he deserves a Nobel Prize for “a lot of things” but complained that the committee that hands out the awards does so unfairly. The comment came during a bilateral meeting in New York with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan after Trump said he was “ready, willing and able” to mediate between India and Pakistan in a decades-old dispute over the territory of Kashmir. “If you can solve this outstanding issue of Kashmir, very likely and definitely you’ll be deserving a Nobel Prize,” a Pakistani journalist told Trump. “I think I’m going to get a Nobel Prize for a lot of things, if they gave it out fairly, which they don’t,” Trump said. He also alluded to former president Barack Obama’s 2009 Nobel Prize, which the Norwegian Nobel Committee said was in recognition of work on nuclear nonproliferation and creating a “new climate” in international relations. “They gave one to Obama immediately after his ascent to the presidency, and he had no idea why he got it,” Trump told reporters in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. “You know what, that was the only thing I agreed with him on.” Trump has previously suggested he should be considered for a Nobel Prize for his efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. Tensions in Kashmir have flared since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi moved last month to strip the territory of its autonomy and send additional troops to the majority-Muslim region after attacks by separatists that India maintains are sponsored by Pakistan. “I have a very good relationship with Prime Minister Modi,” Trump told reporters in New York. “I have a very good relationship with Prime Minister Khan. And if at any time they say, you know, we have some points we think you can maybe iron out, I think I’d be an extremely good arbitrator.” Trump and Modi appeared together Sunday at a rally in Houston intended to celebrate the Indian diaspora. john.wagner@washpost.com


Russia’s spot in the Tokyo Olympics is threatened amid new doping concerns

data it was given had been tampered with or altered. RUSADA and the Russian Ministry of Sport have been given three weeks to respond to questions, though WADA has said it has no timetable for a final decision. If the executive board finds that Russia has been “noncompliant” and the Court of Arbitration for Sport affirms the decision, the country could face penalties similar — or even more severe — to what it received before the 2018 Olympics. Some Russian athletes were allowed to compete at the PyeongChang Games as “Olympic Athletes from Russia,” but the country had no formal presence. In his statement Monday, Pozdnyakov acknowledged “the prospects for the participation of the Russian Olympic team at the Games in Tokyo next year will be in jeopardy.” Russian Olympic officials have repeatedly tried to impress upon the international Olympic community that it has undertaken major reforms and deserves full reinstatement to athletic competitions. Pozdnyakov, who took over as president of the Russian Olympic Committee in May 2018, said the organization has made “diplomatic efforts to regain the trust of the international sports community." “But now again we run the risk of facing certain sanctions for reasons to which we have nothing to do,” he said. The extended investigation will serve as yet another test for WADA and the International Olympic Committee, both of which have drawn the ire of anti-doping advocates for failing to keep Russia in line despite mounting concerns from many athletes and varying degrees of indifference and defiance from some Russian leaders. “In the words of a well-known law enforcement personality — ‘surprise, surprise, surprise,’” Travis Tygart, chief executive of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, said in a statement Monday. “Looks like it’s hammer time, and let’s hope there are no secret backroom deals but that justice is finally served in an open, transparent and public manner. The world, especially clean athletes, have been yanked around enough already.” While Russian’s inclusion in next summer’s Tokyo Games could hang in the balance, Monday’s news had an immediate impact on the Olympic community. The world’s best track and field athletes are gathering in Doha, Qatar, this week for the IAAF world championships, which begin Friday. The IAAF ruled Monday that 30 Russian athletes could compete as neutral athletes at the meet but Russia’s track and field federation would remain under suspension. “There is a recurring problem of athletes and


Trump’s vaping crackdown could help Juul by ending the decade’s biggest small-business success story

beers, railroads and refrigeration, combined with expensive technological advancements such as pasteurization and bottling, squeezed out smaller brewers. In 1920, Prohibition dealt a death blow to many of the operations that remained. “Smaller-scale producers are less likely to be diversified, less likely to have capital reserves, less likely to be able to use influence to move into other markets or find exceptions,” said Bart Watson, chief economist at the Brewers Association. “The companies that survived were the ones that were able to rapidly shift markets and weather the storm.” He pointed out that Yuengling, for example, entered the ice cream business during the lean years. Those bigger players swung back into the industry when Prohibition ended, because they were positioned to navigate costly state and local regulations that proliferated in the wake of repeal. It consolidated their advantage. By 1978, there were 89 brewers in the country. In that same year, regulations finally eased. President Jimmy Carter signed a bill that legalized home brewing. In the years that followed, states relaxed their brewpub bans, Watson said. There were more than 1,500 U.S. breweries by the year 2000, and by 2018 there were 7,450. There is an important caveat, however. A few enormous corporations still sell six out of every seven U.S. beers, leaving about 7,447 craft brewers to split the remaining 14 percent of the market. “These regulatory decisions that were made a long time ago have very long historical trajectories,” Watson said. Heavyweights like Anheuser-Busch InBev (41 percent of the market) and Molson Coors (23.5 percent) have also elbowed into the craft beer boom, snapping up smaller brewers and distributing their beverages under myriad craft labels. We are seeing echoes of that in the vaping industry. Late last year, Altria sought to regain lost ground with a $12.8 billion investment in Juul. It also acquired 45 percent of a Canadian marijuana firm. Vape-shop managers like Pritchard and Brown say they got into the industry to help people stop smoking. Cigarette smoking causes more than 480,000 deaths a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At vape shops, customers often taper to lower and lower nicotine concentrations, until they are vaping a zero-nicotine product. Eventually, some will quit. But while adult smokers seem to have benefited from the vaping boom, officials point to a worrying spike in teen use. A 2018 survey found 37.3 percent of high


Ukraine isn’t Washington’s top priority, but it’s sparking another Washington scandal

on Foreign Relations. “So you have all sides arming themselves with these techniques.” That’s a contrast with Russia, which has far deeper stores of money but where politics has been dominated for two decades by one man: President Vladimir Putin. The Russian market largely closed to Americans after 2014, when the Obama administration imposed sanctions on Russia for its role in the conflict in Ukraine and business ties dried up. In Ukraine, Manafort is deeply tied in the public mind to the corruption of the Yanukovych era. When the ledger of payments surfaced in 2016, diplomats in Kiev figured the disclosure was motivated by Ukrainian anger about his work in their political system. Trump was unpopular in Kiev because of his admiration for Putin, but few thought it was part of a broader Ukrainian vendetta against the Trump campaign because no one at the time expected the campaign to be victorious. But in Trump-era Washington, the president’s backers have portrayed the episode differently, as part of a Ukrainian government conspiracy to interfere in the 2016 campaign. Giuliani, whose consulting group counts among its clients several prominent Ukrainians, has targeted the former lawmaker Serhiy Leshchenko, who helped publicize the ledger. In a May appearance on Fox News, Giuliani named Leshchenko as one of a group of “enemies of the president, in some cases enemies of the United States,” who were close to newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Leshchenko says his actions have been distorted. “Instead of applauding me because I have put in jail a criminal, Mr. Manafort, who is found guilty by American judges and American grand juries, they have started attacking me,” he said. Leshchenko advised Zelensky’s campaign. But he said Giuliani’s vendetta had forced him to leave the new leader’s team to avoid harming relations between Ukraine and the United States. In an opinion piece published Saturday by The Washington Post, he offered to testify before Congress. But if the end of the Yanukovych era cast out American consultants including Manafort, the turmoil pulled in others with Washington connections. One energy company, Burisma, hired several well-connected Democrats, including Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, who became a board member in 2014. At the time, his father was vice president and a leader in the Obama administration’s response to the crisis in Ukraine. The younger Biden didn’t provide direct support to politicians. He earned up to $50,000 per month


The best things to see, drink and do in the D.C. area in September

year; you’ll find a wide selection of local vendors and food trucks alongside a pet parade and music at the new location in Southeast. But what you really want to come for are all the classic fair contests. There are new ones this year, including a prize for best hot sauce, but the best ones are the tried-and-true live competitions, such as hula hooping or limbo, sloppy joe eating and watermelon-seed spitting. 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Gateway D.C. Free. — Hau Chu D.C. Beer Week D.C. Beer Week has moved back to September after a few years in the August doldrums. The celebration of our local beer scene is all over the map: In addition to the usual tap takeovers and happy hours, essential events include Brewers on the Block, an outdoor festival with more than 40 brewers pouring at Union Market (Sept. 14); Aslin Beer Company’s fourth anniversary party, with 120 beers on tap from across the country (Sept. 14); and a panel discussion about women in beer hosted by Red Bear Brewing (Sept. 12). Find the full schedule at dcbeerweek.net. — Fritz Hahn Street festival season The festivities go on for 11 blocks during the H Street Festival, one of D.C.’s most popular neighborhood celebrations. The Sept. 21 event is expected to draw a crowd of 150,000 to the H Street Corridor in Northeast for performances from local musicians, artists and dancers on 14 stages. But it’s not the only neighborhood street party this month: Adams Morgan Day (Sept. 8), Clarendon Day (Sept. 21), Hyattsville Arts and Ales Festival (Sept. 21) and Barracks Row Fall Festival (Sept. 28) also will draw crowds from around the area. Free. — Adele Chapin Art All Night With the District’s annual Art All Night event taking place in eight neighborhoods, from Tenleytown and Dupont Circle to Congress Heights and Minnesota Avenue, and featuring hundreds of artists, it’s hard — make that impossible — to experience everything. The multisite extravaganza includes visual and performing art at indoor and outdoor venues, on public and private sites. So don’t even try to see it all. Pick a neighborhood that’s convenient and explore it, fully. You’ve got eight hours. (Or maybe pick two: Shaw, for example, and Dupont Circle aren’t terribly far apart by bike). 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. at various locations. Free. — Michael O’Sullivan ‘What the Constitution Means to Me’ Playwright


Trump can’t stop talking about the Nobel Peace Prize. It might have something to do with Obama.

and superlatives. File it away with Trump’s insistence that he won the 2016 presidential race in a “landslide” (and the popular vote, too), his declaration that the crowd at his inauguration was “record-setting,” and his early Cabinet meetings, where secretaries-cum-supplicants took turns lavishing adulation upon him. Obama won the Nobel after less than nine months as president, though even he conceded it was not a “recognition of my own accomplishments,” but rather a plaudit for his inspirational rhetoric. Even so, by 2018, Trump had been in office for a year and still no medal. His nomination was indeed discussed that February, but only when the Nobel committee secretary, Olav Njolstad, was delivering some disturbing news: Someone had forged an endorsement of Trump. Twice. An Oslo police official said at the time that investigators had been in touch with the FBI, which, the New York Times reported, suggests the forgeries originated in the United States. But the committee offered few details beyond that, and the Nobel buzz subsided. Then, in the months that followed, as the frightening — and sometimes puzzling — threats Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un exchanged gave way to handshakes, promises and a remarkable planned summit, the prospect of peace loomed. And with the long line of national and foreign leaders looking to win favor with the president, the Nobel was in the air again. “We’re not there yet, but if this happens President Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said in spring 2018. Former president Jimmy Carter, a frequent Trump critic and one of four U.S. leaders to win the prize, said Trump should be considered if he can successfully broker peace. South Korean President Moon Jae-in chimed in to agree. “President Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize,” Moon said. “The only thing we need is peace.” The South Korean leader had painstakingly flattered Trump for weeks, crediting him for creating the diplomatic environment that was making the rapprochement possible. But that comment really caught Trump’s attention. “I just think that President Moon was very nice when he suggested it,” Trump said at a White House event shortly after Moon’s statement. “I want to get peace. It’s the main thing. … But I thought it was very generous of President Moon of South Korea to make that statement, and I appreciate it.” Boris Johnson, then Britain’s foreign secretary,


A local’s guide to Portland, Maine

Breakfast address: 221 Cumberland Ave., Portland, Maine 04101 latlng: phone: 207-536-1279 website: https://coffeemeupportland.com/ twitter: instagram: coffeemeupportland Portland has no shortage of quality brunch spots, but Local 188, with its Spanish-inspired dishes, is something unique. Located in the West End, the high-ceilinged lounge space is casual yet bold, with deep-red decor and funky art. The menu works well for picky eaters and adventure-seekers alike, boasting both your traditional eggs and home fries as well as a breakfast paella with bacon, eggs and mussels. If you find yourself somewhere in the middle, go for the mushroom-and-herb scramble, made with tangy goat cheese. BTW: Label: Breakfast address: 685 Congress St., Portland, Maine 04102 latlng: phone: 207-761-7909 website: https://www.local188.com twitter: eatdrinkart instagram: local_188 Mainers love a good sandwich (the Italian was invented in Portland), and Sisters Gourmet Deli comes through with some of the best. There are over a dozen on the menu, each thin but packed tightly with fresh ingredients between the shop’s light-yet-doughy circular bread. A fan favorite is the Macintuscan — imagine a turkey club, but add apple slices and honey mustard. What the shop, located in Monument Square, lacks in size it makes up for with personality and color: It’s hard to miss its neon “Peace, Love, Sandwiches” sign from the window. BTW: Label: Lunch address: 15 Monument Sq., Portland, Maine 04101 latlng: phone: 207-536-4932 website: http://www.sistersgourmetdeli.com/ twitter: instagram: sistersgourmetdeli Whether you’re looking for a light lunch or you’re full-on hangry, Bao Bao will satisfy. The snug West End spot is owned by a mother-daughter duo with an impressive résumé both in Maine and abroad. (Daughter Cara Stadler studied under Guy Savoy and Gordon Ramsay.) The dumplings, which are pan-fried or boiled, come six to a plate, so order a few different ones to share as a group. The menu also has hot and cold sections; the best from each are the sheng jian bao and the somen noodles, respectively. BTW: Label: Lunch address: 133 Spring St., Portland, Maine 04101 latlng: phone: 207-772-8400 website: http://www.baobaodumplinghouse.com/ twitter: baobaoportland instagram: baobaodumplinghouse You can’t visit Portland and not eat lobster. While some people prefer to eat theirs by the water, Highroller is tucked away, making its back patio feel as if you’ve stumbled upon a secret. This seafood diner, which originated as a food cart, offers more than the typical lobster roll — try the lobster taco with the deep-fried cheese shell, or


Deported Army veteran is back in U.S. for hearing to determine whether he can stay

and served in Afghanistan, where he suffered a brain injury. He was given a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. — Associated Press FLORIDA Two Venezuelans have been charged with smuggling about $5 million of gold bars into Florida in a private plane. A federal criminal complaint filed Monday charges Jean Carlos Sanchez Rojas and Victor Fossi Grieco with hiding the gold bars inside a metal panel of the aircraft’s nose. The plane landed last week at a small airport in Fort Lauderdale. Authorities say Sanchez Rojas told Homeland Security investigators that he had $24,000 in cash but did not declare the gold bars. Authorities later noticed loose rivets in the aircraft’s nose, and Sanchez Rojas and Fossi Grieco told authorities that 230 pounds of the gold was there. It is unclear whether the smuggling was directed by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whose government is struggling economically. — Associated Press TEXAS A man will serve a life sentence after a Dallas jury found him guilty of capital murder in the death of a doctor who died last year after she was left incapacitated in 1988 by an attack in which she was raped and strangled. George Guo, 58, was convicted Monday in a jury trial. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty, and Guo was immediately sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Guo attacked Katherine Bascone in her home in the wealthy Dallas enclave of Highland Park, and her strangulation left her with a brain injury that resulted in blindness and paralyzing injuries that required lifetime care. Authorities were unable to identify a suspect at the time, but after Bascone died in February 2018 and a medical examiner ruled her death a homicide, they reopened the case and resubmitted DNA samples collected from Bascone’s home. The testing led investigators in June 2018 to Guo, who was living in Houston and was a registered sex offender. Guo was convicted in 1991 of burglary of a habitation after breaking into the apartment of a student who attended Southern Methodist University in the Dallas area. Guo is a graduate of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, prosecutors said, and was a licensed physician at the time of the break-in. He also was convicted of burglary in 1999, authorities said. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison in that case and was released in 2013. — Associated


Party On, Niches

Print’s not dead yet. Magazines with ultra-specific target audiences show signs of good health that mainstream outlets would kill for — lots of ads, glossy paper, high reader engagement. We dug through “Writer’s Market 2011,” a dictionary-thick listing of publications seeking freelancers, and selected 50 or so that accept “general interest” stories. These are the ones that answered our emails. We hope they’ll answer our emails when we need jobs, too. irregularly, $24 for six issues, Drunkard.com bimonthly, $6, Chilepepper.com bimonthly, $5, Livingaboard.com monthly, $4, Nmlra.org biannual, read for free at Rosicrucian.org bimonthly, $6, Renaissancemagazine.com three times per year, free subscription with donation to the Chemical Heritage Foundation, Chemheritage.org bimonthly, $5, Mushing.com bimonthly, $6, Infinite-energy.com bimonthly, $5, Grit.com monthly, $6, Blademag.com monthly, free, Transportforchrist.org Written by Holly J. Morris, Kristen Page-Kirby and Fiona Zublin


Latin American countries sanction cronies of Venezuela’s Maduro

NEW YORK — More than a dozen Latin American countries agreed Monday to impose sanctions on individuals associated with corruption, money laundering, drug trafficking and human rights violations in Venezuela in a move designed to further isolate and eventually oust President Nicolás Maduro. Egged on by the United States and the opposition government recognized by more than 50 democracies, the foreign ministers invoked a NATO-like treaty called the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, also known as the Rio Treaty. It is rooted in the principle that a threat to one member threatens all members. Of the 19 signatories to the rarely used 1947 treaty, 16 countries, including the United States, voted to endorse the sanctions. Only Uruguay voted against it, while Trinidad and Tobago abstained. Cuba was absent, but it is an outcast from the Organization of American States, which sponsored the meeting. No one was specifically named besides the reviled Maduro, but the diplomats said their vote means they will identify those deemed complicit with Maduro’s government, investigate and prosecute them, and ultimately seize their assets and sentence them to prison. Under the treaty, all the signatories are required to share information and work together to compile a master list of former and current regime members, as well as family members, to whom sanctions would apply. Though the diplomats stopped short of calling for military action, as the Rio Treaty would permit, they said it represents a big step in pressuring Maduro and his cronies in a way that almost a year of U.S. sanctions against more than 100 individuals have so far failed to do. For months, U.S. officials have said they believe Maduro’s government was on the brink of collapse, but he has managed to maintain the support of most of the armed forces. “This starts defining the path forward,” said Carlos Trujillo, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States, who participated in the meeting. “Imagine the families of the accused trying to get out of the country by getting on a flight from Panama or Costa Rica,” he added. “This puts pressure on the regime it has not had for the last 10 months.” Though the Maduro government remains recognized by the United Nations, the Organization of American States and more than 50 other countries recognize the opposition government headed by Juan Guaidó, the president of the Venezuelan National Assembly. Opposition groups allied with


They were once sent home for their Olympic protest. Now they’ll get the USOPC’s highest honor.

Mexico City, the USOPC — which was known as the U.S. Olympic Committee until changing its name this year — succumbed to pressure and sent the men home following their protest. “One could be forgiven for rolling their eyes at the USOC finally — after 51 years — catching up with the rest of the world,” Dave Zirin, the sports columnist for the Nation who co-wrote Carlos’s autobiography, wrote in an email Monday. U.S. Olympic officials were aware well ahead of time that a group of athletes had been considering a boycott of the 1968 Summer Games altogether. Among other things, the protesting athletes wanted more black coaches; South Africa and Rhodesia to be excluded from the Olympics; and the removal of Avery Brundage, the president of the International Olympic Committee who was accused of racism and anti-Semitism, from power. Doug Roby, head of the USOC at the time, wrote Brundage a letter two months before the Mexico City Games commenced, saying, “We intend to have every athlete thoroughly understand that we will countenance no nonsense and that anyone that participates or that attempts to participate in any demonstration as referred to will be immediately suspended as a member of our team and returned to his home at the earliest possible date.” In Mexico, Smith broke the world record in the 200 meters and Carlos finished in third. On the medal podium, each man raised a fist and bowed his head. They wore black gloves and no shoes, drawing attention to oppression, poverty and pride. That sparked a swirl of activity from Olympic officials. The USOC initially decided against a suspension, intending to issue a warning to the rest of the American athletes competing in Mexico. The International Olympic Committee demanded a stronger response, fearing “that racial dissension might spread to other delegations if USOC refused to suspend Smith and Carlos,” according to a dispatch sent from the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City at the time. The IOC met twice the next day. According to that organization’s minutes, the group felt “something had to be done as this incident could not be ignored.” The IOC’s feelings were shared with the USOC, which held its own executive committee meeting. “President Roby reconvened his Board and in plain English relayed the edict-vote to send Smith and Carlos packing or the USA would be eliminated,” Robert Paul Jr., the USOC’s communications director at


New U.N. climate report: Monumental change already here for world’s oceans and frozen regions

being driven mainly by the rapid melting of ice in Greenland, Antarctica and the world’s smaller glaciers. Sea level rise is accelerating, and the world could see 3.6 feet in total sea level rise by 2100 in a very high-emissions scenario. In 2013, the IPCC had estimated that value at slightly more than three feet. Even these estimates may be too small, because when scientists looked at an alternative method for gauging how much seas could rise — simply canvassing the views of experts — even larger estimates emerged. For some major coastal cities, a historical 100-year flood event will happen annually by 2050 even in the most optimistic scenario, the report found. That includes large cities such as Jakarta, Manila, Bangkok, Lima, Singapore, Barcelona and Sydney, according to the IPCC. In the United States, cities facing this fast-moving sea-level danger include Los Angeles, Miami, Savannah, Honolulu, San Juan, Key West and San Diego. Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles and chair of the group Climate Mayors, says his city has already looked at its risks and studied low-lying Venice Beach and Marina del Rey in particular, where future flood tides could potentially travel a considerable distance inland. “We’re trying to figure out more how to adapt to this,” said Garcetti. “We can all try to build walls around this earth to save our cities, but we can also take the collective action to make sure this doesn’t happen.” In Honolulu, Mayor Kirk Caldwell said his city’s internal studies already indicated severe sea level rise was coming. “While it is upsetting — disturbing to have it confirmed by top scientists in the world — it’s not surprising for us,” said Caldwell. Caldwell said he’s instructed all city departments to plan with climate change in mind, and pointed out that Honolulu is currently designing an inner city rail system that will be elevated to protect against 6 feet of sea level rise. Like coastal cities, various small island nations also face imminent dangers from rising seas and as a result have been among the most vocal in pushing for more-aggressive climate action. Because sea level-rise greatly amplifies storm surge events, “flood levels are all of a sudden returning in many cases once a year by mid-century, and it just gets worse from there,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton climate scientist who led the report’s chapter on sea-level rise. “We’re talking about


Trump impeachment proceedings trigger caution, and a little schadenfreude, overseas

United States is engaged in the unknown,” the prominent French daily Le Monde wrote in the lead of its story on the impeachment inquiry. In continental Europe, few would miss Trump as president. “All parties apart from the [far-right] AfD party would be jolly glad if the Trump presidency was over,” Stephan Bierling, an international politics professor at the University of Regensburg in Germany, said in an email. “The faster, the better.” But Bierling also acknowledged that some of the reasons for continental Europe’s welcoming stance toward possible impeachment proceedings were debatable. Some of Trump’s criticism of Europe — including his attacks on Germany over its low defense spending — has been backed by analysts. German leaders may hope that post-Trump, it might become easier for them to “duck again,” Bierling said. In Britain, the announcement of an impeachment inquiry was largely overshadowed by the historic ruling of the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court on Tuesday that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s suspension of Parliament was unlawful. “[Many] people see so many parallels between Trump and Johnson as populist, would-be strongmen who flout the rules and seem to get away with it — at least until now,” Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, said in an email. “Often these days, there’s a huge Brexit news story in the morning, and then a huge story on Trump in the afternoon,” said Jacob Parakilas, an associate at LSE Ideas, a foreign policy think tank. With the impeachment inquiry announcement, there is a possibility of both stories colliding. Trump has been one of the most vocal foreign advocates of Brexit, and his assurances that Britain would be able to speedily negotiate a trade deal with the United States were especially welcomed by hard-line Brexiteers. As Britain continues to face the possibility of a no-deal Brexit with severely negative economic repercussions, such a trade deal would be crucial. But analysts doubted how much sway Trump ever had over future negotiations — and whether impeachment would matter in this context. “Given the scale of the challenges facing British policymakers at this point, I’m not convinced that the impeachment articles that will be considered by the Judiciary Committee are actually going to make an enormous difference on this side,” said Ursula Hackett, a politics researcher at Royal Holloway, University of London. Parakilas added that impeachment proceedings would make it even less likely


A college student died in his dorm room. It took almost two months for anyone to notice.

know. “It is inconceivable to imagine how these circumstances could have occurred,” Cheryl de la Rey, the university’s vice chancellor, said in a statement to The Washington Post. De la Rey said Wednesday that the university will commission an independent investigation to examine the oversight, despite what she called an “extensive” well-being program to support students. She declined to comment further to respect the family of the student. “This is an extremely distressing time for University students and staff,” de la Rey said. A friend of the student’s told the Press, a Christchurch newspaper, that he was a “good and confident guy” who would sometimes “go off the grid for a week or so." The Sonoda dorm, a leafy complex surrounded by cherry blossoms and tennis courts that houses first-year students, is one of six that’s owned by the university but managed by Campus Living Villages, an Australian company that also oversees student housing in the United States and United Kingdom. Students pay more than $10,000 a year for a single-occupancy room in the “smaller close-knit community,” which has just 108 beds, split across five-person apartments, as well as a cafeteria serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, according to its website. The dorm employs two resident assistants as well as a manager, the university said, and Campus Living Villages meets with the university every two weeks to discuss “students of concern.” Chris Hipkins, New Zealand’s education minister, called on the university to “conduct a thorough investigation.” “If you’re going into a hall of residence or a hostel, you are paying top dollar for not just a roof over your head but also the pastoral care that goes with that,” he told the Associated Press. “And I think clearly that’s not been present in this case.” Sam Brosnahan, the University of Canterbury’s student body president, said the death had distressed students on the usually peaceful campus. “It’s generally well regarded by students as a safe place to learn, study and live,” he told the AP. But Bex Bryan, a former resident adviser at the university, said in a Facebook post she found it “unbelievable” it took so long to find the dead student. She had daily contact with students, planned weekend activities and knew who was away when. The dorms “have certainly taken a dive since my days,” she said, “evidenced by the litter and general behaviour of students there at night.”


He was supposed to be finishing Juilliard. Now this young trombonist is helping to remake the NSO.

coming to the NSO closes a circle: It was the first American orchestra she heard live, shortly after her family moved from Japan to Virginia. (Her parents and brother are now back in Japan; she is excited about visiting them when the orchestra tours in the spring.) Aikawa even played at the Kennedy Center when she was 14 and a contestant in the NSO Young Soloists Competition, with her mother at the piano. But Noseda was an equally important draw. Aikawa played under his baton last summer in the orchestra of the music festival in Verbier, Switzerland. “So I knew he was a great music director,” she says. “And he has a great personality, as well. I just look up to him so much.” Noseda’s magnetism has helped people leave other jobs, as well — from violinist Derek Powell, who joins the orchestra next spring from the U.S. Army Band, to violinist Ying Fu, originally from Shanghai, who in the middle of last season left the prestigious Philadelphia Orchestra and came to Washington with his pianist wife and 3-year-old daughter to take the long-vacant post of the NSO’s associate concertmaster. “It was pretty hard,” he says of his decision to leave. “Philadelphia is one of the orchestras I always dreamed of playing with when I was young.” Fu cites two reasons for making the switch. One, he says, is the organization. “I really like how the NSO runs. It’s very organic, it’s very smooth, you don’t have too many struggles in doing your work.” The Philadelphia Orchestra has been financially struggling and had a brief strike in 2016. The other, he says, “is Maestro Noseda. He used to conduct in Philadelphia a lot, but after he got this job, it’s hard to book him, so it’s nice to have another chance to work with him again.” Fu also is enjoying being part of an orchestra on the rise. “Recently,” he says, “Maestro hired a lot of great musicians — violin section, oboe, horns. So it feels like they are trying to push the orchestra to another level, to make it more internationally known. The level is there. If you look at the players, they’re at the same level as Philadelphia. . . . With Noseda’s leadership, the whole orchestra has the desire to work together.” By contrast, he says, the fabled Philadelphia Orchestra is “trying to keep [its] good reputation,


leave. “Philadelphia is one of the orchestras I always dreamed of playing with when I was young.” Fu cites two reasons for making the switch. One, he says, is the organization. “I really like how the NSO runs. It’s very organic, it’s very smooth, you don’t have too many struggles in doing your work.” The Philadelphia Orchestra has been financially struggling and had a brief strike in 2016. The other, he says, “is Maestro Noseda. He used to conduct in Philadelphia a lot, but after he got this job, it’s hard to book him, so it’s nice to have another chance to work with him again.” Fu also is enjoying being part of an orchestra on the rise. “Recently,” he says, “Maestro hired a lot of great musicians — violin section, oboe, horns. So it feels like they are trying to push the orchestra to another level, to make it more internationally known. The level is there. If you look at the players, they’re at the same level as Philadelphia. . . . With Noseda’s leadership, the whole orchestra has the desire to work together.” By contrast, he says, the fabled Philadelphia Orchestra is “trying to keep [its] good reputation, which is harder.” Trying to live up to your own legend, in other words, is sometimes tougher than creating a new one. For trombonist Carlson, who grew up on Staten Island in a family of engineers, it’s amazing to have an orchestral job at all. “I was the black sheep until I got into Juilliard,” he says. There, his teachers included Joseph Alessi and Colin Williams of the New York Philharmonic — trombone royalty — and he also played with the prestigious National Orchestral Institute at the University of Maryland in 2017. Still, no one expects to land with a major orchestra on their first audition. “It was a two-day thing,” Carlson says. “There is a preliminary round on the first day, because there are so many [people auditioning]. . . . After I got past the first round, I called my mom, and she was freaking out. I was like, ‘Calm down.’ She said, ‘I know I’m getting ahead of myself. But I’m so excited for you.’ ” Having won the job, Carlson returned to Juilliard to finish his junior year. But, he says, “I didn’t take classes too seriously after that.” Correction: An earlier version of this story


An open letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee in support of Donald Trump

programs in return for developing beach resorts. Okay, so none of that has happened yet, but Kim Jong Un has written Trump so many beautiful letters — far more than that phony Barack Obama ever received. If you can award the 44th president the Nobel Peace Prize just for being elected, surely you can do the same for the 45th president! President Trump should be awarded the Nobel not just for the areas where he has made almost-any-minute-now peace, but places where peace will need to be made. The problems in Venezuela are very serious because President Nicolás Maduro has been so tough and strong in the face of crippling economic sanctions. The tensions in the Persian Gulf are near an all-time high: the ongoing war in Yemen, the Gulf Cooperation Council embargo of Qatar and the suspected Iranian attack on Saudi Arabian oil fields have put the region on edge. If you award the Nobel to Trump, you will send a powerful signal to other actors in these regions that they have reacted badly to the president’s heavy moves. I know that some fake people have nominated Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, but I am not one of them! As a social science professor, I meet the Nobel’s listed criteria for nominating someone. And let me stress at this point that there is absolutely no quid pro quo between myself and the president to boost his ego with this nomination. That would be an absurd and very false allegation, typical of the fake news which is the enemy of the people. (As someone who writes for the Amazon Washington Post, I know all too well about this.) Even if there were a quid pro quo — say, I am appointed U.S. ambassador to Norway in return for writing this letter — what difference does it make?! This kind of thing happens all the time! You don’t think other powerful people have thrown their nominators a bone? So even though there is absolutely no quid pro quo — I hate Norway! — if there were a quid pro quo, it would be no big deal. I hope you stupid Europeans can read good English and accept this nomination and act fast and tough to award President Trump the Nobel. Also, it might make him less cranky. Be smart! Sincerely, Professor Daniel Drezner, possible future U.S. ambassador to Norway


An acclaimed French chef is suing over a lost Michelin star. It all started with a cheesy allegation.

A high-stakes food drama playing out in the French Alps might all boil down to the cheddar. Or lack thereof. Renowned French chef Marc Veyrat on Tuesday announced he had sued the France-based Michelin Guide after the restaurant guidebook authority demoted his La Maison des Bois in Manigod, France, from three stars to two earlier this year. Veyrat claimed Michelin’s reviewer wrongly determined a cheese souffle as having cheddar in it; Veyrat said the color was from saffron used in the dish and is now seeking documentation from Michelin to explain its decision. “They dared to say that we put cheddar in our souffle of reblochon, beaufort, and tomme,” Veyrat told French magazine Le Point in July. “They have insulted our region; my employees were furious." A court hearing is set for Nov. 27 in Nanterre, Agence France-Presse reports. Veyrat’s restaurant, roughly 100 miles east of Lyon, was first awarded the coveted three-star Michelin ranking in 2018. Much of the food in the $330-to-$430 tasting menu comes from the restaurant’s own botanic gardens and orchards. The famed chef learned in January that his restaurant was losing a star just one year after it had achieved the three-star ranking — widely considered among the most prestigious distinctions in the fine-dining business. “I’ve been in a depression for six months. How dare you take hostage the health of cooks?” Veyrat lamented during his July interview with Le Point, during which he blamed the “amateur” nature of the Michelin reviewers. “It scares me for the new generations to come. In fact, the only reason given was confusion over the Reblochon and Beaufort emulsion with cheddar,” he said. He went on to call the Michelin reviewers “impostors” who deliberately stir up fights for “commercial reasons.” Among Veyrat’s grievances is his belief that reviewers — in violation of Michelin’s own stated best practices — did not visit the restaurant multiple times. He’s demanding receipts from Michelin to prove that their independent, anonymous reviewers dined at La Maison des Bois more than once. The receipts are among the records Veyrat’s lawsuit is hoping to compel from Michelin, his lawyer Emmanuel Ravanas told Agence France-Presse on Tuesday. “For decades, Veyrat has been used to having his cooking graded, evaluated and compared, and he knows quite well that you don’t own a star for life. He accepts it all, as long as the criticism is accurate,” Ravanas said.


We’re losing birds at an alarming rate. We can do something about it.

Michael Parr is the president of the American Bird Conservancy. You probably see birds frequently — so much so that they might seem to be everywhere. The reality, of course, is that our subjective experience goes only so far. On Thursday, researchers released a new large-scale study that shows that bird populations in North America are undergoing massive and unsustainable declines — even species that experts previously thought were adapting to human-modified landscapes. Three billion is an unimaginably large number. But that’s the number of birds that have been lost from North America since 1970. It is more than a quarter of the total bird population of the continent. Though some species have increased, those that are doing better are massively outweighed by the losers. Among the worst-hit bird groups are insect-eating birds such as swifts and swallows, grassland birds such as meadowlarks and Savannah sparrows, and the longest-distance migrants such as cerulean warblers and wood thrushes. Birds are a critical part of the natural food chain, and this loss of birds represents a loss of ecological integrity that, along with climate change, suggests that nature as we know it is beginning to die. This is a genuine crisis, yet there is still time to turn it around. We know what the problems are, and we know the actions needed to affect change. Alongside strong migratory bird, clean-water and endangered species legislation, and critically important work to mitigate and adapt to climate impacts, maintaining habitat is paramount. In fact, the single greatest cause of these bird declines has been the loss and degradation of high-quality habitat. Habitat loss can seem like “death by a thousand cuts,” but some cuts go deeper than others, and some are more easily healed. The condition of U.S. public lands is based on a collective decision — and we as a nation must decide between an emphasis on exploitative and extractive uses or nature-based and recreational uses. By better managing public lands, we can do a lot to help birds, particularly grassland and sagebrush species such as the western meadowlark and greater sage-grouse, and birds found in fire-dependent forests in the West such as black-backed and white-headed woodpeckers. Policies benefiting these and other birds will help restore nature as a whole. Private lands can benefit from public support, too: Funding for farm-bill conservation programs makes an enormous difference to how private land management is supported


— through the popular Working Lands for Wildlife initiative, for example. While birds such as the northern bobwhite and golden-winged warbler can act as “canaries in the coal mine” for the health of such habitats, programs that benefit them also help native plants, insects and other wildlife. State Wildlife Grants can also make a huge contribution to the bird and nature crises if fully financed through the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act , for example. Let’s not forget, however, that many of our declining birds are migratory and rely on habitat south of our borders. The Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act has funded hundreds of projects to improve wintering habitat for migratory birds, but it needs a significant funding increase. Many of these projects help people, too, by supporting sustainable agriculture, controlling erosion, and creating jobs in nature-based tourism and conservation. When Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring ” was published in 1962, the primary concern was that pesticides — especially DDT — were poisoning birds. In the intervening years, we banned or phased out DDT and the most bird-toxic carbamates and organophosphates, only to see them replaced by a more pernicious generation of pesticides, the neonicotinoids. “Neonics” are used to “inoculate” plants against insects and are used even when no pests are present. They remove both harmful and beneficial insects. If you use a billion pounds of insect poison annually — as we do on the American landscape — you are going to wind up with fewer and fewer insects. Then fewer birds. Then fewer bird predators and, eventually, far fewer animals overall. It’s time to ban neonics until we can be sure that these poisons are not permanently damaging American nature. Fortunately, each of us can do our part to make a difference for birds and other wildlife. Keeping cats indoors, adding decals or other bird deterrents to glass windows and eliminating harmful pesticides from our yards are all things that will help bird populations recover — if enough of us participate. Planting native plants also encourages beneficial insects and other wildlife to return, and rewards us with yards brimming with life. The corporate sector has a critical role to play, as well, by expanding sustainable forestry and placing wind turbines away from sensitive bird areas, for example. While environmental news such as this new research on bird declines often tends to sound negative, it is simply data that we can


Lawsuits. Possible bankruptcy. Declining numbers. Is there a future for the Boy Scouts?

and a father of a 15-year-old Eagle Scout, said he was relieved his chartering organization, a local volunteer fire department, had not started up a girls troop yet. “I was 15 years old. I know what can happen when girls are around. To me, that’s just a bad mixture,” Magistro said. “I don’t think in this environment that the Boy Scouts should be taking that kind of a risk.” Magistro acknowledged that he is more outspoken on this issue than most Scout leaders. And across the country, other troops paint an entirely different portrait. The Boy Scouts of America is still among the largest youth organizations in the United States, and in many counties, troop membership continues to thrive — buoyed even more by newly founded girls troops. As of last year, 2.18 million youth members were registered in the organization. More than 77,000 girls ages 5 through 10 have joined the Cub Scouts, and nearly 23,000 older girls have signed up for troops through the namesake program, now re-branded as Scouts BSA. “We’re booming,” said Michael Perkins, scoutmaster for Troop 162 in Arlington, Va. So many new members have joined his troop in recent years that he might have to start holding back in recruitment, he said. About 60 boys are registered in his troop, and about 30 girls have joined the affiliated girls troop. The troop is part of the National Capital Area Council, one of the largest councils in the country. It also has one of the highest retention rates, at more than 81 percent. Aaron Chusid, chief communications officer for the council, attributed this success in large part to the parents and volunteers in the region. It helps that many parents in the Washington area have a military background or work for federal agencies — jobs and skill sets that “fit very well” with the Scouting structure, Chusid said. He told the story of one Scouting unit that earned an aviation badge — a troop leader happened to run the Federal Aviation Administration. For those troops that are successful at retaining members, incentives are key, Chusid said. Signing up Scouts for summer camp or high-adventure trips is essential to keeping teenagers interested in the program. “When they start hitting 13, 14 years old,” Chusid said, “they’re saying, ‘Why should I stick around?’ ” Over the years, the Boy Scouts of America has enacted extensive policies to


USA judo’s Jack Hatton, an Olympic hopeful and ‘true role model,’ dies at 24

Jack Hatton, a member of the U.S. national judo team and a 2020 Olympic hopeful, seemed on the verge of attaining everything he had worked for in the sport when he died Tuesday, four days after his 24th birthday. One of the country’s top judokas in the 81-kg division, Hatton — who was known as “Judo Jack” — placed fifth at the Pan Am Games in August and recently competed at the world championships in Tokyo but did not place. His best international finish was a silver medal at the Antalya (Turkey) Grand Prix in 2018. “He loved the sport, and I didn’t know anyone who didn’t love Jack,” Jimmy Pedro, one of his coaches, said in a telephone interview. “He was a kind soul, a good person.” Hatton died at an athletes’ house affiliated with Pedro’s Judo Center in Wakefield, Mass. The center released a statement calling Hatton “a true role model for students at our dojo and judoka all over the country” and urged anyone struggling with depression or mental health issues to seek help or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. “We’re devastated over this because Jack was eight months away from making his first Olympic team,” said Pedro, who has worked with some of the most prominent Americans in the sport. “He was in position to go to the Games, a dream of his. He seemed happy, with no signs of depression. But one of the last searches on his phone was looking for mental health [assistance]. He was seeking help. We just had no idea.” A New York City native and the son of a black belt in the sport, Hatton first tried judo when he was 4. In 2016, he joined the New York Athletic Club’s judo program, according to the club’s July magazine. Pedro said he had known Hatton since he “was a little boy” and that he joined Pedro’s program in 2015. In announcing Hatton’s death Wednesday, USA Judo wrote on Facebook that “Jack made an indelible mark on all who had the pleasure of knowing him, and he will not be forgotten. We grieve with the entire USA Judo and international judo community during this tough time. USA Judo is in the process of providing grief counseling services for those in need and will share information on services for Jack as they become available.” The judo community was stunned


Connecting fractured habitats has long-lasting ecological benefits, study finds

said. Birds zigzag through corridors with the energy of pinballs, he said, eating and defecating seeds. Butterflies and bees follow corridors and spread pollen. Seeds ride the winds that blow through corridors like gusts between tall buildings. Until this study, most corridor experiments measured biodiversity and extinction on small scales. Andrew Gonzalez, a conservation biologist at Quebec’s McGill University who was not involved with the South Carolina experiment, observed that declines in insect populations stopped when he connected the patches of moss they lived on. The new research “adds great value to previous findings from connectivity experiments,” Gonzalez said. Sharon Collinge, who studies landscape ecology at the University of Colorado at Boulder and was not a part of this current research, agreed. “This is really the first to demonstrate this so clearly” — that corridors work — “for an experiment at this spatial scale and this temporal scale,” she said. The study took place at the Savannah River Site, where the Department of Energy creates tritium gas for weapons in its nuclear facilities. Vast tracts of a timber plantation managed by the Forest Service surround the buildings. Few plants grow beneath the timber trees’ dense canopy. Spongy mats of pine needles, up to a foot thick, cover the forest floor. “I might see zero species in the understory,” said study author Ellen Damschen, an ecosystem ecologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “Maybe one or two.” Before the arrival of European settlers, longleaf pine savanna covered this land. It burned regularly, and the flames — high enough to lick trunks but rarely singeing the treetops — cleared space for perennial herbs and grasses. Trees were present but not densely packed. Dozens of different plant species grew within each square meter. Red-cockaded woodpeckers, gopher tortoises and other animals that are now rare or endangered once thrived in the savanna. Damschen, Haddad and their colleagues studied 2.5-acre squares of restored longleaf pine savanna, as big as city blocks. In 10 cases, they constructed corridors of savanna, 500 feet long by 80 feet wide, between the plots. Viewed from above, the connected habitats have the outline of giant barbell weights. Forest Service workers mimic the past by frequently setting the area on fire. The restored habitats are full of butterflies, vibrant flowers and other “fascinations of the natural world,” Haddad said, in contrast to the monotony of the pine plantation. For 18


U.S. military’s suicide rate for active-duty troops up over the past five years, Pentagon says

markedly higher than the U.S. population,” the Pentagon’s report said. “Nevertheless, the direct comparison of military suicide rates and the U.S. military population is misleading. It is well established that males have a nearly four times higher risk of suicide death than females.” The military trains commanders how to deal with death within their unit, including by suicide. Van Winkle said she has noticed how much more they talk about it to reduce the stigma associated with seeking help. But the Pentagon must build better understanding of the effectiveness of its suicide-prevention efforts, she said. That can be done through examining pilot programs and seeing “what is working in the civilian sector and bringing it into the military as a promising practice and to measure the effectiveness.” Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, speaking ahead of the report’s release on Wednesday, told reporters that “ever single” suicide is a tragedy. “I wish I could tell you we have an answer to prevent further, future suicides in the Armed Forces,” he said. “We don’t. We are caught up in what some call a national epidemic of suicide among our youth. And not just our youth, but it’s something we continue to wrestle with.” Esper said the military has “the means and the resources to get ahead of this and do better than our civilian counterparts.” On Thursday, he added on Twitter that the release of the report “is an important step towards understanding a complex issue that has no easy solution.” The active-duty rates rose especially sharply in the Marine Corps, jumping from 23.4 per 100,000 in 2017 to 31.4, and in the Army, where it increased from 24.3 per 100,000 to 29.5. The Navy’s rate stayed about the same, rising slightly from 20.1 per 100,000 to 20.7, while the Air Force’s dropped from 19.6 per 100,000 to 18.5. The suicide rates among National Guard members also continued to rise, and at a higher pace than that of active-duty troops. Some 30.6 per 100,000 National Guardsmen died by suicide in 2018, up from 29.8 per 100,000 in 2017 and 27.1 in 2016, the Pentagon report said. The Pentagon focuses on suicide rates rather than raw numbers to account for the military’s fluctuating size over time, Orvis said. In the overall U.S. population, the suicide rate has climbed from 12.1 per 100,000 in 2010 to 14 in 2017, according to a report released


Vegan travelers have more options than ever. Disney just raised the bar.

latest company in the travel world to offer a warm welcome to people who avoid eating animal products. The theme park giant announced a broad expansion of its menus, promising that all major quick-service and table-service restaurants would include plant-based items at its U.S. theme parks and hotels. “For years and years, we’ve always made an effort to have something meatless available at most of our dining locations,” says Cheryl Dolven, manager of health and wellness in the food and beverage division at Disney Parks. “We got a lot of requests: ‘Can you take the dairy, egg or honey out of that as well?’” The parks did have some items that fit that description. But the new plant-based initiative, she said, is “our way of going all-in on that.” A green leaf icon will indicate which items fit the veggie definition. Disney is not using the terms “vegan” or “vegetarian” because the company has found that there’s not a consistent definition, Dolven says. Instead, Disney specifies that its plant-based food will not contain animal meat, dairy, eggs or honey. (The Vegan Society defines a vegan diet the same way, and adds that vegans avoid animal-derived materials, products tested on animals and places that use animals for entertainment.) “We know it also meets the needs of a growing number of Americans that might not be taking meat out of their diet, but they’re just trying to get more plants in,” Dolven says. A 2018 Gallup poll shows that while the number of people who identify as vegetarian (5 percent) or vegan (3 percent) had changed little compared with 2012, sales of plant-based foods increased more than 8 percent in 2017. “Increased sales of plant-based foods, without a corresponding increase in the percentage of Americans who say they are vegan or vegetarian, likely indicates a greater overall interest in these products,” the Gallup snapshot said. “Based on the growth of the market and Gallup’s latest readings on vegetarianism and veganism, it appears Americans are eager to include alternatives to animal products in their diets but are not willing to give up animal products completely.” At the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, which includes four theme parks, new options will be available Tuesday at quick-service restaurants and Oct. 3 at table-service locations. In a blog post, the company said more than 400 plant-based dishes would be available. At Disneyland in California, the


NTSB cites competing pilot warnings and flawed safety assumptions on Boeing 737 Max

to the Oct. 29 crash in Indonesia, MCAS automatically pushed the plane’s nose down “more than 20 times” in a six-minute stretch before the 737 and its 189 passengers and crew plunged into the Java Sea. The Federal Aviation Administration should require Boeing to make a more rigorous analysis of how its warning systems might overwhelm pilots, the NTSB said. The safety board also said the same problem could affect other passenger planes beyond the Max and recommended that the FAA address such shortcomings broadly. “They’re getting all these different alerts. That’s the actual scenario that never got evaluated in the simulator,” said Dana Schulze, director of the NTSB’s Office of Aviation Safety. The FAA should require that safety assessments consider the effect of multiple alerts, she said. “Clearly, if the underlying process has a deficiency, it’s going to affect more than just potentially one aircraft,” she added. “What we’re not saying is that there’s broadly a safety issue in all these airplanes. We’re saying, ‘This is an opportunity to improve the process to ensure that the human aspect is considered,’ ” Schulze said. The two crashes killed 346 people and left the management and safety practices of Boeing and the FAA under intense scrutiny and the subject of numerous inquiries. The company and regulator have both said they followed the same safety practices for the Max that have for years produced trustworthy airplanes. Boeing declined to answer questions about the NTSB findings and was noncommittal about what actions it will take to address them, saying it will work with the FAA to review the recommendations. “The safety of our airplanes, our customers’ passengers and crews is always our top priority,” the company said in a statement. The company’s board of directors on Wednesday recommended a number of actions to “bolster the safety policies and procedures” of the company. They included the creation of a “Product and Services Safety organization” that would report to senior company leaders and would review “all aspects of product safety, including investigating cases of undue pressure and anonymous product and service safety concerns raised by employees.” Boeing’s board also recommended that the company “re-examine assumptions around flight deck design and operation . . . to anticipate the needs of the changing demographics and future pilot populations.” And it called for more pilot training where needed. The FAA said in a statement that it appreciates the


Tom Sietsema’s 10 favorite restaurants in the D.C. area

big window into the kitchen. A highlight reel from September would start with a brilliant chilled carrot consommé so clear you can read through it. (For proof, its glass bowl is set on a “place mat” cut from the pages of The Washington Post.) A few dishes pair first-rate if familiar ingredients with exceptional flourishes: garden-fresh basil broth with sauteed branzino and a bracing Dijon mustard sorbet with rosy grilled Virginia lamb loin. Other combinations find chef-owner Eric Ziebold making a sauce before your eyes or reminding you he’s as adept at Japanese cooking as he is at French. Garnished with a pale green sorbet ignited with yuzu chile paste, cubes of lightly fried, melt-in-the-mouth tofu set in hot smoked tomato water will go down as one of the most extraordinary things I ate all year. The chef’s equal in the pastry department is Anne Specker. Gianduja chocolate torchon with corn milk ice cream and a side of the best churros in memory has me seeing stars — four, to be precise. IF YOU GO: “We’re going to have a lot of fun tonight,” predicts a server at the city’s most upbeat fine-dining lair. Moments later, one of his colleagues is at our table giving us a master class in martinis (unlike Bond, he stirs the drink, preserving its mouthfeel), and a couple of perfect bites appear: a Barbie-size wedge of beef tallow pie and fresh-from-Staten Island escargot sharing a pastry puff with liquefied herbs. The hours fly by in the heady company of “breakfast for dinner” — French toast made savory with blue cheese, foie gras and a downy hedge of black truffle — and grilled lamb and spicy merguez atop a tiny grill, with pots of housemade harissa and chimichurri, a lofty “summer cookout.” Fear not. The dishes are apportioned to leave you receptive to more. Blackened monkfish étouffée delivers a glorious taste of New Orleans; 150-layer lasagna yields a fanciful Italian-American construction project finished with a seafood-rich fra diavolo. Desserts — sticky toffee cake with black chestnut ice cream, chocolate bonbons with toasted hazelnuts — are multiple little sensations. From the comfortable mid-century modern chairs to prepaying the bill ahead of your visit, no detail is too small for owner Aaron Silverman and crew. Many high-end restaurants send guests home with a gift from the kitchen. This one forwards a donation to World Food Program USA to


The Trump administration weakened Endangered Species Act rules — 17 state attorneys general have sued over it

New York City are also in the coalition. The coalition released a statement saying the administration’s rollback of rules “removes current provisions that help prevent threatened species from becoming endangered or extinct.” Among them are rules that ban capturing and killing some species, it said. Nick Goodwin, an Interior Department spokesman, said in an email that the regulatory changes “are long overdue and necessary." He predicted that they “will recover more imperiled species facing extinction than previously accomplished over the span of this law.” He said that the administration will defend its rules in court. "We will be steadfast in our implementation of this important act to improve conservation efforts across the country,” Goodwin said. The rule changes followed a United Nations report that said 1 million species worldwide face extinction as a result of human activity. Wednesday’s lawsuit came on the heels of a separate report that 3 billion birds have been lost since the 1970s. Considering those stakes, Becerra bemoaned the administration’s actions. “Why we have to do a press conference on this is beyond me,” he said. Becerra has filed more than 60 challenges to actions by the administration, 30 involving the environment. In a statement, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (D) also criticized the timing of the administration’s change. “As we face a climate emergency and global extinction crisis threatening more than a million species, the Trump Administration is gutting Endangered Species Act protections to pave the way for oil and gas developments,” Healey said. “We are suing to defend federal law and protect our imperiled wildlife and environment.” Theirs was the second coalition to challenge the administration. The lawsuit mirrors a complaint filed by environmental and animal rights groups about a week after the changes were announced. Like the attorneys, the conservationists argue that the administration failed to disclose how the changes would affect the environment, in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act. Some of the final rules “were never made public,” the conservationists said, cutting American citizens “out of the decision-making process.” The earlier court challenge was filed by Earthjustice for the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Parks Conservation Association, WildEarth Guardians, and the Humane Society of the United States. “California is home to hundreds of endangered and threatened species, and wildlife that owes its continued existence to the Endangered Species Act, including the


On the world stage at the United Nations, Trump’s ‘America First’ foreign policy gives way to a ‘me first’ mantra

that the awards committee in Sweden does not choose prize winners fairly. “They gave one to Obama immediately upon his ascent to the presidency, and he had no idea why he got it,” Trump said. “And you know what? That was the only thing I agreed with him on.” The reporter then asked Trump about the suffering of the Kashmiri people, but Trump was still marveling about the thought of a Nobel Prize. “Where do you find reporters like this?” he asked Khan. “These guys are fantastic.” Trump’s penchant for rewarding those who praise him and punishing those who stand up to him has been long evident in his foreign policy dealings. He promised Brazil’s nationalist leader Jair Bolsonaro, who earned the moniker “Trump of the Tropics,” ahead of the Group of Seven summit in France last month that he would defend Brazil’s sovereignty in the face of mounting international criticism over Bolsonaro’s handling of wildfires in the Amazon rainforest. He has aligned with brutal North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, who has sent Trump a series of flattering personal letters, over the U.S. intelligence community and military — and said he agreed with North Korean state media’s characterization of Biden in May as a “fool of low IQ.” Two weeks ago, Trump sided with Kim again over their mutual distaste for former White House national security adviser John Bolton. Last year, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has sought to ingratiate himself with Trump, privately nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts on North Korea — a disclosure Trump blurted out during a Rose Garden news conference that was embarrassing for the conservative Abe. But on Wednesday in New York, Trump suggested that Abe’s deference had paid off. Announcing that the United States and Japan had agreed to a limited trade pact, Trump joked: “The reason I did it is because you’ve been so loyal.” By contrast, the president has reserved a special disdain for those who oppose him. Last month, Trump abruptly canceled a trip to Denmark after leaders there scoffed at his ruminations that the United States should purchase Greenland. On Monday, he posted a tweet mocking Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish activist who has denounced world leaders for their failure to act aggressively to combat climate change. Trump had walked out of a U.N. climate forum earlier that day after about 10 minutes.


Wallaby, native to Australia, dies during Australian prime minister’s visit to Washington

It’s the kangaroo that is a national symbol of Australia, not the wallaby. But wallabies are something like kangaroos, and so it may seem a sad coincidence that a wallaby died at the National Zoo during the Australian prime minister’s visit to Washington. A Bennett’s wallaby, which is sometimes called a red-necked wallaby, was euthanized Friday, after it was discovered that he had an inoperable mass in his stomach, the zoo said. It had caused weight loss and a lack of appetite, according to a statement from the zoo. His prognosis was poor, and his quality of life was in rapid decline, the zoo said. The wallaby was named Sydney after the Australian city. Friday, the day Sydney died, was the day of a state dinner at the White House held for Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Sydney was 3 years old, and a good companion to the three others with whom he shared quarters, the zoo said. He was the father of one of them, the zoo said, a female named Lenah. Two adult female wallabies in the group are named Victoria, an Australian state, and Adelaide, the name of an Australian city. According to the zoo, Bennett’s wallabies are native to Australia’s eastern coast, parts of South Australia and Tasmania. Wallabies share some kangaroo characteristics, such as the pouches in which females keep newborns. But wallabies are smaller than kangaroos. martin.weil@washpost.com


What’s the history of your house? Tracking down details can be rewarding.

When her niece moved to an older home in Cleveland Park, Elizabeth Ratigan gave her an unusual housewarming gift. Instead of a plant, she presented her with the history of her home. “You know it makes your house kind of come alive,” Ratigan said. “It becomes more of a person than just a house.” Ratigan put together a bound book of photographs, documents and newspaper clippings with everything she found about the home and the neighborhood. In her research, she learned that her niece’s semidetached house was built in the 1920s by a family of builders from Anacostia. “My niece’s house was owned by a woman who was a teacher in D.C. schools and who was very instrumental in campaigning for pensions for teachers. In fact, there is a school named after her today,” Ratigan said. The house’s first owner was Anne Beers, the namesake of Beers Elementary School in Southeast Washington. “Cleveland Park and other suburbs going north were becoming more popular because you didn’t have to have horses and buggy and all of that for transportation,” Ratigan said of the house’s location. Ratigan’s research started by finding the building permit, commonly referred to by historians as the house’s birth certificate. Uncovering that one-page document is like winning the lottery, said Jerry McCoy, a special collections librarian in the Washingtoniana Division of the D.C. Public Library’s Martin Luther King Jr. memorial branch and the Peabody Room at the Georgetown branch. This document describes how the house was built, its dimensions, the builder and, more importantly, the first owner. McCoy said that, to this day, it pains him that he has not found the original building permit to his 1921 bungalow in Montgomery County’s records. Building permits can be found at either the county or state archives. Anne McDonough, the library and collections director at the Historical Society of Washington, uses the library’s database to find building permits in the District. Even without a permit, there are various ways to track down information about a house. “Tax assessments records is another great resource. Those are going to be tracing the owners of the house,” McDonough said. “Once you have found evidence of somebody who lived in your house, you can easily look them up and trace them through time.” Looking through back issues of The Washington Post and Washington Star, Ratigan found advertisements the family placed to rent rooms in


Shalt thou eat an Impossible Burger? Religious doctrine scrambles to catch up to new food technology.

large demographics to be courted, potentially the difference between solvency and failure in the ever more crowded alt-meat arena. There are already 100 plant-based meat products in the United States certified kosher, according to the Jewish Initiative for Animals, a project of Farm Forward, a farm animal advocacy nonprofit that works with all Jewish denominations. In May 2018, Impossible Foods received its official kosher certification from the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the largest organization of Orthodox synagogues in the United States, responsible for certifying more than 400,000 industrial and consumer products. A rabbinic field representative had toured the 67,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Oakland, Calif., confirming that all ingredients, processes and equipment used to make the Impossible Burger were compliant with kosher law. And after a halal auditor visited the plant to determine ingredients and practices were halal-compliant and adherent to Islamic dietary laws, Impossible Foods received its halal certification from the Islamic Food and Nutrition Council of America in December. Packages, which debut in grocery stores on Sept. 19 (Impossible has been a restaurant product to date), will get an “OU” symbol that means the product is certified kosher. The designation signals it is made from inherently kosher or kosher-certified ingredients that are neither meat nor dairy. It will get a symbol with an M to indicate it is halal. Rabbi Moshe Elefant, the chief operating officer of Orthodox Union Kosher, said, nonetheless, an observant Jew is not popping into Burger King to eat an Impossible Whopper anytime soon. “Let’s for the sake of argument say everything they use is kosher; still their equipment isn’t kosher. An observant Jew will never even walk in.” Non-kosher restaurants for the strictly observant may still be a no-go but, Elefant argues, the vast majority of kosher foods are purchased in supermarkets that carry non-kosher items, packages of certified kosher Beyond Meat plant-based pork sausage shouldered right up against forbidden pork sausage made from animals. “Is it a violation of the spirit of the law? That becomes a realm that you can never end. The best example that I always give is there are companies that are certified to make pizza for Passover. There’s not one issue about the kosher status of those products, but you may feel that it’s inappropriate to eat pizza for Passover," Elefant said. He adds that it’s a constant challenge to interpret dietary law in light


Tyson embraces alt-shrimp made from plants — and it could be jumbo

Tyson Foods is riding the new wave. Literally. On Thursday the world’s second-largest processor and marketer of chicken, beef and pork announced it is moving in a whole new direction: plant-based shellfish. Tyson has invested in New Wave Foods, a San Francisco-based start-up that will debut plant-based shrimp early next year. “I was introduced to New Wave by a venture capital friend of mine, and I flew out and had the product prepared for me by a chef, and I didn’t even know it wasn’t shrimp,” says Tom Mastrobuoni, chief financial officer of Tyson Ventures. This is a new entry into the plant-based protein revolution led by Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, a heady world of products that cook, bleed and chew like real flesh. Since Beyond’s stratospheric IPO in May, plant-based debuts have been the talk of the food world, with establishment companies such as Smithfield, Perdue and Nestlé jumping on board. Tyson was an early adopter, owning a 6.52 percent share in Beyond Meat, only to hop out pre-public offering to announce its own plant-based meat brand, Raised & Rooted. This, however, is something largely unprecedented, according to New Wave chief executive Mary McGovern. “This is the first disrupter in this particular kind of protein, and there’s a clear advantage to coming in and being the first disruptive shrimp.” Shrimp are the most-consumed seafood on the planet, and No. 1 in the United States by a factor of two. If a product that tastes like the real thing can be debuted at a similar price point, there’s the potential for big business. Once established, the company intends to follow with plant-based versions of crab and lobster. McGovern says plant-based shrimp will be rolled out in restaurants. Eighty percent of shrimp are consumed in food service, and she says the advantages for a restaurateur are consistency. Consistency of size and shape, as well as consistency in price. Farmed and wild shrimp vacillate in seasonal pricing between $4 and $11 per pound wholesale, which can make menu pricing frustrating. Convenience and consistency mean very little, however, if the taste and essential “shrimpiness” aren’t there. The job fell to Michelle Wolf, co-founder and chief technology officer of New Wave. With seaweed extract as a main ingredient and a plant protein augmented by two other proprietary ingredients, the sham shrimp’s biggest challenge was texture. “We have been wholly focused on making this


From lab to table: Will cell-cultured meat win over Americans?

and vegans. If lab meats can replicate the taste and texture of traditional meat — at a lower cost and with fewer downsides — it would be a game-changer for global nutrition. “If only half of it becomes remotely true, it will be one of the most important advancements of the century,” said Kristopher Gasteratos, founder of the Cellular Agriculture Society, an international nonprofit organization using donations to advance cellular agriculture. This prospect is launching a three-way battle over the future of meat, with factions jockeying to shape government regulation, consumer tastes and the debate over the social and environment implications of widespread adoption of alternative meats. Traditional American animal agriculture, a $176 billion business in 2017, wants to preserve its fundamental business while, in some cases, it dabbles in the future. (Giants such as Cargill and Tyson have invested in alt-meat companies.) The plant-based meat companies, currently getting all the buzz, must convince the world they’re not just for vegans and vegetarians. And the futuristic lab-based meat companies, which perhaps hold the most promise to disrupt the food industry, have to unpack the science for consumers and nudge people past the ick factor. The recent burst in enthusiasm for alternative meat products is striking because industry experts for years have been skeptical about whether they would find acceptance. “When they introduced plant-based products, restaurateurs said it looked really promising, but the reorder rate is really slow,” Don Close, senior animal protein analyst in North America for Rabo AgriFinance, said in an phone interview. “It’s a negligible percentage of overall sales, and the amount of traction they are getting from the public is small compared to the media attention.” Beyond Meat’s lively IPO was a strong indication of public sentiment; so too was this week’s announcement that Impossible was experiencing a shortage of the ingredients it uses to make its plant-based meat and probably would not be able to meet demands at restaurant chains including White Castle and Red Robin. Plant-based meat alternatives have exploded as a result of two conflicting trends: growing demand for meat and growing fears about meat. Animal agriculture is an expanding economic powerhouse worldwide driven by growing demand in developed and developing countries. But it is also a source of great concern about public health, worker safety, animal cruelty and climate change. The World Health Organization and the British medical journal the Lancet this year


Most vaping-related lung injuries linked to marijuana products, CDC says

State health officials said Friday that many patients sickened with mysterious lung injuries used black market marijuana vaping devices, offering the strongest clues so far into what might be making people sick. Officials in Wisconsin and Illinois, the states that were the first to report cases, conducted in-depth interviews with 86 patients who said they used a wide range of e-cigarette products. The vast majority reported using illicit products containing THC, the psychoactive component of marijuana. The products were sold as prefilled vape cartridges — tiny disposable containers — and obtained from informal sources, officials said. Nearly 70 percent of those patients said they used Dank Vapes cartridges, which appear to be predominant in a class of “largely counterfeit brands with common packaging that is easily available online and that is used by distributors to market THC-containing cartridges with no obvious centralized production or distribution,” according to a report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday. Other brands identified by people with the lung injury include TKO, Off White, Moon Rocks, Chronic Carts and others. Industry experts said many THC products on the black market come from distributors who buy empty cartridges, fill them with THC mixtures, then purchase packaging with those brand labels. Amid growing alarm about the lung illnesses and increases in youth-vaping rates, states are rushing to enact bans and restrictions on vaping products. On Friday, Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee (D) directed officials to impose an emergency ban on flavored vaping products — both nicotine and those containing THC. The governor told the state Board of Health to vote on the ban the next time it meets: Oct. 9. He also said he would push legislation to make the prohibition permanent. Earlier this week, Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo (D) signed an executive order barring the sale of flavored e-cigarettes throughout the state. State officials said the regulations would be effective for four months and could be extended for another two months. In Massachusetts, Gov. Charlie Baker (R) announced a four-month ban on all vaping products. Michigan and New York also are banning flavored-e-cigarette products. Other states, including Virginia, are considering similar action. On the federal level, the Food and Drug Administration is preparing a ban on flavors in nicotine e-cigarettes that was endorsed Sept. 11 by President Trump. Administration officials have said the ban would prohibit retail and online sales of


3 new bars you’ll wish were in your neighborhood

hour, where the long banquettes and chair-like bar stools fill up shortly after 5 p.m., thanks to $7 wines — rotating red, white, rose or prosecco — and $8 cocktails. 360 Seventh St. SE. The Garden: Del Ray’s newest arrival is a perfect fit for the neighborhood: a spacious beer garden that specializes in Virginia craft beer and an Oktoberfest-friendly menu with bratwurst and stuffed pretzels that also has a children’s play area outfitted with Little Tikes toys and chalkboards, and a pet-friendly water station with metal dog bowls. The Garden comes from the owners of the adjacent Charlie’s on the Avenue and the nearby Live Oak, and they’ve nailed the details in the lot that once held Greenstreet Gardens. A layer of pebbles and stones crunches underfoot. There are bar-height wooden tables for adults who are just having beer, and lower, picnic-style tables suitable for families. (At one recent happy hour, where at least one group of moms was getting together to catch up, we had to count to make sure there were more adults than kids in the place.) A corn hole set sits next to a brightly painted wall, and most of the tables are shielded from the sun by fabric sails. Be warned that there’s no inside seating: Head to a small window to get a drink — the 20 drafts include prosecco, a grapefruit crush, margarita, Manhattan and cider in addition to craft beers. Don’t feel like getting up, or don’t want to leave the kids? Scan the QR code on your table to order and pay through the Go Tab app, then wait for a server to bring drinks and food. The family-friendly vibe extends to the kitchen: Hot dogs, grilled cheese and fish tacos are available on the kids menu, and all ages can get into a basket of peel-and-eat shrimp or cheeseburger sliders. With the music set at background levels, and no TVs to be seen, the Garden is a solid choice for hanging out with friends or, thanks to the WiFi, laptop-toting work-from-home types who want to be outdoors. 1503 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria. READ MORE The 25 best casual restaurants in the D.C. area Forget the library: The best place to lose yourself in a book is one of these bars Don’t spend lunch at your desk. Get out and explore great art, center your soul or learn to cook.


The Health 202: The Trump administration considered defending the ACA in court

Helping to End Addiction Long-term initiative, will be doled out to 375 grantees in 41 states to study opioid addiction treatments and other efforts including best practices for caring for infants born with drug dependencies. “We have effective tools, such as medication-assisted treatment, but we still need better ways to treat opioid addiction and manage pain in an effective, personalized ay,” HHS Secretary Azar said in a news release. OOF: The mysterious vaping-related lung illness sickening at least 805 people across 46 states and one U.S. territory. There have been 12 confirmed deaths in California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri and Oregon. Federal health officials have not yet linked any one e-cigarette or vaping product or any substance to the spate of illnesses, and a top Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official told lawmakers the investigation has been challenging. Along with the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration is also working with the Drug Enforcement Administration in a criminal investigation of the outbreak. “Based on initial data from two states, officials know that most patients reported a history of using e-cigarette products containing THC, the psychoactive ingredient found in marijuana,” our Post colleague Lena H. Sun reports. “Some reported using THC and nicotine products, and some have reported using only nicotine products. But officials and clinicians have said patients, particularly younger ones, are often reluctant to share information about their use of illicit substances, such as marijuana.” OUCH: Andrea Goldstein, a lead staff member for the Women Veterans Task Force on the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, said she was assaulted last week at the VA Medical Center in Washington, the New York Times’s Jennifer Steinhauer reports. While at the center’s cafe, Goldstein said a man “slammed her below the waist and told her that ‘you look like you could use a good time,’” she told the Times. House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) wrote a letter to Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie, urging an arrest in Goldstein’s case. “Ms. Goldstein said she had just come from a meeting on Capitol Hill and was carrying in her purse the draft of a bill designed to curb sexual assault and harassment when she became a victim of it,” Jennifer writes. “… The incident underscores an intractable problem for many V.A. hospitals across the nation as they scramble to provide better health care for the rising


Medical marijuana regulators stall industry expansion amid complaints of unfairness

Maryland’s medical marijuana regulators abruptly stalled a planned market expansion on Thursday after one company sued them and an influential group of state lawmakers separately complained of “impropriety.” The delay prolongs a three-year effort to enhance diversity among medical marijuana wholesalers and raises new questions about whether laws passed to remedy past regulatory missteps are working as planned. The Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission is set to disband Tuesday under reforms adopted in 2018, and regulators were rushing to approve new licenses in advance of the creation of a replacement commission. Now, an industry launched amid legal and political controversy faces it again. A Montgomery County Circuit Court judge late Wednesday temporarily blocked regulators from issuing new growing or processing licenses, ruling as part of a lawsuit alleging the commission illegally excluded one of the license applicants, a firm identified in court papers as Remileaf, LLC. Separately, black lawmakers raised concerns that as the 200 companies that applied for the new 14 licenses learned whether they were among the top-ranked firms, it appeared minority-owned companies were again being left out of the lucrative industry. “I have too many African Americans that worked extremely hard, put in a whole lot of money ,” said Del. Darryl Barnes (D-Prince George’s), chair of the Legislative Black Caucus. “For them to not have the opportunity, it doesn’t sit well with me. . . . We want to ensure that the process is done fairly. From the phone calls that we have received, there seems to be some impropriety going on.” Barnes and Del. Cheryl D. Glenn (D-Baltimore City), the former caucus chair who spearheaded the effort to boost diversity in medical marijuana industry, declined to elaborate on the allegation. The black caucus asked commissioners Wednesday for a delay and “to ensure that all companies are truthful in their disclosures about minority ownership, and their financial status.” In an interview, the lawmakers said they were pressing the commission to fully investigate claims by winning bidders that they represented disadvantaged minority groups. The industry expansion was mandated by the General Assembly at the behest of the black caucus after the inaugural licensing process did not select any African-American-owned firms to grow the drug, despite a state law requiring diversity in the industry. Commission chair Brian Lopez said the panel halted the issuance of new licenses because investigators needed to more thoroughly look at the identities of the