5 spots for when you want something fast, healthful and good for lunch

Bar put quinoa on the menu.” And directly into bowls: The restaurant, which now has two locations in the District, offers high-protein salads, wraps and bowls that can be customized for any diet, including the gluten-free, keto and paleo plans. There are at least 15 grams of protein in every entree. About a year ago, the chain introduced riced cauliflower as an alternative to quinoa. “We add chia, flaxseed and nutritional yeast, so we fortify it with some protein,” Drake says. “You’re going to give up about 70 percent of the carbs but still get the same protein promise.” Popular bowls include the healthy parm ($11.49), which has 33 grams of protein and is made with plant-based Beyond Beef meatballs; housemade tomato sauce fortified with ghee; spinach; nut-free pesto; Parmesan; and organic quinoa. The Mexicali ($9.49) is a can’t-believe-it’s-healthy mix of chicken, corn, black beans, cheddar, warm kale, salsa, spicy tomatillo lime sauce and chipotle Greek yogurt, topped with avocado and cilantro. It’s zesty and filling — no surprise, given the 41 grams of protein 925 17th St. NW; 398 Seventh St. NW. Abby Taylor grew up surfing in her hometown on the Jersey Shore, and then took her board globe-trotting, to Nicaragua, Hawaii, California and Puerto Rico. Everywhere she went, she had an acai bowl. “And I was like, ‘Why isn’t this an option in New Jersey?’ ” she recalls. “There’s nothing worse than getting off the beach and having a slice of pizza or a cheesesteak.” So in 2014, Taylor and co-founder Robert Giuliani set up a cart along the side of the road, with an umbrella and blender, and brought acai bowls to the Shore. The duo handed out flyers and made it their mission to explain acai to the masses — and one day, the line for their bowls stretched down the street. In 2015, they opened their first storefront, and Playa Bowls now has more than 65 locations. Inside the shop, its beachy origins are evident: Fluorescent green leaves are painted across black walls, pineapples line the counter and a surfboard dangles from the ceiling. There are dozens of bowl options, with bases including acai (Taylor’s favorite), pitaya, coconut, Chia, banana and oatmeal. The Costa bowl ($11) is sweet and healthy: a cool, creamy banana base blended with honey, almond milk and vanilla protein, topped with crunchy granola and more banana, Nutella and fresh mint.


14 American cruise passengers with coronavirus among 328 evacuated from Japan to the U.S.

may have been exposed to coronavirus. Hundreds of passengers flew home, mostly through Thailand or Malaysia, after the ship docked in the Cambodian port of Sihanoukville and health authorities there deemed it coronavirus-free. An 83-year-old American woman who disembarked from the ship at Sihanoukville on Friday took a charter flight to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, along with 145 other passengers. They had all passed health checks by Cambodian authorities and were cleared to leave the ship and travel onward. But when the woman arrived in Kuala Lumpur, she reported not feeling well and tested positive for the virus. Malaysian authorities say she is in stable condition. Her traveling companion tested negative, and none of the other passengers or crew members reported symptoms, Holland America Line said in a statement. The Westerdam on Monday remained in Sihanoukville, where it had docked last week after spending two weeks at sea. Authorities in Japan, Taiwan, Guam, the Philippines and Thailand had turned it away after seeing what happened with the Diamond Princess, where the number of infections grew rapidly even while the vessel and its passengers were quarantined. The new cases come amid a continuing scramble to contain the virus in China, especially in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, where the outbreak began. China’s National Health Commission said over the weekend that the number of new cases outside Hubei province had declined, as authorities imposed severe restrictions on people’s movements in an attempt to stop transmission. In Beijing, China’s ruling Communist Party signaled that it would almost certainly postpone the annual meeting of its legislature, the National People’s Congress, and another national committee, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Together, these meetings are known as the “Two Sessions.” The likely delay of the meetings “underscores the gravity of the coronavirus epidemic,” according to analysts at the NPC Observer blog. “Officially, the Council is reported to have been mainly concerned with pulling NPC delegates (over a third of whom are local officials) away from their epidemic control efforts,” the analysts wrote in a blog post, linking to a state media article. Other analysts point out that it would be bad optics for the party to hold a huge meeting when all public gatherings are banned, and even worse to show thousands of participants in masks. The party’s leaders already have faced criticism for their response to the outbreak. anna.fifield@washpost.com alex.horton@washpost.com abha.bhattarai@washpost.com


Air pollution crossing U.S. state lines, causing premature deaths

originated from another state, according to a study 11 years in the making. The study, published in Nature last week, is the first to calculate how pollution crossing state lines impacts early deaths in each state, said co-author Steven Barrett, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Globally, an estimated 4.2 million premature deaths are linked to outdoor air pollution, mainly from heart disease, stroke, lung disease and acute respiratory infections in children, according to the World Health Organization. Efforts to address outdoor air pollution have largely focused on relationships between local sources of pollution and local air quality. What Barrett and colleagues found is that cross-state pollution accounts for about half of all premature, pollution-related deaths. The computer model his team developed for the study took weather patterns and atmospheric chemistry processes into account and tied those to data on human exposures and health risks. They used this to track how each state in the contiguous United States affects pollution and health outcomes in every other state. The model included data from 2005, 2011 and 2018 on different sources and types of pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide, ozone and fine particulates, from seven emissions sectors, including electric power generation, road transportation, marine, rail, aviation, and commercial and residential sources. The team found that electric power plants — which emit sulfur dioxide from smokestacks — were the biggest contributor to deaths related to pollution from other states. In 2005, sulfur dioxide from power plants was involved in 75 percent of cases of premature deaths from out-of-state pollutants. One bright note is that regulatory changes to curb emissions since 2005 have reduced the number of early deaths related to air pollution by 30 percent. The team also found the proportion of premature deaths from out-of-state emissions is dropping — falling from 53 percent in 2005 to 41 percent in 2018. Not all states contribute to the problem equally, the study showed. Many states in the northern Midwest, such as Wyoming and North Dakota, are “net exporters” of pollution-related health impacts, in part because of their low populations relative to the amount of emissions they generate. States on the East Coast, where winds sweep emissions eastward, are “net importers” of air pollution. New York is hit especially hard, with 60 percent of early deaths related to air pollution arising from out-of-state emissions. — Reuters


Chinese officials try to contain virus outbreak as first case confirmed in U.S.

to decide whether to designate the outbreak as an international public health emergency. The man was in stable condition at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Wash. Officials said they are monitoring him there out of an abundance of caution, not because he is seriously ill. CDC officials said they were expanding screenings to international airports in Atlanta and Chicago. Measures were already in place at the international airports in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and at New York’s John F. Kennedy International, the first such effort since the Ebola outbreak in 2014. Federal officials will also direct travelers arriving in the United States on direct and indirect flights from Wuhan to those five airports for screening. That process is being worked out in the coming days. For example, if a passenger was originally to fly from Wuhan to Shanghai and then Boston, that flight would most likely be rerouted to JFK for screening, and then proceed to Boston, CDC officials said. But the Washington state man arrived before the airport screenings began. “This is an evolving situation, and again, we do expect additional cases in the United States and globally,” said Nancy Messonnier, the director of CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. In China, nine people, all of them in Wuhan, have now died from the virus, Li Bin, vice director of the National Health Commission, told reporters on Wednesday morning. “The virus has the potential to mutate and there is a risk it could further spread,” he said, adding that authorities were on “high alert.” A total of 440 people have been confirmed as having the infection, covering the length of the country. One case has been discovered in the territory of Macao and there are 117 suspected cases in Hong Kong, where authorities have banned the wearing of face masks as a result of recent protests. With confirmation that the coronavirus could be transmitted person to person and wth hundreds of millions of people packing onto public transport to make their annual visits home for the Lunar New Year, a new sense of panic has set in. Long lines formed at pharmacies and convenience stores around the country as people rushed to buy surgical masks, with unlucky customers posting photos on social media of bare shelves. People around the country canceled their trips home for the Spring Festival, as new year celebrations are known, the


treat the infection at the moment,” Zhong said. The Chinese CDC said the latest virus is the seventh type of coronavirus known to affect humans. The previously known six viruses include Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which are linked to animals. Chinese health authorities have added the new type of pneumonia to the Class B list of infectious diseases, in the same category as SARS and HIV. But they said they would enforce the strictest controls, usually used for the most dangerous illnesses, Class A diseases such as cholera and the plague, to try to contain the coronavirus. That meant authorities could forcibly quarantine people known to have or suspected to have the coronavirus, and would inform the public of every new case nationwide. Immigration authorities have also added the new pneumonia to a list of infectious diseases of interest to them. The Foreign Ministry in Beijing said that there was not a complete ban on movement in and out of Wuhan. “The Wuhan government has already taken measures to control the flow of people leaving Wuhan,” said Geng Shuang, a spokesman. “I understand when they are leaving or when they are entering, there will be checks, but there’s not a complete ban of all people leaving.” The government was sharply criticized as having played down or covered up the extent of the SARS virus, but experts say Chinese authorities have learned many lessons in the 17 years since then. “The new pneumonia in Wuhan reminds many people of the SARS epidemic in 2003,” said a social media account run by the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, vowing not to repeat those mistakes. “Self-deception will only make the epidemic worse and turn a natural disaster that was controllable into a man-made disaster at great cost,” said the post, which was later deleted. “Only openness can minimize panic to the greatest extent.” Fortuitously, Wuhan is home to the highest-grade biosafety laboratory in China, a level-four facility that opened two years ago and is designed for work on the most dangerous microbes, such as Ebola and Lassa fever viruses. When it opened, the lab was hailed as a “significant breakthrough” in building China’s public health defense system, with state media calling it an “aircraft carrier” for virus research and a facility that provided “firewall virus protection” for the country of 1.4 billion people. anna.fifield@washpost.com lena.sun@washpost.com


Craig Whitlock wins Polk Award for Afghanistan Papers

Announcement from Investigations Editor Jeff Leen and Deputy Investigations Editor David Fallis: We are proud to announce that our colleague Craig Whitlock has been recognized with a George Polk Award for The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War. Starting with a tip, Whitlock fought for three years to pry loose a trove of confidential interviews conducted by the federal government with people directly involved in the 18-year conflict. In the end, Whitlock obtained more than 2,000 documents that contained numerous revelations showing that presidents, generals and diplomats had misled the American public about the war for nearly two decades. The Polk Awards recognized Whitlock for military reporting. The announcement noted that "senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.” The Afghanistan Papers would not have been possible without the collaboration of dozens of people. The legal department was involved at every step of the way, as were departments across the newsroom, including photo, podcast, video, design and graphics. The project published with an interactive, state-of-the-art database that made the interviews the government sought to conceal easily accessible to the public. Go inside the investigation: - See the document database and read the key takeaways - Learn how The Post unearthed the Afghanistan Papers Explore the full six-part series: - Part 1: Confidential documents reveal U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan - Part 2: U.S. officials failed to devise a clear strategy for the war in Afghanistan - Part 3: U.S. officials reveal how massive rebuilding projects in Afghanistan backfired - Part 4: U.S. officials admit to fueling corruption in Afghanistan by flooding the country with money - Part 5: U.S. military trainers describe Afghan security forces as incompetent, unmotivated and rife with deserters - Part 6: U.S. officials said almost everything they did to end opium farming in Afghanistan backfired See the full list of winners.


How epidemics like COVID-19 end (and how to end them faster)

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The Daily 202: Trump’s clemency spree shows white-collar felons it’s more about who you know than what you did

its second death, a 70-year-old man.” “Deputy Bureau Chief Josh Chin and reporter Chao Deng, both American citizens, as well as reporter Philip Wen, an Australian national, have been ordered to leave the country within five days,” Anna Fifield reports. The Foreign Ministry has been criticizing the Journal since it published a coronavirus-related column on Feb. 3 by Walter Russell Mead, a professor at Bard College, under the headline “China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia.” The Xinhua News Agency, China Global Television Network, China Radio International, China Daily and the People’s Daily will now be treated as diplomatic outposts of the Chinese government, subject to the same constraints. The move is the latest in a series of U.S. efforts to tackle China’s influence in the United States. (Fifield, Carol Morello and Emily Rauhala) “The Trump administration directed its ‘maximum pressure’ campaign in Venezuela toward Russia on Tuesday, announcing sanctions against the trading and marketing arm of Rosneft, the state-controlled Russian oil giant that has taken over an increasing share of Venezuela’s own state-owned oil industry and reaped huge profits from exporting its crude,” Karen DeYoung and Anthony Faiola report. “Swiss-registered Rosneft Trading has ‘propped up the [Venezuelan] oil sector and actively tried to evade’ existing U.S. sanctions against those doing business with the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro, according to [an administration official] … The measures do not cover the parent company, Rosneft Oil. Its chairman, Igor Sechin, is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin … But U.S. officials said the steps would have a global effect. Although the sanctions directly target only property and interests held in the United States by the trading subsidiary and its chairman, Didier Casimiro, ‘most banks, whether U.S.-based or not,’ look to the U.S. measures ‘to guide their risk appetite,’ one of the officials said.” Seven-year-old Fátima Aldrighett “disappeared Feb. 11 in the Mexico City neighborhood of Xochimilco, where she was waiting to be picked up from school. Four days later, her body was found naked in a plastic bag,” Kevin Sieff reports. “Fátima’s killing is the latest in a string of brutal crimes against girls and women stirring enormous public outrage directed at Mexico’s president and other top officials. Last week, Ingrid Escamilla, 25, was found stabbed to death and partially skinned. That crime prompted a wave of protests in Mexico City; President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was accused


The Health 202: Drugmakers are developing a coronavirus vaccine. That’s a sign the disease will be around a long time.

at least a year to develop. There are three other major vaccine developers — Pfizer, Merck and GlaxoSmithKline. If they jump in, it bodes well for vaccine development — but provides another data point that bodes poorly for the efforts of health officials to stem the virus’s spread. A few more coronavirus developments: — A respected neurologist who was director of Wuchang Hospital in Wuhan “Liu Zhiming, 51, became the most prominent victim of the outbreak since another doctor, whistleblower Li Wenliang, died Feb. 7, sparking an outpouring of public anger and grief. Liu’s death follows that last week of a nurse, Liu Fan, from the same hospital,” they write. “A total of eight front-line health workers have died, while as many as 3,000 have been infected with the coronavirus.” — Hundreds of millions of people across China — about 10 percent of the world's population — are on lockdown. New York Times reporter Paul Mozur: —Chinese national health authorities have released stricter guidelines for how coronavirus cases are diagnosed. That could decrease the rate of new cases in the outbreak’s epicenter. It works like this: The National Health Commission eliminated the distinction between how cases would be classified between Hubei province and other regions. Cases will now be reported under two categories: “suspected cases” and “confirmed cases.” But cases can only be described as “confirmed” if they stem from a positive result in a nucleic acid test. — Japan's health minister said the Diamond Princess quarantine will end as scheduled on Wednesday. While more than 300 Americans were evacuated from the cruise ship earlier this week, more than 100 U.S. citizens still on board or in hospitals in Japan have been placed under travel restrictions. These Americans are prevented from returning to the United States for at least 14 days after they have left the ship. — Starting tomorrow, Russia will temporarily suspend entry of Chinese citizens because of the outbreak, You are reading The Health 202, our must-read newsletter on health policy. AHH: All the elements seemed to be in place for Congress passing a Senate bill lowering the prices of prescription drugs – bipartisan backing, President Trump’s endorsement and broad public support. Not so. The bill from the Senate Finance Committee “reveals the perils of tackling one of the nation’s most hot-button topics just months before a presidential election. And even though Trump has said he supports


Burger King wants you to watch a Whopper consumed by mold. It’s a new ad campaign. Seriously.

(The only hedge: Lemon and lime can be used to preserve, but Chipotle was using citrus only as flavor.) In each case, these changes required rethinking of supply chains and reformulating of recipes. (Panera’s popular broccoli cheddar soup recipe had to be revised 60 times before it achieved the desirable flavor and texture.) Other brands, such as Wendy’s, have made less quantifiable commitments such as removing artificial ingredients “whenever possible.” But nearly every national restaurant brand has scrambled in recent years to clean up ingredient statements, often switching from artificial colors, flavors, preservatives and sweeteners to “natural” alternatives. The trigger for all these changes is consumer preference. In recent years, Americans have frequently been drawn to what a product lacks more than what it contains. This has led to absurdities such as gluten-free water, cholesterol-free gummy bears and non-GMO orange juice (there are no genetically modified oranges commercially available), as well as a great deal of consternation about what precisely “natural” means. The Food and Drug Administration defines it as a food product that contains no artificial ingredients or added colors and has been “minimally processed.” The space between minimally processed, processed and ultra-processed remains hazy, however, as do these foods’ effect on human health. When asked precisely which preservatives Burger King was doing away with, a spokeswoman for the company said that sodium benzoate would be removed from the pickles and replaced with lactic acid; ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) would be removed from the mayonnaise; and calcium propionate would be removed from the buns and replaced with cultured wheat flour. Nutrition watchdogs are optimistic but still scrutinizing. Lisa Lefferts, senior scientist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, says these changes are more about public relations then public health. “They are replacing propionate with bacteria that produce propionic acid,” she said. “Basically just a natural source of the same preservative, but it sounds better. Kind of like using celery powder instead of sodium nitrate to cure meat.” Lefferts says the other preservatives they are removing are safe and that consumers are leery of different chemical additives, so companies are responding to that by limiting additives. “Good old-fashioned added sugar and salt are causing more problems than those that have more unfamiliar names,” she says. “Artificial sugars, food dyes — we think companies should disclose which specific ingredients they do not permit. Let’s focus on public health and transparency.”


The Saudi crown prince has learned he can persecute Americans with no pushback from Trump or Pompeo

his family — all U.S. citizens — were banned from leaving the country. U.S. officials were promised that Dr. Fitaihi would finally be cleared at a hearing on Dec. 9, according to Mohamed Soltan, who leads the Washington-based Freedom Initiative. Instead, the proceedings were delayed for two months — and then delayed again on Feb. 2. Such gross disrespect for an American interest might seem remarkable, considering that President Trump has recently deployed thousands more troops and U.S. assets to the Persian Gulf to defend Saudi Arabia against Iranian attacks. But then, Mohammed bin Salman no doubt has concluded that he can persecute journalists, dissidents and even American citizens without consequences to his relationship with Washington — because there have been none to speak of. Take the case of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S. resident and Post columnist who was murdered 16 months ago by an official Saudi hit team. Mr. Pompeo has said repeatedly that the United States was investigating the case and would hold accountable those responsible. Yet apart from denying visas to 21 people who would be unlikely ever to travel to the United States, the administration has done nothing. Last month, it failed to comply with a congressional mandate, included in defense legislation passed in December, that it submit a report to Congress identifying any Saudi implicated in “the directing, ordering or tampering of evidence” in the Khashoggi case. That, of course, would necessarily include the crown prince, whom the CIA concluded ordered the hit. U.S. officials have repeatedly pressed the regime to take action against Saud al-Qahtani, who directed the operation against Khashoggi and also is believed to be responsible for the arrest and torture of a number of leading women’s rights activists. Yet Mr. Qahtani remains immune. A closed Saudi trial of 11 people charged with Khashoggi’s death concluded in December with death sentences for five scapegoats and prison sentences for three, based on the demonstrably false conclusion that the murder was not premeditated. Last week, a senior State Department official briefing reporters on U.S. human rights advocacy was asked what had become of the Khashoggi investigation touted by Mr. Pompeo. With perhaps unintentional irony, the official responded: “We continue to dig into the facts of the case. It’s a never-ending process.” So, too, it seems, is the Saudi response to Mr. Pompeo’s requests for the release of Dr. Fitaihi and other imprisoned Americans.


Police arrest suspect in fatal stabbing on U Street in January

D.C. police on Wednesday arrested a suspect being sought in the fatal stabbing of a Maryland man in early January on U Street, a popular nightlife spot in Northwest Washington, according to authorities. Reginald Hooks, 35, of Northeast, was charged with second-degree murder while armed. He was arrested by member of the Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force. Hooks could make his initial appearance in D.C. Superior Court on Thursday. Police said the victim, Dy’Mani Priestley, 22, of Hyattsville, was stabbed in the left side of his chest about 2:20 a.m. on Jan. 5 in the 1200 block of U Street NW. He was pronounced dead at a hospital. Additional details of the stabbing were not available on Wednesday. peter.hermann@washpost.com


Dissident artist known as ‘China’s Banksy’ takes aim at Beijing — from Australia

SYDNEY — A dissident Chinese cartoonist whose solo Hong Kong show was canceled because of purported threats from authorities is set to revive the exhibition in Australia, offering a scathing critique of China's communist leaders as they grapple with two themes of his work — the deadly coronavirus outbreak and political strife in Hong Kong. The show, “Made in Hong Kong, Banned in China,” by the Shanghai-born, Australia-based artist Badiucao, is to open Thursday in Melbourne for a 10-day run as part of a festival. But it comes as Australia faces growing political pressure from China, fueling a national debate about the risks to freedom of speech, and raising the prospect of a Chinese backlash. “I’ve waited for so long,” Badiucao, who uses a pen name to protect his identity, said in an interview. “Silence will not be the way for me to stay safe, not the way I can get my freedom back. … I have to make noise to warn more people.” Badiucao’s work centers on subversive art and cartoons satirizing the Chinese government — themes of the planned Hong Kong show in November 2018 that organizers say they were forced to abandon over threats to Badiucao’s family in China. The episode underscored the deteriorating environment for free speech in Hong Kong, where millions took to the streets last year to reject Beijing’s tightening grip on the semiautonomous city. Since then, Badiucao has gained popularity online and earned the nickname “China’s Banksy,” a nod to the anonymous British street artist. In June, Badiucao, who used to wear a mask in public, revealed his identity in an Australian documentary that aired on the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. When the Hong Kong protests erupted, he drew prolifically, disseminating sketches that energized the pro-democracy movement. The outbreak of the new coronavirus has provided fresh material. On the opening night, Badiucao plans a performance piece in a Chinese torture chair of his “Wuhan Diary,” a translation of a resident’s account of life under the Chinese city’s quarantine lockdown. The exhibit will feature a mural of selfies of people wearing surgical masks in honor of Li Wenliang, the doctor who was silenced by Chinese authorities when he tried to raise the alarm about the virus and later succumbed to it. The mural will also feature Chen Qiushi, a Chinese citizen journalist who disappeared while covering the outbreak. Other works include


Trump administration targets Russian company for allegedly helping Venezuela export oil

the trading subsidiary and its chairman, Didier Casimiro, “most banks, whether U.S.-based or not,” look to the U.S. measures “to guide their risk appetite,” one of the officials said. “That means anyone outside the United States engaging in any action, any activity with [Rosneft Trading] . . . runs the risk of being sanctioned themselves.” The sanctions come as the administration campaign to force Maduro from office and replace him with Juan Guaidó, the elected head of Venezuela’s legislative assembly, passed the one-year mark with little apparent progress. Sanctions have worsened the effects of years of mismanagement and corruption that have crippled Venezuela’s oil-rich economy, sending millions of people to neighboring nations as the country has endured severe shortages of food, medicine and other necessities. The United States and more than 50 other countries, many of them in Latin America, have recognized Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate president, but Maduro has retained support from key sectors, including the Venezuelan military. Later Tuesday, Jorge Arreaza, Maduro’s foreign minister, condemned the U.S. move against Rosneft Trading. “The unilateral coercive measures of the US against Rosneft Trading are directed against our oil industry, its workers, and the Venezuelan economy,” he tweeted. “They continue to attack the people of Venezuela, trying to generate suffering and difficulties.” Guaidó’s opposition movement has lost traction in recent months, as the Trump administration — which still officially refuses to take a military option off the table — has looked for new ways to bolster him. Guaidó secretly left Venezuela last month to build support with a tour of Europe, Canada and the United States, where he was President Trump’s guest at the Feb. 4 State of the Union speech. Although the sanctions against Russia’s oil trade in Venezuela have raised the prospect of a spike in global oil prices, an official said that “we’re confident that energy markets will remain stable.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo discussed the matter on Friday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Munich, where both were attending a conference, one official said. The four officials who briefed reporters Tuesday spoke on the condition of anonymity imposed by the White House. The new sanctions are part of what one of them called the “Trump Doctrine,” which considers the Western Hemisphere part of “our zone of influence.” Its goal is “ensuring . . . a free and fully democratic” hemisphere, this official said. The United


Boeing’s Starliner space capsule suffered a second software glitch during December test flight

said at the time. SpaceX charged NASA $5 million to perform its assessment; officials said Boeing was asking for as much as $25 million. SpaceX has had its share of problems, including a spacecraft that exploded during a test of its abort engines last year. But it also successfully completed its test flight to the space station without astronauts. Last month, its test of its in-flight abort system was also deemed a success, and the company now seems poised to fly crews to the space station within months. “The panel’s assessment of the status of SpaceX is that NASA is at a point where there is not a question of whether they will be flying crew in the near term, but when, and under what risk conditions,” said Patricia Sanders, chair of the panel, according to SpaceNews. Boeing’s recent woes forced NASA to rethink its decision to give it a pass on the full safety review. The space agency is also now planning a more invasive investigation of the company, which has been reeling since crashes of two of its 737 Max airplanes killed 346 people. In a statement, Boeing said the “error in the software would have resulted in an incorrect thruster separation and disposal burn. What would have resulted from that is unclear.” After it discovered the computer problem during its December test flight, Boeing sent a software patch to the spacecraft that fixed it. The service module separated cleanly and the crew module touched down in what officials later called “an absolute bull’s eye” landing two days later. NASA and Boeing are investigating In its statement, Boeing said members of the independent review team think “they found [the] root cause and provided a number of recommendations and corrective actions.” The company did not say what the cause or remedies were. NASA has since launched two investigations. One, along with Boeing, would examine what caused the timing issue and figure out how to fix it before flying people on the Starliner for the first time. In the second, NASA is looking into whether it needs to require Boeing to redo the test flight without astronauts before allowing the company to fly NASA astronauts. Those investigations are ongoing, officials have said. In case it does have to re-fly the mission, Boeing has set aside $410 million to do so and to fix any issues that arise during the investigations.


Transcript: Fiona Hill and David Holmes testimony in front of the House Intelligence Committee

the Ukrainian people since 2014, as measured in public opinion polling, namely, an end the conflict with Russia that restores national unity and territorial integrity, responsible economic policies that deliver European standards of growth and opportunity, and effective and impartial rule of law institutions that deliver justice in cases of high-level official corruption. Our efforts on this third policy priority merit special mention because it was during Ambassador Yovanovitch's tenure that we achieved the hard-fought passage of a law establishing an independent court to try corruption cases. These efforts strained Ambassador Yovanovitch's relationship with former President Poroshenko and some of his allies, including Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, who resisted fully empowering truly -- truly independent anti-corruption institutions that would help ensure that no Ukrainians, however powerful, were above the law. Despite this resistance the ambassador and the embassy kept pushing anti-corruption and other priorities of our policy toward Ukraine. Beginning in March 2019, the situation at the embassy and in Ukraine changed dramatically. Specifically the three priorities of security, economy, and justice, and our support for Ukrainian democratic resistance to Russian aggression became overshadowed by a political agenda promoted by former New York -- New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and a cadre of officials operating with a direct channel to the White House. That change began with the emergence of press reports critical of Ambassador Yovanovitch and machinations by then-Prosecutor General Lutsenko and others to discredit her. In mid-March 2019, an embassy colleague learned from a Ukrainian contact that Mr. Lutsenko had complained that Ambassador Yovanovitch had, quote, "destroyed him" with her refusal to support him until he followed through with his reform commitments and ceased using his -- his position for personal gain. In retaliation Mr. Lutsenko made a series of unsupported allegations against Ambassador Yovanovitch, mostly suggesting that Ambassador Yovanovitch improperly used the embassy to advance the political interests of the Democratic Party. Among Mr. Lutsenko's allegations were that that the embassy had ordered the investigation of a former Ukrainian official solely because that former official was allegedly the main Ukrainian contact of the Republican Party and of President Trump personally, and that the embassy allegedly pressured Lutsenko's predecessor to close a case against a different former Ukrainian official, solely because of an alleged connection between that official's company Burisma and former Vice President Biden's son. Mr. Lutsenko also claimed that he had never received $4.4 million


I was a wealthy suburban woman. Then I went to federal prison for bank fraud.

father and their grandparents with them daily. And, for that, I am grateful. At 5:45, I head toward the track. As I walk in the dark, the crater in my stomach feels heavy. My mind flashes to the childhood me, a little Indian girl who wore pigtails, strove for my parents’ approval and always focused on getting the best grades. How did that person wind up in a women’s federal prison? I look up at the light poles that line the track and I check for bats. They circle one of the light poles, so I run extra fast around that curve. As I loop the track, it feels like thick cotton is draped over my lungs. My mind is always questioning. How will I get through the day? I am so scared. The fear began 15 months earlier. My parents, best friend and I were at a Hindu temple for Tuesday night worship. When my phone lit up, I stepped outside to take the call from my attorney. I could hear the defeat in his voice. My lawyers had been in a meeting with the prosecutor hoping to convince him to not file charges against me. It was not good news. I collapsed shaking and started to cry. Two months later, my parents, husband, kids and I met with my friends and family to explain what happened. My father stood at the front of the room and told everyone I had just been charged with conspiracy and bank fraud in transactions that I executed for my client, a Miami developer. I had gotten caught up in shady real estate dealings during the housing boom of 2007-2008. My dad and I were crying; the rest of the room was silent. One of my uncles turned to me and said, “Beti (“daughter” in Hindi), you will one day understand that this is not happening to you, it’s happening for you.” In that moment, I didn’t get it. I was mad and confused. As the days passed, I began to acknowledge what I had done, and what I had not done. I didn’t ask questions of the developer, his team or the realtors. I thought if I asked for help, I would be perceived as weak, imperfect. I didn’t listen to my gut, because I didn’t want to know the answers. I didn’t want to lose my biggest client. I had graduated


The Daily 202: The Democratic debate descends into class warfare, as the billionaire and socialist play off each other

what it sees as one of the main mandates of the Brexit vote in June 2016. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who led the campaign for Brexit, has called the new immigration regime revolutionary. His government formally outlined the new plan Wednesday, confirming that Britain will install a new ‘points-based’ system, which will take back control of its borders and end what it described as the country’s overreliance on low-skilled workers.” Hector Cabrera was arrested on charges that he collected information about a U.S. government informant on Russia, Brittany Shammas reports. “U.S. prosecutors claim he was carrying out orders from a Russian official who had recruited him with promises of helping his family. A Singapore resident and researcher at the country’s National Heart Center, Fuentes made several trips to Moscow to meet with the official, who directed him to rent a specific property in Miami-Dade County and report back to Russia the license plate and location of the informant’s car.” Chris Steele said he feared assassination, directed by Russia, after he outlined alleged links between Trump and the Kremlin before the 2016 election. Mexico is investigating ex-president Enrique Peña Nieto, a top official said. Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman is sparring no detail in the planning of the Group of 20 summit, which he hopes will shift focus from the killing of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. “The contention emerges in a new study in the influential journal Nature, which draws on samples of ancient air extracted from within the Greenland ice sheet to measure levels of atmospheric methane before humans started burning fossil fuels,” Chris Mooney reports. “If the researchers are right, then tens of millions of tons of methane could be wafting into the atmosphere, unaccounted for, from oil and gas fields around the world.” Elizabeth Warren got the most online buzz during the debate: Bloomberg’s hometown papers were not gentle with their former mayor’s debut performance: Not surprisingly, Trump also panned the former mayor’s performance: Warren didn’t want to become an accidental influencer: The activists who interrupted Biden’s closing statement said they did so because there have been too few immigration questions in this cycle’s debates: The Bloomberg campaign shared old clips of Biden praising the former mayor, and Biden hit back: A group glued tiny “Make America Great Again” hats onto pigeons in Las Vegas: Trevor Noah shared what his ideal presidential debate would look like:


The elusive animal in the spotlight amid the coronavirus crisis

Amy Yee is a journalist and former Financial Times correspondent About two years ago in northern Uganda, I watched anxiously as an endangered pangolin was released into a protected forest. Wildlife authorities and conservationists had rescued the scaly mammal from poachers. The small, gentle creature fell off the tree he was trying to climb and weakly crawled into the underbrush. Pangolins tend to die in captivity so release into the wild was his best option for survival. But the odds were stacked against him, in many ways. The pangolin is likely the world’s most poached and trafficked mammal, largely because of voracious demand for its scales and meat from China and other Asian countries. As Asian pangolins have been decimated, Africa has increasingly become the source. Around the world, more than 1 million pangolins were traded illegally between 2000 and 2013 — and that figure could be conservative. Pangolins may be headed for extinction, conservationists warn. Now, as authorities in China and around the world race to contain the deadly coronavirus, which has killed more than 2,100 people and infected at least 75,000, the beleaguered pangolin is unexpectedly in the spotlight. The scaly anteater may be a host of coronavirus, said scientists at South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou, according to Chinese news agency Xinhua. The coronavirus is also similar to two viruses that circulate in bats. The research suggesting a 99 percent genetic match between coronavirus in pangolins and humans has yet to be published. However, independent scientists in the United States, Britain and Canada, quoted in Nature, said this connection seemed plausible. Scientists, of course, avoid speculation and rely on evidence to form opinions. Even the IUCN SSC Pangolin Specialist Group — a global advocate for pangolins — was cautious about evaluating these news claims. Nonetheless, it is clear that the authorities in China and elsewhere should crack down on the illegal trade of pangolins and other animals. Conservationists have long trumpeted the cruelty of the wildlife trade, along with its nefarious nexus with other illicit commerce such as drugs. Now, there is a compelling and urgent case for quashing the public health threat of illegal animal trafficking, with no health and safety regulations. “Wildlife trafficking is not just a conservation issue; it can also affect public health and the economy,” wrote Peter Knights, chief executive of conservation group WildAid, in an email. The coronavirus outbreak again underscores


The Technology 202: Bernie Sanders draws criticism at Nevada debate for behavior of online supporters

this story, and Roku did not respond. The streaming ads have roiled both annoyed users and lawmakers, who say updates to federal transparency laws are overdue. “At a time when our adversaries are using disinformation campaigns to undermine our democracy, we need to be pushing for more disclosure and transparency, not less,” Klobuchar, who has pushed for legislation to address the problem, said in a statement. NIBBLES: “No longer are tech companies the underdog upstarts,” Barr said in a speech kicking off a day-long workshop on the law. “They have become titans.” Yesterday’s event could just be the beginning of a lengthy battle. “In raising a series of issues around Section 230, DOJ officials at one point asked if social media platforms should be held liable for decisions they make around political speech, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting who requested anonymity because it was supposed to be off-the-record,” Tony wrote. “That sparked into a heated debate among participants over allegations that social-media companies are biased against conservatives, a charge repeated by President Trump — yet one that Facebook, Google and other companies deny.” A Justice Department aide initially described the battle over political bias as the “800-pound elephant in the room,” the sources told Tony. BYTES: European Union regulators released plans yesterday to rein in how tech companies use artificial intelligence, from facial recognition to self-driving cars. The legislative push signals they are becoming more aggressive about proactively reining in American and Chinese tech companies, The legislation, which will be drafted by the end of the year, will also address concerns regarding American tech giants’ anticompetitive behavior and data sharing practices. Regulators want to subject data sets used to design machine learning technologies to human oversight as well as new disclosure requirements. The restrictions could force U.S and Chinese companies that don’t meet European rules to redesign their A.I. systems before using them in the region, Valentina reports. “We recognize we missed the first battle, the battle of personal data,” EU Commissioner Thierry Breton said. “Europe has everything it takes to lead the ‘big data’ race, and preserve its technological sovereignty.” Spokespeople for Amazon, Google and Facebook declined to comment on the proposals. EDiMA, an industry group representing big platforms including Google, Amazon and Facebook in Europe, welcomed the proposals as a “starting point,” it told Valentina. — Lawmakers want Amazon-owned Ring to provide a sweeping


Vacationing while vegan? Here’s a quick guide.

buying frozen vegetables from Walmart and steaming them in a vegetable steamer in the hotel we were staying in,” recalls Holcomb, a project development manager in Rockford, Ill. You can ease the stress of finding vegan food by taking a local food tour. Tour operators have rolled out new offerings for vegan travelers. Last year, for example, Intrepid Travel, a tour operator that specializes in adventure travel, launched vegan-themed tours for destinations such as India, Italy and Thailand. The eight-day India Vegan Food Adventure takes guests through Delhi, Jaipur and Agra, and promises to take them “far beyond the masala dosas and veggie samosas of the high street cafes.” If you’d rather do your own thing, you can choose a destination known for being vegan-friendly. Portland, Ore., has about 50 dedicated vegan restaurants, including vegan barbecue restaurants, and is home to what’s believed to be the world’s first vegan mini-mall. “We want to make sure visitors with any dietary consideration feel welcome,” says Stephanie Selk, a spokeswoman for Travel Portland. Hotels can range from oblivious to the needs of vegans to exclusively vegan. The latter describes the Stanford Inn & Resort in Mendocino, Calif., which bills itself the only plant-based resort in the United States. The furniture has no animal-based materials, so there are no leather sofas. Its on-site restaurant, the Ravens, serves organic-plant-based fare such as sea palm-and-root vegetable strudel and wild mushroom-and-creamy polenta. “We use as much produce as practically possible from our own farm which, beyond being organic, does not use pesticides, regardless of their organic pedigree,” says Jeff Stanford, the inn’s owner. If all this sounds pie in the sky, let me assure you: It’s not. For the past three years, I’ve been traveling nonstop with my three home-schooled teenagers. Two of us are on a plant-based diet, and two are flexitarians. Some places are easier to be vegan than others. Portland, Ore.; Scottsdale, Ariz.; Los Angeles; and Orlando were among our favorites. We struggled to find vegan food in such places as Santa Fe, N.M., and Grand Junction, Colo. But they always had grocery stores where we could buy all the fixings for a vegan meal. Traveling while vegan has so many benefits that I’d recommend it even to my carnivorous friends. Switching to a plant-based diet can reduce the chances of weight gain while you’re on vacation. It also excludes a lot of expensive


How the coronavirus can kill people

The mounting toll of coronavirus deaths, involving health-care workers on the front lines of the disease and older people in hospitals, raises a basic question: How does the new virus make people sick, and why does it kill some of them? No one knows exactly how or why the novel coronavirus leads to death in just a small percentage of patients — about 2 percent of those infected, according to preliminary numbers. Based on what we know about related illnesses, including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), experts hypothesize that the difference between a lethal infection and one that feels like a bad cold probably hinges on the interaction between the virus and a person’s immune system. While the virus attacks and kills cells in all cases, serious illness will depend on how the immune system responds, and that can be influenced by age, gender, genetics and underlying medical conditions. The initial damage caused by the virus can trigger a powerful and counterproductive overreaction by the immune system itself. “What you get is the initial damage and rush of inflammatory cells, but the damage is so extensive that the body’s immune response is completely overwhelmed — which causes even more immune response, more immune cells and more damage,” said Matthew Frieman, a virologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. The coronavirus is spread when an infected person sneezes or coughs, spraying droplets through the air. The sick person might sneeze directly in another person’s face or expel droplets widely, contaminating surfaces that healthy people touch before unknowingly spreading germs to their mouths or noses. Health-care workers are at especially high risk because they are exposed to very high doses of the virus and also perform procedures — such as putting patients on ventilators to help them breathe — that can spread it. With infection, the virus probably begins to multiply inside cells lining the airway, which are fringed with hairlike structures. Coronaviruses that cause common colds are excellent at infecting the upper airway, while SARS tended to go deeper in the lungs. As the coronavirus gains strength, Frieman said, dead cells are sloughed off and collect in the airway, making breathing difficult. “If the virus replicates very quickly, before your body has a chance to try and prevent it with an immune response, or if the immune response comes in too late, then it can’t control the virus and


How the coronavirus can kill people

response, more immune cells and more damage,” said Matthew Frieman, a virologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. The coronavirus is spread when an infected person sneezes or coughs, spraying droplets through the air. The sick person might sneeze directly in another person’s face or expel droplets widely, contaminating surfaces that healthy people touch before unknowingly spreading germs to their mouths or noses. Health-care workers are at especially high risk because they are exposed to very high doses of the virus and also perform procedures — such as putting patients on ventilators to help them breathe — that can spread it. With infection, the virus probably begins to multiply inside cells lining the airway, which are fringed with hairlike structures. Coronaviruses that cause common colds are excellent at infecting the upper airway, while SARS tended to go deeper in the lungs. As the coronavirus gains strength, Frieman said, dead cells are sloughed off and collect in the airway, making breathing difficult. “If the virus replicates very quickly, before your body has a chance to try and prevent it with an immune response, or if the immune response comes in too late, then it can’t control the virus and starts going berserk,” said Anthony Fehr, a virologist at the University of Kansas. This is what scientists refer to as a “cytokine storm,” which causes the immune system to start sending cells ready to do battle into the lung. At that point, it’s not just the virus doing damage to the body; the immune system begins wreaking havoc on the infected person — also known as the “host” in medical parlance. “The experience with other respiratory viruses would suggest it is a combination of the virus doing damage to the airways, secondary infections and the interplay with the host immune response,” said Erica S. Shenoy, an infectious diseases specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital. The general risk factors for this mismatch between the immune system and any respiratory illness include advanced age and underlying chronic illnesses, including diabetes and high blood pressure, though public health experts are eager to understand more about who is most vulnerable in the current outbreak. “Every individual is different,” Fehr said, and there are differences in how young and old or male and female immune systems react. “There are lots of dynamics at play when you talk about each individual and how they might die from


Japan’s coronavirus response on cruise ship ‘completely inadequate,’ says health expert

of tourists from Hubei had entered the country, some bringing the virus with them. Critics said Abe appeared keener to avoid offending China ahead of a visit by President Xi Jinping planned for April than tackling the problem head on. “The government seems to have been inordinately complacent when it should have been implementing sensible countermeasures and preparing for an outbreak,” said Jeff Kingston, director of Asian studies at Temple University Japan. Masahiro Kami, executive director at Medical Governance Research Institute in Tokyo, said it was apparent the virus was spreading in Japan as early as Feb. 4, after a Thai couple returned home with the disease after a vacation in Japan. Instead of relying on border controls, Kami argues the health ministry should have moved much more aggressively to work with private sector companies to expand virus testing capacity instead of relying on the ministry’s own overburdened National Institute of Infectious Diseases. “It’s all about risk management at the expense of the larger crisis itself,” said Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Sophia University in Tokyo. In response, Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said Japan has consistently taken action in line with the changing situation in China and intends “to continue to tackle the situation with all our might.” A new “aggressive” strategy announced by Japan’s Health Ministry this week recognized that a change of approach was required. Test kits supplied by private-sector companies are finally going to be used to expand testing to more than 3,000 assessments a day, while beds in specialist hospitals will be reserved for more severe cases, rather than trying to isolate people with mild symptoms. A public education campaign has begun and citizens are being discouraged from attending nonessential mass gatherings. Attention must also shift on how to protect Japanese over 65 years old, who make up a quarter of the population, experts say. Instead of restricting tests to people who can show some link to China or another infected person, tests are now being made available to anyone with symptoms of the disease — one of the reasons for the recent jump in cases. “With many emerging infections, when they’re first recognized, there are so many unknowns,” said Jeffrey Duchin, a professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the University of Washington. “You’re almost always in a no-win situation. But you have to really adjust your tactics and your strategies as you


Anatomy of a Trump rally: 67 percent of claims are false or lacking evidence

longer listed income from stocks in these or any companies. The president perhaps was advised he couldn’t hold stocks while in office, but the law itself is unclear, and his disclosure forms indicate he owned stocks anyway until 2019, well into his presidency. The president and vice president are not considered federal employees and technically are not subject to federal ethics rules or criminal penalties covering conflicts of interest. Former presidents such as George W. Bush and Bill Clinton placed their investments, including stocks, in a blind trust. False. Accurate. False. False. False. Unsubstantiated. False. False. Mostly false. False. Mostly false. False. False. False. Mostly false. False. False. False. False. Mostly false. False. Mostly accurate. Accurate. False. False. Unsubstantiated. Studies we reviewed indicate NAFTA had a modest effect on the U.S. economy. Auto industry representatives and independent analysts seem to agree the NAFTA dynamics have helped rather than hindered automakers with U.S. operations. Mexico was a relatively small player in North American vehicle production before NAFTA, producing only 3 percent of the continent’s vehicles in 1987, and it now makes about 20 percent of light vehicles. The U.S. share of North American vehicle production was 70 percent in 2007 and is projected to be about 60 percent in 2020, according to a 2016 report by the Center for Automotive Research. False. False. Mostly false. Mostly accurate. False. False. Mostly false. False. False. Accurate. False. Unsubstantiated. Mostly false. Mostly false. “This information provided the FBI with an articulable factual basis that, if true, reasonably indicated activity constituting either a federal crime or a threat to national security, or both, may have occurred or may be occurring,” the report said. A secret surveillance warrant was obtained on Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page, who had left the campaign by the time the FISA application was approved. It was renewed three times. The inspector general found numerous errors in the application and also found that the Steele dossier was a key source for one section: Carter Page’s alleged coordination with the Russian government on 2016 U.S. presidential election activities. However, the inspector general found the FBI did not act with political bias when it applied for the surveillance warrant on Page. Mostly false. Trump mentioned an “insurance policy” at the FBI targeting him in case he won. But former FBI agent Peter Strzok has insisted the reference to an insurance policy in his


In confidential documents, U.S. military trainers describe Afghan security forces as incompetent, unmotivated and rife with deserters

the Afghan government keeps the exact numbers a secret to avoid destroying morale. Estimates are that more than 60,000 members of Afghan security forces have been killed, about 17 times the number of U.S. and NATO troops who have lost their lives. The national army accounts for most of the Afghan security forces, with about 162,000 troops. It reports to the Defense Ministry and includes the Afghan air force and other units. The national police number about 91,000. They report to the Interior Ministry and are more of a paramilitary force than a crime-fighting agency. The police guard the border, staff security checkpoints and try to hold territory that the army has cleared of insurgents. With the Afghan security forces lagging in quantity and quality, the U.S. military has been unable to extricate itself from the faraway conflict. Although the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has dwindled from 100,000 eight years ago to 13,000 today, the Trump administration has had to escalate the war from the skies to prevent the Taliban from taking over. President Trump has said he wants to withdraw more U.S. troops, and his diplomats are engaged in peace talks with the Taliban. But during his presidency, U.S. military aircraft have pounded Afghanistan each month with three times as many bombs and missiles, on average, as they dropped per month during President Barack Obama’s second term, according to Air Force statistics. In the interview documents obtained by The Post, U.S. and NATO officials partially blamed themselves for the predicament. They said they moved too slowly to build up the Afghan forces during the first few years of the war when the Taliban presented a minimal threat. Then, after the Taliban rebounded, they rushed and tried to train too many Afghans too quickly. Marin Strmecki, a civilian adviser to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, told government interviewers in 2015 that the poor timing and inept planning were mortal setbacks. “These are strategic consequences to this,” The interviews were conducted by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, an agency created by Congress to uncover fraud and waste in the war zone. In 2014, SIGAR launched a special project titled “Lessons Learned” to examine policy failings from the war. It interviewed more than 600 people who played a direct role in the conflict, from military commanders to aid workers. Drawing partly on the


didn’t understand how a tourniquet could help stop bleeding if you’re not even putting it over the wound.” Questionable motivations and loyalties snaked through the ranks of the army and police. Ethnic and tribal tensions posed a perpetual problem, with the officer corps dominated by warlords who doled out promotions based on patronage, according to the interviews. Filling specialized billets was especially tough. It took nearly a decade to get the Afghan air force off the ground, because of not just a lack of qualified pilots but also a dearth of mechanics who could read repair manuals. One U.S. military adviser assigned to the Afghan air force told government interviewers that “Afghans would come to them with ‘pilot wings’ that they found or purchased, claiming to be pilots but having no flight experience.” The unnamed U.S. adviser said that the air base where he worked was plagued by “shenanigans” and that many Afghans reeked of jet fuel when they left each day because they were smuggling out small containers of it to sell on the black market. Petty corruption was rampant. In a 2015 Lessons Learned interview, an unnamed U.N. official described how Afghan police recruits would undergo two weeks of training, “get their uniforms, then go back to the province and sell them.” Unworried that they might get in trouble, he said, many would reenlist and “come back to do it again.” U.S. advisers constantly tried to plug holes in the system to prevent looting and stealing but said they were often stymied by Afghan government officials who did not want things to change. “The less they behaved, the more money we threw at them,” For much of the war, Washington paid the salaries of the security forces by transferring huge sums of money to the Afghan government, which in turn paid soldiers and police officers in cash — after commanders often took an illicit cut for themselves, according to the interviews and news reports. Today, to prevent skimming, most of the security forces receive their pay by electronic bank account transfers, but graft persists. In a 2015 Lessons Learned interview, Michael Callen, an economist who specializes in the Afghan public sector, recalled working with a newly arrived U.S. colonel who wanted to set up a secure system that would pay Afghan police officers by mobile-phone transfers instead of cash. “This colonel had just rotated in and he had


Confidential documents reveal U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan

[This story has been optimized for offline reading on our apps. For a richer experience, you can find the full version of this story here. An Internet connection is required.] A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable. The documents were generated by a federal project examining the root failures of the longest armed conflict in U.S. history. They include more than 2,000 pages of previously unpublished notes of interviews with people who played a direct role in the war, from generals and diplomats to aid workers and Afghan officials. The U.S. government tried to shield the identities of the vast majority of those interviewed for the project and conceal nearly all of their remarks. The Post won release of the documents under the Freedom of Information Act after a three-year legal battle. In the interviews, more than 400 insiders offered unrestrained criticism of what went wrong in Afghanistan and how the United States became mired in nearly two decades of warfare. With a bluntness rarely expressed in public, the interviews lay bare pent-up complaints, frustrations and confessions, along with second-guessing and backbiting. “We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing,” “If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction . . . 2,400 lives lost,” Since 2001, more than 775,000 U.S. troops have deployed to Afghanistan, many repeatedly. Of those, 2,300 died there and 20,589 were wounded in action, according to Defense Department figures. The interviews, through an extensive array of voices, bring into sharp relief the core failings of the war that persist to this day. They underscore how three presidents — George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump — and their military commanders have been unable to deliver on their promises to prevail in Afghanistan. With most speaking on the assumption that their remarks would not become public, U.S. officials acknowledged that their warfighting strategies were fatally flawed and that Washington wasted enormous sums of money trying to remake Afghanistan into a modern nation. The interviews also highlight the U.S. government’s botched attempts to curtail runaway corruption, build a competent Afghan army and police force, and put


Demi Lovato has opened up about her exercise addiction. Here’s how to spot one.

avoid gaining weight — sometimes through food restriction, sometimes through exercise. “Exercise is often a part of the battle against excess weight during these stages,” Markula said. “Many women with exercise dependence simply do not eat if they have not exercised. Exercise can become a way to control, to stay in control, of one’s eating.” Exercise addiction or excessive exercise is not yet its own disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; it usually goes “hand-in-hand” with disordered eating or a full-blown eating disorder, according to Claire Mysko, chief executive of the National Eating Disorders Association. “Oftentimes, people with an unhealthy approach to exercise will use the exercise as a compensatory behavior,” Mysko said. “We often frame exercise as a form of purging. Someone with an unhealthy relationship to exercise is counting, ‘How many calories have I burned off?’ ” And it’s an important element of this complex disorder to be aware of. “Eating disorders are notoriously difficult to ‘cure,’ ” said Susan Albers-Bowling, a psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic. “There is no medicine for these conditions, and eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder.” Unfortunately, it’s difficult to spot someone who is engaging in excessive exercise, for several reasons. First, Mysko said, those who have any sort of eating disorder “are very good at convincing other people they have it under control.” Second, because exercise and fit bodies are lauded in our culture, the dependence can hide in plain sight, or even be celebrated by those who see exercise as purely good. “Many who exercise excessively can admit they are addicted to exercise but can also perceive their addiction as healthy — unlike an eating disorder, which is unhealthy,” Markula said. “In their minds, exercise makes them strong and confident” as well as thin. Finally, a lot of women turn to exercise thinking it will help them recover from their eating disorder, much like Lovato did; it can be good for one’s self-esteem and overall well-being to work out regularly. There are some signs to watch out for if you or someone you love is an avid exerciser and you’re afraid that training has reached an unhealthy level, Albers-Bowling said. But one is paramount: “Inflexibility is a huge red flag,” she said. Someone with exercise dependence might be sick with the flu or dealing with a nagging injury and go to the


Japan’s response to the coronavirus is a slow-motion train wreck

larger population might prove to be an epic mistake. Keeping people on the ship was thought to be a way of preventing an outbreak. Having botched that initial response, health officials appear to have gotten it wrong again by letting people return home without placing them in proper quarantine facilities. It took too long for the cabinet of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to acknowledge the risks. It seems the planned spring summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping might have influenced the Abe government’s response. In addition, as Japan’s recession deepens, concerns about the impact on regional supply chains and broader economic ties made Abe hesitant when he needed to be resolute. Now his government is still enacting half-measures when it should be decisive. Politically, this is tricky for Abe, who is facing criticism for numerous cronyism scandals. One can forgive those Japanese who might be wondering whether public health concerns were overtaken by political and economic calculations. And the Japanese economy was already reeling from the 2019 tax increase and the slumping Chinese economy. The mishandling of the Diamond Princess quarantine has now sent tourism into a tailspin amid unsparing coverage in the international media. The tide is turning domestically. Public discontent with the Abe cabinet’s woeful mismanagement of this health crisis is rising. The Yomiuri, a reliably pro-Abe media group, found a 5 percent drop in support for Abe from January 2020; 52 percent expressed dissatisfaction with how the government has handled the crisis. And well they should. Much is at stake. The coronavirus is heading for a collision with the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in July and August. Olympic officials insist that the Games will not be canceled or postponed. The government has spent nearly $30 billion on Olympic preparations while there are several billion dollars in sponsorship deals hanging in the balance. Fingers are crossed that this pandemic will abate in time for the Games to proceed. But the postmortem on Team Abe’s sleepy risk management is unlikely to be favorable. Read more: Gay Courter: Our cruise ship was quarantined for coronavirus. It’s been 9 days of surrealism. Amy Yee: The elusive animal in the spotlight amid the coronavirus crisis Leana Wen: The U.S. is actually doing a great job fighting the coronavirus threat William Pesek: The real reason Carlos Ghosn’s great escape is a big embarrassment for Japan Jeff Kingston: Brand Japan is taking a hit


Companies to track prescription drugs with blockchain to stem flow of counterfeit medicines

supply chain to better halt the flow of counterfeit medicines, company officials said Friday. Some two dozen companies in the industry, including drugmakers, distributors, retailers and delivery firms, created the blockchain-based MediLedger Network, which they have been testing in the verification of drug returns. They said they intend to expand the system this year. Blockchain, which first emerged as the technology underlying bitcoin, is a shared database maintained by a network of computers. The MediLedger group submitted a report to the Food and Drug Administration laying out the benefits of blockchain for this specific issue, Susanne Somerville, chief executive of the technology company Chronicled, told Reuters. Chronicled is MediLedger’s custodian, providing administration of the network. Somerville said counterfeit drugs are a big problem in developing countries, where it is estimated that half of all drugs are counterfeit. Among the 24 participating companies are Amgen, FedEx, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, AmerisourceBergen, Sanofi, Walgreens Boots Alliance and Walmart. — Reuters TECHNOLOGY The White House plans to hold a conference with Huawei Technologies rivals to try to accelerate the development of affordable competing 5G wireless technology, President Trump’s top economic adviser said Friday. “We’re working carefully, closely with Nokia and Ericsson,” National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow told reporters. “We’re going to be holding some kind of a conference in about a month. I’m sure the president would join us in part; that would include Samsung, that will include all of our guys.” The United States has tried to persuade other countries not to use Huawei equipment in emerging 5G networks. But the effort has faltered because of a lack of competing technology. Attorney General William P. Barr suggested recently that the U.S. government or American companies should consider investing in Huawei competitors Nokia of Finland and Ericsson of Sweden to try to prevent the Chinese company’s technology from being widely adopted. Kudlow in particular called the British government’s attitude toward Huawei “suboptimal.” Trump has spoken repeatedly this month with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, berating him in at least one phone call for refusing to ban Huawei gear. The United States alleges that the Chinese government will use Huawei equipment to spy on nations that install it in their networks. Huawei denies that the Chinese government controls the company or has access to its products. — Bloomberg News Also in Business T-Mobile US U.S. home sales The $35 bag fee — From news services


New York Times hit for publishing op-ed by Taliban leader linked to ‘ruthless attacks’

the Haqqani family’s role in the Taliban or the author’s involvement in deadly military strikes that have killed Afghan citizens and American soldiers. Sirajuddin Haqqani commanded a guerrilla force of at least 5,000 fighters in Afghanistan, The Washington Post’s Haq Nawaz Khan and Pamela Constable reported in 2017. He is a leader of the Haqqani network, established by his father and feared for particularly brutal attacks. “The Haqqani and Taliban are responsible for the death of dozens of American soldiers and atrocities against Afghan civilians,” added Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) in a tweet Thursday. “@nytimes should be ashamed of itself for enabling this blatant propaganda from a designated global terrorist, all in the name of ‘diverse reviews.’” The FBI offers $5 million for information leading to his arrest. “Sirajuddin Haqqani is wanted for questioning in connection with the January 2008 attack on a hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan, that killed six people, including an American citizen,” the bureau says on its website. “He is believed to have coordinated and participated in cross-border attacks against United States and coalition forces in Afghanistan. Haqqani also allegedly was involved in the planning of the assassination attempt on Afghan President Hamid Karzai in 2008.” Midway through the story, the op-ed offered a link for readers to learn “more on the Haqqani network,” which directed to a 2016 news story that said the militant group was leading a “deadlier Taliban in Afghanistan.” The Times defended the decision to publish the piece. “We know firsthand how dangerous and destructive the Taliban is,” Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy said in a statement emailed to The Washington Post. “But, our mission at Times Opinion is to tackle big ideas from a range of newsworthy viewpoints. We’ve actively solicited voices from all sides of the Afghanistan conflict, the government, the Taliban and from citizens. Sirajuddin Haqqani is the second-in-command of the Taliban at a time when its negotiators are hammering out an agreement with American officials in Doha that could result in American troops leaving Afghanistan. That makes his perspective relevant at this particular moment.” The spokesperson also pointed out that the publication has employed a “fulltime team of reporters in Afghanistan since the start of the war nearly 20 years ago” and that several journalists, including former Times reporter David Rohde, who is now an executive editor for the New Yorker, have been kidnapped by Taliban-linked terrorists inside the Haqqani


“deadlier Taliban in Afghanistan.” The Times defended the decision to publish the piece. “We know firsthand how dangerous and destructive the Taliban is,” Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy said in a statement emailed to The Washington Post. “But, our mission at Times Opinion is to tackle big ideas from a range of newsworthy viewpoints. We’ve actively solicited voices from all sides of the Afghanistan conflict, the government, the Taliban and from citizens. Sirajuddin Haqqani is the second-in-command of the Taliban at a time when its negotiators are hammering out an agreement with American officials in Doha that could result in American troops leaving Afghanistan. That makes his perspective relevant at this particular moment.” The spokesperson also pointed out that the publication has employed a “fulltime team of reporters in Afghanistan since the start of the war nearly 20 years ago” and that several journalists, including former Times reporter David Rohde, who is now an executive editor for the New Yorker, have been kidnapped by Taliban-linked terrorists inside the Haqqani network. Still, many observers found a link insufficient context for readers evaluating Haqqani’s opinion while some objected to affording him space with or without context. “Sirajuddin Haqqani is a notorious war crimes suspect being investigated by the International Criminal Court,” Andrew Stroehlein, the European media director for the Human Rights Watch, wrote on Twitter. “Why does the New York Times give him op-ed space?” Retired four-star Marine Corps Gen. John R. Allen, who commanded troops in Afghanistan during the Obama administration and is now president of the Brookings Institution, told the Daily Beast the decision to publish the op-ed raised questions about judgment in the Times newsroom. “Giving the Haqqani terror network the platform of the NYT for the expression of their views on the so-called peace plan creates a strategic communications coup,” he told the publication. “PBS NewsHour” correspondent Nick Schifrin noted the magnitude of publishing an op-ed from Haqqani. “For anyone who has lived in, covered, or otherwise cared about Afghanistan and Pakistan, that alone is extraordinary,” he tweeted. Some lawmakers continued to voice their displeasure over the Times’ decision. “Appalled @nytimes has given leader of the Haqqani network and leader in Taliban room in their editorial pages to espouse his views,” Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) tweeted. “Haqqani network is responsible for 1000s of Americans killed in Afghanistan and provides shelter to al Qaeda operatives … they sheltered Bin Laden.”


Russia’s Arctic winter is now missing its biggest fans: Chinese tourists

all necessary measures are being taken to prevent the coronavirus from getting into our country and spreading around,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday. There is also probably politics at play. “The government is answering to a popular demand to deal with the threat and wants to show that it’s moving ahead of the curve,” said Alexander Gabuev, chair of the Russia in the Asia-Pacific Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “It’s also a way to contain rising Sinophobia among some pockets of the Russian population.” Relations between China and Russia have warmed in recent years — Chinese President Xi Jinping described Russian leader Vladimir Putin as his “best friend” last year — and Putin has publicly praised China’s “decisive and vigorous” measures to fight the virus. Gabuev said he doesn’t expect any long-term strains between Moscow and Beijing because of the ban. “The Kremlin understands symbolic value and sensitivity of this issue to Beijing and Xi personally,” Gabuev said. “At the same time, Chinese leadership understands the pragmatic need of Russia to protect its population.” Although Moscow and St. Petersburg remain the top destinations in Russia for Chinese tourists, the Arctic port of Murmansk has risen in popularity. It is a cheaper alternative to seeing the Northern Lights in Scandinavian countries, and a tour of the world’s first nuclear-powered icebreaker ship has information and menus available in Chinese. One in five of the region’s visitors are Chinese. Murmansk saw just 4,000 Chinese tourists in 2016, but there were approximately 20,000 just last year, according to Anna Sibirkina, who heads the World Without Borders China Friendly program. She credited the Chinese Northern Lights myth for the bump. “You see a lot of young people and young couples coming to Murmansk just for that,” Sibirkina said. Oleg Terebenin, the director of the tour operator VisitMurmansk, said he personally doesn’t propagate the myth, but “any belief that brings sales, why not?” Before the coronavirus outbreak, Murmansk wasn’t equipped to accommodate all of the new visitors, Sibirkina said, but now the sudden drought is hurting businesses. Terebenin estimated that 20 percent of his business comes from Chinese tourists. Coronavirus “has a major impact on us,” he said. “It’s very sad. … But this won’t be for long. Today, our Chinese colleagues sent us a very joyful letter that they’re hopeful that Chinese will be traveling all over the world again soon.” isabelle.khurshudyan@washpost.com


Director of Wuhan hospital dies of coronavirus as infections mount in China

of 11 people from the day before. The Canadian government is aiming to evacuate all asymptomatic Canadians and permanent residents from Japan on Feb. 20 or 21, Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne told reporters. The airplane that was chartered to bring them home experienced unforeseen technical issues during takeoff, he said, but is now en route. It’s not clear how many Canadians want to board the flight. Ottawa has faced criticism for being too slow to evacuate its Canadians, first from the epicenter of the virus’s outbreak in Wuhan, and now from the Diamond Princess. The evacuated Canadians will land in Trenton, Ontario, where they will be assessed. From there, they will be transported to the NAV Canada Training Institute in Cornwall, Ontario, for a further 14 days of quarantine. Russia on Tuesday announced it will temporarily suspend entry of Chinese citizens because of the coronavirus outbreak beginning Thursday, Tass news agency reported. Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova announced the move in a statement to reporters. The restrictions will apply to Chinese nationals traveling to Russia for employment, tourism and education, Tass reported. Russia announced at the end of January that it would be closing its 2,615-mile border with China, one of the world’s longest international borders. Russia has reported two cases of coronavirus, both Chinese citizens. On Tuesday, the Russian Embassy in Japan announced that a Russian citizen who was onboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship had also been infected. WHO experts are struggling to understand how fatal and contagious the disease is outside China because of a lack of data, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news briefing Tuesday. “We don’t have enough data on cases outside China to make meaningful conclusions,” Tedros said, noting that there have not been sustained human-to-human transmissions outside China except for the situation on the Diamond Princess cruise ship. In another part of Asia, some passengers from the MS Westerdam cruise ship docked in Cambodia said they were being shunned on land and in air, following two weeks of being shunned at sea over coronavirus fears. The cruise liner loitered in the water for two weeks without any case of coronavirus after being repeatedly turned away at ports — only to then have one passenger be diagnosed with the virus after disembarking and traveling to Malaysia on Saturday. News of the infection fed into fears of cruise ships and


Norovirus outbreak on Navy men’s lacrosse team leads to postponement of game at Maryland

Maryland and Navy on Friday announced that their men’s lacrosse game scheduled for Saturday in College Park has been postponed due to an outbreak of norovirus among Navy players and staff. A potential makeup date for the game was not immediately established. Navy reports that upward of 30 of its men’s lacrosse players and staff members have contracted symptoms consistent with norovirus since returning to Annapolis after a 12-9 loss at Richmond on Tuesday. The most common symptoms of norovirus are diarrhea, vomiting, nausea and stomach pain, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Outbreaks are common, and the virus is spread easily and quickly through contaminated foods and surfaces. “Out of an abundance of caution and for the sake of public health, the medical staffs at both the Naval Academy and the University of Maryland have determined that Saturday’s men’s lacrosse game should be postponed to prevent the spread of this highly-infectious illness both among the team and Maryland as the host institution,” Navy said in a release. “The Naval Academy is working with the facilities and athletic training staff to ensure current athletic facilities are being disinfected to prevent further spread.” The Capital Gazette reports that first-year Navy Coach Joe Amplo canceled practice on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. “I haven’t seen my team since the bus ride on Tuesday night and the plan at this point is that we’re not going to meet as a group until Monday at noon,” Amplo told the Capital Gazette. Maryland (3-1), which is coming off a 13-12 loss at Villanova on Tuesday, will return to action on Feb. 29 with a home game against Notre Dame. Saturday’s postponement means Navy (2-1) is also off until Feb. 29, when the Midshipmen travel to Lehigh. Read more from The Post: No one is more amazed by Alex Ovechkin than his peers With monocle and curly mustache, college baseball player is a picture day legend The Miracle on Ice arena still pulses with magic, even for those who see it every day Ryan Newman shares laughs with other drivers involved in his Daytona 500 wreck


How the federal government should handle climate change

Steven Bingler and Martin C. Pedersen wrote in their Feb. 18 Tuesday Opinion essay, “On climate, work for the best. But prepare for the worst,” that it is time to “get real” about planning for climate disruption, including relocation from vulnerable coastal areas. They called on the federal government to help ensure that “unavoidable disruptions are anticipated and managed as humanely and fairly as possible.” Sadly, the federal government is not providing the support states and communities need to get ahead of climate change risks — from wildfires to coastal storms and rising seas. What should the federal government be doing? Some first steps include improving disclosure of climate-related risks when property is sold, updating the federal flood insurance program to recognize changing storm patterns and rising seas, and shifting some disaster relief spending into upfront prevention. New efforts are needed to steer development from risky places, such as land expected to be inundated by rising seas. Importantly, the federal government needs to put its resources behind long-range planning that accounts for climate change impacts and then support implementation of response actions. Jeff Peterson The writer is a retired senior policy adviser at the Environmental Protection Agency and the author of “A New Coast: Strategies for Responding to Devastating Storms and Rising Seas.” Read more letters to the editor.


Germany’s Ruhr valley beckons with converted coal mines and a unique industrial heritage

A hill emerges incongruously from the table-flat landscape east of the Rhine River near Bottrop, Germany. I climb a wide graded path through young birch and cherry trees. The fledgling forest finally gives way to a barren plateau with sweeping views of the Ruhr region: steel foundries, one coal-fired power plant still pumping out smoke amid whirring wind turbines, the Rhine snaking its way northwest toward Rotterdam and the North Sea. Looming in front of me is a 210-ton, off-kilter modern steel pyramid that looks a bit like a whimsical rocket ship poised for takeoff. It’s one of the region’s largest and most striking interactive public art pieces, visible from just about any other similarly elevated point. Vertigo sufferers beware: Next comes a 150-foot-high clanky metal staircase leading to a tilted circular catwalk in the structure’s interior. The optimistic yet off-balance structure could be a metaphor for the Ruhr itself: a region careening from an industrial past to a very different future. This hill, like most of the Ruhr’s notable features, is human-made, literally the piled detritus of an industry that once powered much of Europe’s economy. Over five centuries, miners extracted 11 billion tons of coal, sinking the land up to 60 feet. But as the polluting, carbon-heavy fossil fuel has become unprofitable and unfashionable, the region’s mines and power plants have shuttered at a fast clip. Such economic disruption can cause unemployment and breed resentment — see, for example, Appalachia. The Ruhr is modeling a different path. Instead of seeking a return to the past, the region has turned its industrial heritage into an asset and is inviting the world to enjoy the results. Decommissioned factories and power plants have become public parks and museums, or backdrops for laser shows and rock concerts. Abandoned mines, whose iconic two-legged elevator shafts loom like rusty giants, are reborn as cultural centers, museums and homes to visionary restaurateurs. There has been an equivalent environmental transformation. Restored rivers and wetlands draw migratory birds, hikers and bikers. The city of Essen, once home to one of the world’s largest coal mines, was named Europe’s cultural capital in 2010 and its green capital in 2017. And, notably, the Alternative für Deutschland, Germany’s right-wing populist political party, has gained little support here. Though the flat, solidly middle-class Ruhrgebiet contrasts starkly with Appalachia in both geography and socioeconomics, some think the region could be a model


From cocktails to theater to hip-hop, eight D.C. tastemakers show us the way forward

as told to Fritz Hahn Kevin Tien hails from Louisiana, but the 32-year-old chef made a name for himself in D.C. He’s been a line cook at We did an event called Indie Chefs Week recently, and we had a lot of chefs at the restaurant from out of town. One chef was like, “Oh, I have to eat at Centrolina and visit Amy Brandwein. We hear her pastas are amazing.” There were Filipino chefs that came from Seattle, and they’re like, “Oh, we have to go to Bad Saint.” Other chefs were like, “Oh, man, we heard that D.C. has some of the best Lao food, so we have to go to Thip Khao.” I moved to D.C. nine years ago, and there definitely weren’t as many restaurants here. I’d say right now, more than ever, there are a lot of restaurants that tell a story. D.C.’s on the culinary map now. It leaves us more open to critiques, and it’s a lot of pressure. And especially if you’re like someone like Chef JoJo [Law-Yone] and Simone Jacobson from Thamee — there’s not many Burmese restaurants, and they want to be able to represent their food in the correct way. Same thing with Tom Cunanan. Before Bad Saint, there wasn’t much like [Philippine] food to be heard of. I remember talking to Tom, and he wanted to do food that he was proud of, that made his family proud, and that also represented and made everyone in the Philippines proud. I think that’s the biggest pressure for everyone: making other people proud. It was definitely a schlep to get to Himitsu. We were really far north of a lot of dining neighborhoods, so it’s definitely a neighborhood restaurant. But also it became this thing where we had guests drive in from Baltimore, or people that would get off the plane and come straight to the restaurant. It’s the same thing as the Inn at Little Washington. The food and the service are so good, everyone’s willing to make that drive. I think the demographics of the city are changing. It’s a lot younger families between the 30s and 40s. And for them, [choosing a restaurant] depends on your stage in life. If you get off work and you want to do a happy hour, that’s great. You could stay downtown and you could probably go to Centrolina or Nina


China could purchase much less U.S. farm product than thought, new USDA estimate suggests

fairly specific: China was to ensure additional purchases of U.S. agriculture products by $32 billion over two years, $12.5 billion in 2020 over the 2017 baseline of $24 billion and $19.5 billion over that baseline in 2021. This would mean total agricultural and seafood exports to China in 2020 would be $36.5 billion and up to $43.5 billion in 2021. “The question we get is why the numbers aren’t matching up,” Johansson said Thursday by phone. “When the secretary [Perdue] was asked this question, he said, ‘We’re not just taking the additional $30 billion and sticking it into a Chinese export number.’” Some of the discrepancy, he said, is the difference between a calendar year and a fiscal year — meaning October, November and December numbers were not included in the projection. “Does that mean we expect those three months to fill that gap?” Johansson asked. “Our analysts are looking at the market and looking at the books: What is China’s demand? …. My job is to ask if it’s feasible that they meet these commitments.” There are dramatic variables and big unknowns, such as record crop harvests in Brazil and the effects of the covid-19 virus. A devastating outbreak of African swine fever last year that killed more than a quarter of China’s total herd has meant American pork is poised to export a lot of product to meet demand. But the coronavirus outbreak could scuttle that, Johansson said. “Coronavirus is reducing Quarter One economic growth,” he said. “Our assumption is that the outbreak is going to pass and their growth will respond in the second, third and fourth quarters.” Trump began imposing tariffs on Chinese imports because he said there was a major trade imbalance between the two countries, alleging that China needed to import more U.S. products, particularly from farmers. China retaliated by raising tariffs on U.S. farm products, and many farmers said they were caught in the crossfire. Farm bankruptcies increased and commodity prices fell, making the pain even more acute. Trump authorized two large, multibillion-dollar bailouts for farmers in an effort to try to address concerns, but he also said the recent trade deal with China would move to dramatically improve their livelihoods. More broadly, Johansson said that total U.S. agricultural exports should reach $139.5 billion in 2020, up $4 billion from 2019, largely on the strength of trade agreements with Mexico, Canada and Japan.


Classes canceled at Salisbury University after more racist threats found

Hook comes to SU kill [racial slur].” Images of the comment, which appeared to refer to the 2012 shooting that left 26 people dead at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., were posted on social media. Police have made no arrests in that incident. African American students make up about 16 percent of the university’s 8,700 student population, according to university spokesman Jason Rhodes. The latest discovery of racist threats prompted a range of emotions among those students. “We’re scared, but we’re not going to hide in fear. We’re not going to show we’re afraid,” said Aji Sarr, 22, an African American senior majoring in social work. Sarr said Salisbury administrators made the right decision when they canceled classes, but she wants the university to take more aggressive steps to find out who was responsible for the graffiti and to make sure all students are protected. “The moment I have to question my safety on campus is the moment I realized I’m not safe,” she said. The youth and college chapter of the NAACP at Salisbury issued a statement calling for accountability by the administration. “We will no longer tolerate these racist acts on our campus,” the civil rights organization said in a statement. “It is time to make our voice louder than it has ever been. Do not lose hope and please keep fighting with us.” Though classes were canceled Thursday, much of the campus, including the college’s counseling center and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, remained open. The university held meetings and sessions to address student concerns and answer questions. Faculty and staff were encouraged to meet with students, and the university announced an increased police presence on campus. Jay A. Perman, chancellor of the University System of Maryland, condemned “this abhorrent act” and offered his support to the school and students. “Hate speech and harassment have absolutely no place in the University System of Maryland,” Perman said in a statement. “The Salisbury community has the University System’s complete support as the investigation proceeds and as students, faculty, and staff come together to examine issues of race and racism, inclusion and intolerance.” Despite the school’s efforts and assurances from the administration, some students remained worried. “It hurts. It’s happening again and I’m upset and angry,” said Sadé Herbert, 21, an African American senior majoring in community health. Herbert is a member of the university’s gospel choir, which