Have your beer and cook with it, too, thanks to these 9 recipes

Technically, Oktoberfest has come and gone, if we’re talking about exactly when the traditional German festival of Bavarian culture occurs. Still, the celebration has taken on a life of its own around the world, especially if we’re talking about one of its main attractions: beer. Then again, we don’t need an excuse to extol the virtues of this ever-popular quaff during this month or any other. As delightful as it is to drink, beer also makes a wonderful addition to savory and sweet cooking. So grab an extra bottle or can and check out one of these recipe from our archives: Spicy Beer Mustard The Red-Eye. Rattle-Skull Beer-Roasted Mushrooms. Dorie Greenspan’s Belgian Beef and Beer Stew. Soft Beer Flatbreads. Slow-Rise, No-Knead Rustic Caraway-Beer Bread. Guinness Fruit Cake. More from Voraciously: How do pancakes and maple syrup get more exciting? Turn them into a cake. It doesn’t take hours to make an intense, dark and rich French onion soup 6 spectacular sauce recipes to improve almost any meal


Retrofitting busy highways to let wildlife travel safely, too

exceeded $80 million, according to state officials. Across the country, as development continues to encroach on natural areas, wildlife-vehicle collisions are taking a massive toll. More than 1.9 million animal-collision insurance claims were filed in fiscal 2019, a State Farm report found, with some researchers estimating the annual price tag of the resulting human fatalities, wildlife mortality, injuries, vehicle damage and other costs at almost $10 billion. Yet advances in satellite tracking technology are helping biologists to better understand how many animals rely on corridors — strips of land that link habitats — and how wildlife crossings over and under roads are essential to reconnect these shrinking settings. Federal and state officials, conservationists and landowners are now partnering across borders on remedies. “Our ecosystems are in crisis due to habitat loss, deforestation and, of course, climate change,” said Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), who in May introduced a Wildlife Corridors Conservation bill with bipartisan support. The measure would provide federal land managers the authority to establish corridors, set aside $78.5 million in funding, in part for regional projects, and order the creation of a federal wildlife connectivity database. “The science is clear that corridors help protect our most vulnerable species,” Udall said in an interview. Research and video feeds show that specially designed crossings have protected scores of pronghorn antelope in Wyoming, panthers in Florida, mule deer in Nevada, moose along “Slaughter Row” in Utah and grizzly and black bears in Montana from oncoming cars and trucks. Mortality dropped by as much as 90 percent, studies show. Beyond maintaining populations, such projects ensure that ailing ecosystems retain biodiversity, scientists note. The strategy works for flora, too. A new study based on a decades-long experiment that restored longleaf pine savanna in South Carolina found that fewer plants went extinct in connected habitats. “We need to create, or support, maintaining wildlife movement and connectivity at landscape scale because it has long-term genetic consequences,” said Rob Ament, road ecology program manager at the Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University, who is consulting on a project in Asia that will benefit rhinos, tigers and elephants. “We built our interstate system in the 1950s and 1960s before we knew this, and now we must retrofit it to connect landscapes across major highways.” Under a 2018 secretarial order, the Interior Department is funding work in 11 Western states to identify wildlife corridors and what threatens them,


Nobel Prize in economics awarded to three researchers for their work alleviating global poverty

Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer received the prize for their experiment-based approach to fighting poverty, which has led policy makers to change their approach over two decades.This is a developing story. It will be updated.


The queen gives her speech in Parliament as Brexit talks stall in Brussels

Commons since coming to power. Ian Blackford, the Scottish National Party leader in Westminster, tweeted, “The Queen’s Speech was an election broadcast for the Tory Party more than anything else.” Another Labour lawmaker, Anna Turley, tweeted after the speech: “All that pomp and felt like a damp squib.” The queen began her scripted remarks by saying that her government’s priority “has always been to secure the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union on 31 October.” But as Parliament began to debate Johnson’s agenda Monday afternoon, all eyes in the chamber were on their smartphones for news from Brussels, where British and European negotiators were in their third day of secret talks over the fate of Brexit. Depending on the hour, reports have been cautiously optimistic or profoundly pessimistic. Last week, the Europeans rejected an offer from Johnson. But then Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar came away from a meeting with Johnson saying they could imagine a landing zone for a deal. That cleared the way for more serious talks. On Monday, Brussels bureaucrats remained gloomy about the chances of a deal. The politicians, however, were less so. The European Union is famous for crafting deals at five minutes to midnight. The stumbling block this week — as it has been for two years — is what to do about the border between the Republic of Ireland, which will remain an E.U. member, and Northern Ireland, which will exit along with the rest of the United Kingdom. Negotiators are trying to figure out how to preserve British sovereignty and protect the E.U.’s single market and customs union, while preventing the reemergence of sectarian tensions that scarred the island for decades. In the psychodrama of Brexit, the British press has labeled many weeks “make or break,” with the government facing crunch deadlines. On Monday, the Telegraph newspaper called this crunch “the crunchiest” deadline of all. The 28 European leaders are scheduled to meet Thursday and Friday in Brussels. They say this is the last possible opportunity for the heads of the 27 other nations to agree to a Brexit deal — at least in theory. Johnson has insisted — “do or die,” deal or no deal — that he will take Britain out of the E.U. on Oct. 31. But British lawmakers have passed a law that in effect forbids a no-deal Brexit this month and requires Johnson to request an


The Amazon isn’t the only forest that’s burning. Can consumer pressure stop the destruction?

and shareholders to boycott products from illicitly cleared land in places such as the Amazon and Indonesia. These firms then demand overseas suppliers prove their products don’t come from deforested land. Suppliers must demonstrate this by either developing or joining a forest certification standard developed typically through multi-stakeholder initiatives that involve NGOs and firms. Firms could then tell the NGOs and customers their overseas suppliers are not implicated in forest fires. Our research finds similar kinds of pressure have helped enforce environmental norms, labor rights, workplace safety and human rights. A good example of how this works is the chocolate spread Nutella, manufactured by the Ferrero group, whose ingredients include palm oil. This became controversial with consumers, because palm oil cultivation in South Asia is contributing to deforestation. Joining the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, Ferrero began initiatives to convince consumers it knew where nearly all of its palm oil was coming from — and it was being produced sustainably. Similarly, the cosmetic industry buys large quantities of palm oil. Public outcry about the burning of Asian forest to establish palm oil plantations led some cosmetic companies to reformulate products to avoid palm oil entirely. Others have asked supplying plantations to subscribe to a variety of certification systems that claim to identify best practices for palm oil cultivation. As a result, overseas buyers can easily claim that they are using sustainable palm oil. The story in the Amazon is similar. McDonald’s and other major beef importers have some leverage over the Brazilian ranching industry. Like palm oil buyers, they want to preserve their reputations by purchasing sustainable beef via such platforms as the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef. Interestingly, the Chinese meat industry, an important importer of Brazilian beef, is partnering with the World Wildlife Fund to protect the Amazon forests. Despite these efforts, fires continue in South Asia. This suggests palm oil sustainability standards are not really changing behavior. That could be because they are not being widely adopted. Or they might be greenwashes — bad-faith attempts to look environmentally sound without changing anything — with lax requirements. In response, governments may intervene, refusing to accept the results. For instance, the European Union has decided that because of the environmental destruction involved, palm oil cannot be labeled a biofuel. In response, the palm oil industry may be forced to tighten its standards and improve its own policing. The story


14 Mexican police officers killed in ambush as president vows to combat increasing violence

a “chronic crisis of insecurity” from previous administrations. But the attack on police in Michoacan suggests that violence — particularly between criminal groups and the government — is deepening. The number of security personnel killed Monday was the most in a single incident in recent years. Michoacan state police were instructed by a local family court Monday to take a woman and her daughter from Aguililla to Morelia, the state capital, as part of a judicial order, Michoacan Gov. Silvano Aureoles said at a news conference. Authorities said they were still looking into the details of what Aureoles called the “cowardly” ambush. The government’s public security secretariat tweeted that it “condemns the attack in which 14 police officers died in Aguililla, Michoacán. We are in communication and we will make available to the state government all of our human and technological resources to find the aggressors and bring them to justice.” Authorities did not confirm any arrests. In Mexico, the majority of homicides go unsolved. State police have been dispatched to several cities in Michoacan where local police have failed to stand up to criminal organizations. In some places, local police are accused of collaborating with organized-crime groups. As of last month, four state police officers had been killed on duty in 2019. But many more have come under attack. Across Mexico, 421 officers were killed in 2018, according to the research organization Causa en Común. So far in 2019, 308 have been killed. By comparison, 47 police officers in the United States were shot to death while on duty in 2018, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. The U.S. population is 2½ times bigger than that of Mexico. In August, police in Michoacan discovered 19 bodies in the town of Uruapan. Nine were hung from a bridge along with signs with written threats. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which has gained ground across Mexico, has been outspoken about its intention to take control of parts of Michoacan. In one video, released in September, men claiming to be leaders of the cartel address residents of another of the state’s towns, Tepalcatepec. “This fight is not against the citizens of Tepalcatepec, but it is with El Abuelo and his cartel,” one masked man says in the video, referring to a rival. “If you want this war to end, take El Abuelo and his cartel out of Tepalcatepec.” kevin.sieff@washpost.com


3 share Nobel Prize in economics for ‘experimental approach’ to solving poverty

method when investigating the effects of measures to alleviate poverty.” The three laureates were among the first to attempt to measure the real-world effects of poverty-alleviation efforts in a wide array of areas, including access to credit, preventive health care and the adoption of new technologies. Their research found even small differences in prices can lead to dramatically different health outcomes, particularly in preventive care. Kremer, for instance, discovered that 75 percent of poor parents would give their children deworming pills for parasitic infections when the medication was free, compared with only 18 percent when the medicine cost less than $1, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Subsequently, the committee said, the World Health Organization recommended that medicine be distributed at no cost to more than 800 million schoolchildren in areas where more than 20 percent have a certain kind of parasitic worm infection. Their research also suggested clear incentives and accountability for teachers could reduce absenteeism, finding “pupils who had teachers on short-term contracts had significantly better test results,” according to a news release by the committee. The economists also conducted an “initial” study on microcredit programs, or the giving of small loans, to poor households in the Indian city of Hyderabad. Additionally, the panel cited their work in showing that some poor individuals were more likely to adopt temporary subsidies — for agriculture improvements such as artificial fertilizer — rather than if they are permanently on offer. The three laureates are expected to split a $915,000 cash prize. Asked by a reporter what she would do with the winnings, Duflo noted that the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, Marie Curie, used her money to buy a gram of the element radium. “I guess we’ll talk between the three of us and figure out what is our gram of radium,” Duflo said. Duflo and Banerjee are married, making them at least the sixth such partners to collect Nobel Prizes. Curie and her husband, Pierre Curie, shared the 1903 prize in physics (She won again in 1911, for chemistry). Their daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, and her husband, Frédéric Joliet, were awarded the chemistry prize in 1935. The economics prize is the last Nobel to be awarded. On Friday, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won the Nobel Peace Prize for his dogged pursuit of democratic reforms and peacemaking efforts in the region. Other winners: Literature: Physics: Chemistry: Medicine:


'Murder in the Bayou’: A docuseries about eight unsolved murders aims to expose police corruption

A railroad bisects the town of Jennings, La., dividing the ghetto from the upper-class neighborhoods of Jefferson Davis Parish. Between 2005 and 2009, every few months someone discovered a female body dumped either in a waterway or on a desolate back road. There were eight in total, and they fit a pattern: The women were, quite literally, from the wrong side of the tracks. They were local sex workers and drug users between the ages of 17 and 30; they were members of the parish’s thriving informant culture and provided a steady flow of information to local law enforcement; they were all linked to Frankie Richard, a known partyer, pimp and drug dealer; and they all knew each other. Their murders — known as “the Jeff Davis 8” — have been cold cases for nearly 15 years, but a new Showtime docuseries has revived interest in the investigation. Based on a book written by investigative journalist Ethan Brown, “Murder in the Bayou” chronicles the eight unsolved homicides and the events that led up to them, and exposes the Jennings drug trade, systemic police misconduct and political corruption. The information for this article draws from reporting aired on the series, unless otherwise noted. Days had passed before Loretta Chaisson Lewis’s corpse was discovered, decomposing in a canal in May 2005. Her body, the first of the eight, rocked the 10,000-person town; at the time, only one victim had been found, but the sheriff received multiple calls inquiring whether there was a serial killer on the loose. A group of froggers found a second body several weeks later. Two months went by before authorities identified, through bone samples, the victim: 30-year-old Ernestine Marie Daniels Patterson. She had been discarded in a waterway six miles from where Lewis was discovered. Patterson’s injuries were different. Her throat was slit. The district attorney’s office charged two men with the murder and then dismissed the case, leaving the Patterson family with no closure, her mother Evelyn said in the docuseries. Two years later, there was a third victim. A fisherman found the body of Kristen Gary Lopez naked and rotting in the water. The strikingly similar circumstances led local law enforcement to treat it as a homicide. The 21-year-old had gone missing nearly two weeks earlier. In the days leading up to her disappearance, friends remembered her increasing paranoia. Still, one said during an interview, they


Hints From Heloise: Moving the masses

Dear Readers: “Dear Heloise: This country needs more mass transit among cities. We build highways, but the congestion on our roads is becoming serious. Japan, for example, has a mass transit system, elevated above ground, that is not only energy-efficient, it can move a large volume of people at incredible speeds. There’s no stress or hassle over traffic jams, finding a place to park or exorbitant parking fees. “With the increase in population over the coming years, we’ll need a mass transit system between all major cities, both above ground and below. The best time to look into this type of travel for our country is now.” Doug W. in Dallas Dear Readers: ● Use clean litter as a deodorizer in the refrigerator. ● For stinky shoes, place a cup or two of clean cat litter in each leg of an old pair of pantyhose, tie a knot and leave it in the shoes overnight. ● Sprinkle it on oil spots in your garage. ● Keep a bag of cat litter in your trunk to sprinkle under tires in winter for added traction on icy surfaces. Dear Heloise: Someone will glue money or a cellphone (usually a broken one) onto the sidewalk, then wait for passersby to try to pick up the item. While concentrating on getting the item of value off the sidewalk, a thief will pickpocket the person or pick up the person's shopping bag or purse and run off. Anonymous, via email Dear Heloise: Jennifer E. in North Carolina Dear Heloise: Margery T., via email Margery T.: Dear Heloise: Janet W., Idaho Falls, Idaho


Does the U.S. government need to assess economic sanctions better?

and Commerce have performed occasional assessments. All three departments rely on the intelligence community as well. Most of these assessments, however, are economic: the effect of the sanctions on the target economy, or the negative spillover effects of sanctions on third parties. No one in the U.S. government appears to be assessing whether the sanctions are accomplishing their policy goals in real time. To some outside analysts, this is problematic. The McChrystal Group’s Micah Zenko, for example, tweeted that the GAO study was “depressing” because, “US Govt officials acknowledge they cannot determine if economic sanctions work, and aren’t required to do so.” I am not sure if this criticism is entirely fair, for a few reasons. The GAO noted official reasons for the lack of such assessments. Treasury officials said that if U.S. policy goals and objectives shift, that makes it difficult to measure sanctions’ effectiveness. OFAC officials said that with ongoing sanctions programs, “any assessments of a sanctions program’s effectiveness would necessarily be interim, not final, and the metrics used to measure effectiveness might change over the program’s duration.” That last point is key. The effect of economic coercion is not linear. Sanctions don’t work … right up until the moment that they do work. Interim assessments run the risk of missing that rather important fact. If I was ever appointed to be sanctions czar, I would suggest a few rough guidelines to alleviate concerns about sanctions without micromanaging them. First, sanctions designed to deny an actor’s ability to do something need to be evaluated separately from sanctions designed to coerce a change in behavior. Sanctions against narcotics traffickers, for example, are never going to “work” in the sense of stopping narcotics trafficking. That does not mean these tools are not useful, but any assessment of their utility has to be different from sanctions designed to compel. As for the latter category, I would recommend a mandatory political assessment of any sanctions program after five years of implementation. Most successful sanctions episodes are resolved sooner rather than later. After half a decade, some stocktaking seems appropriate. Indeed, a five-year assessment offers a useful point for the United States to consider whether the sanctions should persist or a different course of action should be taken. Props to the GAO for the report. It is asking the right questions. The sanctions community needs to think harder about offering up some answers.


On 5G, the United States is building Betamax while China builds VHS

standard, it is likely that China, the current leader in that space, will lead the charge,” states a report issued this month by the Defense Innovation Board, whose membership includes tech executives from Google and other firms. “This would create security risks for [Defense Department] operations overseas that rely on networks with Chinese components in the supply chain.” What happens when U.S. forces in Europe or Asia find sub-6 bandwidth in those countries jammed up with driverless cars and Huawei cellphones? The military will have to share its spectrum abroad one way or the other, so it might as well figure out how to do that now. There are industrial implications, as well. By relying on mmWave, the United States will need to build more 5G cell towers closer together. That means lots of jobs but worse service for consumers, especially in rural areas. Moreover, U.S. companies building out this domestic system may not be able to compete in international markets operating on the sub-6 model. That means foreign companies — especially from China — could dominate 5G business worldwide. That would allow others to set international standards, and could turn the United States into an island of relatively bad 5G service surrounded by a sea of better technology. Spectrum is not the only factor in international 5G competition. The United States is still dominant in software and systems integration. U.S. companies are also leading producers of many crucial components — for now. But there are zero U.S. companies that produce core telecommunications equipment. There are two from Europe and two from China. In Japan, everyone knows the term “Galapagos Syndrome,” a reference to the country’s isolation from the world’s mobile-phone market. During the 1990s, Japan developed advanced mobile phones ahead of many other countries. But because Japanese technical standards weren’t adopted by anyone else, the rest of the world leapfrogged their early progress and left them way behind. For 5G, the United States must not become isolated. Trump has made his decision, but a responsible parallel policy would be to move forward with research of sub-6 spectrum sharing. That way, we at least have the option to go to VHS if the Betamax system fails. Winning the race for 5G won’t mean much if we are running in the wrong direction. josh.rogin@washpost.com Read more from Josh Rogin’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.


Reframing climate change as a story of human evolutionary success

continue to drive climate change denial are deeply and profoundly worthy of blame. I mean, rather, that all human history is the attempt to harvest new forms of energy to power our cherished project of civilization. We triggered climate change by mistake when we tripped over fossil fuels as part of that long effort. It wasn’t because we are evil or unworthy. From a planetary science perspective, global-scale technological civilizations and climate change go together. Any society as successful as ours, emerging anywhere in the universe, is going to have a hard time not triggering climate change. That’s just how planets work when you harvest buckets of energy from them. Viewed that way, changing a world’s climate marks the end of your civilization’s adolescence. At that point, you then face a very strict planetary driving test. Pass it — build a long-term sustainable version of your civilization — and you can go anywhere. Fail and you might die. So, yes, we changed the atmosphere of the entire planet. Not bad for a bunch of hairless monkeys. Now we must meet the existential challenge that success has created. Thinking about climate change in the context of eons of evolution, and as a curse of success, makes the burden of guilt hovering over every individual daily action (paper towels or electric bathroom hand dryers?) seem beside the point. Once humans recognize that triggering climate change was an inevitable consequence of a civilizational project we began 10,000 years ago, it follows that combating climate change, too, must also be a collective process, requiring all the ingenuity our species can muster. After traveling the country for a year telling this story, speaking to people at venues as diverse as “The Joe Rogan Experience,” the California Academy of Sciences and investor groups, I’ve seen the power of this new story. By shifting from blame to possibility, people are freed to imagine climate change as a challenge full of risk and possibility, rather than just a death sentence from accrued guilt. Many people who don’t consider themselves environmentalists get more engaged when the conversation turns to human success and capacity for innovation, I find. Skeptics don’t suddenly “convert,” but space for conversation opens up. Stressing human ingenuity in this context carries risks, for sure. Focusing on our technological prowess — on an evolutionary timeline as well as in the present — risks steering the conversation toward


In ‘Frankissstein,’ Jeanette Winterson brings something zany and intellectual ALIVE!

them in explicit detail. “You can be old, you can be ugly, you can be fat, smelly, you can have an STD, you can be broke,” Lord says in his breathless salesman’s patter. “Whether you can’t get it up, or you can’t get it down, there’s an XX-BOT for you.” The dialogue is slick and funny, often delightfully obscene, but beneath all the kookiness, Winterson is satirizing sexual politics and exploring complicated issues of human desire. (Ian McEwan’s recent novel “Machines Like Me” buzzed through similar material, but it feels a little lifeless compared to “Frankissstein.”) The story grows zanier and more evocative when Ry Shelley befriends a high-functioning madman named Professor Victor Stein, who’s into artificial intelligence and cryogenics. (He also has a lab full of living hands, but I digress.) Although Stein looks like “a macrobiotic fitness freak on cucumber water,” he’s a fabulously wealthy scientist who is trying to imagine how quantum leaps in AI will transform society. During one of his lectures, Stein predicts: “We humans will only programme the future once. After that, the intelligence we create will manage itself. And us.” That may sound grim — the excitement of a TED talk and the vision of “Westworld” — but in Winterson’s hands it’s a bag of provocative tricks and treats. With diabolical ingenuity, she’s found a way to inject fresh questions about humanity’s future into the old veins of “Frankenstein.” Alternating between the early 19th century and the early 21st century, she illustrates that the concerns we now have about being rendered irrelevant by computers are not so different from the Luddites’ concerns about being replaced by machines. “What if you were one of the millions of human beings who will have no place in the automated life that will soon be reality?” Professor Stein asks. “What will you do all day?” Will our AI future be some sort of degenerate, sexist nightmare — Mark Zuckerberg’s college fantasies in 3-D? Will the soma of our brave new world be robot sex? Winterson’s cleverest maneuver may be suggesting that transgender people are the true pioneers of a self-determined future in which we’ll all design our own bodies. Recast in that way, Frankenstein’s creation was not monstrous; he was just too early. Someday, Winterson suggests, biology won’t define any of us. We’ll be just consciousness — unbound. ron.charles@washpost.com Frankissstein By Jeanette Winterson Grove. 352 pp. $27


Russian indicted by Mueller held in Belarus, then released

MOSCOW — One of 13 Russians indicted by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III for alleged interference in the 2016 election was released Tuesday by Belarus, where she has been detained since Sunday on the American charges. The suspect, Anna Bogacheva, immediately headed back to Russia with her husband and small child after being freed from detention in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, a Russian watchdog group said. Alexander Malkevich, head of the Moscow-based Foundation for National Values Protection, which monitors cases of Russian citizens who have been detained or arrested abroad, called it “absolutely unacceptable” for Bogacheva to be held. It has been assumed from the beginning that none of the Russians indicted by Mueller would ever see the inside of an American courtroom, as long as they kept clear of the United States. Bogacheva’s detention raised, however briefly, the possibility of a criminal proceeding against one of the employees of the organization that was at the center of alleged Russian social media interference in the American election. Known as the “troll factory,” the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg was linked to Yevgeniy Prigozhin, called “Putin’s chef” because he used to provide catering for Russian President Vladmir Putin. Maria Butina Bogacheva went by the pseudonym Anna Trigga when she was associated with a violent right-wing Russian nationalist organization, according to an investigation by Radio Liberty. She later went to work for the Internet Research Agency, and made a 2014 trip to the United States to gather information, some Russian accounts suggested, as a way to stay out of trouble with the Russian secret services. The first reports of her detention were made public Tuesday morning. The fact that Belarus, which has a complicated but close relationship with Russia, would act on an American warrant was surprising. Russian media pounced on the story, as did Malkevich’s organization and the Russian embassy in Minsk. “This is right,” Malkevich said, “because Russian citizens should feel they are protected anywhere in the world from total arbitrariness.” Belarus relented, he suggested, under the public scrutiny. Though the embassy was “very active,” he said, he dismissed the notion that Moscow had brought official pressure to bear. But it was clear that Russia would do everything within its power to prevent her or any other defendant in the election-interference investigation from being extradited to face an American trial. Malkevich said he suspects that the decision


Lasers, rabbits and new Nikes: How the 2-hour marathon barrier was broken

“bonking.” The pacers themselves were guided by a pace car that projected a green laser that strategically indicated where on the road they should run for the shortest possible distance. Magness said a course is measured in the shortest distance a runner could, and that a runner moving from side to side or the outer edge of turns will inevitably add distance. Then there were the shoes. Like aerobars in competitive cycling, clap skates in speed skating or Speedo’s LZR Racer suits in Olympic swimming, Kipchoge’s gear, the Nike ZoomX Vaporfly Next%, were a legal, if not controversial, performance enhancement. “Normally I don’t like to fall for marketing stuff, but if you look at the research and data, the shoes seem to have a big effect,” Magness said. Mike Joyner, a Mayo Clinic faculty member who for years has studied human performance in relation to breaking a two-hour marathon barrier, agreed that the shoe criticism shouldn’t detract from Kipchoge’s achievement. “There’s a lot criticism over the shoes, but the shoes are hiding in plain sight. Back in the late ‘70s, people at Harvard designed an optimized track and runners ran 2 to 3 percent faster. The same principles are in this shoes, which maximize recoil properties in the human leg.” Joyner said. Some reactions to Kipchoge’s feat — or rather, the conditions that facilitated it — have been less rosy. On Sunday, The Atlantic characterized sub-two-hour marathon time as the “Greatest, Fakest World Record.” The piece quoted British sports scientist Yannis Pitsiladis, known in the racing community for his effort to design a training program that would help an athlete break the two-hour marathon barrier, as dismissing the INEOS 1:59 Challenge as a marketing gimmick. “I can’t get excited about this,” Pitsiladis told the Times of London. “It’s meaningless.” Joyner called such criticisms as “sour grapes.” “All large sporting events are manufactured. People can be purist about it, but I think it’s kind of whiny,” Joyner said. “Yes, [Kipchoge] had the course and the support, and the weather and the gear. Nevertheless, you go out and run 26 miles at four minutes and see how it feels.” As much as Kipchoge had the benefit of ideal conditions, Joyner said Men’s marathon times dropped by minutes each decade until about the 1960s, according to Joyner. “What happened is people went from running 30 to 40 minutes to more like 100 miles


The Finance 202: Mnuchin says Trump’s trade deal needs work. China won’t even say if there is one.

ripple effects of an underwhelming agreement could be worse: Morgan Stanley writes that employers who had been banking on a breakthrough may start laying off workers now that no such progress is evident: You are reading The Finance 202 , our must-read tipsheet on where Wall Street meets Washington. -- Earnings outlook dims as banks kick off reporting. “Investors never seem to focus on what’s in the rearview mirror as much as they do the outlook for what’s on the horizon. In this case, though, they’re likely to see the same thing: Profits weighed down by tariffs, economic weakness and geopolitical tumult that seems unlikely to go away anytime soon, despite the recent good news that the U.S. and China have reached at least the first phase of a trade agreement.” — E.U., U.K. negotiators seek to reach agreement today.Bloomberg's Jonathan Stearns and Ian Wishart: ”British negotiators submitted a revised set of Brexit plans to Brussels amid growing optimism that a deal could be struck this week. The new proposals are aimed at clarifying the U.K.’s proposed customs rules for Northern Ireland, two officials said. Talks will continue throughout the day in Brussels as the two sides try to agree on how far Northern Ireland will be detached from the EU’s customs union -- something that risks incurring the opposition of the Democratic Unionist Party, whose support will be vital for any deal to pass.” TRADE FLY-AROUND: — Trump raises tariffs, halts negotiations with Turkey over Syria: “Trump had announced the order in a lengthy statement posted to Twitter earlier ... The retaliatory measures followed Trump’s decision to order the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Syria’s northern border with Turkey, which has enabled Turkish forces to launch an offensive against the U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in Syria.” — WTO clears U.S. to impose Airbus-related tariffs: The World Trade Organization formally authorized the U.S. “to impose tariffs on up to $7.5 billion of imports of EU goods after an arbitrator’s decision over subsidies to planemaker Airbus,” Reuters’s Stephanie Nebehay reports. “The authorization was a formality after a WTO arbitrator awarded a record right to retaliate over illegal subsidies this month. It would only have been denied if all WTO members present voted against. The meeting lasted less than 20 minutes.” — Deutsche Bank spent big to win foothold in China. NYT's Michael Forsythe, David Enrich and Alexandra Stevenson: “Millions of dollars


How a video game is getting its players to rethink Brexit

As the British Parliament continues its political standoff over its long-debated exit from the European Union, one unlikely educator has emerged and even managed to shift a handful of opinions on the issue. It’s even been used to inform Parliament about Brexit’s potential impact on the British Premier League. Football Manager, a popular video soccer simulation game, incorporated various Brexit-related issues into its 2019 version. The game’s development team at Sports Interactive collaborated with an external group of academics, journalists, politicians and people working in soccer to compile a list of potential Brexit scenarios. Each scenario — ranging from hard line policies regarding work visas and international player usage to more relaxed regulations in those areas — was assigned a probability of transpiring during the 2019 season. That dynamic was incorporated into the simulations for the followings seasons, and players of the game could witness and appreciate how those policies could play out in the real world. “I’d written a blog post about how Brexit could affect us a few weeks before the referendum,” Miles Jacobson, studio director for Sports Interactive (SI), said in an interview with The Washington Post. “I ended up publishing it on LinkedIn, and the day after the vote had a couple of messages about my thoughts on how football would be affected.” In the event of a soft Brexit with no changes, European soccer players maintain freedom of movement within the E.U. A slightly harder deal could result in a system resembling that of the Italian Serie A, in which teams can have anywhere between two and 17 non-homegrown players on the squad at any given time. Another potential situation imposes a rule that requires foreign players to earn minimum salaries in exchange for work permits. Then there’s the more extreme possibility of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Gibraltar leaving the United Kingdom. There’s also the small possibility of Britain remaining in the E.U. The game has sold over 2 million copies, and the SI team has received a plethora of messages from fans in response. “There have been lots of reactions on social media, ranging from, ‘If I’d known about this before the vote I’d have voted a different way,’ through to a mini campaign from people wanting to be able to turn it off in-game," Jacobson said. "We refused the latter because [Brexit is] something that will affect the real world, so it’s something


The NCAA is still whining about pay to play. It’s too late for that.

Well before California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the Fair Pay to Play Act into law on Sept. 30, NCAA President Mark Emmert was rattling his saber. The law, he said, would force the NCAA to declare college athletes from California ineligible and thus make their teams ineligible to compete for NCAA championships. Emmert was sad, so sad, that this would have to happen. Seemingly within minutes of Newsom ratifying the bill, which won’t go into effect until Jan. 1, 2023, the Pacific-12 Conference was putting out a news release on how the law would have “very significant negative consequences” on all of college athletics because it would “professionalize” college athletes in California by allowing them to get paid for their name, image and likeness. Commissioner Larry Scott didn’t put his name on the release, but he did say that the law would somehow affect “Olympic sports,” which is the current NCAA euphemism for nonrevenue sports. Naturally, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany also insisted that paying athletes anything over the cost of a scholarship would make the athletes professionals. The most amusing comment may have come from SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, who, in adding his voice to the brigade said: “There is potential for abuse by external influences.” The SEC commissioner claiming something new might lead to abuse by external influences, as if that’s never happened in his league? Seriously? He forgot to say try the veal and tip your waiters. Everyone knows what’s going on here: For many, many years the NCAA has been able to perpetrate the myth of the amateur athlete. That’s why administrators and many coaches and TV talking heads use the term”student-athlete” so often you wonder if they’re being paid for each time the phrase crosses their lips. There are plenty of college athletes who get their degrees. But almost all of the best and most famous are training to be professional athletes. There is nothing wrong with that. It isn’t the fault of the one-and-done basketball players that they have to pretend to be students for a year (actually, for a semester) because the rules require it. The same is true for football players who have to wait three years before turning pro. But let’s not kid ourselves. These guys are pros-in-training just like minor league athletes. Except they aren’t getting paid — unless it’s under the table. The NCAA campaign to attack the Fair


Olympic officials want to move the 2020 marathons 500 miles from Tokyo over heat fears

In a concession to the extreme heat that is expected to blanket the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the International Olympic Committee proposed moving next summer’s marathons and race walking events 500 miles north to Sapporo, site of the 1972 Winter Games. The IOC previously had moved up the starting time for the marathons to 6 a.m. because its working group had identified the event — and race walking — as particularly stressful for athletes. Moving them to Japan’s northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido, the organization said in a statement, would mean “significantly lower temperatures for the athletes.” The marathons for men and women are set for Aug. 2 and 9, with race walking events from July 31 through Aug. 8. Temperatures in Sapporo are forecast to be “5 to 6 degrees Celsius cooler [9 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit] during the day than in Tokyo.” Moving the marathons and race walking will be discussed by the host city, World Athletics, the National Olympic Committees, Olympic broadcasting services and broadcasters that hold rights to the Games. The IOC Coordination Commission plans to dedicate a special session to heat countermeasures during its Oct. 30-Nov. 1 meeting. Other measures are in place as athletic organizers on all levels of competition begin to adjust for extreme conditions brought on by climate change. Upon recommendation from the IOC Medical and Scientific Commission Adverse Weather Impact Expert Working Group, changes include scheduling 5,000-meter and longer-distance races in the evening sessions rather than in the morning; scheduling all morning rugby games to end before noon; and delaying the start of mountain biking events to 3 p.m. Last year “The Tokyo marathon normally gets [a half-million] to 1 million spectators. Even if 0.1 percent of them get ill from heat, that would amount to 500 to 1,000 people,” Makoto Yokohari, a professor of urban engineering at the University of Tokyo, told The Washington Post in December. “Tokyo currently does not have the capability to rescue that many people, though starting at 6 may mean fewer spectators.” Tokyo Olympic organizers previously had taken steps to combat the heat, coating the marathon course and other major roads with a resin-based surface that reflects infrared rays and lowers the surface temperature by as much as 14 degrees Fahrenheit. Tents and fans that emit cooling mist will be used, though a plan to air-condition the new national stadium in Tokyo was abandoned because of the


Warren faces first sustained attack in debate that begins with unified condemnation of Trump

program, which Buttigieg said was unrealistic. “Congressman, you made it clear you don’t know how this would work,” Buttigieg responded. “Develop the plan further, we can have a debate.” “This is not a purity test,” O’Rourke said. “This is a crisis, and we’ve got to do something about it.” He suggested that Buttigieg was adopting poll-tested positions and lacking the political courage to do something bold. “I don’t need lessons from you on courage, political or personal,” Buttigieg snapped. It was part of a more forceful performance from Buttigieg, who directly challenged several of the contenders onstage, often turning to face them as he delivered pointed barbs. At one point, he turned to Gabbard, a fellow combat veteran, and told her she was “dead wrong” to say the United States should immediately withdraw troops from the Middle East. That exchange came during a lengthy discussion of foreign policy, which has played a limited role thus far in a presidential primary dominated by domestic issues like health care, inequality and race. Trump’s recent decision to withdraw troops from northeast Syria and allow a Turkish invasion has drawn bipartisan condemnation and raised questions about how Democratic presidential candidates would handle the country’s foreign entanglements. The Trump administration is struggling to contain the damage in the wake of Turkey’s incursion, with White House officials saying that it has led to a humanitarian crisis and increased the threat of terrorism. Although Gabbard and Buttigieg have each called for the United States to bring troops home from the Middle East, they took opposing positions on the stage Tuesday. “What is an endless war if it’s not another regime-change war?” she asked Buttigieg. The United States has been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan since the early 2000s, and Biden was among those who voted to authorize the conflicts. But in a sign of Biden’s relatively drama-free night, his vote did not come up during the lengthy discussion of foreign policy. Sanders referred to it glancingly toward the end of the debate, calling the vote “disastrous.” Candidates instead went fiercely after Trump, whom Booker accused of “moral weakness” and a “dumpster fire” policy. Biden called Trump an “erratic, crazy president who knows not a damn thing about foreign policy.” Castro put it in even blunter terms: “This president is caging kids on the border and effectively letting ISIS prisoners run free,” Castro said. toluse.olorunnipa@washpost.com chelsea.janes@washpost.com matt.viser@washpost.com


Via Sophia brings twists to Italian dining at a downtown hotel

(Good) Hotel restaurants aren’t what they used to be, certainly not in Washington. They’re more engaging than ever before — destinations all by themselves. Game to eat roast duck with a pantry of condiments standing up? The seatless Spoken English in the Line hotel has you covered. Curious what gnocchi made with tofu tastes like? Let me point you to the meatless pleasure at American Son in the Eaton hotel. Kith/Kin in the Intercontinental Washington DC represents a rare mingling of African and Caribbean accents, and the Pembroke in the reimagined Dupont Circle hotel showcases $5 million of eye candy, along with a tagine that channels Morocco. The latest example of more flavor in our lodging comes at Via Sophia, unveiled in June in the Hamilton Hotel overlooking Franklin Square. Wisely, the owners recruited a chef with serious chops: Colin Clark, a veteran of Washington hot spots Fiola Mare and Le Diplomate and a protege of the admired Italian chef Marc Vetri in Clark’s native Philadelphia. The focus on the corner of 14th and K streets NW is pasta and pizza, made from scratch. Don’t fall asleep on me, though. As full as some of us are from both, the chef’s additions to the plenitude are appreciated. At a moment when good pasta feels unstoppable in the city, his rigatoni decked out with crisp octopus, tender clams and tangy tomato sauce is a leader in the pack. Clark’s pizza tastes novel, too. The nicely chewy crust relies on whole-wheat flour and a couple days of fermentation, plus a brief stop in an 800-degree oven before the blistered pie lands on your table. “I want everything to feel very Italian,” says the chef. “But I want to surprise people a little bit.” Early on, diners quizzed the staff about the fragrance wafting from Via Sophia’s ornate tuna carpaccio. Orange blossom vinaigrette, they were told. Beef tartare fits in the usual sharpeners of mustard and capers, but also chopped sun-dried tomatoes and aged pecorino cheese for a more pronounced bite. The chef counts himself a fan of Italian-American fare and proves the point with a lunchtime sandwich that puts slices of breaded chicken between house-baked focaccia. The idea is a fine one, and I applaud the use of smoked eggplant crema instead of mayonnaise as a spread and focaccia crumbs blended with herbs and Parmesan on the chicken. The only caveat is


The 1980s are calling, they want their economy back

William Pesek is a Tokyo-based writer and author of “ As Japan and the United States slow in tandem, a new frame of reference seems in order. It’s not about why the No. 3 and No. 1 economies are underperforming — it’s about the when. In 2012, Shinzo Abe won the premiership with plans for a multi-pronged assault on a decades’-long malaise. His bold blueprint aimed to end deflation, reanimate Japan’s innovative spirits and restore confidence to a nation being cast uncomfortably in China’s shadow. “Morning in Japan,” if you will. Seven years on, Abe has done nothing of the sort. Rather than modernize Japan’s model or increase competitiveness, Abe relied on old-school currency depreciation and corporate tax cuts to catalyze an export boom. Now, as the trade war deepens, wages are flat as Japan’s economy slows faster than China’s. It’s on the verge of recession, ending the best growth run since the 1980s. Abe’s biggest misstep? Relying on the same policies Tokyo did 30-some years ago. It means, essentially, that Abe is targeting an industrial system that no longer exists in the age of China and rapid technological disruption. So is President Trump. That $1.5 trillion Republican tax cut had Reaganomics written all over it. So does the regulation-slashing tear his White House is on. Trump is focusing disproportionate attention on an exchange rate he claims is “killing us.” His demand that the Federal Reserve cut interest rates back to zero, Japan-style, are code for “the dollar is too strong.” It’s no coincidence that Team Trump wants to embed a currency pact in any trade deal with China. Even better, they hint, would be a new “Plaza Accord,” an aspiration that neither Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin nor trade adviser Peter Navarro denies. Irony abounds. The 1985 deal to weaken the dollar vs. the yen, one that forms the basis for Trump’s China policy, was forged at a New York hotel he later owned for a time. It was during this period that the economic worldview Trump took into the Oval Office was forged. Trump’s when, in other words. The mid-80s was a time when Japan was cast in the boogeyman role China now plays. Ronald Reagan was in the second term of his own “Let’s Make America Great” presidency. Yet to mercantilists such as Trump, Japan Inc. stood in the way. It was buying up New York’s Rockefeller Center,


WeWork gets a helping hand. What about everyone else?

society, we have socialism for big business and the wealthy, and individual responsibility for everyone else. As banks and investors line up to help WeWork out — again! — we should take a moment to spare a thought for the several million Americans who lost their homes during the mortgage crisis. Their attempts to take advantage of Obama-era plans designed to help them out like the Home Affordable Modification Program often ended in failure. That’s because mortgage servicers quickly realized that they could make more money — at least in the short run — foreclosing on desperate homeowners than they could helping them out. The result? When HAMP began, backers predicted it would help up to 4 million American homeowners remain in their home. The real number turned out to be about a quarter of that. Yet while millions of Americans people struggled under record-breaking student loans and backbreaking mortgages, banks and venture capital firms toss money companies like WeWork. No one told WeWork founder and CEO Adam Neumann to skip the avocado toast or lattes while he built his business. Instead, with bank assistance he went on a personal $90 million home-buying spree even as the firm he founded continued to lose gobs of money in an attempt to scale the business. It’s often said it takes money to make money, but in this case, it took money to lose money. Of course, no one exemplifies the trend better than our current president. Trump, a millionaire-by-inheritance, immolated millions upon millions of his own and banks’ money in failed start-ups and subpar real estate investments, his businesses landing in bankruptcy court again and again. Yet over and over again, he was able to find companies and individuals willing to invest in him even when insiders issued warnings that not all was on the up and up. Not only wasn’t he criticized for this, he was promoted as some kind of business and personal finance guru. This sort of experience has not left Trump with anything resembling empathy. As if! His administration, even as it enacted a budget busting tax reform that mostly benefited the richest of the rich, has made life harder for millions of working-class Americans in all sorts of ways, from limiting access to food stamps and Medicaid to neutering the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In a civilized society, this sort of stuff would be called out for


U.K. and E.U. negotiators talk into early morning with hopes for a Brexit deal

will depart the E.U. along with the rest of the United Kingdom. Both the U.K. and the E.U. say they want to keep open the border with the Republic of Ireland, to preserve the hard-won peace there. They have disagreed about how to achieve that, with the E.U. saying Northern Ireland would have to remain tightly aligned with its own rules. May had said “no U.K. prime minister would ever agree to” a proposal that would create a customs border in the Irish Sea. And Johnson had resisted the idea. But on Tuesday, he seemed to be moving far closer to European demands in a bid to push the talks to a conclusion. E.U. leaders will meet in Brussels Thursday and Friday, when they will either sign off on a deal, agree to delay the Brexit date beyond October or brace for a sudden and uncontrolled British departure from the bloc. Barnier told reporters ahead of the marathon negotiations: “Even if the agreement will be difficult, more and more difficult, to be frank, it is still possible this week.” One European diplomat involved in the negotiations said late Tuesday that “there is light in the tunnel, but for the moment it comes from only neon tubes, not from the exit.” The diplomat spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door talks. The Irish border has proved to be one of the most vexing issues facing negotiators over the past three years. The promise of an open border is central to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended the Troubles, as the 30 years of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland are known. Today the boundary is mostly invisible. A driver whizzing between Belfast and Dublin is not required to stop for any customs check or security control. There are no tollbooths, no cameras, not even a signpost. Brexit could change all that. If the United Kingdom has its own set of tariffs and regulations, Europeans would demand a customs border to prevent smuggling and ensure the integrity of their own internal market. But both sides fear it could lead to violence. While the sweeping, E.U. bureaucratic hub of the Berlaymont building in Brussels was busy with Brexit talks, so too was Johnson’s official residence at 10 Downing Street, where ministers and lawmakers dashed in and out all day Tuesday. By some counts, compared to May, Johnson would face an


Bird populations have crashed. Here’s what you can do to help.

The arrival finally of some crisp fall weather has gardeners thinking about the winter, a period of retreat in the garden but not of death. The plants’ withdrawal from the cold invites close examination of the leafless world. But if you need something beyond the display of holly berries, the smooth silver bark and latent buds of the magnolia, or the black silhouette of an old walnut tree, there is another, more vivid reminder that life goes on outdoors. We have the birds. Or do we? A study by ornithologists and other scientists released last month told us bird populations have crashed. Since 1970, the United States and Canada have lost nearly 3 billion, close to 30 percent fewer individuals. The losses are across habitats and species, though hardest hit are birds that inhabit the grasslands from Texas north into the Canadian prairie. The suspected causes? Habitat loss, more intensive agriculture and greater use of pesticides that kill the insects birds eat. For those of us who see the garden not just as a living expression of beauty but a place where we embrace nature, the news is a reminder that we have some power to mitigate this distressing loss. First and foremost, keep the cat indoors. Ask your neighbor to do the same. Cat predation is a major cause of bird mortality, according to the American Bird Conservancy. This is not just from pets but all the alley cats out there, themselves the product of people throwing unwanted, unsterilized felines to the four winds. The cats are the instrument of bird death, but we are the cause. Songbirds also die in large numbers by flying into windows. If this is a problem where you live, you can attach decals to your glazing. Another tactic is not to use pesticides, even sprays against mosquitoes, a pest best countered by removing sources of standing water, especially in the spring. You might think the greatest step you can take for the birds is to feed them. This is, after all, the time of year our thoughts turn to nourishing birds through the chillier months ahead. Do the birds need this buffet? Perhaps not, but bird feed can help at key moments in the year, in April and May and September and October, when migrating birds need all the fuel they can get. “These movements mean a high expenditure of energy for what


Maryland student breaches computer security and steals data of nearly 1,350 teens

Personal information, SAT scores and GPAs of nearly 1,350 students at a suburban Maryland high school were exposed after a student figured out the username and password needed to access the data, school officials said. The student allegedly downloaded demographic data Oct. 3 associated with Wheaton High School students’ accounts on Naviance, an online program that students in the Montgomery County school system use to prepare for college and careers, according to a statement posted on the district’s website. Derek Turner, a spokesman for Montgomery County Public Schools, said the student wrote a program or algorithm that tried various combinations of usernames and passwords. The student does not attend Wheaton High, and Turner declined to identify the student because the person is a minor. Officials for Hobsons, the company that owns Naviance, said in a statement late Tuesday that it “immediately took action to contain and mitigate the impact and notify Montgomery County Public Schools” within 24 hours and is working with the school system to “ensure ongoing security of its accounts.” Hobsons referred other questions about the attack to the school system. The student responsible for the online attack could face criminal charges in addition to disciplinary action by the district, school system officials said. The breach prompted the school system to reset the Naviance passwords of all Montgomery County students. In the statement, school system officials said the district “immediately took steps to secure the platform and began an investigation to identify the unauthorized user. The threat has now been eliminated.” The accounts of 1,343 students and one parent were affected, the statement said. The information included students’ names, contact information, ethnicity and gender. It also included students’ highest scores on SAT, ACT, PSAT and International Baccalaureate exams. Social Security numbers, banking and credit card information were not part of the breach, according to the school system. The attack allegedly happened during two hours starting at 8:10 p.m. Oct. 3, according to the school system. Naviance discovered the suspicious activity at 10:14 p.m. and blocked the IP address responsible for the attack, according to the district. The college prep company immediately reset the passwords of the accounts that were affected and alerted Montgomery County schools the next day. School and police officials began an investigation Oct. 7 and have identified the student they said is responsible for the breach. School system officials said they believe the information was


Impossible vs. Beyond: We tested cook-at-home versions to see who makes a better vegan burger

The ground-beef case is getting more crowded these days, with grocery stores across the country overflowing with plant-based options that are textured, packaged and displayed just like their cow-dependent predecessors. And this isn’t just your hippie aunt’s stuff: High-tech fiddling with veggie-derived colors and fats means these products behave and taste a lot more like beef than the black-bean pucks of yore. Of course, the Impossible Burger is the Lizzo of the plant-based food market (i.e., so hot right now; also has juice), attracting such celebrity investors as Jay-Z and Serena Williams and earning the Harry Potter-meets-Twilight tagline “the one that bleeds.” After being served up in some of the country’s hottest restaurants (also in Burger King’s Impossible Whopper), the company rolled out its packages in grocery stores late last month, meaning you can get in on the action from the comfort of your own kitchen. Impossible is joining stock-market darling Beyond Meat in supermarkets — as well as some traditional meat-alternative brands that are getting more serious about their faux-beef game, too. While they might not all be as high-tech as Impossible, most similarly swap vegetable protein for cow and incorporate vegetable oils, juices and flavorings to more closely mimic red-meat properties. But how close are they to the mark? We gathered some brave eaters for a burger tasting. One good feature of these products is that you can shape them into patties yourself, whether you prefer steakhouse-like thick slabs or thin, smashable discs. (They also come in preformed patties, too, but I’ve always found those to be disconcertingly factory perfect.) Of course, you can also use them for all the usual-suspect dishes, such as meatballs, sauces and tacos. But to evaluate them, we kept things simple and stuck to the classic burger for our test, forming each into four-ounce patties with a uniform 3.5-inch diameter and cooking them according to the manufacturer’s directions. The results were — well, mostly not great, with only one of the options turning out to be something we would feel really confident serving our friends. To be fair, they could be far better if they were gussied up with toppings and condiments (my kingdom for some aioli!), or even a liberal sprinkle of salt, all of which we eschewed to get to the essential burger-ness of each one. Here’s what we found, starting with our least favorite and progressing to the winner. 4.


U.K. and E.U. approve new Brexit deal, setting up potentially close vote in U.K. Parliament

or opt for a no-deal exit. Opposition lawmakers have indicated that they have other ideas. They are staging votes on different amendments, possibly including one that would require a public vote. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour Party, said the agreement reached on Thursday was an “even worse deal” than May’s and that the “best way to get Brexit sorted is to give the people the final say in a public vote.” Under the deal — which focuses mostly on the split from the E.U., not on how the two sides will work together in the future — Britain would leave the bloc but would continue to apply E.U. rules until the end of 2020. E.U. and British negotiators would try to hammer out a trade deal and other elements of their future relationship in the meantime. The transition period could be extended up to two years if both sides agree. The deal suggests a harder break than ever envisaged by May, with Britain potentially taking a sharply different line on trade, taxes and regulations. May’s plans would have left Britain tightly integrated with the E.U. Under Johnson’s plan, only Northern Ireland is committed to remaining largely aligned with the bloc, at least for now, even though it is leaving the E.U. along with the rest of the United Kingdom. The trickiest part of the talks always centered on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which will remain in the European Union. Borderless movement has been a key part of the Good Friday Agreement that ended decades of violence in the region, but it was challenged by Brexit. In his brief comments in Brussels, Johnson praised the deal as one that protects the peace in Ireland. He discounted concerns that the deal cleaves off Northern Ireland and surrenders it to never-ending E.U. tariff and customs laws, as the Northern Ireland unionists assert. Johnson asserted the deal leaves the United Kingdom “whole” and “means that Northern Ireland and every part of the U.K. can take part in not just free trade deals, offering our tariffs, exporting our goods around the world, but it also means we can take, together as a single United Kingdom, decisions about our future — our laws, our borders, our money and how we want to run the U.K.” Elements of the new deal crossed red lines that previous British leaders ruled


The Technology 202: Lawmakers are concerned about exporting tech’s legal shield in trade deals

controversial to both Democrats and Republicans is not the way to get support from Congress, obviously,” Pallone said at the hearing. “Hopefully the ambassador will be more responsive to bipartisan requests in the future.” The pair of lawmakers initially sent Lighthizer a letter raising concerns about the inclusion of language similar to Section 230 in trade agreements while the committee is considering drafting changes to the legal provision. They asked Lighthizer not to include such language in future trade agreements -- and were dismayed to learn it was also included in a trade deal with Japan. We’re “very frustrated about that and I hope the administration is paying attention and listening, because they haven’t up until this point on this matter,” Walden said. The digs highlight how Section 230’s future is growing increasingly uncertain in the United States. Members of Congress are getting more serious about understanding how Section 230 works and potentially amending it as worries mount the provision is being abused to foster harmful content online. There’s bipartisan interest in amending the law to address a host of concerns -- ranging from the social media platforms’ shortcomings when it comes to moderating hate speech, election disinformation and the online sale of drugs like opioids. In the Senate, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has proposed changing Section 230 to address allegations that the tech companies are biased against conservatives. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who chairs the House Energy subcommittee on consumer protection and commerce, said she doesn’t want Section 230 language in the USMCA. ““There is no place for that,” she said. “I think the laws in these other countries don’t accommodate what the U.S. has done about 230.” “In the midst of that conversation because of all the new developments, I think it is just inappropriate right now to insert this liability protection into trade agreements,” she added. David McCabe and Ana Swanson of the New York Times illustrated why the stakes are so high. He reports that American negotiators have proposed similar language in pacts with the European Union, Britain and members of the World Trade Organization. “The administration’s push is the latest salvo in a global fight over who sets the rules for the internet,” David and Ana write. ”While the rules for trading goods have largely been written — often by the United States — the world has far fewer standards for digital products. Countries are


Trump doesn’t want to be ‘responsible for destroying the Turkish economy.’ Good grief.

The White House has confirmed that a remarkable letter sent by President Trump to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is genuine. In the letter, Trump — who earlier seemed to give Erdogan a green light to invade the Kurdish-held parts of Syria — threatens him with reprisals. He says “[y]ou don’t want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of people” and “I don’t want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy.” It is hard to describe how unusual this letter is. Teddy Roosevelt famously described how he liked to “speak softly and carry a big stick.” Trump’s preference instead appears to be to make loud threats that he may not be able to deliver on. The background to this threat is that Trump seems to have recently discovered America’s sanction power. In his impromptu news briefing with Italy’s president Wednesday, he had a lot to say about the “newfound economic power of the United States.” In Trump’s description: “The United States has tremendous economic power. Far more power than playing around with having a few soldiers shooting each other at the border. … The power we have with sanctions and tariffs is far greater than what we are talking about.” Trump’s belief that he can destroy Turkey’s economy seems to be based on a newfound faith in sanctions and tariffs as an instrument of economic coercion. Of course, Trump has liked tariffs for a long time, but he has usually seen them as a way to make purely economic threats, to get the United States a better deal on trade. His threat of sanctions may not be very plausible: His comments at the news briefing suggest he isn’t particularly worried about what Turkey does to the Kurds. However, his discovery of sanctions as a new toy to play with may have long-term repercussions. As we describe in our recent article on how the United States has “weaponized interdependence,” U.S. sanctions can indeed do a lot of damage to other countries’ economies. The United States has unparalleled influence in the global economic system, because international banks rely on the U.S. dollar. This allows the United States to issue sweeping sanctions against institutions, individuals and even entire countries, and to threaten that any banks that fail to apply these sanctions will have access to the dollar “clearing system” cut off. This — together with U.S. influence over the SWIFT financial messaging


The past three months in Afghanistan have been the deadliest for civilians in a decade

Afghanistan has killed 631 children in the first nine months of this year and injured 1,830. The United Nations warned that “indiscriminate and disproportionate” Taliban attacks using explosives “are serious violations of international humanitarian law that may amount to war crimes.” One such high-profile Taliban-claimed attack on Sept. 19 killed 28 civilians and injured 130 in Zabul province when a truck bomb detonated near an intelligence headquarters and a provincial hospital. The increase in Taliban attacks marks a shift since July. The United Nations reported that during the first half of 2019, Afghan government forces and their U.S.-led allies were responsible for more civilian deaths than the Taliban. Afghan and U.S. airstrikes and search operations continue to be deadly for civilians: They have killed 784 and wounded 377 this year, more than in the first nine months of any year since the United Nations began recording civilian casualties in 2009. Since 2018, “international military forces” have been responsible for the majority of civilian casualties caused by aerial operations. The United States is the only member of the coalition in Afghanistan that carries out airstrikes, apart from the Afghan government. The United States has significantly ramped up its air campaign in Afghanistan against the Taliban and the Islamic State. In September, U.S. aircraft dropped more munitions than in any other month since October 2010. U.S. Air Forces Central Command said its planes released 948 weapons last month, a figure that does not include airstrikes by the Afghan air force. The report details two U.S. airstrikes that caused substantial civilian casualties in the past three months, including one in Helmand province on Sept. 22 that killed 15 civilians and one in Nangahar province that killed 19. Regarding the Nangahar strike, the United Nations said that “shortly after the incident, [U.S. forces] paid compensation to the families of eight of the individuals killed, acknowledging they were civilian.” The Afghan presidential election on Sept. 28 was also associated with a spike in violence. The United Nations released a separate report this week that said election-related violence killed 85 civilians and wounded 373. The bulk of the election-related casualties were caused by Taliban operations, including mortar attacks and improvised explosives, that had “indiscriminate effects” in civilian areas. The Taliban had pledged to use violence to disrupt the election that it viewed as illegitimate. The Afghan government, in its response, said it “notes with concern” the


Underestimate Boris Johnson again at your peril

Ryan Bourne is the R. Evan Scharf chair for the public understanding of economics at the Cato Institute and was formerly head of public policy at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London. Pundits have consistently underestimated British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Just a few short months ago, their consensus was that the European Union would not reopen the withdrawal deal it had agreed upon with former prime minister Theresa May, even though the agreement had been rejected three times by the U.K. Parliament. Commentators, again and again, said that a prime minister threatening to leave the E.U. with or without a deal by the Oct. 31 exit date would not change the E.U.’s calculations. Indeed, people claimed a change in prime minister itself would alter nothing. But, as it so often has been in recent years, conventional wisdom was wrong. On Thursday morning, the E.U. and British government announced a fresh withdrawal agreement, stripping away aspects of May’s “backstop” proposal for the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland that had most worried Brexiteers. Now, rather than risking the whole country being locked into a customs union with the E.U. until the latter agreed otherwise, Britain will once again have its own full, independent trade policy. Negotiations on so-called “level playing field regulations” for the environment and social policy have been pushed into stage two talks for a Britain-E.U. free-trade agreement, too. In essence, Johnson has negotiated an exit agreement that points toward a much looser future trade relationship, with more trade and regulatory autonomy for the United Kingdom. Avoiding a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland required compromise on both sides. Rather than keeping the whole United Kingdom in the E.U.’s customs orbit, the new deal would place customs checks on goods flowing between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and Northern Ireland would effectively remain in regulatory alignment with the E.U. on goods and agricultural products to avoid in-Ireland regulatory checks. Crucially though, a tariff-rebate system will mean Northern Ireland is still subject to Britain’s full independent trade policy. And there is an exit mechanism for Northern Ireland should this dual arrangement become intolerable. After four years, its assembly will be able to decide its fate by majority vote. This all means a need for border checks is avoided, and there is a meaningful consent mechanism for the people of Northern Ireland. Whether such a


Britain and Europe have reached a deal on Brexit. Here’s who won and lost.

The European Union and the United Kingdom have reached a provisional deal on “Brexit” — the process through which the U.K. will leave the E.U. The deal still has to pass through Britain’s House of Commons (which will be hard) and be formally ratified by the member states of the European Union (which will probably be easier). Even if it gets over both hurdles, it will be only the beginning of a longer process, under which Britain negotiates its future relationship in the European Union. Nonetheless, it marks important progress. When British voters went to the polls in the Brexit referendum, few of them were thinking about the relationship with Ireland. Nonetheless, this relationship turned out to be the single-most-important factor complicating the Brexit negotiations. The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland share a border, a vexed history and the risk of a resurgence of terrorism, which largely ceased when the Good Friday Agreement provided a long-term framework for the Ireland-Northern Ireland relationship. When Britain leaves the E.U., it will leave the common customs and market arrangement that allowed border posts to be largely abandoned. Irish politicians on both sides of the border feared that this might lead to a resumption of terrorism. They also worried about the economic damage of a hard border. Concerns in the Republic of Ireland led the E.U. to push for a resolution of the border question as a key precondition for Brexit. British politicians and negotiators accepted this at first, but later seemed baffled and frustrated at the E.U.’s willingness to protect Ireland’s concerns. After all, Britain is a big state, and Ireland a little one. Some British politicians seem to think that Ireland’s independence is a quaint historical accident. However, British efforts to peel away Ireland’s European supporters failed. Thanks to assiduous diplomacy, Ireland succeeded in shaping the E.U. understanding of its interests in negotiations, so that Ireland’s position played a central role. The arrangement that has been reached is a complex one under which Northern Ireland will still be part of the United Kingdom’s customs union (so it can be part of trade deals that the U.K. makes), but in which it will effectively operate under E.U. rules. This is a major negotiating success for Ireland, which has secured a deal that protects its core interests in political stability, while also preserving economic relations between the Republic and Northern Ireland. Ireland’s Taoiseach


Brexit: U.K. and Europe edge closer to deal — but are not there yet

given time. E.U. leaders also do not want to negotiate the technically complex agreements directly with Johnson at the summit, diplomats said, because such deals depend on complicated legal considerations. European Council President Donald Tusk told a Polish broadcaster that the “basic foundations of an agreement are ready” and “theoretically [on Thursday] we could accept this deal with Great Britain.” “Everything is going in the right direction,” Tusk said. “But you will have noticed yourselves that with Brexit, and above all with our British partners, anything is possible.” There was furious wheeling and dealing at 10 Downing Street on Wednesday, with lawmakers coming and going. All eyes were on the hard-line Brexiteers in Johnson’s Conservative Party and a group of 10 lawmakers from Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, whose support is crucial. Steve Baker, the leader of the hard-line faction known as the European Research Group, said that “great progress” had been made but that his group “really must see the text” before backing the proposals. The Northern Ireland lawmakers, too, were holding out. They have opposed any deal that would see them treated differently from England, Wales and Scotland — their fellow nations in the United Kingdom. “Discussions continue,” their leader, Arlene Foster, tweeted Wednesday. “Needs to be a sensible deal which unionists and nationalists can support.” The key sticking point in the closed-door talks in Brussels has been what happens to the border between Northern Ireland, which will leave with the rest of the U.K., and the Republic of Ireland, which will remain a member of the E.U. The border has proved to be one of the most vexing issues facing negotiators over the past three years. Today, the boundary is mostly invisible. A driver whizzing between Belfast and Dublin is not required to stop for any customs check or security control. There are no tollbooths, no cameras, not even a signpost. The promise of an open border was central to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended the Troubles, as the 30-year period of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland is known. Both the U.K. and the E.U. say they want to keep the border open to preserve the hard-won peace. But they have disagreed about how to achieve that. The bargain they discussed Wednesday appeared to place Northern Ireland in a U.K. customs zone but with E.U. trade rules. But in a late-night meeting with chief Brexit


5 local beers you should be drinking this fall

Fall is the best season for the restless beer lover. As it begins, we’re just starting to transition away from light, beach-friendly summer lagers and tart, refreshing sours. We pass through a kaleidoscope of styles — including fresh-hop IPAs, malty German-style festbiers, complex saisons, dark brown ales and yes, beers with pumpkin and spice — before the parade of boozy Christmas ales and imperial stouts begin coming down the chimney and packing beer shop shelves. These five Virginia and Maryland craft beers, all available at better beer stores, are the ones to sip now. Foxy is the most perfectly autumnal beer. The copper-colored can is covered with cheerful drawings of falling orange and gold leaves. The copper-red beer inside is redolent with heady notes of resinous pine and a crisp, grapefruit-hop bitterness, but balanced by toffee, bready and earthy malts. It’s a perfect combination that pairs well with hearty tailgating foods, but it has enough character that you can knock back a few around a firepit or while raking leaves. It’s a visitor that you’ll be happy to welcome back year after year. Pilsener is the beer style most associated with the Czech Republic. After all, the town of Plzen was the birthplace of the golden lager in the 1840s, and the first example, Pilsner Urquell, is still sold around the world. But when you visit pubs in Prague, you’ll probably find yourself drinking glass after glass of “Tmave Pivo,” which means “dark beer.’ Washingtonians have a rare chance to try Tmave this fall, thanks to brewer Jonathan Reeves at Port City Brewing. In his quest for authenticity, Reeves uses only Czech ingredients, then lagers the beer for six weeks and serves it unfiltered, leading to a smooth, roasty beer with a caramel maltiness and some zing from the hops. While not available in bottle or can, it’s on draft in Port City’s tap room and around the city through the end of November. Pumpkin beers aren’t as popular as they were in the first half of the decade, when bar taps and beer shelves were filled with potent “pumpkin stouts” packed with flavors of graham crackers and pumpkin pie. (They never taste like actual pumpkin, just nutmeg and clove and spices.) Over time, brewers, too, seem to have gotten bored with indistinguishable Pumpkin Spice Stouts, and have begun making pumpkin beers with actual character. Hardywood’s Farmhouse Pumpkin Ale looks


Facing unbearable heat, Qatar has begun to air condition the outdoors

unbearable. You cannot function effectively,” says Yousef al-Horr, founder of the Gulf Organization for Research and Development. Yet outdoor air conditioning is part of a vicious cycle. Carbon emissions create global warming, which creates the desire for air conditioning, which creates the need for burning fuels that emit more carbon dioxide. In Qatar, total cooling capacity is expected to nearly double from 2016 to 2030, according to the International District Cooling & Heating Conference. And it’s going to get hotter. By the time average global warming hits 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), Qatar’s temperatures would soar, said Mohammed Ayoub, senior research director at the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute. In rapidly growing urban areas throughout the Middle East, some predict cities could become uninhabitable. “We’re talking about 4 to 6 degrees Celsius (7.2 to 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) increase in an area that already experiences high temperatures,” Ayoub said. “So, what we’re looking at more is a question of how does this impact the health and productivity of the population.” The danger is acute in Qatar because of the Persian Gulf humidity. The human body cools off when its sweat evaporates. But when humidity is very high, evaporation slows or stops. “If it’s hot and humid and the relative humidity is close to 100 percent, you can die from the heat you produce yourself,” said Jos Lelieveld, an atmospheric chemist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany who is an expert on Middle East climate. That became abundantly clear in late September, as Doha hosted the 2019 World Athletics Championships. It moved the start time for the women’s marathon to midnight Sept. 28. Water stations handed out sponges dipped in ice-cold water. First-aid responders outnumbered the contestants. But temperatures hovered around 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32.2 degrees Celsius) and 28 of the 68 starters failed to finish, some taken off in wheelchairs. Workers are particularly at risk. A German television report alleged hundreds of deaths among foreign workers in Qatar in recent years, prompting new limits on outdoor work. A July article in the journal Cardiology said that 200 of 571 fatal cardiac problems among Nepalese migrants working there were caused by “severe heat stress” and could have been avoided. The U.S. Air Force calls very hot days “black flag days” and limits exposure of troops stationed at al-Udeid Air Base. Personnel conducting patrols or aircraft maintenance work


Lelieveld, the atmospheric chemist in Germany, says the country is caught in a feedback loop. Though there are virtually no clouds or rain in Qatar, rising water temperatures in the Persian Gulf lead to more atmospheric humidity in certain months. That means there is more water vapor, which is a greenhouse gas and contributes to yet more warming. “The story is that these areas are warming faster than the rest of the globe, and in certain cities on top of that you have an urban heat island effect and urban pollution,” said Lelieveld. Ayoub, the climate research director, worries that some extreme weather events such as dust storms or rainstorms might be tied to climate change, too. And on Oct. 20 last year, as much as 98 millimeters (3.9 inches) of rain — 120 percent of the annual average and 25 times as much as the average October — fell in just four hours. The freak storm flooded homes and roads. “It is an outlier,” Ayoub said. “The question is: Is it part of a trend?” In the Middle East, concerns are rising that the combination of heat and humidity will one day exceed the capacity of humans to tolerate the outdoors. In such conditions, air conditioning would no longer be a convenience; it would be essential to survival. “I often get asked: ‘Can we reverse whatever is happening in the climate?’ ” Mannai said in an email. “I ask: Can you turn off air conditioning and refrigeration and stop using cars? Nobody will say yes.” Mannai advises “adapting to the new norm,” which carries a dual meaning. It is in one sense a surrender, a realization that there is little to be done about the vast store of carbon in the atmosphere. Yet it also means that in finite urban localities, it might be possible to moderate temperatures. In August, Qatar’s Public Works Authority paved over a 200-meter stretch of road near the souq with layers of bright blue material designed by a Japanese company. Unlike asphalt, the material reflects much of the sun’s radiation. Temperature readings dropped by as much as 12 degrees to a mere 136.4 degrees Fahrenheit (58 degrees Celsius). A short walk away, the Qatar Foundation — a progressive organization set up by Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the current emir’s mother — is overseeing a high-end bit of urban planning known as the Msheireb. The


ESPN’s politics policy — and its journalism — tested by NBA-China controversy

When a tweet from a leading basketball executive incited an international incident last week, the NBA found itself embroiled in a media firestorm, with rippling ramifications about its values, its business and its international future. A sports media company that prides itself on blanketing that league with wall-to-wall coverage — and likes to call itself the place of record in sports — should have been salivating. But ESPN’s handling of the story of Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey’s tweet supporting Hong Kong demonstrators and the controversy that followed has been more confusing than authoritative. The company’s website relied on news services instead of well-known ESPN writers. Several producers of ESPN opinion shows were warned to avoid the topic of Chinese politics, as Deadspin first reported. And a well-known ESPN NBA reporter was told to scuttle a planned podcast interview with an expert on China. Since ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro took over the network’s top job a year and a half ago, he has stressed ESPN’s apolitical nature while at the same time insisting that it would remain a news powerhouse. “What we’ve said from Day 1 is that we’re the place of record. We are covering the intersection of sports and politics,” he said over the summer. But while ESPN employs many of the country’s best-known NBA reporters, as well as a staff that helped ESPN the Magazine win a recent national award, those resources appear not to have been marshaled in the wake of the Morey tweet, even to cover the NBA side of the story. There were no detailed reports about how front offices were dealing with the fallout or extended analyses of how the NBA’s business might be affected, no primers on how the league arrived at this crucial point. Neither were there think pieces on the league’s handling of China through the lens of its past progressive social justice stances. There was no examination of whether Morey can continue to do his job effectively or of what might happen to NBA franchise valuations. The Wall Street Journal wrote about the role of Yao Ming, the former Rockets star and now head of Chinese basketball, in the controversy; Yahoo reported that teams around the league were worried about a shrinking salary cap in the wake of the Chinese reaction to Morey’s tweet; the Houston Chronicle estimated the Rockets could lose as much as $25 million this year.


Columbia Heights is a vibrant, diverse and, for D.C., affordable neighborhood

line. Across the street from the Columbia Heights Metro station, retail developer DC USA opened a mall that includes a Target, Best Buy, and Bed Bath and Beyond. But as the neighborhood has developed, crime has plagued its residents. One night last month, five people were shot, one fatally, on Columbia Road. A report by TV station WUSA9 found that violent crime was up nearly 60 percent year-to-date in the area surrounding the Columbia Road shooting and that nearly every month this year has been more violent than the three-year average for the neighborhood. “This has been a very tough year for our community, especially with gun violence,” Christine Miller, advisory neighborhood commissioner for ANC 1A05, wrote in an email. “My work before I became a commissioner and during has focused a lot on how we are lifting up and supporting our youth as the ultimate violence prevention. . . . We recognize that there is a role for the police and enforcement, but as community leaders, I have emphasized the proactive solutions we have available through schools, social service providers, and the many local organizations doing the hard work to ensure area youth are connected to the community in meaningful ways, have choices and opportunities.” Living there: There are 118 properties listed for sale in Columbia Heights. The most expensive is a three-bedroom, three-bathroom condo for $2.4 million. The least expensive is a rowhouse in need of substantial rehabilitation for $100,000. The average sales price of homes in Columbia Heights in 2018 was $617,441. “The bustling Columbia Heights neighborhood offers a wide variety of retail and dining options and a vibrant culture that together are otherwise difficult to find elsewhere in the city,” Homaira Karimi, an agent with TTR Sotheby’s International Realty, wrote in an email. “That along with its relatively affordable pricing and central location makes it an ideal neighborhood for both first-time and repeat home buyers. In taking a look at the numbers, we’re seeing that Columbia Heights continues to remain more affordable than the rest of Northwest D.C., with the average sales price being 28 percent lower.” Karimi said the median time of a Columbia Heights home on the market is 14 days, and properties are selling for 99 percent of their asking price. According to Zillow.com, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $1,972. The neighborhood has three public housing projects. Schools: Transit: haben.kelati@washpost.com


Bye, Bei Bei: Panda will leave National Zoo for China next month

Bei Bei, one of the National Zoo’s giant pandas, will leave the nation’s capital Nov. 19 to live in China, zoo officials said Friday. The panda’s move has long been expected and is part of an agreement with China that all giant panda cubs born in U.S. zoos be sent to a breeding program in China after their fourth birthday. Bei Bei turned 4 on Aug. 22. He will join two other D.C. giant panda cubs that have been sent to China in recent years: Bao Bao in 2017 and her brother, Tai Shan, in 2010. In Bei Bei’s case, the zoo announced weeks ago that plans were underway for him to go to China. Typically, there’s plenty of fanfare when one of the zoo’s pandas gets shipped across the globe, including hordes of extra visitors during the animal’s final days in Washington. Bei Bei was described on Friday as being a member of the zoo “family” who will be missed. "Our team has cared for him, learned from him and, along with millions, loved watching him grow," Steve Monfort, director of the National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, said in a statement. "We're sad he's leaving, but excited for the contributions he will make to the global giant panda population." To prepare Bei Bei for the journey, zookeepers have been getting him acclimated to a travel crate. The crate will be placed inside the panda habitat and keepers will work with Bei Bei to move through it daily, officials said. Once he’s gotten used to walking through the crate, they will “acclimate him to spending short periods of time in it with the door closed,” zoo officials said in a statement. A panda keeper and a veterinarian will accompany Bei Bei on the 16-hour nonstop flight from Washington to Chengdu, China, on an aircraft provided by FedEx. That company flew the other D.C. pandas to China as well. Experts will monitor Bei Bei during the trip and carry his favorite treats, including bamboo, apples, pears, carrots, cooked sweet potatoes and biscuits. Zoo officials said fall is a better time for pandas to travel, avoiding hot summer months. Once the giant panda arrives in Chengdu, Bei Bei’s new keepers will accompany him to the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda. Keepers from the National Zoo will stay with him until he settles in. Bei Bei will join


A bird struck a Navy ‘doomsday’ plane. It caused millions in damage.

The Navy’s “doomsday” plane wasn’t supposed to be on the ground in Maryland for long. Instead, the E-6B Mercury — a flying communications and command post designed to play a critical role during a nuclear war — should have briefly touched down before taking off again. But as the hulking aircraft was attempting to perform the maneuver earlier this month at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station, things didn’t quite go according to plan. A wayward bird struck one of the plane’s four engines when it was landing on Oct. 2, temporarily grounding it and causing at least $2 million in damage, Tim Boulay, communications director for the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, told The Washington Post in an email Thursday. The incident was classified by the Naval Safety Center as a “class A” mishap, which also applies to cases that result in aircraft destruction, death or permanent disability. At the time of the costly bird encounter, a team of people were on board conducting a systems test, but no one was injured, Boulay said. It is unclear what species of feathered creature collided with the $141.7 million plane, and the incident remains under investigation. As of Thursday, Boulay said the damaged engine had been replaced and the aircraft was back in service. The bird strike comes just months after another E-6B Mercury suffered millions in damage at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, the Navy Times reported. Navy officials said the plane was being towed out of a hangar in February when it clipped the structure. E-6B Mercury planes are a critical component of the Navy’s “Take Charge and Move Out” (TACAMO) mission. Derived from Boeing’s commercial 707 jet, the aircraft connects U.S. leaders to an arsenal of nuclear warheads ready to be delivered from land, air and sea in times of crisis, according to a Navy fact sheet. Until 1991, variations of the plane were kept in the air nonstop for three decades, providing a 24-hour link between the president and nuclear submarines during the Cold War, according to The Post. The E-6B Mercury was accepted by the Navy in 1997 and deployed about a year later. The planes are just over 150 feet long and roughly 42 feet high. They can travel at 600 mph and have a range of 6,600 nautical miles. Like every other plane, however, the E-6B Mercury does not come equipped with