Trump and Erdogan ask the same question about the killing of Khashoggi: ‘Where’s the body?’

the Brookings Institution who has expertise in Turkish relations. “If the body appears in the way the leaks suggest, it gives credence to the premeditated nature of this attack and reflects poorly on the Saudi regime.” On Thursday, CIA Director Gina Haspel briefed Trump about her recent trip to Turkey, where she listened to purported audio of Khashoggi’s killing. But even after the meeting, U.S. officials made clear they needed additional information before taking further punitive action. “We continue to seek all relevant facts in this case,” said State Department spokesman Robert Palladino. “As we learn more, we will take additional actions as the facts warrant.” A State Department official said Khashoggi’s remains “should be located and returned to his family for a proper burial as soon as possible.” In his speech, Erdogan suggested that Turkey has additional “information and documents” about the killing that it would eventually reveal and repeated his call for Saudi Arabia to hand over the 18 people it has arrested in the case if the country’s authorities could not “make them talk.” Later in the day, the semiofficial Anadolu Agency reported that Turkish prosecutors were set to “demand” the extradition of those suspects. “Hand them over to us,” Erdogan said. “The event took place in Istanbul. We will judge them.” A senior Turkish official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Turkey was requesting the extradition because Khashoggi was murdered by Saudis who traveled to Turkey, and because it was “clear that the judicial system in Turkey is better equipped to genuinely serve the cause of justice in this case.” In their own ways, Turkey and the United States are pressing Saudi Arabia to provide a credible explanation for a crime that has drawn global condemnation and has prompted countries to reevaluate their ties with the Middle East power. U.S. and foreign officials say such an operation — involving a team of Saudi agents — was unlikely to have taken place without the knowledge of the kingdom’s leaders, including ambitious Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In the aftermath of Khashoggi’s killing inside the Saudi Consulate on Oct. 2, Saudi Arabia has offered shifting explanations for what happened, at one point saying Khashoggi had walked out of the rear of the building unharmed and later saying his death resulted from a fistfight. But on Thursday, the country made its first apparent acknowledgment that the operation


9th person dies amid virus outbreak at New Jersey pediatric center

NEW JERSEY 9th person dies amid outbreak of virus A ninth person has died at a pediatric rehabilitation center amid an outbreak of a respiratory virus, New Jersey health officials said. An additional “medically fragile child” who had a confirmed case of adenovirus at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation died Saturday night, the state’s health department said. Adenovirus has not been confirmed in another person who died Friday, officials said. A staff member also became ill. New diagnoses bring the total number of cases to 25. Those affected range in age from toddlers to young adults, with the vast majority younger than 18. Adenovirus usually poses little risk for healthy people and typically causes mild cold or flu symptoms. Some strains also cause diarrhea and conjunctivitis. The strain found in the rehab center outbreak is among the more potent types and sometimes causes more serious respiratory illness, especially among those with weak immune systems. The first symptoms showed up Sept. 26, and the state was notified of an outbreak Oct. 9, officials said. — Associated Press NEW YORK Deli may have sold 1 of winning lottery tickets The co-owner of a Manhattan deli where someone purchased one of two Powerball tickets that hit the $688 million jackpot said that he probably sold the winning ticket, but that he has no idea who won. Jose Espinosa, 41, and his father own the West Harlem Deli, which lottery officials say sold a ticket that matched all six numbers in Saturday night’s drawing for the fourth-largest lottery prize in U.S. history. The ticket holder will split the winnings with whoever purchased the other winning ticket from a convenience store in a small Iowa town. The other winning ticket was sold at Casey’s convenience store in Redfield, Iowa, a rural community of about 800 people about 35 mile west of Des Moines. A clerk who answered the phone at the store Sunday declined to comment. — Associated Press Mercedes scrutinized over recall notices: Austin lifts boil-water advisory: — Associated Press


Marine Corps Marathon offers one vet the chance to inspire others, reclaim active lifestyle

Crystal City before concluding with a two-mile uphill to the Iwo Jima Memorial back in Arlington. “There’s nothing like it,” said Evanko, who has run 20 marathons, including the Marine Corps Marathon in 2015. “The amount of patriotism that you see, not just from the Marines that are there, but all the armed forces are represented, and the sights that you see as you run past with the monuments and museums are really special.” Soto had never been a runner when he returned home to San Antonio after the 2003 IED attack. But even as he tried to restart a normal active lifestyle, the slightest movements — getting in and out of a car, getting out of bed, bending over — caused debilitating back pain. He tried to self-medicate, he said, with simple pain medication like ibuprofen. He gained weight, and he fell into bad habits. He drank too much, he said, and then he would feel sedentary and try to exercise and the pain returned. Nearly five years after the explosion, medical professionals recognized he had shifted his gait to avoid pain, but in the process built up scar tissue around his injury and severely weakened muscles in his back. He retaught himself everyday tasks and lost weight and felt good enough that he redeployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2011. When members of his platoon all signed up for a 5K run on the base, he joined, too, figuring he would walk the route. But as he started, his back felt great. He started jogging, and when jogging felt okay, running. “For years being told I couldn’t do it or medication was the answer, psychologically it was hard to think I could try again,” Soto said. But when he returned home in May 2012, he signed up for local fun runs. He joined a veterans' running group that set up support stations along race routes in case participants needed a breather or just someone to talk to along the way. Before long, Soto fell in love with distance running. He said he wants to show other vets from the volunteer group Hope for the Warriors that if he can recover and live an active life again, they can, too. “Now it’s just a matter of continuing to enjoy this as much as I can until I can’t run distance anymore,” he said. “But I don’t see myself slowing down.”


Hilary Hahn shows mature artistry with Bach violin solos

For violinist Hilary Hahn, Friday’s concert at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater was a homecoming, in more ways than one. It marked the lone stop in the region on the Baltimore native’s ongoing international tour. And for this inquisitive and searching musician, it also was a return to the foundation and summit of the violin repertory, the solo works of Bach — music she recorded for her teenage debut album from 1997 and which she now revisits as a fully fledged artist. Hahn’s recital, featuring Bach’s first sonata and the first and second partitas, was an exhibition of state-of-the-art violin performance. She combined the best of old-school qualities — seamless legato phrasing, a muscular tone and a majestic sense of line — with more modern ideas about voicing, but without the breathy mannerisms that can afflict period performance. With her command of large-scale architecture and her subtle shadings, Hahn conjured into being a cathedral of sound: spacious and full of dazzling beauty. Compared with the tightly coiled performances on her recent studio album of these works, Friday’s recital, presented by Washington Performing Arts, seemed to catch Hahn in a more ruminative mood. In the slow opening movements of the G-minor sonata and B-minor partita, Hahn’s phrasing felt more relaxed and elastic, with a quieter, introspective quality. No allowances needed to be made, though, for the scintillating fast movements, whose daunting chords and fiendish runs emerged just as technically secure in concert as on record. Hahn’s meticulous readings were as much acts of illumination as of interpretation, revealing the structure of these dense works with astonishing clarity. Hahn’s traversal of the famous Chaconne, which concludes the D-minor partita, displayed all the qualities that have launched her to stardom: the rich sonority, intense concentration and instinctive command of drama. Hahn sustained an epic sense of line through cycles of harmonic tension and release, driving the music to its ecstatic climaxes with utter inevitability and retreating inward with doleful whispers. In the wake of the Chaconne’s tragic wreckage, Hahn left the audience with a parting gift: the Andante from Bach’s A-minor sonata, a serenely meditative close to a memorable concert. style@washpost.com


Marine Corps Marathon events to affect traffic, parking and transit

The Marine Corps Marathon, an annual event that takes runners through monumental Washington, will close roadways along the Potomac River in the District and Arlington on Sunday. About 30,000 people will run a 26.2-mile route that starts and ends in Arlington, and takes runners across the Potomac River into Georgetown, Rock Creek Park and the Mall area for panoramic views of the monuments. Thousands of supporters will cheer them on. The Sunday marathon will culminate a weekend of events that will bring additional traffic to National Harbor in Prince George’s County, Md., where runners will be picking up their race packets. A kids run Saturday is likely to create some delays in traffic and transit. The massive crowds and road closures for the marathon on Sunday will make driving and parking challenging. Drivers should avoid traveling near or within the marathon’s perimeter on the day. Those entering the area are advised to use public transit instead. Metro will open at 6 a.m. — two hours early — to accommodate race crowds, and the transit agency will operate extra trains on the Blue and Yellow lines. See more Metro details below. Runners and spectators can expect some rain at least part of Saturday, and temperatures should hold in the low to mid-50s with gusty winds. Sunday’s forecast is much better with a greater chance of some glimpses of sun and temperatures rising to the mid- to upper 50s, according to The Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang. This map will help you explore the 2018 Marine Corps Marathon. Keep reading for more travel tips and a full list of the street closings. The marathon officially starts at 7:45 a.m. The start line is on Route 110 between the Pentagon and Arlington Memorial Drive. The Finish Festival, where runners meet up with their supporters, is in the area around Wilson Boulevard and North Lynn Street in Rosslyn. This is close to the Rosslyn Metro station. The Finish Festival wraps up around 3 p.m. Events include a 10K run Sunday that will take participants from the U.S. Capitol to the Marine Corps War Memorial. The Kids Run on Saturday is likely to draw as many as 3,600 children for the one-mile run at the Pentagon parking lot. A packet pickup and health and fitness expo will be held at the Gaylord National Resort starting Friday. This will add to traffic at National Harbor in


Trump administration moves to cut off Chinese semiconductor maker from U.S. exports

trade and technology disputes with China, the Trump administration on Monday took action to cut off a Chinese state-backed semiconductor maker from U.S. exports of components, software and technology goods. The Commerce Department said it has put Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit on a list of entities that cannot purchase such products from U.S. firms, citing a “significant risk” that the Chinese firm’s new memory chip capacity will threaten the viability of American suppliers of such chips for military systems. It said in a statement that Fujian Jinhua “poses a significant risk of becoming involved in activities that are contrary to the national interests of the United States.” The action is similar to a Commerce Department move that nearly put Chinese telecommunications equipment company ZTE Corp. out of business earlier this year by cutting it off from U.S. suppliers. ZTE, which had violated a deal to settle violations of sanctions on Iran and North Korea, was allowed to resume purchases of U.S. products after a revised settlement and payment of a $1 billion fine. The action against Fujian Jinhua is likely to ignite new tensions between Beijing and Washington since the company is at the heart of the “Made in China 2025” program. — Reuters TECHNOLOGY IBM aims at cloud market with Red Hat IBM’s $33 billion purchase of Red Hat — the world’s second-largest technology deal ever — is aimed at catapulting the company into the ranks of the top cloud software competitors. The cash deal confirmed by the company on Sunday, IBM’s biggest by far, boosts the 107-year-old computer-services giant’s credentials overnight in the fast-growing and lucrative cloud market — and gives it potential for real revenue growth. The company once synonymous with mainframe computing has been slow to adopt cloud-related technologies and has had to play catch-up to market leaders Amazon and Microsoft in offering computing and other software and services over the Internet. (Amazon founder Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.) IBM has been positioning itself as a leader in the so-called hybrid cloud market — in which companies run programs on both their own internal servers and the big “public” cloud providers — Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft’s Azure — at the same time. Red Hat, which sells software and services based on the open-source Linux operating system, helps companies bridge different platforms. — Bloomberg News Also in Business U.S. consumer spending — From news services


What are the prospects for South Sudan’s new peace agreement? Here are the critical next steps.

It’s been a month since South Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was announced. What can research on other CPAs tell us about this one? On Sept. 12, South Sudan President Salva Kiir and vice president turned rebel leader Riek Machar signed the CPA to end a five-year civil war. The agreement received a tepid reception from diplomats, academics and policy analysts. Kiir and Machar signed a similar CPA in 2015, but fighting resumed within months. The new CPA may succeed — if Kiir and Machar implement its key provisions Our research identifies 51 categories of reforms from 39 CPAs since 1989. We classified the reforms in South Sudan’s 2015 and 2018 agreements and found that 26 of the 27 reforms in the new agreement were also in the 2015 agreement. Even the commitments’ details are similar. We used text analysis to gauge the agreements’ similarity — it was 0.9 on a 0 to 1 scale, where 1 indicates identical words. We find that when signatories carry out more of a CPA’s reforms, peace is more likely to last. When the 2015 CPA collapsed in 2016, 20 percent of its reforms had been implemented. Overall, our data show signatories complete, on average, 52 percent of a CPA’s reforms within two years. Preserving the cease-fire and safeguards are critical next steps In the coming months, maintaining the cease-fire and establishing “built-in safeguards” are critical. Safeguards allow signatories to discuss disputes over the peace process, reducing the likelihood that parties resort to violence. Both of South Sudan’s agreements include two safeguards: a temporary power-sharing government and monitoring groups to oversee the implementation and cease-fire. However, by the end of 2015, these were only minimally implemented. There have been cease-fire breakdowns already, but these appear fewer and less severe than after the 2015 CPA. Importantly, after these recent breakdowns, Kiir ordered the army to respect the cease-fire. Cease-fire violations remain limited when leaders reject, rather than justify, the use of force. In our data, 71 percent of cease-fires experience similar or worse breakdowns in their first year. The cease-fire monitoring group met the agreement’s initial deadline to organize and began investigating the violations. However, the implementation monitoring group missed its target to hold its first meeting due to the signatories’ delay in nominating their representatives. Such delays are common. The 2018 agreement restored the 2015 transitional power-sharing government Kiir will remain president while Machar


Brexit: The next big 5 things to watch

of question to be asked. 4. Ireland’s border is a huge question The Irish border has become the most intractable issue in the withdrawal negotiations, as Northern Ireland is part of Britain, but the Republic of Ireland is, and will remain, an E.U. member. Whatever Brexit deal is struck (or not) will have a significant impact on trade and security. However, for the Democratic Unionists, a Northern Ireland party whose votes give May a majority in Parliament, it is also integral to questions of identity and their place in Britain. The remaining E.U. member states have been solidly behind the Irish government, refusing to countenance signing off a withdrawal agreement unless it contains an Irish “backstop” that would keep Northern Ireland in the customs union and parts of the single market to avoid an internal Irish border even in the event of a “hard Brexit.” There is still some hope in London that Dublin might agree to a slight softening of the language around the backstop, if only because the Republic of Ireland would be the member state worst affected by a no-deal outcome. As of yet, however, there seems little sign of this happening. 5. And the E.U. has other worries Brexit is not the only or even the top priority for the E.U. Concerns over migration and the continuing demands of euro-zone governance tend to take priority. The other 27 E.U. states have been happy to entrust the process to their chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, thereby ensuring continued unity. And, of course, member states also have been keen to benchmark Brexit as an unfavorable outcome for any state considering following suit. However, the actual prospect of Brexit may start to sharpen minds. A punitive Brexit could have long-term political and economic consequences not just for relations between the E.U. and Britain but also the wider geopolitical and security landscape in Europe. If the British people felt they were being punished by the E.U., support not only for European integration, but conceivably also for solidarity within NATO, might weaken. European negotiations have a habit of going to the wire — and Brexit will be no different. But with Brexit, there is a legally defined end date — March 29, 2019 — and the default outcome is not the status quo ante but a no-deal scenario that would be profoundly damaging. The stakes, then, could not be higher. Tim Haughton


Turkey warns Saudi Arabia against stalling investigation of Khashoggi slaying

ISTANBUL — Turkey’s foreign minister warned Saudi Arabia on Monday against prolonging an inquiry into Jamal Khashoggi’s slaying, urging the kingdom to accept its “very large” responsibility in investigating the writer’s death as the Saudi chief prosecutor arrived in Istanbul for talks. Saud al-Mojeb, who is leading the Saudi government’s inquiry, met with his Turkish counterpart for the first time Monday, Turkey’s state-run news agency reported. The outcome of the talks was not immediately clear. A team of 15 Saudi agents was involved in the killing of Khashoggi — a Washington Post contributing columnist — inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul this month, Turkish officials have concluded, calling it a premeditated crime. Turkey, through a gradual release of information and public statements, has helped feed an international outcry over the case and pressured Saudi Arabia to concede its role. Mojeb’s arrival in Istanbul was the latest step in a high-stakes investigation that could implicate members of the Saudi leadership and potentially reshape the region’s politics. Turkish investigators have reviewed thousands of hours of closed-circuit-television footage, taken forensic samples from the consulate grounds and released details of the passports of the 15 Saudis they say were involved. Turkey also played a purported audio of the killing for CIA Director Gina Haspel last week. “The responsibility of Saudi Arabia is very large here,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a news conference Monday, adding that Khashoggi’s remains have not been found. “This cooperation must continue,” Cavusoglu said of the meeting between the two countries’ prosecutors. But the investigation “should not be prolonged,” he said. “All the facts should be revealed.” Khashoggi entered the consulate around 1 p.m. Oct. 2 to retrieve paperwork for his upcoming marriage to his Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz. He had fled Saudi Arabia and taken up residence in the United States, where he wrote columns for The Post. He was a critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto Saudi ruler, who has purged rivals and consolidated power. Turkish investigators say Khashoggi was murdered and then dismembered. In response to the uproar, Saudi authorities arrested 18 suspects, fired five officials and ordered a reorganization of the nation’s intelligence agency. Turkey has called on Saudi Arabia to extradite the 18 suspects as part of the investigation. At a memorial service Monday night in London, Cengiz said she never imagined such barbarity was awaiting Khashoggi inside the consulate.


Heart failure stem cell trial to be paused after calls for retractions

about those conferences. Murry’s work was one of two papers eventually published in the journal Nature that showed bone marrow cells did not regenerate the heart, as Anversa had found. Anversa’s lab began to focus on a population of heart stem cells, called c-kit-positive cells, that could regrow muscle tissue. “The results that they showed were really quite amazing to many of us, from the perspective of being developmental biologists or cardiac physiologists. We didn’t understand how things could be possible; they didn’t present a mechanism, and it just seemed to be just really extraordinary — and extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof,” said Benoit Bruneau, a cardiovascular disease researcher at the Gladstone Institutes. More recently, other researchers have shown those c-kit heart stem cells do not turn into heart muscle. But other researchers have injected those cells into animal hearts and observed an improvement in heart function, leading to a new theory that the cells secrete molecules that help regenerate the heart. Because Anversa’s work had such influence, researchers think it is right to take stock of the science. “I think it’s obviously the responsible thing to do, to pause and reevaluate the scientific basis for a clinical trial like this, and to really carefully ask the question — is there still a good scientific basis for it,” said Richard T. Lee, a stem cell biologist at Harvard. “I won’t make that judgment, but I think it’s quite obvious, you can’t do trials on patients when there is a question about the basis.” Beyond the trial, scientists hope a reexamination of the field will help them understand how these ideas about heart repair became so dominant despite questions about how they work. Anversa received more than $59 million in taxpayer-funded research support, and many in the field say his opinions carried significant weight. “The field was ripe for something new for these patients we all took care of and had nothing else. They’re desperate and miserable, and their lives are bad — it’s awful. It became, who cares how it works — it just does,” Tardiff said. “We need to learn from this, or we’re going to do it again.” Read more: Whales go quiet and dolphins shout in loud oceans, new studies show No, NASA didn’t fix the Hubble Telescope by just turning it off and on again Continent’s oldest spear points provide new clues about the first Americans


It’s not just Amazon. Sam’s Club debuts cashier-less store in race for the future of shopping.

update in real time, and customers can place orders through the app for pickup within the hour. At just 32,000 square feet, Sam’s Club now is roughly a quarter of the size of a typical store, with a specific focus on selling produce, meat and alcohol. Scan & Go technology had been tested at Walmart stores in Texas, Arkansas, Florida and Tennessee but was discontinued earlier this year. One labor-union backed group told The Dallas Morning News that Walmart did away with Scan & Go because “eliminating cashiers doesn’t result in more convenient shopping.” But other analysts speculated that the sheer cost of the technology was difficult to justify in a smaller physical store with fewer items for sale. Technological experiments like Sam’s Club Now are born of retailers' desire to improve speed and convenience for customers, while also reducing their own costs and inefficiencies, said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail. Checkout counters create bottlenecks, Saunders said, and soak up a chunk of employee time. But customers don’t always embrace self-checkout models or other tech-savvy options. While some like being in control of their whole shopping experience, Saunders said, others may feel less comfortable using the app and prefer interacting with human beings. Those skeptics may soon have little choice. “It’s obviously experimental at this stage, from Walmart’s point of view,” Saunders said. “This is certainly the direction in which the market is going.” Greg Melich, retail analyst at MoffettNathanson, said Walmart is smart to debut the store in a Sam’s Club because of the chain’s membership-only model. Melich said that much of Amazon Go’s success likely comes from a core base of Amazon Prime members, and that through Sam’s Club Now, Walmart can capitalize on a core group of loyal shoppers already invested in the company. A decade ago, self-checkout kiosks at grocery and convenience stores laid the foundation for what Melich dubbed the “ultimate self-checkout” being rolled out at Sam’s Club Now. But Melich said its success will ultimately boil down to a fundamental question facing retailers since before “app” was a word: “Do your members like it? Does it increase their frequency of shopping?" “This is a natural step,” Melich said. “Walmart is clearly trying to be on the forefront of keeping up. It’s still the early days.” Read more: Amazon pulls in a record $2.9 billion in quarterly profit Inside Target’s plan to win


Mattis receives assurances from top Saudi diplomat over ‘complete investigation’ into Khashoggi’s death

PRAGUE — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said he received assurances from Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat that the kingdom would conduct a full and complete investigation into the slaying of Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi. Mattis met Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir over lunch Saturday at a security conference in Bahrain. Their discussion came after Mattis condemned Khashoggi’s killing during a speech at the event and warned that such extralegal behavior by nations risked destabilizing the Middle East. “We discussed it,” Mattis said, recounting the conversation with Jubeir on Sunday while traveling to the Czech Republic. Their discussion, Mattis said, underscored “the need for transparency, a full and complete investigation.” “He said, ‘We need to know what happened.’ It was very collaborative, in agreement,” Mattis added. The lunchtime discussion came after Jubeir called the global reaction to Khashoggi’s killing “fairly hysterical” in response to questions about the murder at the security conference. The top Saudi diplomat suggested people were jumping to conclusions about guilt before Riyadh had finished its investigation. “We will know the truth,” Jubeir said. “We will hold those responsible accountable. And we will put in place mechanisms to prevent it from happening again.” Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi government who had fled the kingdom and taken up residency in the United States, entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 to retrieve paperwork that he needed to marry his Turkish fiancee. Turkish officials say a “hit squad” of Saudi agents dispatched from the gulf killed Khashoggi in the consulate and dismembered his body before returning to Saudi soil. Turkey says it has secret recordings of the events, which Turkish officials recently played for CIA Director Gina Haspel. Turkey’s well of information about the killing, which has trickled out in news reports, has put pressure on Saudi Arabia reveal what its government knew about what appeared to be an extrajudicial state-sanctioned killing. In particular, the incident has raised questions about whether Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a target of Khashoggi’s criticism, knew in advance about the gruesome plot. Riyadh’s shifting explanations about what happened — which President Trump described as the “worst coverup ever” — have led to serious doubts in the United States and elsewhere about whether Riyadh can conduct a fulsome investigation about an incident that could implicate its leadership. Asked at a news conference in Prague how a Saudi government investigation could


Italy’s wine industry is being tested by the effects of climate change in its vineyards

said. His operation is smaller than many in the region. When he started 20 years ago, the vineyard was just a side job, an escape from his briefcase-and-computer office work. Now, he is ready to pass it on to his 22-year-old son, Enrico. And he wants the vineyard to be prepared for whatever comes next. So one recent Saturday, Livio Salvador drove to the region’s annual wine festival where, this year, an event had been added to the schedule: a conference on the wine industry and climate change. More than 250 people filed in, a mix of wine executives in suits and farmers in jeans who filled every seat. One of Italy’s most well-known meteorologists, Luca Mercalli, began by telling the crowd that “what we’re living today is new, unheard of — it has no equal in recent millennia.” The next speaker, Diego Tomasi, was a researcher at an agricultural institute partly funded by the government. Earlier in his career, Tomasi co-wrote a book comparing 19 microclimates within a small zone of northern Italy, describing how even minute changes could alter a wine’s taste. But now, at 58, he has dedicated himself to the more significant changes that are happening. He cued up a slide show that tried to capture what he has been seeing. One chart showed the number of days when maximum temperatures topped 95 degrees Fahrenheit. In 2018, it had happened 13 times. Throughout the 1990s, such days rarely occurred more than once or twice. Another chart showed prolonged heat waves. The region has been seeing high-temperature stretches that were unheard of in the 1970s and 1980s. Since 1990, the median annual temperature in Treviso, a nearby city, has risen 1.5 degrees Celsius. Then Tomasi showed the photos of the sunburns — grapes that were shriveled, darkened. Sometimes, even the leaves showed a reddish char. Tomasi said he first noticed the burns 15 years ago. Now, they are commonplace. He said the burns were “certainly” climate-change related. “We must adapt,” he told the crowd. “We need to come up with vineyards that are conceived for the specific climate conditions we’re now facing.” Some wine experts say regions might eventually have to consider using different grape varietals — something that would force companies to alter their identities. But for now, growers have been more interested in pushing for ways to maintain the health of what they’ve been using


Local man wins 2018 Marine Corps Marathon; 2015 winner takes women’s division

Two months ago, Jeffrey Stein had no idea that he’d be participating in — let alone winning — the 43rd Marine Corps Marathon. Mired in a trial that required his full attention, the 32-year-old Washington resident and public defender was only able to carve out time to run during his daily commute to and from the Archives building. “When you’re in trial, you usually can’t train, and you can’t run because you’re in trial 24/7,” Stein said after Sunday’s race, which brought almost 21,000 runners to its course. “I bought a run commute backpack, which let me run to and from work. No marathon-specific training, but it allowed me to keep a baseline fitness.” Those five-mile runs were all Stein needed to come out on top, as he notched his first career marathon victory with an official time of 2 hours 22 minutes 49 seconds. California resident and Navy Lieutenant Patrick Hearn crossed the finish line 37 seconds later to claim second place, while Navy Lieutenant Commander Will Christian of Chesapeake, Va., came in third in 2:24:23. Jenny Mendez Suanca, the 2015 Marine Corps Marathon winner in the women’s division, added to her trophy case by breaking the tape 6 minutes 15 seconds before the second-place woman, Army Lieutenant Lindsay Gabow of San Antonio. Suanca’s time of 2:40:19 was a new personal best by nearly five minutes. Marine Corps 2nd LT Lindsay Carrick of Fredericksburg, Va finished third. Stein came into this year’s marathon on a mission following a 2017 showing in which he finished eighth. Despite taking a three-month sabbatical in the Middle East, during which he developed a case of runner’s knee, Stein was in control for much of last year’s race before his injury, coupled with a miscommunication about the marathon’s course layout, resulted in him overexerting himself in an attempt to make up ground. “Part of the reason I picked this race is I felt like I needed to reclaim my dignity after we made a wrong turn last year at the start. I sort of had a chip on my shoulder after that. I wanted to come back and redeem myself,” said Stein, who now has his sights on Olympic trials marathon qualifying. While battling through a cramping issue, Hearn battled Stein for much of the race, before Stein ultimately pulled away around mile 24. “I wanted to run the first half in 72 minutes


A college student choked to death during a pancake-eating contest. Now, her family is suing the school.

When the buzzer sounded, Caitlin Nelson did what any other person in an eating contest would do — she started shoveling food into her mouth as quickly as possible. In this case, the food was pancakes. Only Nelson wasn’t a professional competitive eater. She was a 20-year-old junior at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., participating in a school-approved event intended to raise money for charity. Moments after the contest began in March of last year, Nelson started to “shake uncontrollably” and collapsed, according to a lawsuit filed by her family Monday in the Superior Court of Bridgeport, Conn. When police responded, they discovered Nelson’s mouth “was compacted with pancakes almost to her teeth,” the lawsuit said. One officer said the “glob of pancake paste in her airway” was “like concrete.” Nelson died days later, and her cause of death was ruled asphyxia as a result of an obstruction of her airway, the Hartford Courant reported. Tests at the hospital revealed Nelson had suffered severe brain damage from oxygen deprivation, the lawsuit said. “Caitlin’s family is bringing this case to expose the dangers associated with amateur eating contests and to help prevent other families from having to endure this type of preventable tragedy,” the family’s attorney, Katie Mesner-Hage, said in a statement sent to The Washington Post early Tuesday. “These contests are significantly more dangerous than people realize and it’s critically important for the public — especially educational institutions — to understand that certain foods are safer than others and a modicum of forethought can literally save lives.” The lawsuit, which is seeking damages in excess of $15,000, called Nelson’s death “as foreseeable as it was horrific,” alleging that the university is at fault for allowing the pancake-eating contest to happen. The event was part of the university’s annual Greek Week celebration, described in the lawsuit as a “festive and service-oriented culmination of Greek Life on campus.” The university said it is unable to comment on ongoing litigation in an email to The Post on Tuesday. Beyond the “inherent risks” of holding an eating contest with participants who are not professional speed eaters, the lawsuit also pointed out the “particular hazard of pancakes.” Cooked pancakes, which largely consist of flour and liquid, turn into a “thick glob of paste” when they come into contact with saliva or other liquids, the lawsuit said. Several parenting sites include pancakes, and other breadlike


Three quarters of Venice is underwater. There was a marathon Sunday anyway.

The torrential rains and high tides that swept through Italy have killed 10 people and flooded the canal city of Venice, where the water level rose five feet, according to the Agence France-Presse news agency, submerging elevated sidewalks the city uses in inundated areas. Three quarters of the city famously traversed by gondolas is underwater, and residents are wearing high plastic boots to walk around until the flooding subsides. But that did not stop runners from trudging through the streets Sunday in the Venice Marathon. As if running 26.2 miles was not enough, runners splashed through at times knee-high water still bobbing with the tide from the Adriatic Sea. Mekuant Ayenew Gebre of Ethiopia won the men’s race with a time of 2 hours 13 23 seconds. Angela Jemesunde Tanui of Kenya won the women’s race in 2:31:30. Runner Andrew Chessell joked to the London Evening Standard that he “should have hired a gondola”. It’s the second year in a row for the Venice Marathon where things haven’t gone exactly as planned. Last year, guide motorcycles departed the route at mile No. 16, something they’re meant to do to avoid congestion along the later miles of the course, which are not vehicle friendly. “Venice is not a city for cars or motorcycles,” race president and co-founder Enrico Jacomini told NPR. But the runners, including the two men’s favorites, kept following the guides. They ended up on a busy city street and were delayed for two minutes. Eyob Ghebrehiwet Faniel, a local man running only his second marathon, won that race to become the first Italian champion in 22 years. His time of 2:12:16 would barely have edged out Gebre, the 2018 men’s winner, who finished with some wet socks. Read more from The Post: NFL trade news and buzz: What will happen with the Steelers' Le’Veon Bell? Aaron Hernandez was smoking K2 before his suicide, his fellow inmate told investigators Could Eli Manning lose his starting job? The Giants aren’t ruling it out. Josh Gordon starts Monday night game despite report of disciplinary benching by Patriots


To shame a prince, activists want to rename street in front of Saudi embassy in D.C. ‘Jamal Khashoggi Way’

LONDON — It was a gut-punch of an evening. Speakers at a memorial service here on Monday night for the slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi included lifelong friends, human rights activists, fellow journalists, academics and his fiancee Hatice Cengiz, who told the audience “the disappearance of my beloved Jamal has left a hole in my heart and my soul.” Cengiz begged the Saudi regime and Prince Mohammed bin Salman to return Khashoggi’s missing body, so he could be given a proper burial. The last speaker was Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, who said he believed he had found a fitting way to honor his old friend and shame his murderers: Rename the section of New Hampshire Avenue in front of the Saudi embassy in Washington “Jamal Khashoggi Way.” The 60-year-old exile and Washington Post contributing columnist was allegedly killed by Saudi agents at the Consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul a month ago. Because of his unchallenged control of the regime and the high profile of the assassination, many suspect Mohammed is directly responsible — a charge the Saudi prince’s defenders reject. “We are petitioning for the roundabout in front of the Saudi embassy in Washington to be named after Jamal Khashoggi,” Awad said. “I want you to start a petition, that in every street and every city where there is a Saudi embassy or a Saudi mission, demand that it will be renamed after him.” “Imagine if their mail had to be addressed to Khashoggi Way?” Awad said afterward. “That their business cards included such an address?” In Washington, the online petition is the brainchild of two unlikely partners, a pair of think tankers from opposing sides of the ideological aisle — Michael Werz, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, and Gary Schmitt, a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Schmitt told The Washington Post the idea is to troll the Saudis for their unconscionable behavior and to remember Khashoggi stood for freedom of expression and paid the ultimate price for exercising it. “We wouldn’t expect something like this to crest a sea change in U.S. policy,” Schmitt said. “But it’s a good reminder of the limits of partnerships with autocratic regimes.” Schmitt said their petition had already gathered about 1,500 signatures — and that when the number reaches 2,000 or more, he and Werz planned to approach


’For all that is holy, please do not let Trump into Ireland’

welcoming Pope Francis to Ireland,” said a missive Sept. 1. “I am astounded that you are now going to welcome to our country [redacted words] Donald Trump.” “No citizen of the world that respects social justice, care of the planet, and respect for all people of the world can possibly believe that Mr. Trump represents America or the majority of its people with his words and action,” said another letter writer. One wrote that he or she felt “the level of public outrage on this will be unlike anything seen before. I can only hope he is impeached before November.” The letters underscore Trump’s isolation on the world stage in democratic nations, particularly in Europe. Some of the letters mentioned specific issues, including immigration, trade, climate change and human rights. U.S. presidents have traditionally been among Ireland’s most welcomed visitors because of the strong history of migration from that nation and traditionally shared values, particularly about humanitarian assistance to nations in trouble. “Donald Trump has denied Climate Change being real 115 times,” said a writer who attached a list for Varadkar’s perusal. “You’re gong to look stupid to all of your constituents trying to have a worthwhile discussion [redaction].” Another person wrote: “The list of policies detrimental to world peace that he has introduced is too long to cite. You know all this, so why issue an invitation? . . . It was not your finest hour, far from it." The opposition to a Trump visit privately addressed to Varadkar reflected public opposition. Ireland’s Labour Party said when the trip was announced that “there would be no welcome mat laid out for a man of his worldview.” Some suggested that Trump’s main reason for visiting Ireland was because of his golf course, Trump International Golf Links at Doonbeg. Indeed, he planned at the time to spend a single day in Dublin, the Irish capital, after a day at the course, The Post reported at the time, and then move on to a French commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. One writer, with biting sarcasm, provided Varadkar some “unsuitable talking points” should Trump visit, making reference to the fact that Varadkar is of Indian heritage and gay and that Trump seemed confused about European geography, once lumping in Ireland with Britain. Among the topics to be avoided, said the missive: Some of the letters approving


A Yazidi activist was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. But what happens next for Yazidis?

Yazidi survivor, activist and U.N. goodwill ambassador for the dignity of survivors of human trafficking Nadia Murad was jointly awarded the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize with Congolese gynecologist Denis Mukwege earlier this month. It was a long-neglected and symbolic contribution to the efforts of those who struggle against conflict-related sexual violence. The award also was meaningful for Yazidis worldwide. But will this international recognition really change anything for the persecuted group? Most existing literature and aid have made sweeping generalizations about Yazidis, the challenges they face and their needs. My research attempts to complicate that picture, by examining the changing ways Yazidis perceive and practice gender after the genocide. Survivors have diverse experiences of liberation and survival In August 2014, the Islamic State attacked Yazidis in the northern Iraq district of Sinjar, kidnapping and enslaving thousands of Yazidi women and children. While some 1,000 female Yazidi survivors of Islamic State captivity live and receive treatment in Germany, around 2,000 more live in internally displaced-persons camps run by the Kurdistan Regional Government, under precarious conditions, many without any psychological support. Suicides or life-threatening risks remain pervasive in camps. Others live in unfinished buildings outside the camps, trying to reintegrate to life after trauma and focusing on daily survival. Families may not always know how to treat the survivors. And some media outlets have reportedly coerced women into continued trauma by constantly retelling their stories. In my research, I focus on the challenges Yazidi women face after the genocide and the potential transformative influence of mass violence on gender dynamics in Iraq and in the diaspora. I conducted initial fieldwork in Iraqi Kurdistan in May 2018 through in-depth interviews with Yazidi male and female survivors in camps, nondisplaced Yazidis, religious and political leaders and policymakers in the Kurdistan Regional Government. I use an intersectional approach, which considers how different identities interact and create unique experiences of submission and/or privilege for individuals. This approach helps me observe the intersecting effects of social identities within this specific historical, institutional and local context. While conducting my research, I pay careful attention to differences in the individual experiences of older and younger, married and unmarried, urban and rural, captured and non-captured Yazidi women in Iraq or in the diaspora, from different sects. This provides a more nuanced perspective than grouping all these diverse and unique individuals under a single label of “genocide survivors.” Post-genocide gender relations


Turkish prosecutor demands answers from Saudis over Khashoggi killing

ISTANBUL — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday that his chief prosecutor has asked his Saudi counterpart to reveal who ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. The killing has sparked a global firestorm, straining Ankara’s already fraught relationship with Riyadh and pressing the Trump administration to defend its most prized Middle Eastern ally, whose leadership is suspected of sending a 15-man hit squad to carry out the killing. “Our prosecutor asked who sent the group that came here and said that this needed to be looked at,” Erdogan told reporters as he left parliament in Ankara. “We cannot leave this issue unsolved,” he said. “We need to solve it now.” Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi journalist and Washington Post contributing columnist, was last seen in grainy surveillance video on Oct. 2, entering Istanbul’s Saudi Consulate to retrieve paperwork for his upcoming marriage. Turkish officials say he was detained, tortured and dismembered — while his fiancee waited outside. His remains have not been found. Saud al-Mojeb, Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor, met with his Turkish counterpart for the second time Tuesday before visiting the consulate, where the killing is alleged to have taken place, Turkish media reported. Riyadh has depicted the killing as a rogue act, arresting 18 suspects and condemning Khashoggi’s death. But Western officials have speculated that it was an audacious plan — which involved flying the hit squad to Istanbul on private jets and enlisting an apparent body double to leave the consulate after the killing— that would not have been possible without the knowledge of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler. Cooperation with Saudi Arabia, and particularly with Mohammed, sits at the heart of the Trump administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East. Although this latest crisis has drawn strong rebukes from both parties in Congress, there are few indications that it will fundamentally change the relationship between the two nations. In an address to parliament Tuesday, Erdogan appeared more muted in his criticism of Saudi Arabia than in previous weeks. He did not mention Khashoggi by name and fell back on earlier talking points without upping the ante. “There is no reason to beat around the bush. Or, there is no reason to save someone from beneath this,” he said. “We must overcome this with our mechanisms of justice and politics.” Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. high


Anne Arundel drug bust discovery may be tied to overdose death

MARYLAND Drug-bust discoverymay be tied to death Authorities said they arrested 21 people in a large-scale drug bust of opioids in Maryland and found a deadly animal tranquilizer that is believed to be linked to at least one overdose death. The eight-month undercover investigation in Anne Arundel County involved officers from the county sheriff’s office, the county police agency and Annapolis police and resulted in one of the biggest drug busts in the county, officials said. It is part of a stepped-up effort in Anne Arundel to deal with the opioid crisis. Authorities said they found nearly $300,000 in cash, four guns, heroin and cocaine. They also found nearly 9 grams of Xylazine, a tranquilizer used for large animals such as cows and horses. The street value of the drugs was estimated at $800,000. Anne Arundel Police Chief Timothy J. Altomare said the products from that drug ring had probably been showing up in overdose and drug-sale cases from Pasadena, Md., to Annapolis, Md., in the county. He said detectives found that the operation probably sold drugs that were linked to seven recent overdose deaths. — Dana Hedgpeth Woman allegedly set mother's home on fire A Maryland woman set her mother’s home on fire, officials said, and faces arson charges. Amanda Hooker, 25, of Upper Marlboro faces charges of first- and second-degree arson, and charges of malicious burning, according to officials with the Prince George’s County Fire Department. The incident happened about 1 a.m. Monday at a mobile home in the 9000 block of Marlboro Pike in Upper Marlboro. Officials said they responded to a 911 call and found the home on fire. They extinguished the fire; damage was estimated at $80,000. — Dana Hedgpeth Gunman fatally shoots man, is then killed A gunman who killed a man Friday in Prince George’s County was then fatally shot by the victim’s brother, police said Monday. They said the second shooting has been ruled a justified homicide. On Friday about 4:30 p.m., officers responded to a report of gunshots in the 5000 block of Eastpine Drive in Riverdale, Prince George’s County police said in a statement. They found Michael Gerard Bryant, 34, and Richard Arawole, 22, both of Riverdale, suffering from gunshot wounds. They were pronounced dead at the scene. An investigation showed that Bryant shot Arawole before Arawole’s 23-year-old brother, who was not named by police, returned fire in defense of


Don’t tell me that ‘both sides’ need to do better

believing him to be far too soft on immigration. But Bowers was fixated on the so-called caravan of Central American migrants, which Trump and the Republicans have cynically exploited to drive turnout in the midterm election. GOP candidates have portrayed the slow-moving column of asylum seekers — still about 1,000 miles from the border — as an imminent “invasion.” Trump actually used that word Monday in a tweet. There is in fact no emergency, no invasion, no reason to panic. Trump and the Republicans helped convince Bowers otherwise. The Pittsburgh massacre came one day after Cesar Sayoc, 56, was arrested for allegedly sending more than a dozen crude pipe bombs to high-profile critics of Trump, including former president Barack Obama, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr., actor Robert De Niro and others. Among the targets chosen by the alleged bombmaker was billionaire George Soros — who also features prominently in alleged shooter Bowers’s fantasyland as a purported financier of the nonwhite invasion. Unlike Bowers, Sayoc is a fanatical supporter of Trump. The sides and windows of his van are plastered with pro-Trump stickers, including a picture of Clinton with the crosshairs of a gun scope on her face. On social media, Sayoc posted images of himself wearing a Make America Great Again cap at a Trump rally. Sayoc was arrested two days after a gun-wielding man named Gregory Bush, 51, tried to force his way into an African American church near Louisville. When he could not get in, he went to a nearby grocery store, where he allegedly shot and killed two black customers at random. According to news reports, he told an armed white bystander who confronted him: “Please don’t shoot, and I won’t shoot you. Whites don’t kill whites.” From the first day of his presidential campaign, Trump has whipped up anti-immigrant fervor and stoked racial animus. By obliterating normal boundaries of political speech, he has opened space for unapologetic advocates of white supremacy, anti-Semitism, misogyny and other biases to spew their venom. And the GOP happily goes along. Don’t tell me that “both sides” need to do better. Republicans who remain silent deserve to be swept out of office. eugenerobinson@washpost.com Read more from Eugene Robinson’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A.


Google offers money to universities to use artificial intelligence to scale up research

massive amounts of digital information. The technology identifies patterns. “What AI can do is look for the signals that matter — repeated phone numbers, location, image similarity,” Fuller says, and use algorithms to pinpoint possible signs of children being trafficked, allowing law enforcement to investigate the most likely cases. Hundreds of thousands of law enforcement officers are using that technology, Fuller said, helping them find thousands of traffickers and victims. Google is unifying those efforts and calling it AI for Social Good, and it launched the six-month Impact Challenge on Monday, issuing a call for research partners around the world. “We have heard from universities who have ideas about how AI can be applied. Sometimes, what they’re lacking is the resources,” Fuller said. Professors, students and people working at nonprofits can submit proposals, even if they don’t have expertise in the technology, including if the ideas are in the early stages of development. Winners will be announced in the spring. “We’re open to bunch of ideas and types of ideas,” said Brigitte Hoyer Gosselink, head of product impact for Google.org. Once winners are chosen, Google will kick off an accelerator program, giving recipients funding, support and expertise for the next one to three years. Google hopes to dramatically increase the impact of projects, so already published research is eligible if it has potential to be expanded. Other examples of research helped by artificial intelligence include efforts to prevent wildfires, famine and infant deaths. There’s a large-scale project hoping to protect whales. Many whales are harmed by collisions with ships and fishing nets, but protecting the animals is complicated because they spend most of their time well below the surface of the ocean. They’re easier to hear than to see: Whale songs can travel hundreds of miles underwater, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been recording audio for more than a decade in the Pacific Ocean. But it would take a scientist many years to listen to the 170,000 hours of recordings. Google teamed up with NOAA to create visualizations of the patterns of humpback whales' complicated songs, allowing the algorithm to correctly identify the sound and connect it with the species — giving scientists data on where whales are and where they’re going. They can use that information to let shipping companies know about areas with many whales so that collisions between whales and ships can be reduced.


Why was MBS so afraid of Jamal Khashoggi?

Why was Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman so afraid of Jamal Khashoggi that he reportedly gave orders this past summer to bring the Post contributing columnist back to Saudi Arabia? We’ll still be left with that question after the Saudi and Turkish investigations are done and the designated culprits are convicted. What was the threat that had to be silenced? My guess is that Khashoggi was seen as dangerous for the simple reason that he couldn’t be intimidated or controlled. He was an uncensored mind. He didn’t observe the kingdom’s “red lines.” He was an insistent, defiant journalist. If you want to visualize what Khashoggi was struggling against, watch some of the slickly packaged video coverage of this week’s Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh. It was a captive audience, so to speak: MBS, as he’s known, got a prolonged, raucous ovation Wednesday when he denounced Khashoggi’s murder and promised cooperation with Turkey. A gushing story in the Riyadh-based Arab News praised MBS’s “war” for modernization, which is “restoring the Middle East to its past glory,” and quoted the crown prince: “I believe the new Europe is the Middle East.” Who wouldn’t like MBS’s vision of a modern, Europe-like Arab world at peace with its neighbors, including Israel? But the crown prince doesn’t seem to understand that a united, peaceful Europe was possible only because it had a shared culture of freedom and tolerance. Troublesome journalists don’t get murdered in that Europe. Leaders don’t order “rendition” of dissenters, as MBS did with Khashoggi in July, according to a U.S. official. There’s a danger now that Khashoggi will be seen as a creature of the West and not an authentic Saudi voice. But that view is false: Khashoggi was part of an Arab journalism tradition with a long, brave history. He is the latest Arab martyr for press freedom, but he isn’t the first. I’ve encountered many similar heroes over the past 40 years who shared Khashoggi’s ambition. Let’s start with someone you’ve probably never heard of, a Palestinian named Tewfik Mishlawi, who was my colleague in Beirut in the early 1980s. Every morning he gathered the news from the region into a clear, unbiased summary called “the Middle East Reporter.” His dream, he once told me, was to create the first Arab wire service, with the same standards as the Associated Press or Reuters. Mishlawi died in 2012, but he


he isn’t the first. I’ve encountered many similar heroes over the past 40 years who shared Khashoggi’s ambition. Let’s start with someone you’ve probably never heard of, a Palestinian named Tewfik Mishlawi, who was my colleague in Beirut in the early 1980s. Every morning he gathered the news from the region into a clear, unbiased summary called “the Middle East Reporter.” His dream, he once told me, was to create the first Arab wire service, with the same standards as the Associated Press or Reuters. Mishlawi died in 2012, but he trained a generation of great Arab reporters, including The Post’s matchless war correspondent, Nora Boustany, who now teaches journalism at the American University of Beirut. Lebanese journalists risked their lives to challenge Syria, which occupied their country for a generation. Samir Kassir, a fearless columnist for An Nahar, was assassinated in June 2005. May Chidiac, a Lebanese television anchor, was maimed by a car bomb in September 2005. She’s still crusading for a free press. Gebran Tueni Turkish journalists have battled for this same dream. Can Dundar, a former editor of Cumhuriyet, was indicted in 2015 after publishing a story about how Turkey supplied arms to jihadists in Syria; he fled the next year to Germany. It’s grotesque to watch President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country has imprisoned more journalists than any other, pose as a defender of the press in the Khashoggi case. The yearning for public debate is shared by other Saudis. My friend Hussein Shobokshi was fired by the Jeddah newspaper Okaz in 2003 after he wrote a column dreaming about a more modern Saudi Arabia where his daughter could drive, a comprehensive annual budget was published and leaders were elected. All three have happened, if you count Saudi municipal elections, he told me Thursday. He’s still a journalist, now hosting a weekly show on Al Arabiya. Those who truly want a modern and prosperous Saudi Arabia could start by building on Khashoggi’s legacy. A country that cannot tolerate criticism will never be, as one of the slogans at this week’s Riyadh conference put it, “a road map for the future of civilization.” That could be Khashoggi’s gift in death: a chance for Saudi modernizers to make a fresh start, without the brutal trappings of autocratic power. Twitter: @IgnatiusPost Read more from David Ignatius’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.


Why one man’s disappearance captured the outrage and media attention that war has not

time and place of Khashoggi’s disappearance, and the gruesome circumstances of his apparent death, which may have made his story more “relatable” to American viewers and readers. The accumulation of details has created the kind of sustained news coverage that the faceless victims of war and violence rarely receive, experts on international affairs say. The Khashoggi story has been prominent in the American news media almost since he walked into the consulate on Oct. 2. Governments around the world, including the United States’, have called on Saudi Arabia to account for what happened. In the days since, a Saudi investment conference involving American media companies and investors has all but collapsed in reaction. The constant news coverage has created perhaps the foremost foreign-policy crisis of President Trump’s administration. Apart from the geopolitical implications of Khashoggi’s apparent killing, the volume of news coverage about him is a validation of a saying attributed to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin: “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” Though not widely known before this month, Khashoggi was well connected in Washington. A former Saudi insider himself, he lived in exile in Northern Virginia and was a familiar figure among Washington’s foreign-policy wonks, politicians and media figures. He had also worked since last year as a contributing columnist for The Post, an association that gave him an establishment perch and international cachet. All that made him distinct and distinguishable from Saudi Arabia’s many victims, said Stephen McInerney, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy, a Washington-based policy organization. “Brutal violence happens relatively frequently in Saudi Arabia, but the victims tend to be anonymous,” McInerney said. “Jamal was not anonymous. He was a writer and journalist for The Washington Post. It personalizes him. It humanizes him as a victim in a way [others] aren’t humanized in their own country.” It’s also important that Khashoggi was apparently killed outside the kingdom, he said. The murder of a dissident inside Saudi Arabia would very likely have been covered up. In this case, the events in question occurred in Turkey, a country with an adversarial relationship with Saudi Arabia and thus an incentive to expose what happened, he said. In fact, the Turkish government has been the leading source of leaks about the incident, providing such key bits of information as the identities of some men in the alleged Saudi “hit squad” and


Jamal Khashoggi: What the Arab world needs most is free expression

A note from Karen Attiah, Global Opinions editor I received this column from Jamal Khashoggi’s translator and assistant the day after Jamal was reported missing in Istanbul. The Post held off publishing it because we hoped Jamal would come back to us so that he and I could edit it together. Now I have to accept: That is not going to happen. This is the last piece of his I will edit for The Post. This column perfectly captures his commitment and passion for freedom in the Arab world. A freedom he apparently gave his life for. I will be forever grateful he chose The Post as his final journalistic home one year ago and gave us the chance to work together. I was recently online looking at the 2018 “Freedom in the World” report published by Freedom House and came to a grave realization. There is only one country in the Arab world that has been classified as “free.” That nation is Tunisia. Jordan, Morocco and Kuwait come second, with a classification of “partly free.” The rest of the countries in the Arab world are classified as “not free.” As a result, Arabs living in these countries are either uninformed or misinformed. They are unable to adequately address, much less publicly discuss, matters that affect the region and their day-to-day lives. A state-run narrative dominates the public psyche, and while many do not believe it, a large majority of the population falls victim to this false narrative. Sadly, this situation is unlikely to change. The Arab world was ripe with hope during the spring of 2011. Journalists, academics and the general population were brimming with expectations of a bright and free Arab society within their respective countries. They expected to be emancipated from the hegemony of their governments and the consistent interventions and censorship of information. These expectations were quickly shattered; these societies either fell back to the old status quo or faced even harsher conditions than before. My dear friend, the prominent Saudi writer Saleh al-Shehi, wrote one of the most famous columns ever published in the Saudi press. He unfortunately is now serving an unwarranted five-year prison sentence for supposed comments contrary to the Saudi establishment. The Egyptian government’s seizure of the entire print run of a newspaper, al-Masry al Youm, did not enrage or provoke a reaction from colleagues. These actions no longer carry the consequence


uninformed or misinformed. They are unable to adequately address, much less publicly discuss, matters that affect the region and their day-to-day lives. A state-run narrative dominates the public psyche, and while many do not believe it, a large majority of the population falls victim to this false narrative. Sadly, this situation is unlikely to change. The Arab world was ripe with hope during the spring of 2011. Journalists, academics and the general population were brimming with expectations of a bright and free Arab society within their respective countries. They expected to be emancipated from the hegemony of their governments and the consistent interventions and censorship of information. These expectations were quickly shattered; these societies either fell back to the old status quo or faced even harsher conditions than before. My dear friend, the prominent Saudi writer Saleh al-Shehi, wrote one of the most famous columns ever published in the Saudi press. He unfortunately is now serving an unwarranted five-year prison sentence for supposed comments contrary to the Saudi establishment. The Egyptian government’s seizure of the entire print run of a newspaper, al-Masry al Youm, did not enrage or provoke a reaction from colleagues. These actions no longer carry the consequence of a backlash from the international community. Instead, these actions may trigger condemnation quickly followed by silence. As a result, Arab governments have been given free rein to continue silencing the media at an increasing rate. There was a time when journalists believed the Internet would liberate information from the censorship and control associated with print media. But these governments, whose very existence relies on the control of information, have aggressively blocked the Internet. They have also arrested local reporters and pressured advertisers to harm the revenue of specific publications. There are a few oases that continue to embody the spirit of the Arab Spring. Qatar’s government continues to support international news coverage, in contrast to its neighbors’ efforts to uphold the control of information to support the “old Arab order.” Even in Tunisia and Kuwait, where the press is considered at least “partly free,” the media focuses on domestic issues but not issues faced by the greater Arab world. They are hesitant to provide a platform for journalists from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Yemen. Even Lebanon, the Arab world’s crown jewel when it comes to press freedom, has fallen victim to the polarization and influence of pro-Iran Hezbollah. The


Fact-checking Trump’s macho talk on birthright citizenship, military at the border

what the Constitution says on birthright citizenship. I think we are far better off focusing on securing the border.” (Cruz had flip-flopped by 2015, and Trump took credit for it on Twitter.) Military on the border The Trump administration is deploying 5,200 active-duty troops to the southern border by the end of the week, because a caravan of nearly 3,500 Central American migrants slowly working its way through Mexico poses a threat, according to Trump and other administration officials. That’s in addition to the 2,000 National Guardsmen already at the border. (And there’s another caravan of 3,000 migrants trailing the first caravan.) For perspective, the 7,200 troops deployed to the border are about equal to the U.S. military presence in Iraq (5,200 troops) and Syria (2,000 troops) as of August. When Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham asked Trump what the point was, as Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both sent the National Guard to the border and it had “no effect,” Trump said things would be different now that he’s calling the shots. “When they are captured, we don’t let them out,” he said. This is misleading. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 restricts what the U.S. Armed Forces can do to enforce domestic policies, including immigration laws. “The armed forces do not appear to have a direct legislative mandate to protect or patrol the border or to engage in immigration enforcement,” according to an April 2018 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. However, the Armed Forces can provide indirect support, the CRS report added. They can “share information collected during the normal course of military operations; loan equipment and facilities; provide expert advice and training; and maintain and operate equipment,” for example. “For federal law enforcement agencies, military personnel may be made available to maintain and operate equipment in conjunction with counterterrorism operations or the enforcement of counterdrug laws, immigration laws, and customs requirements,” the CRS found. “Military personnel are permitted under this authority to maintain and operate equipment only for specific purposes, including aerial reconnaissance and the detection, monitoring, and communication of air and sea traffic, and of surface traffic outside the United States or within 25 miles of U.S. borders, if first detected outside the border.” What the Armed Forces cannot do is detain or frisk migrants, according to a federal law that bars “direct participation by a member of the Army, Navy, Air


U-Md. football coach DJ Durkin is out, a day after the school said he would stay on in wake of player’s heatstroke death in June

One day after issuing a stunning endorsement of Maryland football Coach DJ Durkin, the University System of Maryland Board of Regents faced heightened pressure from both state and federal lawmakers.This is a developing story. It will be updated.


At VA, unequal employment opportunity

Regarding the Oct. 24 news article “Nonpartisan panel of veterans judges gets dose of politics”: Most bothersome is that the Department of Veterans Affairs claims to abide by the equal employment opportunity policy, which says, “The United States Government does not discriminate in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy and gender identity), national origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, marital status, disability . . . or other non-merit factor.” The White House required applicants to identify their party affiliation, even after they were vetted as best qualified and selected for the positions by the chairwoman of the board. Merit reasons were not provided for rejecting the applicants, so such rejections should not withstand judicial scrutiny, because they violate the federal government’s own workplace policy. Mary Suffoletta The writer is a lawyer at the Board of Veterans’ Appeals.


D.C.-area forecast: Perfect weather for Halloween; staying warm through Friday with late-week showers

TODAY’S DAILY DIGIT 10/10: EXPRESS FORECAST Today: Tonight: Tomorrow: View the FORECAST IN DETAIL We’ve got great news for the trick-or-treaters out there, and the parents chasing behind them. Our Halloween gets off to a gorgeous start with mild temperatures this afternoon, and we stay dry and mild through the evening hours. In fact, we’ll remain rather warm through Friday, with rain chances holding off until late Thursday and Friday, before a cooler but mostly dry weekend. Get our daily forecasts on your Amazon Alexa device. Today (Wednesday): Tonight: Follow us on Tomorrow (Thursday): Tomorrow night: A LOOK AHEAD On Friday, we should remain under the influence of low pressure and a cold front. That means mostly cloudy skies and a continued risk of scattered showers, with perhaps a thunderstorm, as temperatures stay up in the 60s to near 70. It’s possible we see a lull during the midday, with the best chance of rain in the morning and then again Friday night. Lows by late Friday night cool down into the 40s to near 50. Confidence: Low-Medium A few showers could linger into early Saturday morning, but skies should turn partly sunny thereafter, with a cooler breeze from the west-northwest and highs in the mid-50s to near 60. High pressure builds in Saturday night and Sunday, providing mostly clear skies, with Saturday-night lows in the 40s and Sunday highs in upper 50s to near 60. Confidence: Medium


Military tech giant settles charges that it discriminated against National Guardsmen

that it discriminated against reservists and maintains that it has consistently hired the most qualified applicants regardless of their military status,” according to the proposed settlement. The legal complaint filed by the plaintiffs described a recurring pattern of discrimination not only in the company’s hiring efforts but also in its operations. It quoted one L-3 manager as saying the “reservists are always trying to get over and get out of work.” And that the manager accused one of the reservists of being “one of those guard guys who gets to go home whenever he wants.” According to the complaint, Hall worked at a now-defunct L3 business unit called Vertex, which was contracted by the U.S. military for field support before it was divested by its parent company in July. Hall is described as a U.S. Air Force veteran and reservist who applied for a job in early 2013. He became a pilot in the company’s S4 program, the complaint states, which periodically sent pilots to provide contract aviation support for the U.S. military coalition in Afghanistan. The complaint accuses L3 managers of delaying Hall’s initial on-boarding and also holding up his return to work after a 2015 tour of duty at a time when the company suffered a persistent pilot shortage. A manager allegedly said “Mitch [Hall] is all about Mitch…because Mitch went on military orders when we needed him around for the holidays" when a colleague asked about Hall. “Just because Mitch gets off orders doesn’t mean he can come back to work here just because he wants to,” the L3 manager said, according to the complaint. The other plaintiff, Nathan Kay, applied for a “Basic Pilot” position with L3 in October 2014. But the complaint alleges “based on information and belief,” without providing specific evidence, that managers at L3 rejected him in part because he was an Air Force reservist, and that numerous other reservists were turned away for the same reason. L3 has received an estimated 15,000 applications for pilot positions since 2011, the complaint states, part of a massive pilot shortage that has dogged the U.S. Air Force as well as commercial airliners and government contractors. The complaint identified a sample of 200 job applicants who applied for a job at L3 and found that those who identified themselves as reservists in their job applications had “a substantially lower chance of obtaining employment” compared to others.


One question for the University of Maryland regents regarding football coach controversy: Really?

This was the start of a story published Tuesday by The Washington Post about a months-long leadership debacle at the University of Maryland after the death of a football player and an investigation into whether the football coach, DJ Durkin, was running a program with a toxic environment: The Board of Regents told Loh that if he wanted to keep his job, he had to keep Durkin in his job. Loh decided to retire instead. The regents, somehow, thought it was okay to allow a football coach who failed to rein in abusive behavior by a subordinate to keep his job. How to react to the news? Perhaps David Fahrenthold, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at The Washington Post, got it as best as anyone could at this point with this tweet:


As Venezuela’s health system collapses, disease spreads beyond its borders

O We have two patients with symptoms. Bernardino Albuquerque, 69, an infectious disease specialist and president of the Health Surveillance Foundation of Amazonas State, debates strategies to combat the latest measles cases in the Brazilian state. That alert from Brazilian doctors near the Venezuelan frontier marked the start of an imported measles epidemic that is still ravaging the Brazilian Amazon. It was the first time in nearly two decades that the highly contagious virus had appeared in this tropical region, home to a growing number of Venezuelan migrants. The disease has also spread to Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. The economic and social crisis in Venezuela is increasingly spilling over its borders, with disease becoming the newest symbol of the disaster. Venezuela’s health-care system has virtually broken down, allowing once-eradicated illnesses such as measles and diphtheria to reemerge in a population facing acute shortages of food and medicine. Now, a historic outflow of migrants is helping spread infections to other countries. “Venezuela’s crisis has become our own,” Manaus Mayor Arthur Virgilio Neto said. Brazil’s patient zero for measles was a 1-year-old Venezuelan child brought over the border in February. Eight months later, more than 10,000 patients have contracted suspected infections in Amazonas state alone, as the virus hopscotched across a local population that was not sufficiently vaccinated. New cases are growing at the rate of 170 a week. Seen as a manageable childhood illness in the United States, measles has taken a high toll in the crowded shantytowns and remote villages of the dense Amazon jungle. Amazonas state declared a health emergency in July, and hundreds of people have been hospitalized with complications including pneumonia. So far, two adults and four infants have died. “We hadn’t had a single case of measles in 18 years; most of our doctors only knew it from text books,” said Albuquerque, recalling the start of the measles outbreak. “We were prepared for routine problems. But this was extraordinary.” Venezuela, an oil-rich nation of about 31 million, is in the midst of a societal collapse — the product of a five-year-long depression sparked by lower oil prices, failed socialist policies, government mismanagement and corruption. Aid agencies project nearly 2 million Venezuelans will abandon their nation this year, on top of 1.8 million who left over the past two years. They are leaving a country where food is scarce and the public health system is withering,


People are decorating for Halloween with dead bats. The CDC says that’s a scary idea.

mail bag, then, typically sets inspectors off on a quest to identify the species and, if it isn’t protected, track down the importer to get the paperwork sorted. “We have one shipment of, like, 100 bats sitting on our referral table,” Aziz said, and inspectors are “waiting for a gentleman to obtain a license and declare the species.” There’s also another problem: the threat of fatal illness. All bat shipments are also referred to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which requires an additional import permit for bats. The CDC says it regulates incoming bats because they are potential reservoirs for infectious diseases including rabies and Ebola. It requires that deceased bats are “properly processed” to render them safe, either with high heat, formaldehyde or another approved method. Viruses such as rabies and Ebola “can’t survive for very long outside of the host, but can survive longer in a dead animal,” Brian Amman, an ecologist with the CDC’s viral special pathogens branch, said in an email. “While the likelihood is low that something like Ebola would be transmitted via an imported bat carcass, even a small chance with a potentially deadly disease is too much.” How do the dead bats get dead? That’s unclear, Aziz said; cause of death isn’t required information even for legally imported bats — about 9,000 of which come into the United States each year, according to a Newsweek investigation that cited federal figures. Many online sellers tout their taxidermied bats as “ethically and sustainably sourced,” and some say they’re trapped in nets by farmers whose crops bats damage. Human-bat conflict over crops occurs in many countries, and fruit bats are widely killed for that reason in Indonesia, according to the World Wildlife Fund. But the organization says the animals in fact play an important ecological role by pollinating and dispersing plants. “The way they are preserved, it boggles my mind how they’re captured. They’re not decomposed whatsoever. They’re pretty much caught and probably treated,” Aziz said of the shipments found at JFK, whose numbers, she added, alarm her. “The amount that I see, it’s got to be impactful to the species.” Read more: When the crime victim is an animal, this lab is on the case Two generations of humans have killed off more than half the world’s wildlife populations, report finds USDA’s enforcement of animal welfare laws plummeted in 2018, agency figures show


Republican senators ask Trump to end nuclear energy talks with Saudi Arabia

Five Republican senators sent a letter to President Trump on Wednesday imploring him to end ongoing discussions with Saudi Arabia on nuclear energy cooperation in the wake of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi’s killing at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. The senators also threatened in the letter to file legislation to block any civil nuclear agreements with Saudi Arabia if Trump will not agree to suspend negotiations “for the foreseeable future.” “We already held serious reservations about negotiations for such an agreement,” Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Todd C. Young (R-Ind.), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.) wrote in the letter, first reported by NBC. “The ongoing revelations about the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as well as certain Saudi actions related to Yemen and Lebanon, have raised further serious concerns about the transparency, accountability, and judgment of current decision-makers in Saudi Arabia.” Congressional dissatisfaction with the U.S.-Saudi relationship was on a slow ascent before the prominent journalist’s disappearance in early October. But his apparent slaying — which most lawmakers believe occurred at the behest of Saudi leaders, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — has precipitated unprecedented calls for consequences, including sanctions and an end to arms sales and military support for the Saudi kingdom in its controversial regional engagements, particularly in Yemen’s civil war. Saudi officials have acknowledged that Khashoggi, a self-exiled critic of the Saudi government, was killed in the consulate, but they deny that the action had their authorization. The senators’ letter indicates yet another layer of distrust in Saudi leaders: concern that the kingdom may try to adapt nuclear technologies acquired in a civil-use deal for weapon-making purposes. Saudi Arabia has never agreed to terms that would prohibit it from turning a civil nuclear program dedicated for energy production into a tool to enrich uranium, reprocess plutonium and pursue other weapons-grade uses “that can bring a nation within weeks of producing a nuclear weapon,” they said, pointing out that the United Arab Emirates did accept such terms for a similar deal. The senators suggested that it would be hypocritical and dangerous for the United States to accept anything less than a Saudi pledge to abide by terms of an Emirates-style deal — terms known as the “Gold Standard” — especially when the administration is demanding such behavior from Iran. “Given your Administration’s ongoing efforts to press the Iranian regime —


Kidnapped and raped by ISIS, Nadia Murad went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. This documentary tells her story.

Rating: The harrowing story of Nadia Murad — who escaped captivity by the Islamic State, going on to receive the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize for her work speaking out against wartime sexual violence — has been well publicized. Now 25, Murad was one of thousands of women and girls captured and sexually enslaved by ISIS in 2014 as part of its genocidal assault on the non-Muslim Yazidi minority in northern Iraq; her mother and six of her brothers were killed. The powerful and affecting documentary “On Her Shoulders” doesn’t rehash Murad’s suffering in painful detail. Instead, filmmaker Alexandria Bombach, who made the 2015 Afghanistan documentary “Frame by Frame,” chronicles Murad’s more recent life, revealing her to be a compelling and inspiring subject. Bombach follows Murad during part of 2016 as she travels through Europe and North America with fellow survivors and activists to call attention to the Yazidis’ plight. In other scenes, she prepares for her wrenching speech that September to the United Nations and is shown working with human rights lawyer Amal Clooney on an International Criminal Court case against members of ISIS. Murad’s life is a blur of speeches, interviews, photo ops and meetings, throughout which she is poised and articulate, resilient and strong despite the horrors she’s gone through. But she also bears the heavy weight of being a voice for her people: She often appears to be on the verge of breaking down, and at times she cries; she misses her mother; she curls up in a car seat in exhaustion. She comes across as a real person with real vulnerabilities, not some saintly, idealized victim. The film poignantly reveals a frequent disconnect between the urgency of Murad’s mission and the sluggishness with which policymakers act. A Canadian member of Parliament, though moved to tears by Murad’s testimony, admits that the bureaucracy of her country’s refugee resettlement system has failed the Yazidis. Her parting gift to Murad is a medallion of a maple leaf — a well-intentioned yet ultimately meaningless token. Interspersed with Bombach’s vérité footage are moments when Murad addresses the camera, reflecting on her life and work. In measured tones, she speaks in her native Kurdish about how she would have preferred not to have had this fame, wishing the world knew her by her previous identity: a student in her village whose dream was to open a beauty salon. She laments that the


Maryland ought to be ashamed

fully the poor decision-making that went into that evening. Do people deserve second chances? Absolutely. But Evans got his — and failed. When he was hired as one of Anderson’s underlings, among his duties was overseeing football. Somehow, he missed all the practices that he and Durkin now — according to the university — agree must be changed. Did he lack the good judgment to see that before a player died? Or was he too embroiled in petty office politics in a dysfunctional department? Or was he, flatly, asleep at the wheel? I’ll take D.) All of the above. One more thing, for those who want to contain this embarrassment to the athletic department: Please. This tragedy reached all aspects of not just the campus in College Park, but the university system. To be clear: The board of regents wrested control of the investigation into the culture of the football program from the College Park administration because it believed there needed to be distance between the investigators and those they were investigating. Yet in the days and hours before it announced its recommendations, it took measures — quietly, cowardly, not from a position of leadership but a position of cover-our-behinds — to make it known that it would be out of line for the regents to meddle in specific personnel decisions on an individual campus. And then, according to The Washington Post’s reporting, the regents told Loh that, to retain his job for the remainder of the academic year, he had to return Durkin to his spot, or be fired himself. What, exactly, would meddling look like? Whew. This is a lot to digest. “This is absolutely a first-class institution,” Brady said. Kinda fits with the times, doesn’t it? If you say it enough, maybe it’ll be perceived as the truth, even when it’s not. That Durkin remains the football coach at the University of Maryland defies common sense and common decency. That Evans remains his boss as the athletic director means Maryland has installed a leader who is defined more by his mistakes than his successes. And the entire university system has exposed itself. It isn’t guided by the memory of Jordan McNair, that’s for sure, and it’s insulting to use that memory as a prop in making these regrettable moves that are supposed to distance Maryland from the past, but only serve to cement it right there. barry.svrluga@washpost.com


Two generations of humans have killed off more than half the world’s wildlife populations, report finds

humans. More than a third of crops globally are partially pollinated by animals, the report found. And tens of thousands of medicinal and aromatic plants are harnessed for human use. Meanwhile, researchers have increasingly looked to natural sources for medical cures, the report said. But the rate of animal population drop-off is 100 to 1,000 times the rate of decline before human activity was a factor, the report found, accelerating the disappearance of not just life but the ecosystems it inhabits. That comes as the world population explodes and nature untouched by man shrinks from about a quarter of the world to a tenth by 2050, the report found, forcing animals into unsuitable and occupied environments. “There is a connection between loss of the natural environment and human health,” Roberts said. “Where does our food come from? Where does our water come? Go to Latin America and Africa, where ecosystems are struggling,” he said, and where some governments are struggling with food scarcity and drought. Crop failures brought on by climate change have been linked to an exodus in Central America toward the United States, for example. “Something’s got to give,” Roberts said, “and it’s not a pretty picture.” Tanya Steele, the WWF’s chief executive in Britain, put it more bluntly to CNN: “We are the first generation to know we are destroying our planet and the last one that can do anything about it.” In its report, the WWF report urged governments and businesses to forge understandings on how to harvest resources without ultimately destroying them. “In the next years, we need to urgently transition to a net carbon-neutral society and halt and reverse nature loss — through green finance and shifting to clean energy and environmentally friendly food production. In addition, we must preserve and restore enough land and ocean in a natural state to sustain all life,” WWF Director General Marco Lambertini wrote in the report. International panels will meet in two years to discuss progress on the way forward, Lambertini noted, with optimism tinged with the understanding that there may come a time when we won’t be able to pull life back from the brink. “We have before us a rapidly closing window for action and an unparalleled opportunity as we head into the year 2020,” he wrote. Read more: How dogs could help eradicate malaria The latest thing climate change is threatening is our history


Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman is ‘chief of the tribe’ in a cowed House of Saud

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — For just over two years, until June 2017, Mohammed bin Nayef was crown prince of Saudi Arabia, the designated heir to the throne. A grandson of the kingdom’s founder, with long experience at high levels of government, he was the first of his generation to reach the direct line of succession. Today, bin Nayef, 59, is rarely seen outside his palace in Jiddah, on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast. Usurped by an ambitious cousin barely half his age who took over his title and froze his once-hefty bank accounts, he reportedly passes his days under heavy guard. The ouster was not completely surprising, since his cousin was the favored son of bin Nayef’s uncle Salman, the current king. But the speed and apparent ruthlessness with which it was done — a late-night summons that left the crown prince with little choice — were shocking to many in the extended royal family, in which decisions had traditionally been made by consensus after extensive consultation. Now well more than a year into the job, the new crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, enjoys nearly absolute power in the kingdom, directly controlling foreign and domestic policy, the security forces, and the economy. In doing so, Mohammed has replaced “cautious” royal leadership with “impulsive interventionist politics,” as one Western intelligence agency predicted in late 2015, warning that his rapid ascent would lead to trouble at home and abroad. The prescience of that three-year-old analysis, by Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, appears borne out by events as Mohammed’s command has grown — an endless and seemingly futile war in Yemen, stubborn disputes and peremptory behavior toward neighbors and allies, and crackdowns on even the mildest forms of internal dissent. Most recently, the death this month of self-exiled, dissident Saudi journalist and Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi, killed by Saudi agents during a visit to his government’s diplomatic mission in Istanbul, has sparked widespread global revulsion. Whether the killing was by his direct order — which the government unequivocally denies — or just by dint of his unchallenged control, Mohammed is widely held responsible. Western governments say they are still waiting for facts in the Khashoggi case and trying to decide whether they will want — or need, based on rising political and popular outrage — to punish the Saudis. The Trump administration, which depends on Saudi Arabia to keep spending billions on


How to have the best fall ever in D.C., from picking apples to drinking cider

F.H. Distillery Lane Ciderworks, 5533 Gapland Rd., Jefferson, Md. distillerylaneciderworks.com. Hard cider tastings, $7 for five samples. Have a drink by the fire As the weather starts to chill, it’s time to start looking for a warm fire to sit by. Fortunately, Washington has no shortage of bars and restaurants with fireplaces suiting different moods and occasions. For classic cocktails, such as hot ciders and Manhattans, along with lighter fare including fried calamari and Middle Eastern dips, head to Tabard Inn, where the lounge is furnished with plush couches surrounding an ornate fireplace, alongside live jazz three nights a week. Or, if the weather’s not too cold yet, try the beers and bar fare at Tavern at Ivy City Smokehouse, where a large, marble-accented firepit is the focal point of the outdoor balcony. — M.G. Tabard Inn, 1739 N St. NW. tabardinn.com. Ivy City Smokehouse, 1356 Okie St. NE. ivycitysmokehouse.com. Wander through a corn maze Three years ago, Summers Farm in Frederick, Md., made international headlines with a gigantic Taylor Swift-themed corn maze (“Lawn goals,” the singer wrote on Instagram, with a photo of the cornfields). Since then, locals have eagerly anticipated the farm’s autumnal follow-ups: Last year was an armed forces theme, and this year Summers Farm is all about the Washington Nationals. Featuring 12 acres of nine-foot stalks, the design has both easy and more difficult paths leading to its “Curly W” center, while the rest of the farm has many of the other fall activities you’d expect, including wagon rides and a pumpkin patch. And for those who want to get lost in a maze celebrating a different (and more victorious) local team, Bowles Farm in Clements, Md., and Greenstreet Gardens in Lothian, Md., both have Washington Capitals-themed mazes this year. — M.G. 5620 Butterfly Lane, Frederick, Md. summersfarm.com. $8-$14. Through Oct. 31. Pick out the perfect jack-o-lantern Throw on your favorite flannel and celebrate the season with a day-long adventure to Great Country Farms. About 70 minutes outside the city, the Loudoun County farm has a pick-your-own-pumpkin patch and apple orchard, and a multitude of fun fall activities. A general-admission ticket grants access to a corn maze, hayride, petting farm, pumpkin cannons and, most important, pig races. Other activities include marshmallow roasting, cider pressing and catch-and-release fishing (BYO tackle). The grounds are pet- and kid-friendly. Afterward, grab some extra apple-cider doughnuts for the road and pair