A realistic approach to linking carbon markets

linkage can work Carbon markets are now big business, estimated at almost $50 billion this year. They provide a promising avenue for moving beyond the gridlock that has beset the Kyoto negotiations. They are not going away. So the question remains: how can linkage promote effective action on climate change – i.e. real and meaningful emissions reductions? We advise that linking markets proceed with caution. They must balance the benefits of economic efficiency with political feasibility. Specifically, we have five suggestions for an incremental approach to linkage. 1) Linking states should start small. Informal linkages through memoranda of understanding will promote learning and provide flexibility to work out any unanticipated problems. It will also allow a test-run to ensure that domestic regulatory institutions are up to the task. Once a pilot phase is successful, relationships can be further institutionalized through law. 2) Linkage should start in the developed world. This is so for several reasons. First, the most mature markets—including, among others, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative—are located in the developed world. Quite simply, they have the most experience with cap-and-trade markets. Second, and related, these are most likely to have robust regulatory capacity to support and enforce a trading system. Finally, there will be smaller differences in marginal costs of abatement between developed nations. While this will sacrifice some of the efficiency gains, it may also mitigate political objections associated with large transfers of wealth. 3) Indirect linkage should be kept to a minimum. Indirect linking—where two states are linked through a third—reduces regulatory autonomy and creates another layer of coordination requirements. In other words, it can create problems both politically and in terms of policy design. As such, we suggest that markets linked through a third party explicitly agree with each other on the terms. 4) Banking and borrowing should be kept to a minimum. Banking and borrowing are designed to help smooth out prices over time by providing clear signals about future markets. But they can also be gamed, and may propagate any flaws in the market into the future. Linked markets should limit the number of allowances that can be banked or borrowed across time periods. In sum, linkage will require extensive regulatory coordination. And that coordination will invariably involve politics. Thus, at the outset, simpler systems are better, both for the purposes of learning how to design working systems,


Why 80 percent of top students get into elite colleges

angrily to the proposal. They worry that a federal system would force colleges to focus on the wrong things. That's a real concern, but it would be a more persuasive objection if high school seniors weren't busily sending in applications by the dozen. Welcome to Wonkbook. To subscribe by e-mail, click What's in Wonkbook: Number of the day: $380.95. Chart of the day: The major banks feel confident enough about a new agreement with federal regulators on who is liable when borrowers default that they're adopting less stringent standards for new mortgages Monday. In particular, some banks are expected to eliminate the additional points on a borrower's credit score many banks have required above federally mandated levels. Joe Light in The Wall Street Journal. 1. Top story: Obama to meet with cabinet, civil rights leaders on Ferguson We may hear about police militarization from Obama soon. In Ferguson, things have quieted down. Officer Darren Wilson has resigned from the police force. BLOW: Whites misperceive the link between race and crime. MICHAEL ERIC DYSON: Obama dodges the real issues in Ferguson. COBB: More riots result in yet more governmental commissions. DOUTHAT: Neither party knows how to move the country beyond race. BRUENIG: Actually, riots can be economically efficient. 2. Top opinions: Inequality, Internet control, Ray Rice, tax extenders and the great white shark LAURA TYSON: Inequality has an economic cost. CROVITZ: The Obama administration wants to give up control over the Internet. KAVITHA DAVIDSON: Ray Rice's suspension was arbitrary to begin with. DIONNE: Obama was right to veto the tax extenders. In defense of the great white shark. Disturbance in the Force interlude: The script: A lightsaber shown in the trailer is fitted with a crossguard. 3. Climate diplomats meet in Lima After decades of failed negotiations, maybe now is the time. The clock is ticking. 4. Government funding deadline nears Congress must pass a spending bill by Dec. 11. Speaker Boehner aims to avert a shutdown. 5. In case you missed it The House's Obamacare suit focuses on what are known as "cost-sharing reductions." The White House wanted to give parents of "dreamers" a reprieve from deportation. Gay men may soon be able to donate blood. Under new management, Corinthian Colleges will be not for profit. The feds get $29 million, and students get nothing. NICK BUTLER: Expect the decline in energy prices to continue for a long, long time.


The surprisingly political origins of ‘Cyber Monday’

Cyber Monday was invented by a conservative lobbying group. (REUTERS/Kacper Pempel) Those allergic to Black Friday crowds — or who wait to stay from the Ferguson protesters shutting down shopping malls in an attempt to "#BoycottBlackFriday" — can take refuge in Cyber Monday. If one's employer offers Web access, an entire Internet's worth of sales awaits. But regardless of their motivation, those who seek one deals on Samsung 55-inch Ultra HD TVs or Nest Thermostats should know: Unlike the century-long evolution of Black Friday, Cyber Monday is not the organic development of retailers who realized there was money to be made online on the Monday after Thanksgiving. Rather, it is the nine-year-old brainchild of the National Retail Federation (NRF) — a powerful lobbying group that often supports right-leaning causes such as the repeal of the Affordable Health Care Act and anti-union attempts to limit the power of the National Labor Relations Board. It all started in 2005 — with a press release. "While traditional retailers will be monitoring store traffic and sales on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), online retailers have set their sights on something different: Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving, which is quickly becoming one of the biggest online shopping days of the year," announced Shop.org, a branch of the NRF that serves online retailers. "For the past few years, online retailers have found that sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving have been creeping higher, giving retailers an additional reason to be jolly during the ceremonial kickoff to the holiday season." The New York Times, though calling Cyber Monday a "legitimate trend," was initially cynical. "Because the world needs another Officially Named shopping day, the people who dreamed up Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving, when retailers hope to turn a profit) have created a nickname for the following Monday," the paper wrote at the time. "Hence the catchy Cyber Monday, so called because millions of productive Americans, fresh off a weekend at the mall, are expected to return to work and their high-speed Internet connections on Nov. 28 and spend the day buying what they liked in all those stores." The snark wouldn't last. In 2010, Cyber Monday became the biggest online shopping day of the year. The gimmick was worth $1.5 billion in 2012 — a newly minted American tradition anyone able to get online at work could honor. Meanwhile, the NRF — the


world's largest retail trade organization founded in 1911 — lined up on the conservative side of quite a few political issues. As seen on its Web site: - On Obamacare: "While some elements supported by NRF can be seen in the Affordable Care Act, NRF opposed passage because of the law’s failure to adequately address health care costs and its job-killing employer mandate. NRF has worked to repeal the most onerous provisions of the health care law, such as the employer mandate, but those efforts have not yet succeeded." - On unions: "NRF is working in court and Congress to overturn a recent series of highly politicized NLRB decisions that would make it easier to unionize retail stores." - On renewable fuel: "The Renewable Fuel Standard is a federal program that requires energy companies to blend billions of gallons of biofuels into the nation’s gasoline supply each year. ... [NRF affiliate National Council of Chain Restaurants] has led the chain restaurant industry’s efforts to have the Renewable Fuel Standard either repealed or rolled back, arguing that corn and soybeans should be used for food rather than fuel." The NRF is not right-leaning on all issues. The trade association supports immigration reform and credit card swipe-fee reform that could benefit small businesses as much as major corporations. And it's facing new pressure from within to moderate its stance on other issues, like opposing an increase in the federal minimum wage. But the trade association — which spent more than $3.5 million on lobbying in 2012 — often can be found more often on the red side of the aisle. While supporting some Democratic politicians such as Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Chuck Rangel (D-N.Y.), RetailPAC, the NRF's political action committee, has donated to some of Congress's most visible conservatives. These include: House speaker John Boehner (Ohio), Rep. Eric Cantor (Va.), Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Jim DeMint (S.C.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.). And then there's Wal-Mart. Not long before the company became the target of labor advocates around the world, the NRF celebrated its relationship with the Walton family. “Wal-Mart has joined the National Retail Federation,” Stephen Schatz, a NRF spokesman, said last year. “We are pleased to have them as a partner with the over 10,000 other NRF members who are advocating on behalf of an industry sector that creates good jobs, gives back to the communities they serve, leads


Budweiser’s fall from grace, visualized

The good old days. (Damian Dovarganes/AP Photo) The self-proclaimed "King of Beers" is looking more like a pauper than a prince these days. Budweiser sales have fallen each and every year for nearly a decade now, according to data from market research firm Euromonitor. The decline is such that Americans drink nearly 40 percent less of the famously mediocre mass brew than they did 10 years back. And it's even worse when considered on a per person basis: Americans, on average, now drink only 18 cans of Budweiser per year, more than 13 cans fewer than in 2004. The fall from grace is so significant that The New York Post reports Budweiser is scrambling to re-brand itself in hopes that better marketing might help reverse the trend. It remains to be seen whether a fresh image can freshen up the beer's sales, but there's reason to believe its problems extend far beyond its ad campaigns. What's going on? A few things, most likely. Firstly, and probably most importantly, young people aren't drinking Budweiser. Even Budweiser admits that this is a major problem. And how could it not? Nearly half of young drinkers between the ages of 21 and 27 haven't even tried the beer, according to the company's own research. Budweiser's tumble, meanwhile, coincides with a furious increase in craft beer, which stands for the very opposite of Budweiser—small batch (even if often unfairly). And that's likely of little coincidence. Big, non-craft beers have been suffering amid the rise of craft beer. Since 1998, non-craft brewers have lost more than 10 percent of the overall beer market, more than 5 percent of which has gone to craft brewers. But Budweiser's troubles, however tied they might be to a country-wide shift from watery, mass-produced beers to less watery, less mass-produced beers, are also, and perhaps even largely, the result of a singular and growing distaste for Budweiser. Similar, lower shelf beers, after all, haven't fared nearly as poorly. Bud Lite, Budweiser's waterier counterpart, and the most popular beer in America, has seen sales remain stagnant. So too have Miller and Natural. And a few brands, including Coors Light and Pabst Blue Ribbon, have even grown in popularity over the past decade—Coors Light by roughly 16 percent, and Pabst Blue Ribbon by nearly 130 percent, according to Euromonitor.


What happens when good innovations do bad things?

and has since introduced models with similar, but revised infrared capabilities. And more recently, Google removed facial recognition technology from Google Glass in response to issues a few raised about privacy — unfortunate, because facial recognition software could help those who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease or brain injuries. Despite privacy concerns, there will be a healthy market for these products. We are at the very tip of a much bigger transformation in society – one in which connected devices will be able to capture a multitude of personal data, continuously. Products such as wearable fitness monitors, Google Glass and the Apple Watch are just the pioneers. More are coming, and they will radically alter the way we work, live and communicate. However, new technologies like these introduce more difficult, nuanced and novel issues. Should an employer be able to make a hiring decision based on captured data about how often a potential employee exercises? A corresponding rise in legal and ethical concerns will meet this wave. Companies will have to weigh potential revenue from new products and services against the possible reputational damage brought by controversial products. Will some decide the regulatory or reputational risk is too high and withhold useful products in the future? One way industries deal with such complex problems is by voluntary standards. They are consensus-driven processes outside of government which solve a myriad of problems, from safety to compatibility. Another way involves working with government and creating public-private partnerships. There are many successful examples of private and public sector cooperation rising to meet difficult challenges and, in fact, producing better results than unilateral government action. In just its first year, the 2012 voluntary set-top box agreement among the pay-TV industry, set-top box manufacturers and energy efficiency advocates saved U.S. consumers $168 million in electricity costs and mitigated the release of nearly 842,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2). Over time, the agreement is expected to result in annual electricity savings of more than $1 billion, as set-top boxes become even more energy efficient. And Energy Star, the voluntary energy efficiency labeling program, is an example of a successful public-private partnership that’s now in its third decade. Working together through voluntary agreements, companies can tackle major issues more quickly and nimbly than regulators can. Results for the set-top box agreement are based on electricity-use measurement standards created with industry engineers and government regulators at the same


If the U.S. military is expanding in Iraq, why isn’t it embedding journalists?

Navy Lt. j.g. Bryan Mitchell records Alex Pena, a reporter from Star and Stripes, during a media embed at Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, in February. (Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Kenneth G. Takada/U.S. Navy) The U.S. military will have more than 3,000 troops in Iraq sometime soon, part of an increase aimed at training up to 45,000 Iraqi soldiers to defend against Islamic State militants. But at least one major element of the Pentagon’s involvement in Iraq is missing so far now: embedded independent journalists. The modern media embed program in Iraq began in 2003, with 692 journalists embedding during the U.S. invasion of the country that March and the subsequent fall of Baghdad, according to a September 2004 assessment produced for the Defense Department by the Institute of Defense Analyses. The program’s early goals were to dominate media coverage of the war, counter third-party “disinformation” and to nurture U.S. and international support, the report said. Thousands of journalists have embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan since. For civilian journalists like me, the assignments provide immersive learning in the dangers that Americans and civilians alike face in war zones, the complexity of military operations and the proud, complicated culture of the service members who carry them out. Embedding can be scary at times, but it also can lead to powerful journalism that explores how a military campaign is going and what the troops prosecuting it think and feel. In Iraq, media embeds ended when the United States pulled virtually all of its remaining troops out in December 2011. They have not been reestablished, six months after President Obama sent several hundred military advisers to Iraq in June and four months after the United States began launching airstrikes against militants there. Virtually nothing has been heard from rank-and-file troops in Iraq in that time frame. The small number of U.S. troops in Iraq now is far smaller than what deployed during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and makes it impossible for the military to embed reporters, said Army Maj. Curt Kellogg, a spokesman with U.S. Central Command. “Given these small numbers of U.S. troops, there is currently no capacity to host embeds in Iraq,” he said. “As Operation Inherent Resolve progresses, we will continue to examine ways to best facilitate media coverage.” A change could be coming, though. Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said that


The old man and the rising sea

the permanent buildings. A brutal set of storms in the ’90s hastened some of the changeover. One northeaster in 1998 eroded the shore by nearly the span of a football field in some places. These storms damaged the artificially maintained dunes near the beach at Tom’s Cove, and a decision was made to led the dunes go natural. “What we realized is that in order to keep the island as healthy as possible, we needed to let the natural processes happen,” said Patricia Kicklighter, who served as Assateague’s superintendent from 2009 to 2013. “In order for the island to have any future, it needs to have that rollover.” And if the island was going to roll over, then the buildings were just going to have to roll with it. The fragile island In 2009, the Obama administration ordered agencies overseeing federal land to explicitly account for climate change in their planning processes. When Kicklighter took over Assateague that same year, she made climate change the central issue of the new management plan, which is still in draft form. Assateague was one of the first national parks to conduct this decision making specifically with different climate change scenarios in mind. Recent studies suggest that barrier islands all along the Atlantic are at a threshold. If the sea starts to rise any faster — as even the most conservative models predict — these places may start to rapidly migrate or break apart. Recognizing Assateague’s fragility, several different courses of action were proposed. The most promising one calls for minimal interference with the island’s rollover or possible fragmentation. There would be ferries to make up for any losses in beachfront parking. If the aging bridge on the island’s north side crumbled in a storm, it wouldn’t be replaced. Parking lots and buildings would move as necessary. And if the waves split the island in two, they would accept that, and work around the new inlet. The proposal, if adopted, would represent more of a shift in attitudes than a completely new way to operate. Much of the work of adaptation had already been done, inadvertently, by Ennis and his team of maintenance workers, as they scrambled to figure out what could survive on Assateague. Rebecca Beavers, a geologist who coordinates the Park Service’s climate change planning in its coastal areas, has high praise for these efforts. “At this point Assateague is one of


NASA prepares to test the spaceship that could take us to Mars

program is subject to funding constraints and a balky political system. “This is the problem with anything that takes 20 years — people have very short attention spans,” Caceres said. “And you have numerous presidential administrations and Congresses, and inevitably someone gets around to canceling it, or reducing it.” Still, the Orion test flight will be a huge day for NASA — and the Orion, which will face extreme conditions, from space radiation, to the 4,000 degree temperatures generated when it hits the atmosphere traveling at 20,000 mph. NASA will launch its newest spacecraft, Orion, into space for the first time Thursday, on a flight that will take it farther than any spacecraft built to carry humans has gone in more than 40 years. The test flight “is basically a compilation of what I would say are the riskiest events that we’re going to see when we fly people,” Hill, the senior NASA official, told reporters. There will be numerous “separation events” — the Launch Abort System, for example, and the crew module separation — that, Hill said, “have to work right the first time.” The heat shield will be put to an extreme test. And then there are the numerous parachutes that have to deploy correctly so that the capsule lands safely in the Pacific Ocean. NASA is already looking ahead to Orion's next unmanned test flight in 2018, and the first manned flight in 2021 at the earliest. Mark Geyer, NASA's Orion Program Manager, said at a news briefing Tuesday that the long wait times are "budget driven." "I wish it would go faster, but I think this is a good plan given the budget we've got," he said. The October explosion of the unmanned Orbital Sciences rocket that was to supply the space station is hanging over the launch. So is the recent crash of the Virgin Galactic spacecraft that killed the co-pilot. Those incidents “remind us that this business is very difficult,” said Mike Hawes, Lockheed’s Orion Program Manager. Officials have done everything they can to “identify your risks and do everything you can to mitigate them. But you still fly with a level of risk.” Geyer said he hoped “everything is perfect” and that there are “high-fives” all around after ward. But officials will be looking for the things that aren’t perfect, so they “can learn and fix it before we put people on board.”


D.C. area forecast: Warmer but still cloudy today; some sun Thursday before clouding up again into weekend

EXPRESS FORECAST Today: TODAY’S DAILY DIGIT 5/10: FORECAST IN DETAIL Radar & lightning: Latest regional radar shows movement of precipitation and lightning strikes over past two hours. Refresh page to update. Yesterday’s cold rain and drizzle was about as miserable as it gets around these parts. While we may not see the sun again until early tomorrow, today does offer some modest improvement after any early showers or drizzle. The sun goes on hiatus again by later tomorrow into Friday, however, and rain chances increase Friday into the weekend. Today (Wednesday): Tonight: For related traffic news, check out Dr. Gridlock. Keep reading for the forecast through the weekend… Tomorrow (Thursday): Tomorrow night: A soggy evening yesterday in Takoma Park, Md. (Potomac Weather via Twitter) A LOOK AHEAD Friday SNOW POTENTIAL INDEX 1/10 (↓): A stalled front, and the potential for low pressure to develop along it, means we could see a few different periods of rain during the course of the weekend. We’ll try to pinpoint the timing as we get closer. But for now plan on the possibility of rain at times on both Saturday and Sunday, with mostly cloudy skies and highs in the mid-40s to near 50. Saturday night lows bottom in the upper 30s to low 40s. Confidence: Low


Obama: Immigration legislation possible only after ‘temperatures cool a little’ over executive actions

President Obama told business leaders Wednesday that the United States remains in a strong economic position globally, but he emphasized that Washington must break through political gridlock to maintain that edge. President Obama gestures toward the crowd as they respond to his words while he speaks about the economy after participating in a roundtable discussion with working parents, small business owners, students and faculty, on Oct. 31, in Rhode Island. (Stephan Savoia/AP) As he has before, Obama cited tax reform, trade and infrastructure as areas where he hopes to cut deals with Republicans, and he added that if progress is made in those areas, then perhaps the parties could revisit immigration reform legislation later next year. "I suspect that temperatures need to cool a little bit in the wake of my executive actions," Obama said of immigration, during an appearance before the Business Roundtable. "I don’t think that that’s something that this Congress will be able to do right away. My suspicion is they’ll take a couple of stabs at rolling back what I’ve done, and then perhaps folks will step back and say, 'Well, rather than just do something partial that we may not be completely satisfied with, let’s engage with the president to see if we can do something more comprehensive that addresses some of our concerns,' but also addresses my concerns as well." Obama, who is scheduled to meet with incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Wednesday afternoon at the White House, suggested "there is definitely a deal to be done" on corporate tax reform and said it would be crucial to cut a deal on taxes as a way to provide new revenue to invest in infrastructure. Reflecting on his recent trip to an economic summit in China, Obama marveled at the hotel and conference center where he stayed in Beijing and said: "One thing is that if they need to build some stuff, they can build it. Over time, that wears away our advantage competitively. It's embarrassing." The conference center, he added "would put most conference centers here to shame. It was built in a year. Now, you've got an authoritarian government that isn't necessarily accountable. I understand we're not going to do that. But if they're able to build their ports, their airports, their smart grid, their air traffic control systems, their broadband systems with that rapidity, and they're superior to ours,


The great beer abandonment: America’s young drinkers are drinking wine and hard alcohol instead

Wine is on the rise, too. The percentage of young adults who prefer wine has gone up from just under 15 percent in the early 1990s to just under 25 percent today. The percentage that said wine is their preferred alcohol category. (Source: Gallup, Goldman Sachs Investment Research) The change in preferences isn't restricted to the country's youngest drinkers—the whole country, as it happens, has been drinking less and less beer for quite some time now. Nationwide, beer consumption fell by nearly 9 percent between 2002 and 2012. But, as the first chart above shows, it's likely being driven by the fact that young drinkers don't like beer as much as they used to. The decline in the number of 30- to 49-year olds who say beer is their drink of choice, after all, has fallen only marginally. And the percentage of those 50 and older has remained virtually unchanged. Even the beer world's coveted corner, craft beers, which has been gaining market share for many years now, might be on the verge of hitting their peak. "While we're not there yet, we're definitely approaching bubble territory," Spiros Malandrakis, an industry analyst at Euromonitor, said this past summer. What's going on? It's hard to pin beer's waning popularity on anything specific. As The Atlantic's Derek Thompson noted last year, the rise of health narratives, which have demonized more caloric food and drinks likely hasn't helped. Neither have economic collapses, like the recession, which appears to have had a noticeable effect on beer sales (possibly because beer is a relatively inefficient way to get a buzz). There's also the fact that in the mid-1990s, a ban was lifted on ads from hard alcohol makers. "Since that time, spirits have been steadily gaining share in the U.S.," Thomas Mullarkey, a market analyst with Morningstar, told MarketWatch earlier this year. And it's also possible that young people are merely rebelling against the tastes of the generation before them—a sort of alcohol-soaked shift that's more reactionary than people realize. People, after all, tend to eschew what their parents drink, because what their parents drink isn't "cool." The good news for beer makers? For roughly the same reason, they also tend to pick right up where their grandparents left off. "Alcohol consumption is cyclical by nature," Malandrakis said. "Believe it or not, we tend to drink what our grandparents drank, not what our parents drank."


Four beers per mile — get ready for the inaugural Beer Mile World Championship

which will take place at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, on Wednesday at 7 p.m. EST. The idea is simple: before every 400-meter lap, racers must chug a 12-ounce beer, thus ingesting four beers per mile. And yes, there is a penalty for puking (an extra lap), which is why training for this event is essential, at least according to participant Corey Gallagher of Canada. Per The New York Times: In preparation for his big race Wednesday, the Canadian runner Corey Gallagher followed a strict regimen: go home from work, chug two bottles of water, devour four sandwiches and chug two more bottles of water, chasing it all with a 10-mile run. Other days, Gallagher, a 27-year-old mailman in Winnipeg, Manitoba, turns his treadmill to top speed for a mile and downs four bottles of beer — one per quarter-mile — each in less than eight seconds. Then he tries not to vomit. If you’re still not convinced of the Beer Mile’s difficulty, perhaps, Lance Armstrong can convince you. He couldn’t finish a Beer Mile when he attempted a practice run in mid-November. He chugged on beer, ran a lap then promptly dropped out. “That was not what I expected,” he said (via Runners World). Conclusion: Doping aids performance; alcohol kills it. Common sense, however, won’t stop those who think they have what it takes (i.e., an incredibly high tolerance for carbonated beverages shaking around in their stomachs while moving at a brisk pace). Those who want to give the feat a try can compete in the amateur divisions divided by age, while racers like Gallagher and the 20 other elite runners who have committed to the sudsy race will compete in the professional heats. Gallagher is considered one of the favorites, with a personal record of 5 minutes 1 second, according the New York Times. He’ll be joined by track-and-field superstars, such as Olympian Nick Symmonds, an 800-meter specialist (at least without beer) and Jim Finlayson, a Canadian marathon champions. Meanwhile in the female heats, 45-year-old mother of six Chris Kimbrough is coming in the favorite. Her fastest time is 6:28, the New York Times reports. She’ll compete against some much younger talent, such as nine-time collegiate All-American Katie Mackey. The event will stream live on Flotrack.com on Wednesday night starting at 7 p.m. EST in case you want to crack a beer and watch the action.


Chicago and London marathon winner reportedly paid Russian officials $550,000 to keep her doping secret

Lilya Shobukhova. (Charles Rex Arbogast/AP) Liliya Shobukhova is a good runner. But she wanted to be better. She wanted to win. So she started doping, and to keep her secret quiet, the 37-year-old reportedly paid Russia’s athletics federation $550,000 to help her cover up a positive test, according to the Associated Press, which cites German and French news sources. Shobukhova has won the Chicago Marathon three times, from 2009 to 2011, as well as the London Marathon in 2010. According to France’s L’Equipe sports newspaper and German television channel ARD, which claims to have undercover video of Shobukhova admitting to using oxandrolone, a banned steroid, the money Shobukhova reportedly paid the Russian athletics federation is what led Shobukhova to be able to compete in the 2012 Olympics, where she entered but failed to finish the marathon event. Less than two years later, Shobukhova was stripped of her Chicago and London wins after Russian doping officials discovered suspicious blood samples in her biological passport in April of this year. As a consolation payment, ARD reports, Shobukhova’s husband received a refund of $370,000 from the Russian athletics federation, which had allegedly been using the money to bribe officials at the Russian Anti-Doping Agency to falsify positive tests. Apparently, at least one official couldn’t be bribed. The main accusations come from former Russian Anti-Doping Agency official Vitaly Stepanov and his wife Yulia, a former runner herself who was once banned for doping. Per the Associated Press: Stepanov told ARD that various Russian sports federations “would come to (Russian) doping control officers” offering “extra cash” to hush up positive tests. He also accused the head of the national doping test laboratory, Grigory Rodchenkov, of falsifying tests and selling banned substances. Yulia Stepanova accused coaches of providing her with banned substances. Yulia Stepanova also accused the head of the Russian federation’s medical department, Sergei Portugalov, of supplying doping products in exchange for 5 percent of an athlete’s earnings, plus bonuses for competition wins. She also said Russian athletes had avoided out-of-competition testing by using false names during foreign training camps. The story, however, doesn’t end there. The ARD report states the behavior could be endemic and could implicate Russian officials and athletes in other sports, such as swimming, cycling, biathlon, weightlifting and cross-country skiing, the AP writes. “These are serious allegations. I understand an investigation is already under way by the IAAF ethics commission and


Israel is the latest target for China’s ‘panda diplomacy’

(Lazaro Garnio/The Washington Post) Beijing's famous "panda diplomacy" is finally reaching Israel. This week, China announced that as long as the facility meets the standards needed for the animals, it would soon be loaning two panda bears to a zoo in Haifa. China's practice of giving the bears to its allies and partners has a long history: Some date it to the 7th-century Tang Dynasty, though it was revived by Mao Zedong in the 20th century and became well known in the United States in 1972 when President Richard Nixon received two pandas after a landmark visit to China. Countries ranging from Belgium to Japan have been on the receiving end. Given the pandas' ubiquity and cuteness, it's easy to forget what a weird diplomatic tactic loaning them is. Pandas are a strange lot. They are notoriously difficult to breed and expensive to keep (U.S. zoos have complained that the animals cost more to maintain than they bring in extra revenue). And although they look cuddly enough, the creatures sometimes have an unpleasant demeanor. "Mean-spirited, mate-abusing, progeny-mauling, deviant monsters" is the way my colleague Ishaan Tharoor once described them. A giant panda bear chews at Pairi Daiza animal park in Brugelette, Belgium, 05 April 2014. EPA/STEPHANIE LECOCQ In the complicated world of diplomacy between Israel and China, perhaps a panda makes sense. The two countries may seem like close allies now, but it hasn't always been the case — and things are already more complicated than meets the eye. In 1950, a newly established Israel was the first Middle Eastern nation to recognize the Communist Party as the legitimate leader of China. Israel had some reason to look kindly upon China: About 20,000 Jews had taken refuge in the country during World War II. However, for decades after the People's Republic of China was established, relations were strained. China had little, if any, diplomatic ties with Israel and instead emphasized its support for Palestinian groups: It became one of the first non-Arab states to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and developed a relationship with Yasser Arafat. By the mid-1980s, things were beginning to change behind the scenes: China, rapidly modernizing, was starting to secretly eye Israel technology. In 1992, after Israel and the PLO began peace negotiations, China established diplomatic relations with the country. Relations bloomed. Israel rapidly became the second-biggest arms supplier to China (which, in turn, led


D.C. area forecast: Clouds overwhelm early sunshine; count on weekend wetness

TODAY’S DAILY DIGIT 5/10: EXPRESS FORECAST Today: FORECAST IN DETAIL Latest mid-Atlantic infrared satellite shows movement of clouds over past two hours. Refresh page to update. This isn’t Seattle, but you could be forgiven for thinking so over the next few cool, cloudy days with frequent chances of drizzle and rain. At least the lack of freezing temps in much of the area means no wintry weather. Chances of seeing the “Long Night” full moon Saturday morning are pretty slim as that day shapes up to be the wettest day of the bunch. Some models stretch the rains into Sunday with nearly two inches of rain! Early Christmas shoppers need to keep one hand free for the umbrella. While we may see few of them, the sunsets have reached their earliest point of the season, so light lovers take heart. Today (Thursday): Tonight: For related traffic news, check out Dr. Gridlock. Keep reading for the forecast through the weekend… Tomorrow (Friday): Tomorrow night: By the Anacostia, November 30. (Jim Havard via Flickr) A LOOK AHEAD Saturday Sunday Monday SNOW POTENTIAL INDEX 1/10 (→):


Does this postal chairman’s lobbying history pose a conflict of interest?

in favor of the pecuniary interests of his clients,” the letter said. “He must give assurances that he would not use his position to promote the practices of the industry he previously represented.” The Leadership Conference also suggested that the Postal Service would be a more trustworthy source of payday loans, which are cash advances that have to be repaid by the next payday. The loans are controversial because of their high interest rates and the fact that they often trap low-income individuals in a cycle of debt. A report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this years said more than 80 percent of payday loans are rolled over or followed by another loan within two weeks. A report this year from the USPS inspector general said the Postal Service could offer interest rates of 28 percent on payday loans, which would be far lower than the triple-digit rates that traditional lenders charge. Payday lenders tend to set up shop in African-American and Hispanic communities, which is another reason the Leadership Conference has taken such an interest in Barnett’s stance toward the practice. The group sees an opportunity for the Postal Service, which Americans largely trust, to provide cash advances in those communities at lower rates. Barnett joined the postal board in 2006. The previous year, he opposed efforts by the New Mexico legislature to impose stricter regulations on payday lenders, such as limiting delinquency fees and requiring lenders to forgive loans once a customer has paid twice the amount that was borrowed. Working as an attorney, Barnett argued in one case that borrowers must settle disputes with lenders through arbitration rather than through the courts, and that no such restrictions should apply to lenders. The New Mexico Supreme Court unanimously rejected that position as “substantively unconscionable and therefore unenforceable.” The Postal Service has long provided financial services, including money orders and international money transfers. It also offered savings accounts until 1967. Researchers have estimated that the agency could bring in nearly $9 billion annually by capturing 10 percent of the market from Americans on the fringes of the banking system, according to the inspector general’s report. But industry groups such as the American Bankers Association have pushed back against further USPS forays into the financial-services, arguing that the agency could have unfair advantages — theoretically through fewer regulations and the perception of being government-endorsed. Any major policy changes for


In Syria, jogging through a war zone

A runner in Aleppo’s Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood, a rebel-controlled area, on Dec. 2, 2014. (Mahmoud Hebbo/Reuters) On Tuesday, a handful of runners took to the crumbling streets of Aleppo, Syria, to compete in a race through the rebel-controlled neighborhood of Bustan al-Qasr. According to Reuters, the race was won by Ahmad Sobhe, who received a trophy at a kind of event not usually seen in war-torn countries. The race came the same day as a report by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which reported more than 200,000 people have died in the country in more than two years of conflict. Aleppo has not been spared — the ancient city is a shell of its former self, with only 1 million remaining residents out a pre-war population of 2.5 million, NBC reported. At least 60 runners participated in a race in opposition-held northern Aleppo Tuesday. The event honored victims of a group execution whose bodies were reportedly discovered in Quieq River in January 2013. According to Tom Finn of Middle East Eye “We are proving to the world that we, as free athletes in Aleppo, are resisting despite everything that is going on,” one of the organizers of the event told Middle East Eye. Another said: “We are showing the world that we are playing sports in the most dangerous city in the world … It’s also to relieve people from the stress of the continuous strikes and crimes committed by the regime and to showcase our talented athletes who partake in such events.” (Mahmoud Hebbo/Reuters) (Mahmoud Hebbo/Reuters) Ahmad Sobhe celebrates his win. (Mahmoud Hebbo/Reuters) RELATED: Syrian children took to the streets of Aleppo to draw attention to their plight amid the raging civil war.


German TV documentary alleges that ’99 percent’ of Russian Olympic athletes are doping

tested in the first place. Evgenia Pecherina, a Russian discus thrower who is serving a 10-year doping ban, told documentary director Hajo Seppelt that a vast majority of Russian athletes are doping. “Most of them, the majority, 99%. And you can get absolutely everything. Everything the athlete wants,” she says in the documentary. Another Russian athlete — also serving a doping ban — alleges she had to bribe the Russian athletics federation in order to compete in the 2012 London Olympics: In a further interview, the Russian runner Liliya Shobukhova, a winner of the London and Chicago marathons, alleges she had to pay her own federation $450,000 in order to bribe her way into the 2012 Olympic Games in spite of abnormal blood test results for the period 2009 to 2011. When Shobukhova did not complete the race, she was banned after all and the federation paid her back a third of the money via a shell company. Documents shown in the film appear to show Valentin Balakhnichev, the president of the All-Russia Athletics Federation and treasurer of the IAAF, was aware of the transaction. The BBC has more They allege that leading Russian athletics officials supplied banned substances in exchange for 5% of an athlete’s earnings and colluded with doping control officers to hush up and falsify tests. Yulia Stepanova said it was also common for Russian athletes to avoid out-of-competition testing by using false names while training abroad. … The documentary also included an undercover video purporting to show 800m runner Mariya Savinova, who won gold at the 2012 Olympics in London, admitting to using the banned steroid oxandrolone. Per the BBC, the World Anti-Doping Agency said the documentary’s claims would be “carefully scrutinized” and that it had passed information it had already received to the IAAF. Per the Associated Press, the IAAF said it was already investigating the claims. Reaction from Olympic athletes starting pouring in Thursday. Here’s British marathoner Paula Radcliffe: The ARD doping documentary is making me sick to my stomach. Some of the allegations coming out of this are every sports worst nightmare British rowing gold medalist Matthew Pinsent: this is grim reading for Oly sports fans - casts a pall over every RUS performance for an Olympiad http://t.co/Lk7KLU74jF British marathoner Mara Yamauchi: Allegations about Russian doping shocking but not surprising. Let's see more cleaning up done so that honest athletes can compete fairly.


Grayshirt gives Severna Park’s Olivia Reiter early start with Maryland field hockey

Olivia Reiter doesn’t think Maryland field hockey Coach Missy Meharg will remember the story, but the senior midfielder from Severna Park will never forget. About a decade before Reiter signed with the Terrapins, Meharg was already pushing for an early start. Olivia Reiter helped lead Severna Park to consecutive Maryland 4A state championships (Jonathan Newton / The Washington Post). Reiter said when she was 7, her brother played on the same basketball team as Meharg’s son. She was shooting hoops one day when she piqued the coach’s interest. “She came down – and I had never played field hockey before – and she told me, ‘You should play field hockey.’ So then I just started playing because she told me to. It was kind of crazy,” Reiter said. “I don’t even think she remembers that, but I remembered it, and I started playing field hockey because of it.” When Meharg signed Reiter – who has since become a remarkable talent, drawing interest from Syracuse and Old Dominion, as well as Maryland – to sign with the Terps, the coach was trying to fast track Reiter’s development one more time. After playing her first two years of high school at Spalding, then transferring to Severna Park and winning back-to-back Maryland 4A championships with the Falcons, Reiter will graduate after her fall semester of high school and take a “grayshirt” at Maryland, allowing her to practice with the team through the spring indoor season and better prepare her for an ambitious goal of starting as a freshman in the fall. “I’m just going to work my butt off, and hopefully it’s good enough,” she said. Reiter said she picked Maryland for a number of reasons. She had always been a fan of the field hockey team at Maryland, because she said she and her teammates would always flock to College Park to watch the game at a high level. Two of her cousins played sports for the university, which made her a bigger fan. William Yeatman played lacrosse and football in College Park before playing in 15 games as an offensive tackle with the Dolphins. He’s currently on the injured/reserve list for the Houston Texans. Anne Morgan Yeatman won a 2010 NCAA championship with Maryland’s women’s lacrosse team. But Reiter said ultimately the decision came down to connection she felt during her official visit, when Meharg first floated the idea of early


Expect large crowds for downtown events

Two separate events near each other in the heart of downtown Washington will put crowds on the streets and add to traffic congestion, particularly during the Thursday afternoon rush. Many Metrobus routes will be detoured or delayed. Drivers who just want to get through the area should steer clear of the John A. Wilson Building (“A” on the map) on Pennsylvania Avenue and the Ellipse (“B” on the map) south of the White House. Here are the travel details for each event. John A. Wilson Building Metrorail is likely to be the easiest approach for those attending. The stations nearest to the Wilson Building are Federal Triangle and Metro Center. This page on the Parking Panda Web site can help drivers who want to find and reserve garage parking nearby. The transit authority said it expects the activity around the Wilson Building to disrupt service on these Metrobus routes: 30N, 30S, 32, 33, 36, 37, 39, A9, D1, P17, P19, W13. See this page on Metro’s Web site for details on route changes and skipped stops. The Ellipse Several street closings for the event setup are scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. Thursday and continue till 10 p.m. The streets to be closed are 15th and 17th between Constitution Avenue and E Street NW. This alone would be enough to disrupt the evening rush hour, but those closings will be extended from 4 p.m. through the end of the ceremony. During those hours, 15th Street NW will be blocked to vehicles between New York and Constitution avenues, 17th Street NW will be blocked between Constitution Avenue and New York Avenue/State Place, and 18th Street NW will be closed to vehicles between D and E streets. The diverted traffic will make congestion even worse than normal throughout the area near the White House and Ellipse. The nearest Metrorail stations are McPherson Square, Farragut West, Metro Center and Federal Triangle. For paid parking options in the vicinity, check this page on Parking Panda. But remember that the closer you get to the Ellipse, the more likely you are to be caught in extra heavy rush hour traffic. Metrobus delays because of the extra traffic can be widespread, affecting routes that link the District with Maryland and Virginia. The transit authority expects these routes will be subject to delays and unplanned detours: 3Y, 7Y, 11Y, 16X, 16Y, 30N, 30S, 32, 36, 37, 38B,


Investigation: Afghan shooter ambushed slain Army general at close range

Then-Brig. Gen. Harold Greene addresses a crowd in 2011. He was killed in a shooting in Afghanistan on Aug. 5. (U.S. Army photo) The mass shooting that killed a two-star Army general and wounded 18 other people in Afghanistan on Aug. 5 was carried out by a lone Afghan soldier who did not have any apparent ties to the Taliban and who simply seized “a target of opportunity,” according to a U.S. military investigation. This photo of Rafiqullah, 22, is included in a U.S. Central Command report released Thursday. He opened fire on coalition and Afghan troops in Afghanistan, killing Army Maj. Gen. Harold Greene. (Photo released by the U.S. military) The investigation, released by U.S. Central Command on Thursday, found that Maj. Gen. Harold Greene, of Falls Church, Va., died immediately after being shot multiple times in the pelvis, head and neck by an army private named Rafiqullah, 22, who also was killed in the incident. The report found that Rafiqullah opened fire from a bathroom window in a military police barracks less than 15 meters away from the nearest person he targeted. He had previously expressed disdain for Americans. Greene was the highest-ranking U.S. officer killed in a combat zone since the Vietnam War. The others wounded in the shooting included German Army Brig. Gen. Michael Bartscher and Afghan Brig. Gen. Miyan-Yar Gulalm Sahki. The names of the others wounded are redacted from the newly released documents, but they include 10 Americans, three Afghans and two individuals from Britain. The attack occurred at the Marshal Fahim National Defense University. The facility, in the Qarga district of Kabul province and west of the city, was known as the Afghan National Defense University until this year. Greene, the deputy commanding general of Combined Security Command – Afghanistan, and the others were at the academy to review and discuss a construction project that was underway and highlight the school’s potential to train Afghan officers. The report said that Rafiqullah was not believed to have been a member of the Taliban or any other extremist group. He may have been “self-radicalized” or had a mental illness, investigators found. He fired between 27 to 30 rounds from an M-16 that carried up to 30 in its magazine, and was killed by coalition service members. It “appears the shooting was not premeditated, and the shooter simply took advantage of a target of opportunity provided


Orion test flight scrubbed due to valve problems

NASA officials delayed the scheduled launch of the Orion space capsule until Friday due to a last-minute technical problem. The historic launch of Orion, NASA’s much-heralded, next-generation spacecraft, was scrubbed Thursday because of faulty valves. The decision came after repeated delays caused by strong winds and even an errant boat that appeared to move too close to the launch site. Up until the final minutes before the close of the launch window, NASA officials held out hopes of testing the craft designed to ultimately bring humans to Mars. But after a tense morning, several fuel and drain valves that did not function properly finally forced officials to postpone the mission. The next launch window is Friday at 7:05 a.m. EST. But officials said there was only a "40 percent chance of favorable weather conditions" for a launch Friday morning. The uncrewed spacecraft had been scheduled to lift off at 7:05 a.m.Thursday from Cape Canaveral, Fla., aboard a Delta IV Heavy rocket, en route to a 4.5 hour flight that would take it twice around Earth and to an altitude of 3,600 miles-- farther than any spacecraft designed for humans has traveled in more than 40 years. As the morning unfolded, a NASA official had said on the agency's live web stream that there have been a "number of minor issues," but no "show stoppers." At one point, the official said Orion "stands ready for launch" as crews waited for the wind to die down. In a statement, the United Launch Alliance, the joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing that makes the Delta IV rocket, said that while "the liquid hydrogen fill and drain valves...did not properly close within the allotted time," the spacecraft "has no technical or operational issues and remains ready for launch." Daniel Collins, ULA's chief operating officer, told reporters Thursday afternoon that the valves "had gotten cold and a little sluggish in their performance." He said that the team was "listening to everything the rocket was telling us. And it told us it wasn't ready to go today. So we'll go make sure we have a happy rocket. And as soon as we do that we're going to get back to the pad and send Orion off for a very successful test flight." NASA’s next-generation unmanned capsule gets its first test flight. The months-long hype and anticipation leading up to Orion's test flight reached a crescendo


The racial divide in America is this elemental: Blacks and whites actually breathe different air.

American Lung Association There's a profound truth to one of the mottoes of protesters in New York who are upset about a grand jury's decision not to indict an officer in the death of Eric Garner on Staten Island this summer. "We can't breathe," they have been chanting. And in New York, as in most American cities, the air itself has been tainted by decades of disparity in public policy. The motto paraphrases Garner's words as Officer Daniel Pantaleo held him in an apparent chokehold on the sidewalk. Pantaleo told the grand jury he did not intend to choke Garner and tried to let go of him when Garner said, "I can't breathe," but the asthmatic Garner suffered a heart attack and died several minutes later in the back of ambulance. A medical examiner ruled the death a homicide. We'll never know if Garner would have survived the altercation if he hadn't had asthma. We also don't know what caused the asthma, which he developed as a child. What we do know is that asthma is much more common among blacks than whites, and that air pollution is much worse in communities of color nationwide. Asthma was one among many factors correlated with race in Garner's life that led to the fatal situation, said Eddie Bautista, director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance. "There are number of ways that racism plays out," he said. "The asthma is just one more example." A recent study found that members of racial and ethnic minorities are exposed to levels of nitrogen dioxide, a common pollutant associated with asthma and heart disease, that are 38 percent higher than in the air whites breathe. Advocates say that authorities often decide to dump waste in minority neighborhoods, and to locate highways and industrial facilities away from the higher-income areas where whites live. Garner lived in Tompkinsville, a neighborhood on Staten Island's north shore where zoning regulations have concentrated shipping and industry, Bautista said. The north shore of the island is one of six areas that New York City has designated for marine freight. Bautista's group analyzed the demographics of these zones and found that about two-thirds of the people living in them were not white. Historically, he said, immigrants and people of color moved to these waterfront neighborhoods because they could live and find work there despite a lack of money and qualifications.


Even climate change experts and activists are in denial about climate change

The Kochs and others are clearly filling a psychological void. Research also has shown that “people want to protect themselves a little bit,” particularly in times of crisis and uncertainty. If climate change simply isn’t happening, there’s nothing to worry about. Another popular coping and defense mechanism is to pretend that we can address this global and urgent problem by tinkering at the edges of “business as usual.” For example, politicians and business leaders widely believe that we can achieve a decarbonization of the global economy while maintaining high economic growth. Social psychologist Matthew Adams says such a response is part of an unconscious coping mechanism that simply implies that we have pushed the problem onto a distant future. As the geographer Erik Swyngedouw shows, climate change politics could in fact be seen as a “post-political” phenomenon where apocalyptic images of environmental destruction and human suffering are used to justify swift action without allowing any real political and economic choices. For example, while on one day the U.K. government is acknowledging that climate change is having stark impacts on developing countries by pledging 720 million pounds (about $1.1 billion) to poor countries, another day of the political calendar is dominated by rhetoric that emphasizes economic growth and even the expansion of the oil and gas industry in the United Kingdom. Urgent action on climate change is thus to be implemented within a business-as-usual framework of high growth and high consumption, despite growing evidence that such growth doesn’t make us happier and that it is very likely to deliver increasing carbon emissions for years and decades to come. In psychosocial theory, these defense mechanisms also are referred to as “splitting.” Consciously we might be talking about the impending sustainability crisis, but unconsciously we find ways to maintain the status quo. This is also true for those climate experts who fly around the world, going from one global climate change summit to the next. The very carbon emissions associated with their work can be seen as part of a denial strategy. In fact, one could argue that those who are very close to the reality of climate change are particularly prone to a need to split their identity. The knowledge they have, and the images they have seen, might unconsciously lead them to the above-mentioned counter-balancing and coping behaviors. Not a good omen for the latest round of climate talks in Peru.


Another drug war tragedy

Kansas police have cleared themselves of any wrongdoing in the death of Brenda Sewell. The 58-year-old woman died in a Lawrence Goodland jail cell after she and her sister were pulled over and arrested for possession of marijuana. From KMBC in Kansas City: Relatives of Brenda Sewell of Kansas City, Missouri, contend that jailers in Sherman County in western Kansas refused to give her prescription medication and were slow to help after she collapsed in her cell. Sewell was 58 when she died Jan. 22. Sherman County Attorney Charles Moser released the police investigative file exclusively to the Lawrence Journal-World this month, the newspaper reported. The report showed that Douglas County Attorney Charles Branson was brought in to review the case and found that the correctional officers overseeing Sewell didn’t commit a crime. The file said Sewell vomited more than two dozen times over 15 hours. After being taken to a medical center and given intravenous fluids and anti-nausea medicine, she was returned to her cell. The next morning she was sick again, began having seizures and stopped breathing. Sewell suffered abdominal hemorrhaging when her spleen ruptured, according to an autopsy report. Contributing factors to the rupture included vomiting and abdominal retching, the autopsy found. Sewell’s family doesn’t understand why she wasn’t provided better, faster medical treatment. Sewell suffered from several autoimmune diseases including fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis and Sjogren’s syndrome, her family said. She also had thyroid disease, high blood pressure and Hepatitis C, the family said. Among Sewell’s prescriptions were pain and muscle relaxant medications prescribed to deaden the pain that some of the diseases caused. “I firmly believe she would be alive today if they had just listened instead of treating (her and his aunt) like hardened criminals,” said Sewell’s son, Aaron Ray. “Everything about this was absurd.” Or better yet, stop putting people in cages for possessing a plant in the first place. Neither Sewell nor her sister had any prior criminal history. According to relatives, the two women had driven to Colorado to see whether marijuana might help treat some of Sewell’s symptoms, such as her nausea and loss of appetite. For the crime of trying to see whether pot could help treat her illnesses, Sewell was left to die of them. It also took several months and a change to Kansas’s open-records laws for Sewell’s family to get any answers about her death. (Not surprisingly,


PM Update: Rain moves in this evening; Fallstreak clouds over D.C.

Radar & lightning: Latest regional radar shows movement of precipitation and lightning strikes over past two hours. Refresh page to update. Click here or on image to enlarge. Or see radar bigger on our Weather Wall. Update at 9:00 p.m.: Farther east in the near western suburbs and the Beltway, mostly rain is expected, though it’s possible that some sleet could mix in. Sleet has been reported as far east as Manassas, Va., as of 9 p.m. Original post: Rain is moving into our far western suburbs. So far it’s only been light showers, though models suggest the rain could become heavier in the evening hours over D.C., so grab the umbrella on the way out the door. Friday is expected to be similarly dismal and grey. Through Tonight: Tomorrow (Friday): See David Streit’s forecast through the weekend. And if you haven’t already, join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter A glimpse of a sunset on Wednesday. (Momo Couture via Facebook) Fallstreak clouds spotted over D.C. Fallstreak clouds were spotted over Washington, D.C., today. At one point it appears that two of these “hole punch clouds” were sitting right next to each other. Thanks to everyone who shared photos with us! More on these stunning clouds that “pack a punch.” Post @capitalweather Another shot of this morning's fascinating fallstreak http://t.co/GOnTnReDcr @capitalweather View of the fallstreak that formed just north of DCA this morning, overlooking nat'l mall http://t.co/0Qya8xVfhV @hbwx @capitalweather @NWS_BaltWash sad I didn't have a better camera, but here's a sun dog inside the fallstreak! http://t.co/7fWJ7YYXXl


The paradox of newsworthiness

Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp holds a news conference to announce the launch of astronaut selection for a Mars space mission project in New York in April 2013. (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images) Mark Palko shares a devastating takedown by Elmo Keep about the emptiness of Mars One, a marketing plan that is being advertised as a space program that is supposed to be sending colonists to Mars. There’s too much in Keep’s story to copy all of it, but here’s an example: Here’s what it says, for instance, about how they will actually get people there: “Mars One anticipates using SpaceX Falcon Heavy, an upgraded version of the Falcon 9, which is in use by SpaceX currently. The Falcon Heavy is slated to undergo test flights in 2014, granting ample time for fine-tuning prior to the Mars One missions.” This summer, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket prototype broke apart over Texas after “an anomaly forced the destruction on the craft.” Also Keep has an amusing story about how she got the runaround when trying to track down an unsourced, but much-repeated, claim, that 20,000 people signed up to apply to be future Mars astronauts. The short answer: no evidence. But many journalists would rather report the hype. It is, after all, easier to hype than to investigate. And, perhaps, hype stories are more popular than investigative stories. (I don’t know about this, I haven’t seen data on the topic, but I’m sure it’s been studied by some scholars of communication.) As an example, Palko points to a completely credulous story by Vibeke Venema on BBC world service. Wow! As a credulous American myself, I always thought of the BBC as a class act, so this sort of thing is disappointing. Palko concludes: The press likes to maintain the convenient fiction that it is “open to all voices.” This is an obviously absurd proposition – even though the Internet has greatly expanded what news organizations like the BBC can offer, they can still only cover a tiny fraction of the information and opinions out there – but it serves the purpose of absolving journalists and, more to the point, editors and publishers from taking responsibility for what they present to the public. When something appears in a major news outlet, particularly when it is presented noncritically, that outlet is implicitly endorsing the story; it is, in effect, saying that this story is


Atlanta Symphony Orchestra gets $8 million

In early October, Todd Skitch pickets to support Atlanta Symphony Orchestra musicians in front of Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta. Skitch plays flute in the orchestra. The dispute was settled in early November. (Photo by Michael A. Schwarz for the Washington Post.) Weeks after settling a nasty labor dispute with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Woodruff Arts Center will receive a $38 million grant, the largest in its history, according to the ASO. The money comes from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation and will include almost $8 million for a players endowment fund. But the money does come with strings attached. The ASO and Woodruff Center must raise matching funds by the end of 2016. “The $8 million will actually be distributed incrementally as the ASO and Woodruff Arts Center raises the matching funds, so we could technically get it in installments as we raise the money,” an ASO spokesman wrote. Of the 2016 deadline, he added: “It’s important to note, though, that we’ve already had a very positive response from potential matching donors, so I feel confident that we’ll accrue the funds before that point.” The Woodruff Foundation gift is key, as the number of players in the ASO was one of the main sticking points during the recent, two-month lockout. Music director Robert Spano said that cutting more permanent slots would make it hard for the ASO to maintain musical integrity. Woodruff Center management argued that the ASO, which has run a deficit for years, needed to make concessions, among them the size of the orchestra. In the end, the ASO agreed to a deal that, among other changes, called for 77 musicians its first year, with goals of expanding slowly to 88 by the fourth year of the contract. In 2012, during another labor dispute, the ASO lost seven permanent positions, dropping from 95 players to 88.


You can thank this Predator drone for capturing NASA’s incredible Orion splashdown

(NASA / GA-SAI Photo) Forty years ago, this is what a spacecraft splashdown looked like. ( YouTube) Today, it looks more like this. (NASA) And this. (NASA) That's partly due to improved camera technology, of course. We now get crisper images and better frame rates. But think about what else had to go into NASA's coverage of the Orion splashdown. Countless people tuned in to watch America's next manned spacecraft return to Earth — live, in real-time, over the Internet! — and from an incredible bird's-eye angle. All of that was made possible by NASA's Predator drone. Yes, since 2006 NASA has had its own unmanned aircraft, modified to do things like monitor wildfires and take measurements of the atmosphere. It doesn't shoot Hellfire missiles, but the drone, named "Ikhana," can fly as high as an airliner at cruising altitude and can carry more than 2,400 pounds of science gear on its wings and in its internal bay. Ikhana — which in Choctaw — means "intelligent, conscious or aware," according to NASA, is the same MQ-9 unmanned aerial vehicle that the U.S. military uses. NASA helped fund the development of the Predator-B, as it's also known, in hopes that it could be used for research. According to the space agency, Ikhana has a wingspan of 66 feet and measures 36 feet in length. And it's equipped with ADS-B, a next-generation aircraft tracking technology that you may remember from our coverage of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight. NASA dispatched Ikhana this week to watch as the Orion spacecraft descended from orbit. Everything in the mission proceeded smoothly — including the drone footage stream. Ikhana offers a taste of what's possible with unmanned aircraft in the commercial sector, although with the Federal Aviation Administration still dragging its feet on crucial regulations; drone industry officials aren't optimistic about being able to fly their own missions anytime soon. In case you missed Ikhana's view of the Orion splashdown, here's a short clip. Untitled


NASA’s Orion completes historic flight, ushers in ‘new era’

which built Orion, and United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed and Boeing, which built the Delta IV Heavy rocket that launched Orion into orbit. Moments after liftoff, NASA spokesman Mike Curie said it marked "the dawn of Orion and the new era of American space exploration." In the post-flight press conference, Mark Geyer, NASA's Orion program manager, said: " It’s hard to have a better day than today." And he described the Orion and the Delta IV as "nearly flawless." The images of Earth seen from such a great distance, he said, "reminded us here we are again now -- the United States leading exploration out into the solar system." NASA’s next-generation unmanned capsule gets its first test flight. Since 1972, human flights have been restricted to the orbit level of the International Space Station. But Friday's flight went 15 times as far. NASA plans another test flight without astronauts in 2018. A crew is scheduled aboard Orion in about 2021. Sometime in the 2020s, NASA plans to capture an asteroid with a robotic spacecraft, then drag it to the moon’s orbit where it would connect with the Orion. Astronauts would then be able to take samples from the asteroid. "Just the idea of having a human around the moon interacting with an asteroid -- that’s mind boggling," NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said Friday. "We are very confident we can do this." The big target, however, remains Mars, which NASA says astronauts could reach sometime in the 2030s. But for all the excitement of Friday’s launch and talk of grand plans to go to Mars, NASA has been hampered by tight budgets and doesn’t have the funding for a mission to the red planet. Critics say that the Mars mission exists on paper only. While the Orion was initially part of a program, called Constellation, designed to return to the moon, its mission changed after the Obama administration killed Constellation and made Mars the goal. Friday's mission used the Delta IV. But future Orion missions would use the new Space Launch System rocket, or SLS, which is still being developed. "The SLS remains a big question mark -- both in terms of its development and funding, as well as political support," wrote Marco Caceres, a senior space analyst with the Teal Group, in his newsletter. "Without the SLS, Orion is like a Cadillac without wheels." Caceres and others


What would happen if the government shut down — and never reopened?

Safety Administration (OSHA) or the EPA or financial regulators would likely see their budgets slashed. There are political benefactors for these things, but compared to other budget priorities, it's easy to see why they'd be cut quickly. Also cut early, per Zelizer: Visa and passport issuance, arts programs, scientific research. The things, in other words, that affect the smallest and least-vocal and -powerful groups of people — or affect the powerful and vocal in only minor ways. At this point, it's safe to assume that financial markets would be freaked out. The government has a significant role in the national economy. "You could see a huge swing in the stock market. ... Federal contracts would dry up, which means that ... cities and suburbs and rural communities across the country that depend on the government would not have the money they were expecting." It would affect the housing market, as loans from the federal government stop. The closure of parks and museums, a battleground in 2013, would mean sharply reduced revenue in places that depend on tourist money. For those things that the government can't shut down, it would need to take out loans. Imagine that person, sitting in a dark office in the Department of the Treasury, unsure if she'll be paid any time soon, trying her best to twist arms and keep money flowing in. Interest rates would spike as time passed, with creditors increasingly nervous that they'd ever be repaid — and exacting a high cost for offering that trust. Incoming tax revenue is never enough to pay our bills by itself; it wouldn't be in this scenario, either. And that's assuming people actually kept paying their taxes, which, over time, might be less and less the case. If the shutdown continued, it's hard to predict the order in which services would go dark. But Zelizer offered his opinion on which things would be maintained until the end. "Theoretically, Social Security would continue because it's funded on its own," he said, and "that's a big part of what government does." Air traffic control. Emergency response, in the event of a natural disaster. "They'd find the revenue to do something. They're not going to allow the kinds of things you see in a Hollywood movie to occur." National security would be near last on the list — as would federal prisons and border control. "The government is not


Predicting epileptic seizures with 82 percent accuracy

A CT scan of a brain There are 60 million epileptics on the planet, and while advances in medication and implantable devices have helped them, the ability to better detect and even predict when they will have debilitating seizures would be a significant improvement in their everyday lives. Imagine, for example, if an epileptic knew with reasonable certainty that his next seizure would not occur for an hour or a day or a week. That might allow him to run to the market or go out for the evening or plan a short vacation with less concern. Computers and even dogs have been tested in the effort to do this, but now a group of organizations battling epilepsy is employing "big data" to help. They sponsored an online competition that drew 504 entrants who tried to develop algorithms that would detect and predict epileptic seizures. Instead of the traditional approach of asking researchers in a handful of labs to tackle the problem, the groups put huge amounts of data online that was recorded from the brains of dogs and people as they had seizures over a number of months. They then challenged anyone interested to use the information to develop detection and prediction models. "Seizure detection and seizure prediction," said Walter J. Koroshetz, deputy director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), are "two fundamental problems in the field that are poised to take significant advantage of large data computation algorithms and benefit from the concept of sharing data and generating reproducible results." On Friday evening, the groups announced that the prediction contest was won by a team of scientists and engineers who forecast abnormal electrical activity in the brain with 82 percent accuracy. They were led by Drew Abbot, an engineer, and Philip Adkins, a mathematician, who work at AiLive, a small company in Sunnyvale, Calif. Also on the team were Quang Tien, Simone Bosshard and Min Chen, scientists at the Center for Advanced Imaging at the University of Queensland in Australia. The sponsors of the challenge -- NINDS, the American Epilepsy Society and the Epilepsy Foundation -- noted that six other entrants scored within five-hundredths of a percentage point of the winners. The detection contest was won by Michael Hills, an Australian software engineer. About 500,000 of the 2 million U.S. epileptics do not respond to medication, so their best hope is "responsive neurostimulation devices"


IOC clears way for baseball and softball to return to Olympics, allows cities to submit joint bids

(Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images) The International Olympic Committee approved two changes on Monday that will significantly alter the way countries can bid on future Games, as well as change the lineup of sports at each Olympics. In an effort to reduce the costs associated with putting on the Games, the IOC will now allow multiple cities in the same country to present joint bids and allow certain events to be held outside the host city or even the host country. The move comes on the heels of the bidding for the 2022 Winter Games, which saw traditionally snowy locations such as Oslo, Stockholm and Munich drop out of the running because residents of those areas feared spiraling costs associated with hosting. That left Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan — cities with either serious concerns over logistics or questionable human-rights records — as the two finalists. The results of Monday’s vote could be felt as soon as the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, which has started construction on a $120 million sliding complex that will have little use after the Games are over. IOC officials said Sunday that South Korean officials would be allowed to move the sliding events to an area that already has such a complex, with Japan, the United States, Canada and European nations seen as alternatives. Pyeongchang officials have said they do not wish to move the sliding events, as construction on their complex already has begun. But they need only look toward Turin, the 2006 Olympic host that has dismantled its $100 million sliding complex because of high operating costs, as a cautionary tale about building White Elephants. IOC Vice President John Coates told the Chicago Tribune that cities wishing to submit a joint bid must do so early in the bidding process. The other vote could pave the way for baseball and softball to return to the Olympics, perhaps as soon as 2020 in Tokyo. The Associated Press explains: The IOC agreed to abolish the cap of 28 sports for the Summer Games and move to an “events-based” system that would allow new competitions to come in, while keeping to about 10,500 athletes and 310 medal events. Host cities will also be allowed to propose the inclusion of one or more additional events for their games. The new rules clear the way for Tokyo organizers to request that baseball and softball be included in the


Vigilante justice in the heart of southern Mexico’s drug war

Vigilantes, most of whom are farmers and businessmen, patrol the streets of Ayutla. (Kirsten Luce) Over the weekend, the remains of one of the 43 students missing from Guerrero, Mexico, were identified by DNA evidence. The students had been missing since late September, when they were last seen being rounded up by police. Gang members would later claim to having shot the students to death and then burning the bodies and throwing them into a river, which Human Rights Watch has described as the worst case of abuse to take place in Latin America in the past few decades. Guerrero is Mexico’s second-poorest state and had the nation’s highest homicide rate in 2013. The region has been plagued for years by a host of drug-cartel-related problems, including extortion and kidnapping. After a constant landslide of violent crimes related to drug cartels and rival gangs, the tension throughout some small communities in Mexico has reached a fever pitch. Dissatisfaction with President Enrique Peña Nieto’s handling of drug-related crimes has increased and has sparked demonstrations across Mexico City. In 2013, Photojournalist Kirsten Luce followed a group of vigilante citizens in Ayutla de los Libres, Guerrero who banded together to take up arms and create autodefensas, or self-defense groups, to protect their communities as Mexico’s increasingly complicated drug war continues. They formed out of a simultaneous need to control the cartels in this region and growing distrust in the local, state and federal authorities to help them. That sentiment reverberates still today in the wake of the missing students who many suspect where taken by corrupt municipal police. But in the midst of the formation of these autodefensas in Guerrero, skepticism that rival drug cartels may be arming some of these citizens groups in several communities has continued to grow. Last year citizens created their own autodenfensa in Ayutla, with road checkpoints that monitor traffic moving through their area. Masked men round up and detain fellow residents or visitors that they claim are responsible for chronic extortion, kidnappings and disappearances. The impoverished region in Southern Mexico is mostly agricultural and has become a hub for the production and transportation of marijuana and poppies. It has become increasingly violent, with residents saying that they cannot rely on help from the federal government. The trend toward self-policing has become more visible with communities being emboldened to create their own volunteer forces. Citizens in Ayutla have


Militaries, civilians and the crisis of the Arab state

Iraqi soldiers parade inside the main army recruiting center during a recruiting drive for men to volunteer for military service in Baghdad, Iraq on Thursday, June 19. (Karim Kadim/AP Photo) The civil-military relationship has proven central to the politics of many Arab countries, both those that underwent transition in 2011 and those that did not. The attempt to renegotiate constitutional frameworks and set up new political arrangements under conditions of profound uncertainty notably intensified existing patterns in their civil-military relations, to the point of transforming them. Those transformations also come in response to the longer-building crisis of the state, structural trends of social transformation and changes in global military affairs and security agendas pre-dating the Arab Spring. The breakdown of authoritarian control and transition in systems of governance weakened political and legal constraints on the military in the Arab Spring countries. In Egypt and Tunisia, characterized by relatively strong state institutions and highly formal militaries, this enabled the latter to play a major political role. In Libya and Yemen, with their weak states and mutual penetration by strong societal forces, in contrast, the uprisings deepened tribal and regional cleavages within the military, accentuating its paralysis and disintegration. The outcome, in every case, has gone beyond changes in degree, to usher in a qualitatively new phase in civil-military relations. The civil-military relationship is concerned centrally with questions about how to organize and use the means of violence controlled by the state, and against whom violence may be legitimately employed. For this reason, the nature and form of military organizations are intricately tied to the composition, internal balances and distribution of capital within their states and societies. The Arab Spring represented a moment of decisive rupture in systems of political and administrative control that triggered or enabled significant shifts in civil-military relations. That rupture took place in the context of much longer-developing trends, however. Neo-liberal economic policies converged with two other long-term trends affecting civil-military relations in all Arab states. First, major demographic changes in Arab societies over the past four decades have generated massive urbanization, changing the nature and scale of security challenges and imposing new requirements on state agencies of coercion. This has converged, second, with the global “revolution in military affairs” and the rise of the counter-terrorism and security sector reform agendas since the 1990s. Together, the two trends have had transformative effects on Arab militaries, and altered the


How prescription drug abusers are cheating the system by shopping across state lines

States are taking efforts to prevent patients from "doctor shopping" across their borders. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot, File) Deaths tied to opioid painkillers, like oxycodone and hydrocodone, have doubled to about 17,000 a year over the course of a decade — now outnumbering the people killed in traffic accidents each year. One reason behind the alarming rise: "doctor shopping," when patients search around for doctors who'll prescribe them powerful medications. In a new study published this month, researchers tried to better understand where doctor shopping is actually taking place. Most strikingly, the analysis found about one-third of apparent "doctor shopper" patients crossed state lines to obtain a prescription, which helps explain why smaller states like Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Delaware showed the highest rates of this occurring. There's a major reason why doctor shoppers are crossing borders — it's harder to track the prescriptions. Many states have drug monitoring programs in place to track prescriptions dispensed within their borders, but not across them. "Part of the problem is that state systems all vary — they're either home-grown or operated by different vendors and they're not interoperable," said Douglas McDonald of Abt Associates, who co-authored the NIH-funded study published in Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety. "There are also legal questions about what you can share about patient data." The following map show the county-level rates of doctor shopping, according to the study: (Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety) States know this cross-border shopping is happening, and they're starting to deal with the problem. Just this year, New Jersey entered into agreements with Delaware and New York to share prescription drug information. New England governors, whose states have some of the highest rate of prescription drug abuse, this year also agreed to share monitoring data. Some physician groups have called for the creation of a national monitoring program. The universe of doctor shoppers is relatively low — another study from McDonald last year estimated just about one of every 143 patients prescribed a prescription painkiller in 2008 appeared to be doctor shoppers. They represented 0.7 percent of all patients with such a prescription, but bought about 4 percent of all opioids measured by weight. Doctor shoppers tend to be in their 20s and 30s, and they're pretty large outliers when compared to other patients prescribed opioids. They see an average of 10 doctors per year, receiving 32 different prescriptions and generally paying cash for at


The following map show the county-level rates of doctor shopping, according to the study: (Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety) States know this cross-border shopping is happening, and they're starting to deal with the problem. Just this year, New Jersey entered into agreements with Delaware and New York to share prescription drug information. New England governors, whose states have some of the highest rate of prescription drug abuse, this year also agreed to share monitoring data. Some physician groups have called for the creation of a national monitoring program. The universe of doctor shoppers is relatively low — another study from McDonald last year estimated just about one of every 143 patients prescribed a prescription painkiller in 2008 appeared to be doctor shoppers. They represented 0.7 percent of all patients with such a prescription, but bought about 4 percent of all opioids measured by weight. Doctor shoppers tend to be in their 20s and 30s, and they're pretty large outliers when compared to other patients prescribed opioids. They see an average of 10 doctors per year, receiving 32 different prescriptions and generally paying cash for at least one prescription to avoid detection, according to McDonald's research. McDonald goes all the way down to the county level to try to understand the variation in doctor shopping behavior. He estimated 30 percent of the inter-county variation could be explained by the prevalence of opioid prescribers — in other words, a county will have more doctor shoppers if they have more patients and more prescribers. Another 30 percent of the variation could be explained by another combination of other local factors, like residents' income, health-care utilization rates and a county's racial and ethnic makeup. The research, based on IMS Health records of 146 million prescriptions dispensed across the country in 2008, couldn't account for the rest of the 40 percent of the county-level variation. There are, of course, other methods of obtaining these drugs illegally beyond doctor shopping — forgery, theft, and shady Internet sites, just to name a few. The data doesn't include clinical information that would allow the researchers to determine whether apparent doctor shoppers had legitimate medical reasons for their prescriptions. It may look like a patient is trying to abuse the system, but it could also be indicative of the patient receiving poorly coordinated care. But the likelihood of patients being a doctor shopper increases as the number of prescribers increases.


America’s clumsy regulation of drones stirs up frustration, confusion

sense.” “Safety should not be dictated based on whether or not the activity is commercial,” said Dave Mathewson, executive director of the Academy of Model Aeronautics. “Safety is safety and that is how it should be addressed.” Blair would like to use drones to take photos of his crops and monitor their growth. In Japan drones have been used to tend to crops since the 1980s. Here a Yamaha RMAX unmanned helicopter, which is commonly used in Japan, sprays water during a demonstration at a test vineyard at the University of California-Davis’s Oakville Station. (Rich Pedroncelli/AP) Many of those interviewed pointed to Canada’s rules as a sensible model for drone regulation. The country’s standards consider whether a drone is being used for work or research, but also take into consideration a drone’s weight. The idea being that a three-pound drone has a lot less energy than a 50-pound drone, meaning the associated risks are much lower. A small and low-powered drone might be less dangerous than a batted baseball, but larger drones can be deadly. The nightmare scenario would involve a careless operator near an airport flying his drone into the engine of a plane that’s taking off. While drone software could use GPS to automatically render itself inoperable near airports, that wouldn’t stop someone who built his own drone or hacked the software. Since June 1 there have been 25 reports of near-collisions between small drones and passenger aircrafts. Some of those I spoke with offered sympathy for the FAA as it attempts to fulfill its Congressional mandate to integrate unmanned aerial vehicles in the sky while UAV technology rapidly advances, creating new circumstances to consider. “The pace of innovation is so phenomenal that if you try to write standards you’re chasing the moon,” said Ro Bailey, director of the Pan-Pacific UAS Test Range Complex in Alaska. “You’re never going to catch it.” A few year ago drones were strictly the domain of the military, now they’re toys that will appear in droves under Christmas trees this month. “The fact that it gets a little darker before the dawn is completely normal in regulation,” said Chris Anderson, the chief executive of drone manufacturer 3D Robotics. “It’s still early days. I’m just not that concerned about our long-term prospects in this country and I don’t feel by any means that the FAA’s current thinking is the end of the process.”


NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is awake and almost ready to change our view of Pluto forever

and full of water and life before that flyby, and were surprised to see the cold, red planet we now know well. Pluto may have lost its full-fledged planetary status in recent years, but it has just as many secrets to reveal to NASA as the rest of the solar system's bodies. The real excitement will start on Jan. 15, when New Horizons gets close enough to Pluto to start taking measurements. By mid-May, the spacecraft should send home the best images we've ever had of the dwarf planet. To date, the best we have comes from the Hubble -- and even that powerful telescope shows Pluto as a blurred splotch. All we know of Pluto. (NASA, ESA, and M. Buie) (And why can't the Hubble, which takes beautiful images of far-away galaxies, catch something in our own solar system? Pluto may be much closer than those space objects, but it's also so, so, so much smaller.) By July, the spacecraft will make its closest approach, coming within just a few thousand miles of the dwarf planet and its moons. New Horizons will look at the surface and atmospheric compositions of Pluto in the hopes of learning something about dwarf planets in general -- which we now know are more common in the solar system than rocky worlds like our own and gas giants like Jupiter combined. “New Horizons is on a journey to a new class of planets we’ve never seen, in a place we’ve never been before,” project scientist Hal Weaver said in a statement. “For decades we thought Pluto was this odd little body on the planetary outskirts; now we know it’s really a gateway to an entire region of new worlds in the Kuiper Belt, and New Horizons is going to provide the first close-up look at them.” Scientists are also excited to study Pluto's largest moon, Charon. The two form a binary planet. Instead of orbiting Pluto, which is about twice its size, Charon circles around a fixed point in tandem with it -- like two ice dancers holding hands and spinning together. This will be our first chance to study a such a system, even though they're not uncommon in the galaxy. You can read more about NASA's reasons for going to Pluto at the missions website. And we'll keep you updated as New Horizons blinks off its sleep sand and starts doing science.


A majority of Wyoming residents support medical marijuana, but not recreational

(Marcos Brindicci/Reuters) Most Wyoming residents say they’re in favor of legalizing marijuana for medical, but not recreational, use according to a University of Wyoming poll. The poll, which included 768 residents statewide and was released Wednesday, found 72 percent of respondents support marijuana use if it is prescribed by a physician, but only 35 percent support its recreational use. Marijuana legalization measures were passed by voters in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, D.C., in November, and marijuana use has been legal in neighboring Colorado since 2012, but, “it appears that a similar movement in Wyoming would be unsuccessful,” said Jim King, political science professor and co-director of the survey. Support for recreational marijuana has increased slightly since a 2000 University of Wyoming poll, which found that 23 percent of residents were in favor. “There has been a bit of a shift in public opinion on this aspect of the marijuana debate,” King said. “On the other hand, the 2000 and 2014 surveys have the same proportion of Wyoming residents, 72 percent, accepting medical marijuana use.” The poll also found 62 percent of residents were in favor of reducing penalties for marijuana possession and not having jail sentences while 32 percent support jail sentences.


Michelle Obama, Vincent Gray, Eric Holder among Boss Shepherd’s power diners

Michelle Obama is among the power diners who’ve visited Boss Shepherd’s. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) Is fried chicken the new steak? Seems southern-accented Boss Shepherd’s is becoming the new power-dining spot. A parade of A-listers has dined at the downtown watering hole in the last week alone. First lady Michelle Obama was spotted there on Thursday (dining in a private upstairs room with what looked like her staff, a tipster tells us). She might have gotten a recommendation from her mom, Marian Robinson, who, we’re told, had been there earlier in the week. On Friday, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray lunched there. Attorney General Eric Holder and his wife, Sharon Malone, were among the Friday-night dinner crowd. And on Saturday, the restaurant was where some 150 of former mayor Marion Barry’s friends and family gathered after the Mayor-for-Life’s burial. Part of the appeal for local politicos might not have to do with the fare: Owner Paul Cohn, who opened J.Paul’s Dining Saloon in the early 1980’s, is politically connected, having served as the head of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce and the city’s restaurant association. Read more Reliable Source: Prince William’s World Bank visit brings out the royal gawkers Kennedy Center Honors kicks off with a star-studded red carpet President Obama at WH at holiday party: Please don’t steal the silver! Even more