Ethiopia’s Feyisa Lilesa won an Olympic medal then protested his government. Can he go home?

the marathon while Lilesa “only” received the silver. He then went on to talk more about the Kenyan winner, with no further mention of Lilesa. Lilesa's fear that he will be jailed is borne out in the experiences of other Ethiopians. In 2012, Eskinder Nega, a blogger, was sentenced to 18 years in prison and Woubshet Taye, a journalist, was sentenced to 14 years. Both were convicted on terrorism charges. Human rights groups say Ethiopia frequently uses anti-terror laws to round up its critics. In 2014, the Committee to Protect Journalists declared Ethiopia "the fourth worst jailer of journalists in the world." Ethiopia's runners are among the country's biggest celebrities. When its first Olympic champion, Abebe Bikila, died, the government called for a national day of mourning. Haile Gebrselassie, another former champion, is one of the country's richest men. He has flirted several times with a run for parliament or even president. But younger, less-established runners have complained about persecution at home, seeking asylum when traveling for international meets. Many say that persecution is linked to their Oromo ethnicity. "I'd rather commit suicide in America than return to Ethiopia," one runner told The Post last year. Protests have increased in Ethiopia in recent months, and many of them turned violent after government forces turned their weapons on civilians. According to Human Rights Watch, more than 400 people have been killed since November. The Oromo people have long complained about being mistreated by the nation's government, which has recently threatened to reallocate some of the group's land. But recently, the Oromos have been joined in their protest by other ethnic groups, including the Amharas, some of whom also feel antagonized by the government, which is dominated by the Tigrayan ethnic minority. Those growing protests, experts say, could eventually pose a threat to the government. Still, Ethiopia is seen by many Western governments as a relative success story, particularly in economic terms. It is one of the fastest growing countries in sub-Saharan Africa with increasingly modern infrastructure, like a new light rail in the capital, Addis Ababa. The government has its own take on the protests, as Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn told The Guardian in an interview earlier this year. “We have clearly identified why this protest has come about: unemployment and lack of good governance. Building democratic culture will take some time. But we are on the right track. It’s improving,”


There are a lot of people lowering their student loan payments, but also a lot of people who are behind

loans, which could ruin their credit and make it difficult to buy a home or a car. While the surge in enrollment in income-driven plans is a win for the White House, the persistent level of defaults signals a disconnect somewhere in the servicing of federal student loans. According to the Education Department, 8.1 million people — roughly the population of New York City — had not made a payment on $128 billion in student loans for at least nine months as of June, an 8 percent increase over the same period a year earlier. Well over half of the people in default have loans from the old bank-based federal lending program, but the number of borrowers with newer loans who were falling behind on payments is high. Matt Sessa, a deputy chief operating officer at the department, said in a statement that the portfolio of defaults continues to grow, even as delinquencies and new defaults have declined, because defaulted loans are rarely written off. He said the number of people defaulting for the first time has decreased as a percentage of borrowers in repayment — the total universe of borrowers repaying their loans — crept up in the last quarter. Still, tens of thousands of people are defaulting for at least the second time. The government pays student-loan servicers, the middlemen who collect and apply payments, hundreds of millions of dollars to help people stay current on their payments and avoid default. And the suite of income-driven plans is supposed to play a key role in that effort, yet a report released last week by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said servicers are falling down on the job. People trying to enroll in income-driven plans have complained to the bureau of prolonged processing delays and wrongful rejections by their loan servicers. Those delays and rejections can result in increased interest charges and lost eligibility for some federal benefits and protections, according to the CFPB. “Student loan servicing breakdowns can stack thousands of dollars of hidden costs on the backs of borrowers who can least afford them,” the CFPB’s student-loan ombudsman, Seth Frotman, said in a statement. “Too many student loan borrowers are struggling to take advantage of their right to pay based on how much money they make.” The complaints the bureau tracked dovetail with accounts from consumer advocates who earlier in the year raised concerns about the problems


Venezuelans are going hungry. But the country’s Olympians will get free housing and cash.

Yulimar Rojas of Venezuela celebrates winning the silver medal in the event. (Leonhard Foeger/Reuters) As a young man, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro played electric guitar, not sports. But like the men who mentored him, Cuba’s Fidel Castro and the late Hugo Chávez, he views the country’s Olympic achievements as a validation of his economic and social policies. Also, he is fond of wearing track suits in the colors of the national flag. It’s perhaps understandable, then, that Maduro was in a generous mood Monday when he welcomed home the 87 members of his country’s Olympic team with the announcement that they would all receive free houses and cash. To be sure, plenty of Olympic athletes around the world reap material rewards from their governments and sponsors for their athletic feats. But in Venezuela, a country where you can spend more time waiting in a supermarket line than it takes to run a marathon, cash is perhaps the last thing the government has to give away. Facing a national food crisis, Venezuela's pumpkin-growing socialist president is exhorting compatriots to grow fruit and vegetables on balconies and roofs and in barracks across the country. Maduro called it an “extra incentive” for the country’s athletes, who also learned they would not have to worry about the country’s rapidly depreciating currency, the bolívar. The athletes and their coaches will receive the cash in U.S. dollars, Maduro said, without specifying how much their rewards would be. For Maduro, the Rio Games have provided a much needed national distraction from months of unrelenting bad news about the economy. Venezuela faces a 10 percent economic contraction this year and is considered the world’s leader in inflation. Maduro’s gesture came on the same day economists announced that the cost of basic goods last month had increased 773 percent since July 2015. Maduro ordered a 50 percent increase in the minimum wage last month, but the latest studies show that salaries still fall far short of the amount needed to obtain basic household goods and food. The government’s slow-footed economic interventions are being outpaced by Venezuela’s Olympic-level inflation. Despite facing the oil-exporting country’s worst crisis in history, the Venezuelan president said he has also ordered a 50 percent increase in spending on high-performance athletics in preparation for the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games, a move that would benefit more than 1,000 Venezuelan Olympic hopefuls. Venezuela’s most decorated Olympian, triple jumper


Polio is back in Nigeria, and the next vaccination campaign may have a surprising consequence

A health official administers a polio vaccine to a child in Kawo Kano, Nigeria, in 2014. (Sunday Alamba/Associated Press) In early August, Nigeria announced new cases of wild poliovirus, two years after the country’s last reported case. This was a setback for the Nigerian government as well as the global health community, which has invested $14 billion over the past three decades to wipe out polio. Both of Nigeria’s new cases occurred in Borno state, previously a Boko Haram stronghold, where vaccinators have had limited access. The government is intensifying its vaccination campaign, pledging six rounds of vaccination over the coming months to help meet its high-profile public commitment to polio eradication. Polio vaccination efforts create opportunities for accountability While the cases of polio are unfortunate, the experiences of communities in other parts of northern Nigeria suggest that intense efforts to eradicate polio could be an unprecedented opportunity for Borno residents to gain a political voice. We detail this process in our research paper. We found that polio vaccination campaigns elsewhere in Nigeria empowered communities to get the government to pave roads, electrify villages and fix dilapidated schools. Here’s what happens: Entire communities selectively resist vaccination, in what is locally called “block rejection.” Crucially, vaccine noncompliance does not happen because of ignorance, fear or religion — campaign monitoring data show that less than 1 percent of Nigerians hold these objections. Instead, noncompliance is a strategic move by citizens to gain the government’s attention. Local officials, who must meet strict vaccination coverage targets, then come under intense pressure from state and national polio campaign coordinators to resolve the community’s resistance. Often, local officials make concessions to address community demands. These instances of block rejection represent nascent bargaining processes between the state and citizens. Accordingly, we term the process opportunistic accountability. And it plays out frequently in Nigeria. In Giwa local government in Kaduna state, over a four-month period, we documented 30 instances of block rejection. One youth leader organized his community’s noncompliance activities with the goal of getting the local health clinic roof repaired. He told us: “It might be possible we won’t be protected from polio due to block rejection. We admit and concur with the polio campaign but [we are] also concerned with the issues affecting our community.” He added that, “in this whole context of health services [our priority has to be] availability of health service facilities. But


Russian athletes will be banned from the Paralympic Games

The Russian Paralympic Committee lost its appeal to the CAS over its ban from Rio. (Maxim Shipenkov/EPA) The Court of Arbitration for Sport on Tuesday morning upheld Russia’s ban from the upcoming Paralympic Games in Rio. The sanction, handed down by the International Paralympic Committee in early August, came about after a World Anti-Doping Agency investigation found evidence of a state-sponsored doping program in Russia from 2011 to 2015, with the IPC saying via the Associated Press that it had found evidence of manipulated doping tests relating to 44 Russian athletes, including 27 from competitors in eight sports that are part of the Paralympic program. The Russian Paralympic Committee appealed the ban, but the CAS said Tuesday that the IPC “did not violate any procedural rule” in handing down the punishment. “[The] decision to ban the [Russian team] was made in accordance with the IPC Rules and was proportionate in the circumstances,” the court said in a statement obtained by the AP. IPC President Philip Craven issued a statement applauding the CAS ruling: “Today’s decision underlines our strong belief that doping has absolutely no place in Paralympic sport, and further improves our ability to ensure fair competition and a level playing field for all Para athletes around the world. “Although we are pleased with the decision, it is not a day for celebration and we have enormous sympathy for the Russian athletes who will now miss out on the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games. It is a sad day for the Paralympic Movement, but we hope also a new beginning. We hope this decision acts as a catalyst for change in Russia and we can welcome the Russian Paralympic Committee back as a member safe in the knowledge that it is fulfilling its obligations to ensure fair competition for all.” The International Olympic Committee had similar evidence of a state-sponsored Russian doping program in its hands ahead of the main Rio Olympics, but it decided to leave the country’s participation up to each sport’s governing body. Russian weightlifters and all but one track and field athlete were prohibited from competing in the Olympics. This year’s Paralympic Games are Sept. 7-18.


He withered away for 7 years. Doctors didn’t realize his passion was killing him.

Manchester could see was that the man’s symptoms had rapidly improved when he moved to Australia for three months, only for his breathing to deteriorate once again as soon as he returned to the United Kingdom. In September 2014, five months after first arriving at the clinic, the man returned — in worse shape than ever. He was breathing rapidly but suffering from hypoxia, or a lack of oxygen in his blood. When doctors listened to his lungs, they heard crackling like an old vinyl record. An X-ray suggested pneumonia, a blood clot in the lungs or an exacerbation of the still mysterious HP. A CT scan ruled out a clot but showed that the lung scarring that had started seven years earlier had gotten worse. Doctors gave him a cocktail of drugs to treat what they thought was bacterial pneumonia. When those didn’t work, they added Posaconazole therapy, used to treat pneumonia caused by fungi. Despite their efforts, the man died on Oct. 10, 2014. An autopsy didn’t explain much. It merely showed that his lungs were badly scarred, which was attributed to the years of inexplicable HP. The medical examiner chalked the cause of death up to “acute exacerbation of ILD,” or interstitial lung disease, a broad category. Now, however, nearly two years after the man’s death, doctors say they have solved the medical mystery. In a report published Monday in the medical journal Thorax, a team of five UHSM researchers coined a new term for the man’s condition. “Bagpipe lung.” (UHSM) According to the paper, when doctors initially tried diagnosing the man’s illness, they overlooked his daily hobby: playing the bagpipes. Tests conducted on the man’s bagpipes found a slew of fungi and yeast living inside the musical instrument. Inside the air bag was a mixture of Paecilomyces variotti, Fusarium oxysporum, Rhodotorula mucilaginosa, and Penicillium species. In a petri dish, they formed a psychedelic swirl of green, orange and red mold. There was pink yeast on the instrument’s mouthpiece as well as fungi on the neck, chanter, chanter reed, chanter reed protector, bass drome and tenor drome, researchers found. Even the bagpipe carrying case had mold inside. The moist, airtight bagpipes made an ideal home for the spores. Unknown to the piper, who was not named in the study, every time he played his instrument, he was inhaling a mixture of mold that caused his illness. His


10 new patios, rooftop bars and beer gardens you should check out this week

The rooftop bar at 801 on Florida Ave. NW serves Orange Crushes and beachy drinks. (Photo by Fritz Hahn/The Washington Post) A steady stream of new rooftop bars, patios and beer gardens have opened this summer, though the beastly weather probably has kept people from making a first visit. With the humidity finally beginning to subside, it's time to get out and enjoy happy hour outside. Here are 10 new outdoor bars to check out this week. 801 Bar There are three levels at this Florida Avenue bar, opened by the team behind Shaw's Tavern and the Front Page, but you should go straight to the rooftop deck to enjoy a beach-worthy Orange Crush or a Moscow Mule big enough for a group to share. All Souls After a lengthy fight with neighbors over permitting, this cozy Shaw bar finally opened its sidewalk patio in June. It's the perfect place to sip a #19 cocktail: Tanqueray gin, Capitoline rosé vermouth, orange juice and bitters. Anxo Cidery and Pintxos Bar D.C.'s only cidery has a lovely yard filled with picnic tables and newly planted apple trees, which will someday provide juice for the bar's cider. The Brig beer garden on Capitol Hill has room for just under 300 patrons. (Photo by Fritz Hahn/The Washington Post) The Brig At the southern end of Barracks Row, the Brig offers a large family-friendly and dog-friendly beer garden. Grab a giant mug of German lager or a local craft beer and settle in at an umbrella-shaded table. Views from the CityBar rooftop sweep from the Wilson Bridge to downtown Washington. (Photo by Fritz Hahn/The Washington Post) CityBar The Hyatt Place hotel's rooftop bar has become an attraction near L'Enfant Plaza, thanks to its sweeping views, good cocktails and happy hour tap takeovers with RAR, DC Brau and other local breweries. The patio at Hazel has room for both lounging and dining. (Becky Krystal/The Washington Post) Hazel Hazel's gem of a patio features wicker lounge furniture, flowering pots hanging on the walls and bright green artificial turf underfoot. You can't swim at Mason and Rook unless you're a guest, but anyone can enjoy drinks and views. (Photo by Fritz Hahn/The Washington Post) Mason and Rook's Rooftop Bar While Mason and Rook's ground-floor Radiator bar is worth a visit, you'll want to linger at the rooftop's poolside bar and enjoy the views with a tiki drink or


Hill has room for just under 300 patrons. (Photo by Fritz Hahn/The Washington Post) The Brig At the southern end of Barracks Row, the Brig offers a large family-friendly and dog-friendly beer garden. Grab a giant mug of German lager or a local craft beer and settle in at an umbrella-shaded table. Views from the CityBar rooftop sweep from the Wilson Bridge to downtown Washington. (Photo by Fritz Hahn/The Washington Post) CityBar The Hyatt Place hotel's rooftop bar has become an attraction near L'Enfant Plaza, thanks to its sweeping views, good cocktails and happy hour tap takeovers with RAR, DC Brau and other local breweries. The patio at Hazel has room for both lounging and dining. (Becky Krystal/The Washington Post) Hazel Hazel's gem of a patio features wicker lounge furniture, flowering pots hanging on the walls and bright green artificial turf underfoot. You can't swim at Mason and Rook unless you're a guest, but anyone can enjoy drinks and views. (Photo by Fritz Hahn/The Washington Post) Mason and Rook's Rooftop Bar While Mason and Rook's ground-floor Radiator bar is worth a visit, you'll want to linger at the rooftop's poolside bar and enjoy the views with a tiki drink or glass of rosé in hand. Neal Place Tap & Garden, a pop-up beer garden in an empty lot next to Masseria, opened in early June. (Photo by Fritz Hahn/The Washington Post) Neal Place Tap Garden This beer garden, located a block west of Union Market, comes from the team behind the market's outdoor bar, Suburbia. Beers and cocktails are on tap, and bocce and darts are available. The beer garden at Spider Kelly's in Clarendon offers drink specials every day of the week. (Photo by Fritz Hahn/The Washington Post) Spider Kelly's The back patio behind Clarendon staple Spider Kelly's has room for 300 people at tables, benches and around fire pits. Happy hour, which lasts until 8 p.m. on weekdays, includes $4 beers, sangria and wines by the glass. The Wunder Garten beer garden reopened in a new lot in NoMa on Aug. 19. (Photo by Fritz Hahn/The Washington Post) Wunder Garten After weeks of delays, Wunder Garten finally opened in its new location in NoMa on Friday, Aug. 19. The large beer garden features picnic tables and long German-style benches on carpets of artificial turf, a fire pit with a make-your-own-S'mores station and a bar pouring German and American


An Olympic medalist was killed in his back yard. 7 years later, his wife has been sentenced for murder.

off. A year earlier, he had won the gold medal at the 1979 Pan American Games. He was the top shot-putter in the country. His greatest moment was also a disappointment, however. In 1984, the Olympics were held in Los Angeles, practically Laut’s back yard. He was favored to win gold but came in third. He vowed to win gold four years later but blew out his knees in training. Instead, he turned to teaching, working his way up from track and field coach to athletic director. He and Jane adopted a son, Michael, from South Korea. “We had happy times,” she told “48 Hours.” “Right up ’til Michael was probably 5 was the best time of our marriage. And it just — it just started going downhill. And it — got worse and worse every year.” Dave had raped and beaten her for years, with the abuse accelerating in the months before the shooting, her defense attorneys claimed in court. Lying about the incident, they said, was a classic symptom of battered woman syndrome. “She acted like a battered woman,” Gail Pincus of Los Angeles County’s Domestic Abuse Center told “48 Hours” after testifying on behalf of the defense. “That guy sexually, physically, and verbally abused her for years, did things to her that are just awful, just awful,” her attorney, Ron Bamieh, told the CBS News program. “There’s no dispute that she wanted him dead that night. Yeah. It was gonna be him or her.” Dave had been drinking on Aug. 27, 2009, and threatened to use his Ruger revolver to kill her, their son, Michael, and their dogs, Jane claimed in court. “He pushed me up against the doorjamb,” Jane told “48 Hours” in an interview before her trial. “And it was just like yelling in my face, telling me how much he’s sick of this and that he was gonna blow Michael’s f—-n’ little head off.” Worried for her son, she tried to divert her husband outside. “We stumbled,” she told the CBS News program. “I don’t know if we were falling or just, like, moving. But I felt one gunshot go off, and then we did fall. And I was, like, straddling him and I honestly don’t remember after that.” Prosecutors said her story was bogus. Dave Laut prepares to throw during the 1984 Olympic trials in Los Angeles. (Doug Pizac/AP) There was no evidence


A surprising simple solution to bad indoor air quality: potted plants

A new study shows that houseplants may be better than ventilation systems at clearing indoor spaces of some pollutants. Here's how. The first time Vadoud Niri walked into a nail salon, he quickly had to walk straight out. "I went with my wife and couldn’t handle it," he said. "You could smell all the VOCs," or volatile organic compounds — pollutants like acetone, formaldehyde and toluene that easily become gases and pollute indoor air. Niri On Wednesday, at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society, he's presenting his surprisingly simple solution: potted plants. According to Niri's research, common house plants are effective at removing VOCs from the air. In 12 hours, an unassuming bromeliad (a tropical plant with long, swordlike leaves and spiky red flowers) removed at least 80 percent of six different compounds from the air inside a 76-liter container (roughly the size of a sedan's gas tank). A dracaena, with its long, strap-like leaves, was exceptionally good at gobbling up acetone — it removed 94 percent of the gas from the air. Spider plants were lightning fast — the minute one was placed inside the container, the concentration of VOCs immediately began to go down. This research is a long way from being put to use. It hasn't been peer reviewed or published in a scientific journal, and even if it passes that hurdle, cleaning the air in a small, sealed container is very different from purifying entire rooms. Niri still needs to test his plants' effectiveness in real-world situations and to make sure that his plants are as effective if not more effective than traditional ventilation systems. If that research goes well, he hopes to test dracaena at nail salons soon. But he thinks the research does point to a possible, inexpensive mechanism for lowering concentrations of pollutants in salons and myriad other kinds of rooms. "We all know, but most of the time we completely forget, that air is the most consumed material by humans," Niri said. "Each of us breathes over 3,000 gallons of air each day, and even though you could go days without food and hours without water, you would last only a few minutes without air." "That’s why air quality is extremely important and air pollution is an important environmental threat to human health." In some ways, indoor air pollution can be worse than that outside. Concentrations of VOCs are typically


Scientists say they’ve found a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, our closest neighbor

and learn about its composition. Direct observation — staring at the planet with a telescope — isn't possible with current technology. The star is just too bright and close to the planet for any telescope to see the latter. There's a small chance — something like 1.5 percent probability — that the planet "transits" in front of its star, or passes in front of the star from the perspective of Earth's telescopes. If that's the case, scientists will be able to study the planet's mass and atmosphere by analyzing the way Proxima's light passes around it. "That's the first thing we're going to go look for," John Brown Paul Strachan, a PhD student at Queen Mary University of London who contributed to the study, told The Post. "If it does transit, then that opens a whole field to us, where we might be able to start seeing details about the atmosphere of the planet." But Strachan and his colleagues aren't giving up hope of a direct observation in the near future. They believe that instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope, launching in 2018, will allow them to glimpse Proxima b in no time. If Proxima b proves to be a real planet — and one particularly worthy of study — a visit wouldn't be totally outside the realm of possibility. But even though Proxima is our closest neighbor, it's still awfully far: NASA's New Horizons probe had to travel 3 billion miles to get to Pluto, and took nearly a decade to do so. At around 25 trillion miles away, a trip to Proxima b would be more than 8,000 times as long. At least one well-funded group is trying to develop the technology needed to propel a tiny probe into the Centauri system, but don't hold your breath. Then again, the detection of an Earthlike atmosphere on Proxima b would provide some excellent motivation. As Anglada-Escudé said in a statement, "The search for life on Proxima b comes next." Want more science news? We can deliver the latest to your inbox. Sign up for our newsletter. Read More: Study: Maybe we can’t find aliens because they’ve all died already Why NASA still believes we might find life on Mars Astronaut Chris Hadfield’s lifelong mission is to show us the Earth Dear Science: How do I stop snoring? Scientists have a wild idea for hiding us from evil aliens


You wouldn’t be a happy camper if you relocated to Proxima Centauri’s planet

orbiting Proxima Centauri, and were searching for exoplanets, and were studying the yellow star just down the pike, you'd likely conclude that it had three, count 'em three, rocky planets in the habitable zone. “We should probably be wary of making too many predictions on what happens on other planetary systems based on our limited experience with our own solar system," Alycia Weinberger, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution, told The Washington Post. "When we only had to extrapolate from the solar system we thought we knew a lot." Butler says we have more mountains to climb in the hunt for life on other worlds: Finding Proxima b is a baby step. It has taken 20 years to go from finding any planet to finding potentially habitable planets. My hope is that in another 20 years technology advances to the point where we can directly image these planets, and take spectra of the planets. The spectra would reveal what the atmosphere is made of. If we find planet atmospheres with water vapor and oxygen, or other gases that are far out of thermodynamic equilibrium, then we can start jumping up and down in our excitement about an actual living world. It doesn't seem likely that any of us are going to go zooming off to Proxima b to live anytime soon. First, there's the distance. It's 25 trillion miles, roughly. Even if you could accelerate quickly to a tenth of the speed of light (going much faster than any spacecraft has ever gone) you'd need upward of 40 years to get there. More plausible would be a tiny, chip-sized interstellar probe designed to take direct measurements of Proxima b's atmosphere. We asked astronomer Johanna Teske of the Carnegie Institution how such a probe might work. She writes: If we were to send a probe, with the purpose of sending us information back (at the speed of light), we'd probably want it to have a detector specifically tuned to wavelengths corresponding to molecules we would want to detect in the atmosphere. These might include water, methane, oxygen, ozone; we'd want to focus on anything that wouldn't be expected in an equilibrium atmosphere, because that would indicate some kind of process changing the atmosphere from equilibrium (like geologic activity, or perhaps plant life). If you, personally, did make it to Proxima b in your very fast interstellar spaceship, you'd better be prepared


Pokemon Go claims first victim in Japan as distracted driver kills woman

TOKYO — A Japanese farmer who was playing Pokémon Go while driving struck two women, killing one of them and badly injuring the other, in the country’s first fatality related to the blockbuster smartphone game. Authorities in Japan — which is home to Niantic, the maker of Pokémon Go — had been concerned about the potential for accidents on roads and on crowded train platforms. Those fears materialized Tuesday night when Keiji Goo, a 39-year-old farmer, was playing the game while driving a small truck in Tokushima prefecture on the island of Shikoku. He struck two women while they were crossing the road, killing 72-year-old Sachiko Nakanishi and breaking the hip of 60-year-old Kayoko Ikawa. Goo told Tokushima police that he had been playing the game while driving, the Kyodo news agency reported. “I was playing Pokémon Go while driving, so I didn’t really see what was in front of me,” the public broadcaster NHK quoted the driver as telling police when he was arrested. There have been numerous accidents relating to Pokémon Go around the world since its release last month — including a man who crashed into a tree in New York state and an Australian man who drove into a school building. This prompted the game developer to add a warning earlier this month not to play the game while driving. The app also detects when the player is moving quickly, sending another warning to check that the person is really not driving. After numerous accidents, a warning not to play the game while driving was added to the Pokemon Go app. https://t.co/f0ncy6PFPL A previous update to the game included a change to the scanning technology for finding Pokémon, the website Geekwire reported. That made it less likely that Pokémon would appear for players traveling in a car rather than on foot. This is Japan’s first fatal accident involving the game, the National Police Agency said Wednesday. Before the game was released July 22, the government’s National Center of Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity issued an illustrated, nine-point warning about playing the game. The warnings included to watch out for heat stroke and to carry extra battery power, as well as advising against playing while walking or biking. ni( ^s^)c < 「#ポケモンGO」のリリースに先立ちまして、内閣サイバーセキュリティセンターより「おねがい」をお送りします。 みんながニコニコと安全に楽しめるように、ぜひ周りの方々、そして子供たちにお伝えくださいね♪ https://t.co/cNc0QCvaA8 Still, official statistics show that police gave out 1,140 tickets for traffic violations involving Pokémon Go in the month since the game


EpiPens save lives. If they cost too much, kids will die.

are 2.4 times more likely than adults to visit the emergency room because of a food allergy. And for children up to age 4, the risk is nearly double. In fact, New York City averages about 325 ER visits and five deaths per year because of anaphylaxis. New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene estimates that more than half of these deaths could have been avoided if people with known food allergies had an EpiPen and received training on how to use it. In 2015, Mylan made about 90 percent of all epinephrine auto-injectors prescribed in the United States. A spokesman told NBC that the cost has “changed over time to better reflect important product features and the value the product provides.” The company offers an EpiPen Savings Card and a Patient Assistance Program, a kind of discount to help offset some of the cost for “qualifying” patients. These are small comforts to those who depend on their product. Meanwhile, since 2007, the salary and bonus of Mylan’s CEO jumped 671 percent, and other top executives got double-digit pay increases last year. If this isn’t greed, what is? Allergies run in families. How can a financially strapped family possibly manage if more than one member has a severe allergy? Where households suffer a shared affliction that threatens breathing and blood circulation, Mylan sees only dollar signs. I grew up before EpiPens were available, so I learned early on how best to protect myself. I eat at home whenever possible. When I eat out, I’m extremely cautious: I usually won’t eat anything if I’m not 100 percent sure of the ingredients. That goes for freshly-prepared dishes and packaged foods. I once bought a chocolate chip cookie that was supposedly nut-free and was wretchedly sick the rest of the day. When it comes to food, I’m an adult fully capable of making smart decisions. But no one can fully protect themselves from a bee, wasp or hornet sting – other common allergens. And what about that 6-year-old whose family can’t afford an EpiPen? Should we really expect her to turn down every questionable cookie or successfully dodge a stinging insect? Can we safely rely on her to do so? I understand that Mylan is a business, and businesses need to turn a profit. But what is the justification for price-gouging on life-saving medication? The answer is simple: There is none.


VA moves to restrict treason symbols at cemeteries

week asking park store operators to “voluntarily withdraw items that solely depict a Confederate flag as a stand-alone feature, especially items that are wearable and displayable.” Dylann Roof, the accused killer, was photographed holding a Confederate flag and burning an American flag. Huffman’s legislation, an amendment to a larger VA military construction appropriations bill, passed the House with a strong 265-to-159 bipartisan vote in May. Yet the measure was mysteriously removed from the bill during a conference committee with House and Senate members. No one informed Huffman in advance. “I read about it after the fact,” he said. He still doesn’t know who stripped his amendment or why. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), who led the House conferees, should know. Rogers spokeswoman Jennifer Hing said “the provision was removed to ensure passage of the bill, to maintain critical funding for the Nation’s troops, military families, and veterans care,” while providing no information on who did the deed. Note — Rogers voted against Huffman’s amendment. The larger bill remains stuck in Congress, hostage to the Zika funding debate. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), an original co-sponsor of Huffman’s amendment, also doesn’t know who did it in. But he’s happy with VA’s action, even as he, too, would like even the small flags banned. Confederate flags, of any size, Ellison said, symbolize “racial hierarchy with blacks on the bottom.” Walters mentioned that in his letter when he said the flags “are perceived by many as a symbol of racial intolerance.” But the problem goes beyond Walters’s cautious acknowledgment. Ellison made it plain. “This is a flag of treason,” he said. “The people who raised that flag, they took up arms against the United States.” They weren’t tried for treason, however, but they certainly fit the constitutional definition of the crime: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” “This flag is a flag of treason and of racism,” Ellison added. “No matter what background you come from, no matter what color you are, that flag should be a deeply offensive signal.” It is. That’s why VA and the Park Service acted, finally. Read more: House takes action against Confederate flag, a symbol of treason The Confederate flag isn’t just offensive. It’s treasonous. The South lost the war but keeps winning the battle over Confederate memorials


How the Islamic State recruits and coerces children

exacerbates the problem. Evidence from Sri Lanka suggests recruiters target schools. During the course of my field research in 2002, mothers in the areas under control of armed rebels, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, confided in me that they had started to homeschool their children for fear that they would be recruited during the day. The 15-year-old bomber who was caught with explosives in Iraq this week had been in an IDP camp for a week when he was sent to blow up a Shiite school. When stopped for questioning by the police, the child froze in fear and quickly surrendered. Experience shows that children who are coerced will often allow themselves to get caught, since they were coerced in the first place. Children are the ultimate weapon of the weak. They cannot back out, but they also don’t want to carry out the mission. It is not just terrorist groups and militias that exploit children. Paramilitaries and rebel groups, and 10 national governments, recruit or conscript youths under 18 to their national armies, including Chad, the Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya, Burma, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, the United Kingdom and Yemen. The army in Burma, also known as Myanmar, recruits children en masse. The reason is that the military is required to fill recruitment quotas and recruiters are rewarded accordingly. Recruiters have an incentive to recruit the maximum number of children and youths possible. If adults are unwilling to join the army, children can and will be picked up, threatened and coerced to “volunteer.” The children are instructed to lie and claim that they are 18 years old. The Maoists in Nepal and groups in the Palestinian territories recruit children into cultural organizations well before the age of 15. The Maoists go so far as to abduct children for a few weeks to expose the children to the group’s propaganda and then let them go. As with any controversial issue, data collection is complicated. The United Nations does not systematically break down the number of militarized children, which is purported to be in the hundreds of thousands, nor does it explicitly explain its methodology for arriving at that number, saying instead that: Hundreds of thousands of children are used as soldiers in armed conflicts around the world. Many children are abducted and beaten into submission, others join military groups to escape poverty, to defend


This new weather satellite is a game changer — if it can survive the journey to launch

away from home for a while,” said Kindblad. “It’s like a little family. I see these guys more than my own family.” It was Kindblad’s third launch campaign. Until now, she has mainly worked on commercial military communications and satellites. She has an airframe and powerplant license, which the FAA requires for anyone performing aircraft maintenance. Hired right out of college, she has been with Lockheed for eight years. (Angela Fritz/The Washington Post) “I’m what’s known as a blanket lady,” Kindblad said casually. “There’s only two of us.” She pointed to the upright satellite, which was covered in a protective material that looks a lot like tinfoil. “You see how everything on the outside is covered?” she asked. “That’s one of my specialties. They call them ‘garbage bags,’ but it’s MLI — multi-layer insulation.” It’s the last but possibly the most important thing that goes on the satellite. It protects the instruments from the harmful radiation of space. “That’s the reason they wanted me on this project, for that work,” Kindblad said. She loves her job. Behind her, I watched white figures crawl all around the spacecraft to check and double-check every bolt before moving on to the next step. My imagination ran away with visions of a slip or a dropped wrench. After all, these white figures were only human. “Everyone has to be very close to the spacecraft for the things that we’re doing,” Jeffrey Coyne told me. He’s the assembly, test and launch operations manager for GOES-R. “You have to make sure that you know where every part of you is.” He chuckled at the mildly irritated rumblings among our non-Lockheed group about the progress speed. “Yeah, it doesn’t move fast here,” Coyne said. “But that’s intentional.” The strict, step-by-step, checked and rechecked process exists for a good reason — enormously expensive mishaps can occur without it. Lockheed faced this reality in 2003 when a NOAA satellite slid off its mount and fell to the floor as engineers attempted to move it into the vertical position. A NASA investigation concluded that the accident happened because a technician removed the 24 bolts that secured the satellite to the mounting plate without logging the action, and the technicians who executed the adjustment failed to check that the bolts were in place. The mishap severely damaged the spacecraft and cost the project a significant delay and $135 million — a


Everything you need to know about the new planet Proxima b (in gifs)

not like we can be 100 percent certain it's there. And even if the planet exists, we definitely don't know that it's anything like Earth. For starters, it orbits a completely different type of star — a tiny, cool red dwarf. To be in a red dwarf's habitable zone (the distance from the star where the planet could theoretically hold liquid water), a planet has to be so close that it's likely to become tidally locked. That means it has one side in the sun and one in the dark all the time, forever. 3. The method that was used to detect Proxima b means that we know very little about it Like, really. Very little. Most of the exoplanets we talk about these days are found using the Kepler space telescope, which detects worlds by tracking the way they make their stars dim as they pass in front of them. When a planet passes in front of its host star from the perspective of one of our telescopes, we call that event a transit. (giphy) Transiting planets are great, especially if they transit often, because we can use transits to study their characteristics. When a planet passes in front of a star, we can analyze the light that passes around the planet to puzzle out the composition of the planet's atmosphere. We can do this to detect water vapor and other molecules necessary for life, allowing us to deem a planet truly "Earth-like." But that's not how Proxima b was found. (giphy) Instead, scientists used the so-called Doppler or radial velocity method. They still looked at the light of the host star (Proxima Centauri), but they didn't see Proxima b pass in front of it and cause it to dim. Instead, they saw the light signature wobble back and forth as the star pushed and pulled against the gravitational force of its orbiting planet. (giphy) While the Doppler method is great for detecting planets, it's not great at telling us anything about them. Scientists can predict the distance of the planet from its host star, they can estimate its orbital period, and they can figure out its minimum mass. That's it. So for now, that's all we know: Proxima b is at least 1.3 times as massive as Earth, it orbits its sun every 11.2 days, and it's technically in its star's habitable zone. Based on what we know


A tour of the solar system’s ocean worlds

The solar system is surprisingly wet. Water is everywhere: frozen in flying chunks of space rock, floating in the atmospheres of gas giants, and — perhaps most remarkable of all — sloshing about in huge oceans hidden under the icy crusts of distant moons. This last group are the "ocean worlds." If there’s life in our solar system (other than us, of course), there's a decent chance it lives in one of these places, and at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute on Thursday, dozens of oceanographers and planetary scientists came together to discuss how we might explore them. It would be a long trip — taking us to the frigid outer reaches of the solar system. But there are plenty of beaches to stop at along the way (whether you'd want to go swimming in them is another matter). Here are a few of the most intriguing ocean worlds: Europa. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute) Europa This moon of Jupiter has the smoothest surface of any object in the solar system; it has a thick, icy crust streaked with reddish marks thought to be deposits of salt from an interior sea. The ocean beneath that crust is kept liquid by "tidal heating" — the act of orbiting Jupiter actually keeps the moon's interior warm. And it might share some key characteristics with the oceans on Earth: a study from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab earlier this year suggested that the moon could have the right balance of chemicals to power biological processes. A NASA mission to do several long flybys of Europa is already in the works. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) Enceladus In 2005, NASA's Cassini spacecraft noticed something strange going on near the surface of Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons: geyser-like jets of water vapor, carbon dioxide and other gases and particles were erupting from fissures near the moon's south pole. Beneath Enceladus's fractured surface, a liquid ocean is being churned by volcanic activity in the moon's rocky interior. Since it's thought that life on Earth first evolved around similar sea vents on our planet, this find makes the moon pretty enticing to astrobiologists. Carolyn Porco, the imaging team leader for the Cassini mission, said Thursday, "some of us regard Enceladus is actually — with no hype — the best place in the solar system to search for extraterrestrial life." This October 28, 2014 handout photo captured by the Hubble Space Telescope on April


The solar system is surprisingly wet. Water is everywhere: frozen in flying chunks of space rock, floating in the atmospheres of gas giants, and — perhaps most remarkable of all — sloshing about in huge oceans hidden under the icy crusts of distant moons. This last group includes the "ocean worlds." If there is life in our solar system (other than us, of course), there's a decent chance it lives in one of these places, and at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, dozens of oceanographers and planetary scientists came together Thursday to discuss how we might explore them. It would be a long trip — taking us to the frigid outer reaches of the solar system. But there are plenty of beaches to stop at along the way (whether you would want to go swimming in them is another matter). Here are a few of the most intriguing ocean worlds: Europa. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute) Europa This moon of Jupiter has the smoothest surface of any object in the solar system; it has a thick, icy crust streaked with reddish marks thought to be deposits of salt from an interior sea. The ocean beneath that crust is kept liquid by "tidal heating" — the act of orbiting Jupiter actually keeps the moon's interior warm. And it might share some key characteristics with the oceans on Earth: a study from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab earlier this year suggested that the moon could have the right balance of chemicals to power biological processes. A NASA mission to do several long flybys of Europa is already in the works. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) Enceladus In 2005, NASA's Cassini spacecraft noticed something strange going on near the surface of Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons: geyser-like jets of water vapor, carbon dioxide and other gases and particles were erupting from fissures near the moon's south pole. Beneath Enceladus's fractured surface, a liquid ocean is being churned by volcanic activity in the moon's rocky interior. Because it is thought that life on Earth first evolved around similar sea vents on our planet, this find makes the moon pretty enticing to astrobiologists. Carolyn Porco, the imaging team leader for the Cassini mission, said Thursday, "Some of us regard Enceladus is actually — with no hype — the best place in the solar system to search for extraterrestrial life." This Oct. 28, 2014 image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope on


A new class of galaxy has been discovered, one made almost entirely of dark matter

built by a group of astronomers at Yale University and the University of Toronto who realized that telephoto lenses — so often used for nature photography and sporting events — were well-suited for spotting the kind of large, dim objects that pose problems for typical telescopes. "We planned to study the outskirts of galaxies to see what exists around them, but by accident we saw all these little smudges," study author Pieter van Dokkum of Yale told The Post. At first, van Dokkum and his colleagues thought they were seeing image defects. But when they looked more closely at their data, they realized they'd found an entirely new class of object. Let's pause here to remind ourselves that scientists have no idea what dark matter is. Dark matter is the name given to a mysterious form of matter that we know must be there. Without something adding to the mass of the universe, things would tear apart. The laws of physics require some unknown, unseen kind of something to hold the universe together (while dark energy pushes it farther and farther apart). All we really know about dark matter is that it barely interacts with anything, including its own ilk. Dragonfly 44 wasn't like the dark galaxies that have been found before, which are all quite tiny. It was as big as the Milky Way, but with far fewer stars. "They are so diffuse, these galaxies, so tenuous, that they would be ripped apart. There just wasn’t enough mass to hold them together," van Dokkum said. The researchers then turned from their maverick telescope to an old standard: the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, home to the largest telescope in the United States. They spent six nights imaging the galaxy to be sure of its mass. What they found shocked them. "It's pretty crazy, the difference from the Milky Way is a factor of 100," he said. It's as if someone picked through the Milky Way, selecting just one star out of 100 and throwing the rest away. For the galaxy to stay in one piece, it must make up the difference with dark matter. "That's just something we never knew could happen." And unlike in previously observed galaxies where dark matter dominates only in certain areas — in the Milky Way, the dark-matter fraction is less than half that of the star-filled central regions — it rules all of Dragonfly


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Pokémon Go and railroad tracks don’t mix. There we said it.

We know, we know, you can’t believe we’re writing this. After all, only an idiot would be stupid enough to play Pokémon Go while walking near railroad tracks. Yeah, and people don’t try to bring loaded guns through airport checkpoints. And so, to underscore concerns about Pokémon Go we offer this tidbit first reported by The Hill: Officials with the Federal Railroad Administration and the Association of American Railroad have sent a joint letter to Niantic Labs, Inc. the company behind the game asking them to avoid placing Pokémon or other game elements near railroads. According to The Hill officials wrote the following in their letter: “We are seriously concerned that the focus demanded of Pokémon Go users in play of the game distracts them from their surroundings when near railroad tracks. Safety is our shared concern and we at FRA and AAR are prepared to partner on ensuring the safety of both Pokémon Go users and railroad passengers and personnel.” For the uninitiated, Pokémon Go is a game in which players use their smartphones to capture virtual creatures in the real world. Pokestops and Pokémon pop up in a variety of places including parks, schools, Metro stations even the Washington Monument (currently closed for repairs, sadly). The game has left many a player glued to their phone screen which has resulted in unfortunate instances of people falling off cliffs or wandering into traffic. Officials around the world have even had to warn people they shouldn’t play while they’re driving. A farmer in Japan was allegedly playing the game when he hit two pedestrians, killing one. So to repeat: Don’t play Pokémon Go while driving, walking near railroad tracks, crossing the street or anything else dangerous that requires your full attention. We don’t want to be writing about you next week.


Middle East chaos leads to drop in life expectancy in some Arab countries, study says

Syrian men react following a reported bomb attack in Aleppo, Syria. (Thaer Mohammed/AFP via Getty Images) Life expectancy in a number of countries gripped by political instability in the wake of the 2011 "Arab Spring" has slumped, according to a new report. In Syria, which has been torn apart by a hideous civil war, the average life expectancy for men dropped from 75 to 69 between 2010 and 2013. For Syrian women, that figure went from 80 to 75 in the same period. The pro-democracy uprisings that flared across the region in 2011 led to years of political upheaval. Nowhere has the violence been as calamitous as in Syria, where after half a decade of ruinous conflict, perhaps as many as half a million people died, while millions more were forced from their homes. But the research, put out by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which is affiliated with the University of Washington, found that countries such as Yemen, Tunisia and Egypt — all sites of regime change or collapse -- also lost around three months in life expectancy. New infographic shows the burden of disease in Eastern Mediterranean region @LancetGH https://t.co/Bx7lZhDVGE https://t.co/ON6Vl2e06f "Recent conflicts have shattered the basic infrastructure in a number of countries," the report's lead author Ali Mokdad, a professor at the University of Washington, told reporters. "As a result, millions of people are facing dire water shortages and poor sanitation that will lead to disease outbreaks." This is particularly tragic given the considerable improvements much of the region made in the past few decades. According to the institute's analysis, overall life expectancy in 22 nations in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia increased from 65 years in 1990 to 71 years in 2013. More on WorldViews If the Syria war happened in the U.S., there would be 68 million refugees Syrian conflict led to an epic dust storm, scientists say Syria's ruined cities will need decades, not years, to recover


Was this Ukrainian combat photo staged? Soldiers and photographers think so.

has returned to the village and interviewed two of the soldiers supposedly depicted in the image. While the soldiers in the video confirmed the incident, according to a translation by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, an officer from the unit wrote in a Facebook post that the men in the video had been co-opted by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense to buoy Muravsky’s account. The officer, a platoon commander named Viktor Moroz, said he served in Shyrokne from February to June but was not there when Muravsky took the picture. “If Muravsky or the Ministry of Defense begins to put pressure on the commanders of the unit or on the guys, I will learn about this at once. And I hope and believe that my instructions to the men always to act according to their conscience and those days that we spent as one fighting family did not pass in vain,” he wrote. “I officially declare that Muravsky’s photo with the explosion in [Shyrokne] was staged. The place is real, it’s on the front. The men were told what to do and how to act, there were no injuries and sprained limbs. There was no bombardment, an explosive device was detonated remotely, covered in a sack or in cement or in a mixture used for construction, or in chalk.” According to Kenton Fulmer, a former U.S. Army explosive ordnance disposal technician and current researcher at Armament Research Services, the picture of the blast supports Moroz’s assertion that the explosive was indeed buried underneath something, though a similar effect could have been made by a mortar or artillery round set to explode after penetrating the surface. “If the mortar had a short delay-action fuse, as opposed to a super quick fuse, then it could present a similar pattern, but I would hope to see some sort of signature fragmentation,” Fulmer said, adding that he would need physical evidence to make hard conclusions. Muravsky provided the raw image and a number of sequential photos following the blast to The Washington Post for analysis. When asked for the photographs before the explosion, Muravsky said he deleted them because they were “unnecessary.” “I am not a pro and had not intention of this photo to give to the press so did not know these standards,” he said. According to an image analysis provided by researchers at the Monterey, Calif.-based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies,


Biden announces upgrades for Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor

Anthony Coscia, right, chairman of the board for Amtrak, and Vice President Biden enjoy a light moment at the Joseph R. Biden Jr. Railroad Station in Wilmington, Del., on Aug. 26. (Suchat Pederson/The Wilmington News-Journal via AP) Vice President Biden has good news for Amtrak riders along the Northeast Corridor, announcing $2.45 billion in federal loans to help pay for new trains and other upgrades along the busy corridor. Biden, a well-known Amtrak commuter during his tenure in the Senate, was on home turf at the Wilmington, Del., station that bears his name when he made the announcement Friday. He was joined by Deputy Secretary of Transportation Victor Mendez. Back at Biden Station but not to catch a train. Here to announce @Amtrak investment to strengthen infrastructure: https://t.co/LaQub4TLds “This loan is a key step to providing investments needed to help keep high-speed trains moving throughout the region, and to help all commuters in the Northeast Corridor,” Biden said. “We need these kinds of investments to keep this region — and our whole country — moving, and to create new jobs.” It is the largest single loan in the Transportation Department’s history. Part of the money will be used to upgrade the passenger railroad’s current fleet. Amtrak will contract with Alstom to build 28 next-generation high-speed train sets that will replace the trains used as part of Amtrak’s Acela Express service. The trains will be built at Alstom’s Hornell and Rochester, N.Y., facilities. “Amtrak is taking the necessary actions to keep our customers, the Northeast region and the American economy moving forward,” said Amtrak chief Joseph Boardman. “These train sets and the modernization and improvement of infrastructure will provide our customers with the mobility and experience of the future.” The new trains will have one-third more seats than the current fleet and offer a smoother, more reliable ride, Amtrak officials said. They can also be upgraded to provide many of the amenities passengers have come to expect: WiFi access, personal outlets, USB ports and adjustable reading lights. The new trains also will allow Amtrak to increase service on the busy corridor — including half-hourly Acela service between Washington. D.C. and New York City during peak hours and hourly service between New York City and Boston, officials said. “As more people rely on Amtrak, we need modernized equipment and infrastructure to keep the region moving,” said Anthony Coscia, chairman of Amtrak’s board


Navient chief: There are 56 options for repaying federal student loans. It’s time to simplify.

Navient-serviced borrowers, just 28 percent of the past-due, pre-qualified borrowers we spoke with completed all of the necessary steps to enroll in an income-driven repayment plan, even when we sent multiple reminders. To put a fine point on it: 72 percent had not submitted an application even after knowing how much lower their monthly payment would be under the new plan. Why so few? The current process requires borrowers to go to a Department of Education website to complete a lengthy application — a process the servicer is not allowed to facilitate — and select a program from among similar-sounding options. Alternatively, they can submit the 12-page paper application. They must also provide proof of income, such as a filed tax return, or authorize the IRS to transfer information. In the modern economy, technology enables millennials to hail a car, order groceries, or access volumes of information conveniently and instantly. The process of signing up for IDR should be just as simple. Borrowers should be able to enroll while they’re logged in to their account, as opposed to visiting a separate website. Those who need help over the phone — and we find that most do — should be able to enroll while they’re on the line with their servicer. The process of validating income should be simpler and more flexible, leveraging mobile technology and providing simple, verbal options for those without easy access to online solutions. Once borrowers are enrolled, additional hurdles remain, such as the federal requirement to reapply annually. We find that too many borrowers do not renew on time or at all, despite many reminders to do so. Certainly, some actively choose not to re-enroll because their economic circumstances have improved– that’s good news. Others, however, would find their loans easier to manage if they could sign up to automatically renew enrollment each year without having to file a new application, an option not available today. For those who opt for an annual application process, making the deadline memorable, such as birthday month, would be another way to increase timely renewals. As noted in a recent White House report, “behavioral economics shows that onerous processes can impact choices, especially when the individuals making decisions are young.” As the largest student loan servicer, we see this play out again and again, day after day. The complexity of the federal loan repayment program — as it has evolved


Paramount to film TV show based on 9-year-old crime reporter Hilde Kate Lysiak

Hilde Kate Lysiak, acclaimed 9-year-old reporter from Selinsgrove, Pa., interviews Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan in July in Providence, R.I. (Matthew Lysiak) After she won national acclaim for defending her right to be a 9-year-old crime reporter, and after she won an award and met a Nobel Peace Prize winner, Hilde Kate Lysiak (and her dad) signed a deal with Scholastic to write four children’s mystery books called “Hilde Cracks the Case.” That was enough for Paramount Television and Anonymous Content, producers of “The Revenant” and “Mr. Robot” among others. Last week the two companies agreed to develop a TV show based on Hilde’s forthcoming books, and also optioned the rights to Hilde’s (nine-year) life story. And all of this in a little less than five months. Seriously. How much had you accomplished when you were 9? Variety Hilde first came to our attention in April, when she got a tip that there had been a homicide in her home town. She went to the scene, did her reporting, worked with her older sister Isabel to post a quick video, and had a full story online before the grown-up media could catch up. This irked some folks, who posted notes or emails to the effect that 9-year-olds shouldn’t be covering such matters. Hilde promptly responded with a tart video, reading some of the complaints to the camera, and then saying that if the complainers wanted to do something about it, they needed to get out and cover the news themselves. A post in “True Crime” about all this soon attracted more than 1 million page views, and greatly boosted the circulation of both the print and online versions of the Orange Street News. Hilde and Isabel were honored by the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards, Hilde was interviewed by ABC, Fox News Channel and CNN, and in July she was invited to interview Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani teenager who survived being shot in the head for going to school. “Out of all the girls in Pakistan, you were the one to stand out and speak up,” Hilde said to Yousafazai. “I’m wondering if you were born that way, or if it was the way you were raised?” Good question, Yousafazai said. Hilde’s poise, in front of a large audience in Providence, is remarkable. Here is a portion of it: Hilde Kate Lysiak interviewing Malala


A planet orbiting our nearest star used to be science fiction. Now it’s science.

field should protect the planet from the star’s flares and other hazards. So I confidently placed Per Ardua about 3.7 million miles from its star, compared to the 4.5 million miles estimated by Anglada-Escudé’s team for Proxima b, and with a mass 8 percent less than Earth’s, compared to 30 percent higher for Proxima b. A week ago, Proxima b itself was fiction. Now that we know it is real, the fictional speculation moves on to what it would to be like to go there. I tried to imagine how life would adapt to the strange conditions of such a world. With one face permanently turned to Proxima, the planet’s “substellar point,” directly under the star, is a focus of climate patterns. Around the substellar point, there are concentric bands of life types, adapted to particular levels of starlight, with analogues of thick forest at the center and prairies and tundra farther out. These bands are broken up across land masses and oceans. The terminator zone, between permanent light and dark, features sunlit mountains surrounded by valleys of perpetual dark. Proxima’s flares inflict long term changes on the climate, like our ice ages, to which life has to adapt. All this remains speculation, but Anglada-Escudé was kind enough to tell me that my climate description was within plausibility for a Proxima planet, given his team’s studies. Some day we will know for sure. We will image the surface of Proxima b and measure the composition of its atmosphere; perhaps we will send probes to its surface. But the real excitement is the wider significance of the discovery. Proxima may be an unspectacular red dwarf, but as any standard astronomy text will tell you, Proxima is actually more representative of our galaxy’s stars than our sun; while only a few percent of stars are like the sun, 70 percent are like Proxima. And red dwarfs are much more long-lived than the sun. So if we found an Earthlike world orbiting such a star — and indeed the very nearest star of all — we can expect to find such worlds everywhere. Suddenly, the universe looks much more hospitable to life than it did just a few days ago. Read more: Proxima b reminds us that the universe isn’t about us You wouldn’t be a happy camper if you relocated to Proxima b Scientists say they’ve found a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri


Express Best Of Dining: Vote for your favorite restaurants in D.C.

Bettina Bammer-Whitacker, bottom center, eats dinner with Nathan Wieand, bottom right, at Toki Underground, last year’s winner for Best Ramen. (Matt McClain for The Washington Post) Vote for your favorite restaurants, fast-casual eateries and more in D.C. Nominees were selected by Express and the Washington Post. Voting closes Sept. 16 at 11:59 p.m. We’ll publish the winners in the Oct. 20 issue of Express. Voting on this ballot has closed. Check back soon to see the winners. You've already filled out a ballot! View your past selections: Best Ramen Toki Underground Daikaya Sakuramen Ren's Ramen Marumen Yona Pardon the interruption! We need to verify that you are an actual person. Thank you ! ... Best Pho Pho Viet Pho 75 Pho 14 Pho 88 Pho Real Best Pizza Timber Pizza Company 2 Amys Frankly... Pizza! Pizza CS The Italian Store Best Bagel Bullfrog Bagels Bethesda Bagels Bread Bite Bakery Ize's Deli Bagelry Bagel Uprising Best Sandwiches SUNdeVICH Bub and Pop's Taylor Gourmet Dirty South Deli Duke's Grocery Best Tacos El Rey El Sol Restaurante Tequileria Chaia Taqueria Habanero Taco Bamba Best Frozen Treat Dolcezza Pleasant Pops Pitango Gelato Ice Cream Jubilee Nicecream Factory Goodies Frozen Custard Treats Best Sushi Sushi Taro Sushi Capitol Kotobuki Makoto Sushi Ogawa Best Bakery A Baked Joint Little Red Fox Bread Furst RareSweets Buttercream Bakeshop Best Coffee Compass Coffee Vigilante Coffee Qualia Coffee Zeke's Coffee Swing's Coffee Roasters Best Food Truck Dirty South Deli Peruvian Brothers Swizzler Pepe Food Truck DC Empanadas Best Spot for Vegetarians Busboy and Poets Sticky Fingers Sweets Eats HipCityVeg Shouk Smoke Barrel Best New Restaurant Pineapple and Pearls Kinship Convivial Bad Saint Masseria Best Quick Lunch Sweetgreen Cava Grill Buredo Beefsteak SKWR Best Late-Night Snack Amsterdam Falafelshop Ben's Chili Bowl Julia's Empanadas Jumbo Slice Surfside If you would like to receive an email of your ballot results, please sign in. Submit Share my ballot: Print my ballot: Edit my ballot: Email this ballot again when voting closes. Vote for more Best Of categories here: Drinking Style Sports Arts Fitness D.C. Life


Bettina Bammer-Whitacker, bottom center, eats dinner with Nathan Wieand, bottom right, at Toki Underground, last year’s winner for Best Ramen. (Matt McClain for The Washington Post) Vote for your favorite restaurants, fast-casual eateries and more in D.C. Nominees were selected by Express and the Washington Post. Voting closes Sept. 16 at 11:59 p.m. We’ll publish the winners in the Oct. 20 issue of Express. Voting on this ballot closes on September 16, 2016 12:0 AM EDT You've already filled out a ballot! View your past selections: Best Ramen Toki Underground Daikaya Sakuramen Ren's Ramen Marumen Yona Pardon the interruption! We need to verify that you are an actual person. Thank you ! ... Best Pho Pho Viet Pho 75 Pho 14 Pho 88 Pho Real Best Pizza Timber Pizza Company 2 Amys Frankly... Pizza! Pizza CS The Italian Store Best Bagel Bullfrog Bagels Bethesda Bagels Bread Bite Bakery Ize's Deli Bagelry Bagel Uprising Best Sandwiches SUNdeVICH Bub and Pop's Taylor Gourmet Dirty South Deli Duke's Grocery Best Tacos El Rey El Sol Restaurante Tequileria Chaia Taqueria Habanero Taco Bamba Best Frozen Treat Dolcezza Pleasant Pops Pitango Gelato Ice Cream Jubilee Nicecream Factory Goodies Frozen Custard Treats Best Sushi Sushi Taro Sushi Capitol Kotobuki Makoto Sushi Ogawa Best Bakery A Baked Joint Little Red Fox Bread Furst RareSweets Buttercream Bakeshop Best Coffee Compass Coffee Vigilante Coffee Qualia Coffee Zeke's Coffee Swing's Coffee Roasters Best Food Truck Dirty South Deli Peruvian Brothers Swizzler Pepe Food Truck DC Empanadas Best Spot for Vegetarians Busboy and Poets Sticky Fingers Sweets Eats HipCityVeg Shouk Smoke Barrel Best New Restaurant Pineapple and Pearls Kinship Convivial Bad Saint Masseria Best Quick Lunch Sweetgreen Cava Grill Buredo Beefsteak SKWR Best Late-Night Snack Amsterdam Falafelshop Ben's Chili Bowl Julia's Empanadas Jumbo Slice Surfside If you would like to receive an email of your ballot results, please sign in. Submit Share my ballot: Print my ballot: Edit my ballot: Email this ballot again when voting closes. Vote for more Best Of categories here: Drinking Style Sports Arts Fitness D.C. Life


Dear Science: How do scientists find far-off planets like Proxima b?

many stars in the universe that they do spot some; in May, NASA scientists working with the Kepler Space Telescope announced they'd found a record-breaking 1,284 new exoplanets using the transit method. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp-content/uploads/sites/36/2016/08/transit_method_single_planet_dlv.mp4 The vast majority of planet candidates are found using one of these two methods (scientists say "planet candidates" because they can't be 100 percent sure it's a planet until they've seen it directly). A few more have been detected by measuring the way a planet's gravity distorts the light of a distant star — a method called gravitational microlensing. But "the holy grail looming in this field," Butler says, "is to be able to directly detect these planets." Scientists have directly imaged a few dozen exoplanets by blocking the glare of stars so they can see their planets' fainter glow. But this is hard to do, and requires incredibly sensitive telescopes capable of capturing tiny blips of light. Right now, three ground telescopes are under construction that will be larger — and more sensitive — than anything else in the world. Butler hopes that these will help launch a new era of exoplanet detection, when astronomers can see new planets directly. This is a big deal, because actually capturing light from a distant planet (even though it'll look like just a few pixels on a screen) will allow scientists to figure out what those planets are like. All we know about Proxima b is that it's roughly Earth-sized and sits in its sun's habitable zone. But if astronomers could see light from that planet, they could use a technique called spectroscopy to sort that light into its component parts and figure out what kinds of molecules are in the planet's atmosphere. Then they could start looking for things such as water, oxygen, and gases that indicate biological process — in other words, signs of life. "In the case of Proxima b right now, what we don’t know is more important than what we do know," Butler said. The fact that it sits in its sun's habitable zone raises the question, "Could there be life?" but doesn't come anywhere close to answering it. "But if you had spectral signatures of things like water vapor or oxygen, then you would flip the question," Butler said. "It wouldn't be 'Prove there's life.' It would be closer to 'Prove there isn't.' " Have a question for Dear Science? Ask it here.


The stark difference in how doctors and the government view marijuana

that excessive drinking causes 88,000 deaths per year, according to the CDC. The medical and research communities have known for some time that marijuana is one of the more benign substances you can put in your body relative to other illicit drugs. A recent longitudinal study found that chronic, long-term marijuana use is about as bad for your physical health as not flossing. Compared to alcohol, it's virtually impossible to overdose on marijuana alone. On a per-user basis, marijuana sends fewer people to the emergency room than alcohol or other drugs. The scientific consensus was best captured in a 2010 study in the Lancet, which polled several dozen researchers working in addiction and drug policy. The researchers rated commonly used recreational drugs according to the harm they pose to individuals who use them, as well as the harm they pose to society as a whole. Here's what their results looked like: The experts rated marijuana as less harmful to both users and to society than either tobacco or alcohol, or indeed than many other recreational drugs, such as heroin, cocaine or methamphetamine. Alcohol was, by far, the most socially harmful drug the committee rated, as well as one of the most harmful drugs to individual users. Research like this is one reason surveys have shown a substantial majority of doctors support the use of medical marijuana. And although big medical groups, such as the American Medical Association, haven't shifted gears on marijuana, other groups, such as the California Medical Association, are now openly calling for marijuana legalization. This year has also seen the formation of the nation's first doctor's group devoted to legalizing marijuana, Doctors for Cannabis Regulation. The group views marijuana legalization primarily as a public health issue. None of this is to say, of course, that marijuana is completely "safe" or "harm-free." As with any drug, using too much weed can lead to dependency on it. And as with any other drug, marijuana can have particularly harmful effects on young, developing minds. But the federal approach to marijuana has stood at odds with the science on the drug for decades. As far back as the 1970s, an expert report commissioned by Richard Nixon recommended that the federal government decriminalize marijuana use, given the drug's mild effects. Nixon, of course, ignored the report's findings. In the years since, there have been hundreds of thousands of arrests for marijuana possession


Why tracking military ballots can be complicated and confusing

number of reasons ballots may be mailed out after the 45-day deadline: lack of information among military voters about how to cast a ballot, administrative errors at the state and local level and the logistics of mailing ballots. The Federal Voting Assistance Program is part of the Department of Defense. It works alongside the EAC, using its data to track voting trends. Its director, Matt Boehmer, is working to dispel what he considers misgivings among military voters that their votes are not counted. Boehmer said confusion about ballot rejection is exacerbated by the fact that overseas voters never receive confirmation that their ballots were counted or that returning those ballots to home jurisdictions involves sending them on a convoluted journey across continents and through multiple mailing systems. While election officials and advocates examine data issues from an administrative level, military installations such as Fort Bragg are engaging in grass-roots awareness campaigns. The Army released a statement in November 2015 advising that “units and installations will host voter registration promotion events.” “Most of our soldiers, they are so busy with mission. So we kind of stop them and be like, ‘Hey, you know this is your right to vote? ’” said Laurie Joseph, Fort Bragg unit voting assistance officer. “And that is the biggest thing. That’s the biggest mission. To get everybody registered and aware that they can vote.” This report is part of the project titled Voting Wars — Rights | Power | Privilege, produced by the Carnegie-Knight News21 initiative, a national investigative reporting project by top college journalism students across the country and headquartered at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Erin Vogel-Fox | @ErinVogelFox Hearst Fellow Erin Vogel-Fox is a master’s-degree student at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Erin previously worked as an associate producer for Fox News in Washington, which included working with the White House unit and producing shows for the bureau’s weekend program “America’s News HQ.” You can find her work at erinvogelfox.com. Michael Olinger | @MikeJOlinger Fred W. Smith Chair Fellow Michael Olinger is an undergraduate student at the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada at Reno. He is the recipient of the Paul A. and Gwen F. Leonard Scholarship, the Edward W. Scripps II Scholarship and the Reno News Review Scholarship. He was an intern for the Fresno Bee.


Scientists have identified a key way the Amazon’s forests may adapt to climate change

The Amazon rainforest is seen near construction of the Belo Monte dam complex in the Amazon basin on June 15, 2012 near Altamira, Brazil. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) The Amazon is famous for being one of the most diverse places on Earth — its forests are home to tens of thousands of plant species alone. And now, scientists are claiming that all of these different plants may be key to the Amazon’s survival during future climate change. A “I think this is a nice and elegant study illustrating the practical stakes of a classical debate in ecology…about whether diversity begets stability,” said In the past, models have often been used to demonstrate how the Amazon might react to future climate change, which is expected to bring not only higher temperatures, but also According to For the new study, Sakschewski and a group of colleagues expanded on one such vegetation model, creating an updated version that can simulate the growth of individual trees and their diverse characteristics. The researchers then ran a series of simulations with both the new model and several older versions to see whether the added diversity would make a difference in forest responses under various future climate scenarios. Specifically, the researchers tested out two different scenarios. One was a “business-as-usual” trajectory, in which greenhouse gas emissions are assumed to continue on unabated, resulting in high temperature increases and severe climate effects. The other was a more moderate scenario, in which mitigation efforts are able to cut down on global carbon output and reduce the severity of future climate change. Sure enough, the more diverse forests in the new model were better able to recover under future climate change scenarios. However, that doesn’t mean that they escaped totally unscathed. None of the simulations suggested that Amazon forests would be able to grow back 100 percent of the trees they lost to the changing climate — and, in fact, the business-as-usual climate scenarios resulted in low amounts of recovery in all the models, even though the more diverse model produced slightly better results. “You definitely see a higher positive contribution of biodiversity under a moderate climate change scenario,” Sakschewski said. It’s also important to note that even the areas that showed recovery were still changed afterward, with different types of plants growing in and becoming dominant under the evolving climate. This could mean that the animals and other


Photographer of controversial Ukrainian combat photo ‘dismissed’ from duties

its war against the Russian aggression, including Russian propaganda.” Muravsky’s pictures in question, including the troops running from an explosion in a rubble strewn street, quickly went viral after they were uploaded in mid-August. Business Insider published an article featuring the images titled “Images from the front lines of Ukraine are a vivid reminder that there’s still a war going on in Europe” and then-Ambassador to Ukraine Geoff Pyatt tweeted the photos as “Amazing new images from the #Shyrokyne front of Ukraine’s forgotten war – outside #Mariupol.” Muravsky had been hired on June 16 to help “establish the Information and Coordination Centre for volunteer photographers, cameraman, artists, filmmakers and scriptwriters” that would “allow them to create a high quality content” for Ukrainian armed forces, according to the Ministry of Defense’s statement regarding his dismissal. “All photos that attracted public attention were taken by the author before his official appointment to the position in the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and at his personal discretion. The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine has never considered those photos as real war photos and made no official statement in this regard,” the statement said. Muravsky has adamantly defended the image of the troops running from the explosion despite it being the subject of an open letter by Ukrainian photojournalists that called it a “clumsy” attempt at information warfare and a Ukrainian soldier familiar with the incident said the photo was “staged” and that the troops involved had been coerced to defend Muravsky’s account by higher-ups. According to the soldier, an officer named Viktor Moroz, buried explosives along the side of the road provided the aesthetic of incoming artillery and the baby carriage in the photo was placed there. A database maintained by a Ukrainian organization associated with the Ministry of Defense did, however, record a mortar attack at roughly the same time and place of Muravsky’s picture. While Muravsky has defended his hallmark photo, one of the pictures used in both Pyatt’s tweet and the Business Insider article have since been deleted from Muravsky’s Facebook. The picture shows two soldiers running in a trench with ammo as something explodes behind them. When initially asked about the picture over WhatsApp, Muravsky said the picture was taken in combat sometime in mid-June but would not specify where the image was taken. Upon further inquiry he said he was “not prepared to discuss the photo.” Muravsky refused


Study: Medical marijuana changes how employees use sick time

mixed. "It is simply uncertain as to whether there are negative labor market consequences of drug use in general, and cannabis use in particular," the 2014 paper concludes. But there hasn't been a lot of research into the impact of licit marijuana use — particularly medical marijuana use — on the workplace. So Ullman decided to look into what happened to employee sick-day use in states that legalized medical marijuana, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current Population Survey (CPS). On the one hand, you might expect broader access to marijuana to result in more workers calling in sick, because they're too stoned to work or because they just don't feel like showing up on a given day. On the other hand, if medical pot is successfully treating conditions that would otherwise render somebody unable to work, you might expect sick days to decrease. So Ullman examined before-and-after sick-day data from 24 states that had medical marijuana laws at the time of his study. On average, he found that "respondents were 8% less likely to report being absent from work due to health issues after medical marijuana laws" were passed. The CPS numbers also suggest that states with fewer restrictions on the use of medical marijuana, such as on the number of conditions it could be recommended for, had more of a decrease in sick-day use than states with stricter regulations. Now, if you read much about this type of research, you're probably expecting a Big Important Caveat to appear here, and you're right: Ullman's study can say that sick-day use decreased after the passage of medical marijuana laws. But it can't say medical marijuana caused that decrease. There are any number of factors that could have accounted for a drop in absenteeism in the states Ullman studied — better access to health care, better workplace wellness programs, improved employee health overall, etc. The decline in absenteeism could be driven more by any of those factors than by whatever happened to the state's marijuana laws. However, Ullman notes that the effect of the laws was stronger for middle-aged workers and for males, the groups most likely to hold medical marijuana cards. That, combined with the stronger effect of the laws in the more lax states, does suggest that the laws themselves could be a driver of the reduced absenteeism seen in the data. Ullman notes that there are any


More parents believe vaccines are ‘unnecessary,’ while a mumps outbreak grows

In 2006, the No. 1 reason parents were refusing vaccines was because of concerns about the ingredient thimerosal causing autism. In 2006, 74 said it was about autism. In 2013, that number had declined to 64 percent. Now, more parents are refusing the vaccine on the grounds that they are “unnecessary” — 73.1 percent in 2013 vs. 63.4 percent in 2006. Moreover, even parents who believe in vaccines appear to be delaying the shots that are supposed to be given on a strict schedule to maximize their effectiveness. Seventy-five percent of pediatricians said that parents asked for delays because of worries about their child's "discomfort" and 72.5 percent because of a concern "for immune system burden." Jonas Salk administers a trial polio vaccine to David Rosenbloom of Pittsburgh in this 1954 photo. The word "polio" once conveyed the same terror that "cancer" does today. (National Foundation March of Dimes via AP) That’s stunning because of the scary history of infectious disease in this country. Polio once killed and paralyzed by the hundreds. An outbreak in New York City in 1916 left an estimated 27,000 people infected and 6,000 dead. The disease is now making a comeback in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan because of poor immunization rates. In a 1964-65 rubella outbreak that is being compared to what’s going on today with Zika, 1,000 babies miscarried or were aborted, and 20,000 others were born with defects because of rubella. A rubella vaccine is now one of the standard vaccines given in childhood. The rapid speed at which a modern outbreak can spread was underscored in 2014-2015 when a single unvaccinated child with measles at Disneyland in California started an outbreak that spread to 146 people, many of whom were also unvaccinated. There were no deaths, but many became so seriously ill that they had to be hospitalized. With the latest measles outbreak spreading fast, you may be surprised by the state with the best child vaccination rate in the country. A lot of the recent controversy over vaccines has focused on a new vaccine for HPV, or human papillomavirus, for preteens or teenagers. The adoption of this vaccine has been low, in part because parents and pediatricians may be reluctant to discuss the fact that it protects against a sexually transmitted virus. Health officials have been focusing on the vaccine’s effectiveness for preventing cancer instead. The AAP paper’s publication coincidentally


The generous reason this doctor is running from L.A. to D.C. in just 100 days

He always dreamed of crossing America by foot, but when he did he wanted it to be for a reason bigger than himself. Dr. Levi Rizk has found one. Rizk, an ultra marathoner and a family doctor in rural Hot Springs, Va., has put his life on hold for an epic-cross country journey, with his six-month pregnant wife and 2-year-old daughter in tow. Starting in Los Angeles on Sept. 11, Rizk plans to run no less than 30 miles every day, ending in Washington about 100 days later. His wife will shadow him in a donated RV camper that, when he’s finished, will be converted into a mobile health clinic to be used in low-income neighborhoods. Levi Rizk running. (Courtesy: The Hope Foundation) Rizk, 33, started running 12 years ago, when he was still an undergraduate college student. He took it up the way many people casually do, to decompress, to stay in shape. But running had an almost transcendental impact on him. He kept pushing himself to greater distances, until going out for an afternoon marathon-length run was part of his routine. When Rizk sat down with his wife, Mandy, in a house in France for a Skype interview Monday morning, he had just completed a 103-mile race through the Alps, the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc that crosses France, Italy and Switzerland. It took him about 39 hours. Five days earlier he’d done a 175-mile run in 58 hours through Portugal. These were his training runs for his transcontinental venture. He will fly to D.C. on Wednesday and then on to L.A., where he will rest for a few days before setting off from the Santa Monica Pier on a 3,000-mile run. Yes, his wife could go into labor before he finishes. And they both had to take leave from work for more than four months. They thought about canceling when they found out she was pregnant, but they agreed there would never be an ideal time. Opportunities like these, to fulfill both his personal and professional goals in such a profound way, must be seized. Several years ago, “he told me that he had a dream that someday he would run across America for something he was passionate about,” Mandy Rizk said. “Something that moved him to do something like that for.” “I believe deep down that every single one of us is given a gift of some sort,”


The sky fell on the U.S. poultry industry last year. But NAFTA and the TPP helped protect U.S. exports.

With U.S. poultry products still welcome in many countries, the prospects were not nearly as dim for U.S. poultry farming operations and the thousands of jobs they provide. Yes, the much-pilloried free trade agreements (FTAs) of NAFTA and even the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) were an unlikely savior. While the multilateral WTO agreement has provided the first step for encouraging countries to set trade policy based on sound scientific evidence, these newer FTAs push partners to engage in additional regulatory cooperation with the United States. The bird flu case is one way to measure the benefits of trade agreements You can’t stop bird flu — you can only hope to contain it. Highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI — the particularly devastating 2015 variant of the disease — appears to have been transmitted from wild waterfowl to commercial poultry. The likely culprits were infected flocks of ducks or geese migrating home after spending the winter down south. On the trek north, the HPAI-infected flocks transmitted the disease to chickens and turkeys on farms in 15 states in the Pacific Northwest and Midwest in the first half of 2015. Veterinarians from U.S. government agencies, including Department of the Interior and the USDA, worked with farmers in Iowa, Minnesota and other states to help contain the outbreak. Upon positive results of HPAI, they would cull infected flocks, dispose of carcasses and then decontaminate and clean entire farms. The last incident was reported in June 2015. Trade rules also require international flows of information The USDA had to provide real-time public updates about what it was finding. In much the same way governments report human infectious disease outbreaks such as Ebola or Zika to the World Health Organization in Geneva, governments must report the details of animal disease outbreaks to the World Organization for Animal Health in Paris. Better known by its French acronym, the OIE serves three main global functions: 1) Convening veterinary and public health experts to establish disease standards based on scientific evidence 2) Acting as a centralized clearinghouse to report and circulate information on animal disease outbreaks worldwide 3) Establishing trade agreement guidelines — when to close and when to safely reopen markets — to guide commercial policy when a disease outbreak occurs The United States and other geographically large countries have pushed for an additional important protocol on “regionalization.” If a country can make the scientific case that a