As more pro athletes use cannabis for aches and pain, the more they run afoul of rules

There was a notable face missing at last fall’s Ironman 70.3 World Championships in France. Instead of racing as expected, American Lauren Goss, 31, who had a string of wins at the distance and was feeling fit and ready to compete, was stuck on the sidelines. She’d been banned from competition for six months, lost her main sponsor and is mulling retirement. All because she used a topical cream containing CBD (cannabidiol) for pain caused by a stress fracture in her foot. There’s a tiny bit of THC in almost all CBD, and the over-the-counter cream was no different, but Goss said she didn’t think it would be enough to tip her to test positive. “I didn’t think twice about the cream and used it twice a day for months,” she says. “I assumed it would take something like smoking a joint close to race day to turn up enough THC for a positive result. I was shocked.” Such is the gray area that surrounds the use of cannabis products by athletes. With increasing numbers of states allowing recreational and medicinal cannabis use, and CBD oils, creams and tinctures sold in stores across the country and online, athletes of all types are testing the waters to see how the substance might fit into their regimens for training aches and pains. The retired and active big-name professionals who have declared their use of, or are involved with developing or promoting a business around cannabis, include former NFL players, mixed martial arts fighters, golfers, Olympic athletes, surfers and hockey players. Among them are retired NHL players Riley Cote and Ryan VandenBussche; retired NFL players Steve Smith, Tiki Barber and Rob Gronkowski; retired NBA players John Salley, Kenyon Martin and Matt Barnes; Olympic hurdler Lolo Jones and golfer Bubba Watson. The list continues to grow as the stigma and rules surrounding cannabis fall away. Until recently, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) disallowed any type of cannabis use among pro athletes. Both, however, have changed their list of banned substances in the past few years to make an exception for CBD — provided it has no more than a specified tiny amount of THC, the psychoactive component in cannabis that provides a “high” for people. Despite its popularity, research is largely unclear on the effects of CBD for pain, stress and other conditions. The Food and Drug Administration


a medical purpose.” She began with small doses of edibles — legal in her home state of Colorado — and found relief from both pain and nausea, along with better sleep. “It was life-changing,” she says. “But figuring out what dosages to take and when to take it was difficult. There wasn’t much information out there. I had to do a lot of experimenting.” She became interested in learning how common cannabis use was among athletes and how it was being used. Through social media and email blasts, the Canna Research Group that Zeiger runs distributed a survey to 1,274 adult athletes, asking whether and how they used CBD and THC-containing products. “We asked the participants if they had used cannabis over the past two weeks and for what purpose,” Zeiger says. “We found that 26 percent [of the 1,161 athletes who responded] had taken it in some form during that time period, while overall, 67 percent had used it at some point in time in their lives.” Not surprisingly, younger athletes tended to use THC and CBD products for recreational purposes, while athletes over 40 skewed more toward medicinal CBD use. Overall, however, “About 61 percent of the athletes indicated they use cannabis for pain, with 68 percent saying that cannabis improved their pain,” Zeiger reports, “There were no differences in pain relief by age, but younger athletes reported better sleep and less anxiety with cannabis use than older athletes.” A recent meta-analysis, published in the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association, found that “cannabis and cannabinoids via certain routes of administration, could reduce [certain] kinds of pain.” The review pointed out, however, that more studies are needed to “characterize the effects and routes of administration on analgesic safety and efficacy.” Zeiger acknowledges that more research is needed and hopes to find funding to support that. She would like her next study to focus on disease populations and how they use cannabis for relief to determine the efficacy and safety of cannabis for various health conditions. Goss, meanwhile, hopes USADA and WADA will re-examine their usage rules for professionals like her. “It’s legal out of competition but not during, except for CBD,” she says, “but if you’re using a combo, the THC gets stored up in your body. I think the organizations need to make it legal or illegal at all times. It can’t be something in between.” health-science@washpost.com


The Pensacola shooting gunman was a military student from Saudi Arabia training in the U.S., officials say

line of service members — like many in the neighborhood. She said the area’s usual sense of quiet had been shattered. “I woke up and opened my texts to all of these messages and then looked across the water to see all the ambulances on the bridge,” she said. “It was too close for comfort.” The facility hosts 16,000 military personnel and more than 7,000 civilians. “For 200 years, they have been a part of the city of Pensacola,” Mayor Grover C. Robinson IV said during a news conference. “We’re a military town.” The shooting could put additional strain on the U.S.-Saudi relationship, which has been tested recently by legal and diplomatic troubles. Last month, the Justice Department charged two former Twitter employees with spying for Saudi Arabia by accessing information about Saudi dissidents who used the social media platform, marking the first time federal prosecutors have publicly accused the kingdom of running agents in the United States. One of those implicated in the scheme, according to court papers, is an associate of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who the CIA has concluded likely ordered the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last year. Khashoggi was a Washington Post contributing columnist who advocated for free expression in the Arab world. In September, the U.S. Justice Department decided to provide families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks some information that the FBI learned about Saudi government activity related to those attacks; 15 of the 19 plane hijackers were Saudis. Friday’s shooting in Florida came just two days after a gunman opened fire at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam near Honolulu. The shooter in that incident was identified as an active-duty U.S. Navy sailor and his three victims as civilian Defense Department employees working at the base’s shipyard, but officials do not suspect terrorism was the motive in that case. The gunman, Gabriel Romero, was assigned to the USS Columbia, a submarine undergoing maintenance at Dry Dock 2, where the shooting occurred, officials said. After that incident, military officials said Romero had been receiving counseling and was unhappy with his commanders. He was also involved in a low-level administrative process for minor misconduct, officials said. Nakashima, Shammas and Barrett reported from Washington. Kim Bellware, Joby Warrick, Mark Berman, Alice Crites, Kareem Fahim, Abigail Hauslohner, Alex Horton, Souad Mekhennet, Dan Lamothe, Missy Ryan, Julie Tate and John Wagner contributed to


Stand with Ethiopian churches as they are attacked

The Dec. 2 article and photographs “Climbing to the church in the sky” [The World] gave a glimpse of Ethiopia’s long Christian history and its unique sites of worship. The 100-plus rock-hewn churches in the northern part of the country are truly fascinating for their style, spirituality, artworks and treasures. Century after century, and despite numerous challenges that included foreign military invasions, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church has preserved the integrity of most of its historic holy sites. Churches such as Abuna Yemata Guh and similar religious sites around the world are part of the global human heritage whose preservation and well-being should be the concern of all nations. Lately, however, there were shocking acts of violence against Orthodox Christians in Ethiopia that claimed many lives. Several churches were burned down along with their treasures. The unprovoked attacks, although confined to a few regions, should not be ignored. Those who instigated and carried out the attacks should face the law for their unspeakable acts of crime. Sadly, the prime minister of Ethiopia, who won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, and his government showed disturbing indifference toward the blatant violence and tragic losses. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church has made significant contributions to Christianity, global history, knowledge and literature. Innocent civilians who were attacked only for being Christians deserve justice. I hope and trust that all fair-minded and peace-loving people will stand with the church and its followers during these challenging times. Tewodros Abebe Read more letters to the editor.


Following the Pensacola shooting, Trump auditions as Saudi Arabia’s press secretary

this person in no way shape or form represents the feelings of the Saudi people who love the American people.” Trump then told reporters that the king “will take care of the families and loved ones of the victims.” Sorry, but Americans don’t need blood money from the Saudis. What they need are honest answers to figure out what happened and why. It has been reported that the attacker had screened videos of previous mass shootings with fellow Saudi students at Pensacola; that before the attack he had posted online criticism of Israel and of America’s “invasion” of foreign countries, suggesting he may have been inspired by al-Qaeda; and that some of his fellow Saudi students filmed the attack. There is enough evidence for Rep. Matt Gaetz (R.-Fla.), a fervent Trump supporter who represents Pensacola, to label the attack an act of terrorism. But Trump, who never hesitates to throw out the “T” word after other attacks by Muslims, refuses to do so in this case. This is, of course, only the latest example of Trump’s suspicious partiality to Saudi Arabia — the site of his first trip abroad as president. Trump has taken Saudi Arabia’s side as it has blockaded Qatar, the home of a large U.S. military base; caused a humanitarian tragedy with its bombing of Yemen; and even murdered and dismembered Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Congress was so outraged by Saudi atrocities — both against Yemen and Khashoggi — that it passed legislation to block arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Trump vetoed the bills. And even while abandoning the Kurds who fought with U.S. troops to defeat the Islamic State, Trump has sent thousands of U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia, a deployment that in the past has inflamed jihadist sentiment. Why is Trump so sickeningly solicitous of a vicious dictatorship whose citizens have carried out numerous terrorist attacks against Americans, from Sept. 11, 2001, to Friday in Pensacola? In public, Trump talks about the supposed economic benefits of the relationship — even though the United States, which has now become energy-independent, no longer needs Saudi oil. “They give us a lot of jobs. They give us a lot of business,” Trump said in justifying his nonresponse to Khashoggi’s murder. As usual, Trump is wildly exaggerating: He claimed last year that the Saudis have agreed to buy $110 billion in U.S. weapons since he took office. The


Saudis have come for U.S. military training for decades. Here’s why and how.

Arabia is one of the world’s largest purchaser of arms, and many of these weapons are manufactured in the United States. At Naval Air Station Pensacola, foreign military personnel can receive training on aircraft such as the F-15 fighter and the C-130 cargo plane, which are among the items Saudi Arabia has purchased. Other coursework offered for Saudis through these programs have included leadership training for senior naval officers, The Washington Post’s Dan Lamothe reported. Foreign military personnel in the United States on Defense Department-related training are first nominated by their host country and then assessed by Pentagon officials. The vetting process includes an in-country screening and database checks for any ties to terrorist-related activity, drug trafficking, corruption and other criminal conduct, officials said. “The way that program works is that the foreign government has to certify that these are the best of their best, that these are their future generals and admirals and senior military officials for their countries,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), told USA Today. “The U.S. State Department does a scrub on those prospective trainees, and after that they matriculate into the program.” He added: “That’s a really important part of what our military does because it has people use our systems and train alongside our military members. They are more receptive and more capable and more willing to work with us when the time arises, should U.S. interests be impacted.” Earlier this year, the Pentagon canceled a training program for Afghan pilots in Texas after about 40 percent of the students were reported absent without leave. The Afghans who did not leave the course were sent back to Afghanistan to complete training. A similar program for Afghan pilots at an air base in Georgia is also facing high desertion rates and is expected to end next year. Some have criticized these programs for not emphasizing enough coursework on issues such as human rights or for helping to train officers that prop up authoritarian systems. Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, a former general and defense minister, is one of many prominent military and political leaders who have studied in the United States on these programs. He has maintained close ties with the Trump administration as he leads brutal crackdowns on dissent in Egypt. For years, the United States ran what was formerly called the School of Americas — now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation —


Study: Freak summer weather and wild jet stream patterns are on the rise because of global warming

In many ways, the summer of 2018 marked a turning point, when the effects of climate change — perhaps previously on the periphery of public consciousness — suddenly took center stage. Record high temperatures spread all over the Northern Hemisphere. Wildfires raged out of control. And devastating floods were frequent. Michael Mann, climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University, along with colleagues, has published a new study that connects these disruptive weather extremes with a fundamental change in how the jet stream is behaving during the summer. Linked to the warming climate, the study suggests this change in the atmosphere’s steering current is making these extremes occur more frequently, with greater intensity, and for longer periods of time. The study projects this erratic jet stream behavior will increase in the future, leading to more severe heat waves, droughts, fires and floods. The jet stream is changing not only because the planet is warming up but also because the Arctic is warming faster than the mid-latitudes, the study says. The jet stream is driven by temperature contrasts, and these contrasts are shrinking. The result is a slower jet stream with more wavy peaks and troughs that Mann and his study co-authors ascribe to a process known as “quasi-resonant amplification.” The altered jet stream behavior is important because when it takes deep excursions to the south in the summer, it sets up a collision between cool air from the north and the summer’s torrid heat, often spurring excessive rain. But when the jet stream retreats to the north, bulging heat domes form underneath it, leading to record heat and dry spells. If the excursions in the jet stream endure long enough, it can then set the stage for floods where the jet dips, and wildfires and drought where it ascends. “What made these events [in the summer of 2018] so devastating was not just the extreme nature of the meteorological episodes but their persistence,” Mann said in a blog post discussing the implications of the new study. The study, published Wednesday in Science Advances, finds that these quasi-resonant amplification events — in which the jet stream exhibits this extreme behavior during the summer — are predicted to increase by 50 percent this century if emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases continue unchecked. Whereas previous work conducted by Mann and others had identified a signal for an increase in these events, this


Russia calls Olympics ban ‘anti-Russia hysteria’ and politically motivated

Russia’s reaction to being banned Monday from the next two Olympics in the wake of one of the biggest international sports doping scandals has been to claim it’s the world’s punching bag. The World Anti-Doping Agency voted Monday to bar Russia from major international sporting events for the next four years. Russian athletes deemed clean can still compete but not under their country’s flag or anthem — similar restrictions were imposed during the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang, where 168 Russian athletes competed as “Olympic Athletes from Russia.” Officials from the Russian Olympic Committee or any of its sport governing bodies are also barred from attending the Olympics or any other major international competitions for the next four years, which includes government officials such as President Vladimir Putin. The country’s years-long state-sponsored doping scandal led to it being banned from the 2018 Games, but Russia and its anti-doping agency were conditionally reinstated last year, prompting criticism that WADA was too soft in its punishment. As part of that reinstatement, Russia was required to turn over laboratory data, but WADA discovered that data was manipulated, which prompted new sanctions for “an extremely serious case of noncompliance.” But just as Moscow has repeatedly denied interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, claiming allegations were part of an anti-Russian narrative, the official reaction since the sports scandal first surfaced in 2015 has been to complain that this too was political. “It’s obvious in this case that there are still significant doping problems on the Russian side — I mean our sports community. This can’t be denied,” Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said at a conference Monday with deputy prime ministers in Moscow. “But on the other side,” Medvedev continued, “the fact that all these decisions are recurring and have often been applied to athletes who have already been punished one way or another, not to mention some other aspects — this certainly makes one think that this is just a continuation of that anti-Russian hysteria that has become chronic.” His comments echoed those from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who was asked about the possibility of a ban two weeks ago. “There are those who want to put Russia in a defensive position accused of pretty much everything in every sphere of international life — conflicts, economics, energy, gas pipelines, arms sales,” Lavrov said at the time. WADA President Sir Craig Reedie appeared


Russia banned from next two Olympics for doping violations

The World Anti-Doping Agency executive committee voted Monday to bar Russia from competing in the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo and the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. After being banned from the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang, Russia and its anti-doping agency were conditionally reinstated in September 2018, but Russian officials were caught this year manipulating data from their Moscow anti-doping laboratory and misleading WADA investigators, prompting a new chapter in a years-long doping scheme that continues to roil the international sports community. As in the 2018 Games, Russians who have not been implicated in the country’s state-sponsored doping scheme will be allowed to compete as unaffiliated athletes. In PyeongChang, 168 Russians competed as “Olympic Athletes from Russia.”This is a developing story. It will be updated.


Were you or one of your family members involved in the Afghanistan war? Tell us about your experiences.

The Washington Post has published a trove of documents that reveal a secret history of the war in Afghanistan. In candid interviews, senior U.S. officials and others directly involved in the war effort criticized how the government and its military mishandled the conflict over 18 years, detailing the numerous mistakes, flawed strategies and rampant corruption that have characterized the fight. In the documents, U.S. officials acknowledged they failed to tell the public the truth about the war. “We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing,” Douglas Lute, who served as the White House’s Afghan war czar during the Bush and Obama administrations, told government interviewers in 2015 — voicing criticisms shared by scores of others. The interviews were conducted by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, known as SIGAR. The Post obtained the documents through two lawsuits. As part of our coverage, we want to hear from you: If you or a member of your family was involved in the war and may be interested in speaking with the Post, please fill out the form below. (If you cannot see the form, please follow this link.)


Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed won’t be answering any questions when he receives his Nobel Prize

When Norway’s Nobel Committee chose Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed for this year’s peace prize, they knew it would generate controversy. As with Barack Obama a decade earlier, Abiy, 43, was awarded one of the world’s most prestigious prizes at the beginning of his first term — more of a nod to the world’s high expectations than for any particular achievement. He had deftly handled a peace deal with neighboring Eritrea, but many saw that as low-hanging fruit. Meanwhile, surging ethnic tensions within Ethiopia displaced more people from their homes in his first year in office than in any other country in the world. His ruling coalition holds all 547 seats in the country’s Parliament, though he has pledged to hold multiparty elections next year. But now Abiy is refusing to engage with the international media when he receives the prize Tuesday in Oslo — refusing even to field questions from the young students who traditionally are offered that opportunity at an event hosted by Save the Children — and the Nobel Committee is scrambling to get him to change his mind and spare it a major embarrassment. “The Nobel Institute and the Nobel Committee wishes Abiy Ahmed had said ‘yes’ to meeting Norwegian and international press,” Olav Njolstad, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute and secretary for the committee that annually awards the peace prize, told the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. Njolstad traveled to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, last week in an attempt to persuade Abiy to attend at least one of the four news conferences traditionally scheduled over the three-day ceremony, which begins Monday. He was rebuffed. “We have been very clear about this and have clarified that there are several reasons we find this highly problematic,” Njolstad said. According to Henrik Urdal, research director at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, this is the first time a peace prize recipient has declined to take questions in at least three decades, if not ever. In addition to the Save the Children event, there is usually one news conference the day before the award is given, one big interview done by a major news outlet (it was supposed to be Al Jazeera this year), and one news conference the day after alongside the Norwegian prime minister. (The Save the Children event will go on, just without the guest of honor.) Abiy will still give his acceptance speech as scheduled Tuesday. The


The Afghanistan Papers: A secret history of America’s longest war

Post Reports is the daily podcast from The Washington Post. Unparalleled reporting. Expert insight. Clear analysis. Everything you’ve come to expect from the newsroom of The Post. For your ears. Martine Powers is your host, asking the questions you didn’t know you wanted answered. Listen online. When the United States attacked Afghanistan in October of 2001, the mission was simple: Defeat al-Qaeda and drive them out of the country that had harbored them as they plotted the 9/11 attacks. Al-Qaeda’s forces were driven out of Afghanistan in months, but the Americans stayed, and stayed. Now in its 19th year, the war in Afghanistan is the longest one the U.S. has been engaged in, and the official line has always been a variation of “there’s progress” or “we’re turning a corner.” That, at least, was the public line. Now, after two Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, one of which is still ongoing, to acquire a trove of transcripts and audio recordings, Washington Post reporter Craig Whitlock talks to host Martine Powers about interviews conducted with key players and participants of the war in Afghanistan from ambassadors to generals to people who worked with NGOs. They give their frank assessment of how the war had an unclear mission, poor strategy and even lacked clarity on whom the U.S. was fighting. The interviews with some 400 people were part of a project called “Lessons Learned,” undertaken by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR. These Afghanistan papers are a secret history of the war, Whitlock tells Powers, and “they contain these frank admissions of how the war was screwed up and that what the American people were being told about the war wasn’t true.” “They really do bring to mind the Pentagon Papers, which were the Defense Department’s top-secret history of the Vietnam War,” Whitlock says. More on this topic:


China’s library officials are burning books that diverge from Communist Party ideology

BEIJING — Library officials in northwest China recently hoped to demonstrate their ideological fervor and loyalty to the Communist Party by purging politically incorrect books and religious materials in emphatic fashion: They burned them. Then they uploaded a report — and a photo — to showcase their work. The book-burning incident, with all its dark historical precedents from this country and Nazi-era Germany, has heightened alarm at a time when Chinese intellectuals see their society tipping further into authoritarianism. The incident attracted widespread attention Sunday after Chinese social media users noticed a report on the Library Society of China’s website from a library in Zhenyuan county. The library declared it had removed “illegal publications, religious publications and deviant papers and books, picture books and photographs” in an effort to “fully exert the library’s role in broadcasting mainstream ideology.” The library’s announcement said the event was attended by education and culture bureau officials. It included a picture of employees burning a stack of books outside the entrance of the library, which was adorned with a red banner declaring it would “grasp the themes of education and promote the comprehensive and strict development of the party.” The incident was likely a response to a new directive from the Education Ministry calling on school libraries to cull teaching materials, analysts said. Chinese authorities in recent weeks have talked up the importance of tightening their grip over classrooms after Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests, which Beijing believes are a product of the city’s independent, and wayward, education system. The ministry did not respond immediately to a request for comment Monday. The nationwide memo from October called for a ban of materials that harmed national unity and sovereignty, contradicted the Communist Party’s direction and path, or propagated religion, among other things. But for many Chinese, and even some of the country’s tightly controlled news outlets, the sight of local officials trumpeting book-burning was too much. Chen Youxi, a prominent defense lawyer, warned officials that book-burning “goes down in history” and loosely compared it to the Cultural Revolution in a social media post that was censored hours later. The Cultural Revolution, which started in the mid-1960s and lasted a decade, was an attempt to purge Chinese Communist society of the remnants of traditional and capitalist elements. The Beijing News called for an investigation into the library in an opinion column. That was also censored. On Monday, the


Trump’s defense of Saudis grows more isolated after deadly shooting on military base

terrorism, had not done so as of Sunday evening. The White House did not respond to requests for comment. The president has personally chafed at the idea of not being able to sell arms to Saudi Arabia, even as lawmakers have repeatedly condemned the kingdom’s human rights record in the wake of the grisly murder of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi and civilian casualties from the Saudi-led coalition’s bombing campaign in Yemen. Democrats tried to restrict arms sales to Saudi Arabia as part of a military budget deal negotiated this week, but the White House pushed back and rejected the idea, according to White House and congressional officials who requested anonymity to discuss internal negotiations. Trump has shown little interest in Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, according to current and former aides. The president has been especially blunt in describing his transactional approach to foreign affairs, particularly in the Middle East where his interests in oil, arms deals and terrorism intersect. After intelligence officials concluded last year that Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered Khashoggi’s killing, Trump issued a statement that his administration was “standing by Saudi Arabia” for strategic reasons having to do with Iran and because it had agreed to invest “a record amount of money” in the United States. In the statement, which began by declaring “The world is a very dangerous place!” Trump acknowledged that the crown prince may have known about the plot to kill Khashoggi, before waving it off by saying “maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!” Chris Ruddy, a Trump friend and informal adviser, said the president appreciates the country’s great wealth and that they reached out to him early in the administration to stage an elaborate trip in 2017. Ruddy said presidents have always dealt with imperfect countries that they believe can help them. “Human rights are not his top priority because he believes the strategic interests of the United States should take priority,” he said. “They are our best Arab ally.” Tom Bossert, Trump’s former homeland security adviser, said a working relationship with the kingdom is valuable, particularly given its strategic importance in U.S. policy toward Iran. “We need KSA to modernize and stay our partner against Iranian expansion and aggression. It is unsavory, but necessary to handle MBS with some tolerance,” Bossert said, referring to the Saudi crown prince. But even as Trump has embraced


In Britain’s ‘appalling’ election, voters in the middle don’t like either Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn

weaker,” he said, and risked breaking up the United Kingdom, as Northern Ireland and Scotland wandered off over time. If given the chance, Major said, he’d cast a ballot for ex-Conservatives such as David Gauke, who was kicked out of the party with 20 other “Tory Rebels” by Johnson in September over their resistance to his Brexit plans. “None of them left the Conservative Party; the Conservative Party left them,” Major said. “Without such talent on its benches, parliament will be the poorer, which is why — if I were resident in any one of their constituencies — they would have my vote.” Major was followed by Blair, who paid tribute to his former political rival. “Here are five words I thought I would never say: Thank God for John Major.” Blair said he would personally vote Labour but urged others to back “the best candidates.” “If you look, constituency by constituency, you will know the best candidates to back. Back them.” This election, Blair told the crowded theater, was “beyond surreal, but the threat to our country all too real.” Pollsters say a significant portion of the pro-leave vote is coalescing around Johnson’s Conservative Party, as the electorate largely rejects the entreaties of Nigel Farage’s upstart Brexit Party, which is polling at 3 percent. But what happens to the anti-Brexit vote is the big question that will determine the shape of the next Parliament and direction for the country. Britain remains hopelessly split, almost down the middle, over Brexit, polls show. Johnson’s Conservatives, who promise to “get Brexit done” have maintained a steady 10-point lead over Labour. But if Labour and the third largest party, the Liberal Democrats, were a bloc, they would represent a near majority. The Liberal Democrats say they would cancel Britain’s decision in June 2016 to leave the European Union. A fourth party that’s expected to do well in the election, the Scottish National Party, also opposes Brexit. Voters looking for a moderate middle are further muddled by the country’s disquiet over the two top candidates. Johnson is one of the most popular politicians in Britain — but deeply divisive. People either like him, or they really don’t. Johnson is arguably lucky in his opponent: Corbyn is the most unpopular Labour leader since Michael Foot, who led his party to a catastrophic loss to Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives in 1983. Labour’s position on Brexit is harder


Embrace the wintry weather at holiday lights displays

your family has gone in past years, there are new features at the familiar displays. And if you haven’t, well, this seems to be the year to venture “into the unknown.” If you’re used to steamy summer evenings at Nationals Park, this first-time holiday attraction is quite an experience. The field has become a maze of lights on trees, archways and the nine giant reindeer from Santa’s sleigh. There’s an ice skating trail, musical performances, food for sale (including s’mores), “Christmas Village” shops and an opportunity to give Kris Kringle your Christmas wish list. Where: When: How much: More information: Brookside Gardens in Maryland has more than a million colorful LED lights wrapping around trees and forming winter scenes in its annual Garden of Lights. Spend an hour or so walking through the gardens, then head to the conservatory to see a seasonal model train display. There’s also food for sale, a fire pit and a variety of musical performances. Where: When: How much: More information: Meadowlark Botanical Gardens in Virginia has a half-mile walking trail through the gardens featuring more than 100 flower species as well as rainbow-colored trees and animals. Several of the displays flash on and off to seem as though animals are moving around the gardens. (Challenge your siblings to see who can spot the most animals.) End the evening with s’mores by the fire pit and musical performances inside the visitors’ center. Where: When: How much: More information: Animals made of LED lights are the main attraction at the National Zoo’s annual free light show. This year the zoo has added 3-D glowing animal sculptures to the mix of 2-D lit-up lions, tigers and bears. Another new feature is called “Entre les Rangs” (“Between the Rows”), a collection of stems topped with reflectors meant to look like a shimmering wheat field. The nearby Great Meadow features musical and dance performances each night. For a small fee, visitors can try ice-tubing or ride the zoo’s train and carousel. There are plenty of holiday treats, including cocoa to warm up, and even gelato for those who want to embrace the cold. Where: When: How much: More information: If you live outside the D.C. area or are traveling during the holidays, check out zoo light displays at New York’s Bronx Zoo, California’s San Diego Zoo, Missouri’s Saint Louis Zoo or the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, Illinois. kidspost@washpost.com


A reporter blasted the runner who ‘smacked my butt on live TV.’ Now he’s banned from future races.

Dressed in a neon-yellow shirt with microphone in hand, Alex Bozarjian stood along the Savannah Bridge Run route Saturday morning and described the race on live TV to viewers watching from home. Enthusiastic runners passed by, whooping and cheering in the background of her live shot for NBC affiliate WSAV-3 in Savannah, Ga. She laughed as one person, dressed in a gorilla costume, swooped into view and kept running. “Whoa,” she said, smiling. “Not expecting that.” But she did not smile, and she did not laugh, at the next person who interrupted her reporting. Just seconds later, a man wearing sunglasses and a blue long-sleeve shirt ran past Bozarjian and smacked her lower half. Shocked, her face dropped and she stuttered over her words before quickly recovering to continue reporting. The moment, which illustrates the kind of sexual harassment TV reporters face on the job, was captured on video and posted to social media. On Saturday afternoon, after covering the race, Bozarjian shared it alongside a firm message. “To the man who smacked my butt on live TV this morning,” she wrote. “You violated, objectified, and embarrassed me. No woman should EVER have to put up with this at work or anywhere!! Do better.” Robert Wells, director of the Savannah Sports Council, which hosted the race, quickly responded to the viral video. “This will not be tolerated at our events,” Wells wrote on Twitter. “Glad we have race bibs and photos for easy identification.” To Bozarjian, he wrote: “Alex, what happened today is 100% unacceptable. You have my assurance we will identify him.” Internet sleuths quickly worked to find and name the man who touched Bozarjian, and in a statement to The Washington Post, Wells said the runner had been identified. They shared his information with Bozarjian and WSAV-3, Wells said, and made the decision to ban the man from registering in any other races organized by the Savannah Sports Council. Wells said his council and Enmarket, the race’s title sponsor, “take this matter extremely seriously and fully condemn this individual’s actions.” Keturah Greene, a spokeswoman for the Savannah Police Department, said local authorities are aware of the incident and have talked with Bozarjian. They said their ability to investigate further depends on how she would like to proceed. “The Savannah Police Department is more than willing and ready to work with her,” Greene said. Bozarjian did not respond to


Why WADA banned Russia from the Olympics and what it means

The World Anti-Doping Agency’s executive committee voted Monday at its meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, to bar Russia from any formal involvement in the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo and the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. On Nov. 22, WADA’s Compliance Review Committee recommended that the executive committee find the Russian Anti-Doping Agency in violation of the World Anti-Doping Code because of “an extremely serious case of noncompliance with the requirement to provide an authentic copy of the Moscow data, with several aggravating features.” The executive committee voted unanimously to accept the recommendations from the organization’s Compliance Review Committee. Under the ruling, Russia will not be allowed to participate in international competition, which includes the Olympics, Youth Olympic Games, Paralympics, FIFA’s World Cup, world championships and other major sporting events subject to WADA code; Russian officials are barred from sitting on boards and committees related to international sports governance; Russia is disqualified from hosting any major sporting event or even applying for hosting opportunities; and the Russian flag won’t be allowed to fly at any major event. However, St. Petersburg will host matches of the 2020 UEFA Euro Cup as scheduled and the Russian national team will play under the Russian flag, according to the head of the Russian organizing committee. The 12-member executive committee is considered WADA’s most important policymaking body and is headed by Craig Reedie, a former badminton player from the United Kingdom and longtime sports administrator. The other members come from 11 countries and have a wide range of athletic and political backgrounds. None of the 12 is from Russia or the United States. Russia will have no formal presence. Its flag won’t fly; its anthem won’t play. No officials from the Russian Olympic Committee or any of its sport governing bodies can attend the Olympics or any other major international competitions for the next four years. This includes government officials such as President Vladimir Putin. But Russian athletes can still compete, as long as they haven’t been implicated in doping. Russia faced similar restrictions during the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang, where 168 Russian athletes competed as “Olympic Athletes from Russia.” According to WADA, Russians can compete if “they are able to demonstrate that they are not implicated in any way by the noncompliance (i.e., they are not mentioned in incriminating circumstances in the McLaren reports, there are no positive findings reported for them in the


Investigation broadened in Pensacola Navy base shooting

Firearms and Explosives. Gun use is tightly restricted on military bases, and officials said only members of “security forces” are able to bring a weapon on to the Pensacola installation. It was not immediately clear how the shooter was able to take a gun into the classroom. The Defense Department operates a robust effort to train foreign military officers, with more than 5,000 such foreign students from 153 countries in the United States, officials said. Those foreign nationals are vetted in a process that includes searching databases for evidence of drug trafficking, support for terrorist activity, corruption and criminal conduct, officials said. Several members of Congress called Saturday for canceling or suspending training programs until better screening procedures could be adopted. But current and former defense and counterterrorism officials described the programs as vital for U.S. national security, saying they promote good relations between U.S. and foreign militaries and are crucial in fostering seamless deployments with U.S. troops fighting and training overseas. Violent incidents among participants are extremely rare, the officials said. “We’ve been having individuals from Arab militaries studying and working here for decades — not just from Saudi Arabia but from across the Arab world,” said Nicholas Rasmussen, a former intelligence official who directed the National Counterterrorism Center. “When something like this happens you have to go back and look at whatever vetting procedures you have and check carefully to make sure that you are doing everything you can to get a full picture of those entering the United States for this purpose. But it doesn’t invalidate the utility of the actual programs.” Trump’s response to the shooting has been conspicuously restrained in comparison with his reactions to other violence by people from predominantly Muslim countries. After speaking by phone with Saudi King Salman, he tweeted that the monarch and his people are “greatly angered by the barbaric actions of the shooter, and that this person in no way shape or form represents the feelings of the Saudi people who love the American people.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s response echoed the president’s. “I just spoke with Foreign Minister Al-Saud of Saudi Arabia who expressed his condolences and sadness at the loss of life in the horrific attack in Pensacola, Florida yesterday,” Pompeo said in a Twitter posting. Knowles, Nakashima and Warrick reported from Washington. Alice Crites, Derek Hawkins, Marisa Iati and Dan Lamothe contributed to this report.


Trump is the most anti-military president we’ve had — and he doesn’t even know it

The circumstances behind the firing of Richard V. Spencer are murky, but it’s impossible to argue with what the former Navy secretary wrote in a Post op-ed last week — that President Trump “has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices.” Trump is, to be sure, not the first president to enter office with little knowledge of the armed forces. The same could be said of Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. The difference is that they were diligent students who listened to their briefers, asked probing questions and vastly increased their knowledge as their presidencies progressed. Trump, by contrast, is invincibly ignorant because he prefers to get his military advice from Fox News blowhards rather than from the eminently qualified professionals who report to him. Trump loves to use the military as a backdrop for photo ops, as he did last week in Afghanistan. He loves to revel in military accomplishments — as he did following the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, even fantasizing about the Islamic State leader “whimpering and crying” in his final moments. He loves military parades — probably a carryover from his days as a high school student at the New York Military Academy. And he loves to posture as the defender of the troops. “I will always protect our great warfighters,” he tweets. “I’ve got your backs!” Trump is so uneducated in all matters military that he does not even realize that he is insulting millions of troops who have served honorably and ethically when he pardons service members who have been accused of war crimes. Or when he tweets: “We train our boys to be killing machines, then prosecute them when they kill!” Real-life American soldiers — as opposed to the cartoonish renditions that Trump may have seen in the Rambo movies or “American Sniper” — don’t see themselves as “killing machines.” They see themselves as skilled and ethical professionals dedicated to fighting in accordance with the laws of war. Elliot Ackerman, a former Marine who earned a Silver Star in Iraq, represented the thinking of many veterans when he wrote: “We’ve discovered a new way to defile the uniform. Today, we allow murderers to wear it while being lauded as heroes.” This is only, of course, the latest in a


Trump’s reaction to the Pensacola shooting was insensitive and insufficient

of terrorism, or a shred of curiosity about motives and whether the Saudi officer was radicalized and by whom, or a thought about what Saudi Arabia could do to help investigate the shooter, or perhaps a lament that a pilot, a guest of the United States, would carry out such a horrific assault on his hosts, or even a worry about where the 21-year-old officer got the weapon. Mr. Trump quickly pivoted to say there were a lot of countries participating in the aviator training program. He often performs this pivot, a telltale dodge. “There are a lot of killers,” he said once when asked about a leader who dispatches assassins abroad. “I think there is blame on both sides,” he said after Charlottesville. Mr. Trump has an inexplicable blind spot for Saudi Arabia. He has no trouble insulting in the vilest way people from other Muslim countries. He is hostile generally to people from “shithole” countries. After a terrorist attack in London, he said on Twitter, “These animals are crazy and must be dealt with through toughness and strength!” But when a Saudi carries out an attack on a U.S. military base, Mr. Trump becomes a spokesman and apologist for the king. King Salman has assured Mr. Trump, according to an embassy news release, that he has “directed Saudi security services to cooperate with the relevant American agencies to uncover information that will help determine the cause of this horrific attack.” Perhaps Mr. Trump thinks Americans have forgotten that when Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi was dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Mr. Trump and members of his administration vowed, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo put it, to pursue “a thorough, transparent and timely investigation, including accountability for those responsible for the killing.” This promise remains unfulfilled. The king’s promises of cooperation might be more credible if he would direct his intelligence service, and the crown prince to whom it reports, to pay more attention to cases of radicalization and less to what seem to be the prince’s top priorities: silencing peaceful dissent, torturing women who campaigned for the right to drive, surveilling the relatives of the murdered Khashoggi. Mr. Trump might ask the king to make public who really ordered that murder and to free the writers and activists the regime has thrown into prison. That is, if Mr. Trump could see beyond his blind spot.


The Daily 202: FBI director shows independence from Trump and Barr in responding to IG report on Russia probe

Republican senators said they were prepared to support the deal, including Sens. John Barrasso (Wyo.), Mitt Romney (Utah) and Roy Blunt (Mo.).” -- Good news for Washington: The Nationals and Stephen Strasburg, the reigning World Series MVP and pitcher who kick-started the team’s slow rise to relevance a decade ago, agreed to a seven-year, $245 million deal. -- The North Dakota county poised to become the first in America to bar refugees under a new Trump executive order rejected the motion. -- Border arrests fell in November for the sixth consecutive month, new data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows. -- CBP denied access to a group of doctors trying to vaccinate migrant children against the flu. -- A Florida official told her deputy to act like a “white supremacist” when stopping a black murder suspect. THE NEW WORLD ORDER: -- Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky agreed to a renewed cease-fire and to exchange all known prisoners when they met for the first time in Paris. -- Trump will meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov today in the Oval Office for a conversation that could include the extension of the last major nuclear treaty between the U.S. and Russia. Lavrov will also meet with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. -- Russia called the Olympic committee’s ban “anti-Russia hysteria” that is politically motivated. -- The behavior of the trainee who killed three classmates at a Florida Navy base changed after a trip to his native Saudi Arabia, friends said. -- The White House blocked a U.N. meeting on North Korean atrocities in an attempt to salvage the faltering diplomatic effort to convince Kim Jong Un to abandon his nuclear weapons program. -- Trump and Pelosi are ready to pass a new NAFTA. -- Poll numbers in the U.K. show Tories maintaining the lead over the Labour Party as the campaign enters its final days. -- Jonathan Ashworth, the U.K.’s shadow health secretary, dismissed as “banter” a leaked tape showing him saying Labour, his party, will lose the election. -- After two elections in less than a year, Israeli leaders have less than 48 hours to stop a third. -- Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed won’t answer any questions when he receives his Nobel Prize, highlighting the Nobel Committee’s awareness that his victory would generate controversy. -- A Chilean Air Force plane carrying 38 went missing on its way to


Gunman’s behavior changed after trip to native Saudi Arabia, friends say

week before the shooting and recalled that he had been rude with his staff. When the Saudis failed to show up as usual on Friday, he wondered what had happened to them. He understood when he saw news on television about the shooting at the Navy base, he said. Several of the business owners said law enforcement officials have visited them in the days since the shooting. None of the acquaintances recalled Shamrani discussing religion or politics. But FBI officials were drawing insights from the alleged gunman’s Twitter account. The typo-filled will apparently posted by Shamrani is addressed to the “American people.” The writer says he does not dislike Americans per se — “I don’t hate you because of your freedoms,” he begins — but that he hates U.S. policies that he views as anti-Muslim and “evil.” “What I see from America is the supporting of Israel, which is invasion of Muslim countries,” the letter states. “I see invasion of many countries by its troops. I see Guantánamo Bay. I see cruise missiles, cluster bombs and UAV.” The posting has been widely circulated on Islamist websites, though no group has issued a credible claim of sponsoring or encouraging Shamrani’s actions. Also Monday, a senior defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the Navy was beginning to discuss the possibility that the sailors killed and wounded in Pensacola could merit Purple Heart medals and that some of them could be eligible for some sort of valor award. The issue will depend on what determination the FBI makes about the case, the official said. The service members could be eligible for the Purple Heart if the service determines that the attack was inspired by a foreign terrorist organization, based on guidelines for the award. In 2016, the military awarded Purple Hearts to service members who were killed or wounded in a July 2015 attack at a recruiting center in Chattanooga, Tenn. The criteria to receive one were expanded in 2015 through congressional action to include service members wounded stateside in acts of terrorism after years of lobbying in response to two attacks on military facilities in 2009. In one, 13 people were killed and more than 30 were wounded at Fort Hood, Tex. In the other, two service members were killed in a shooting at a recruiting center in Little Rock. souad.mekhennet@washpost.com joby.warrick@washpost.com


Winner of Devils Backbone and Caps’ beer can design contest wants to make it a career

Capital One Arena beginning early next year and through the end of the season. It will replace the original can design, which featured the work of local artists BroCoLoco, who created one of the murals the Capitals commissioned in the D.C. area before last season’s Stanley Cup playoffs. Capit-Ale IPA will remain available on draft at Capital One Arena and at select retail locations in D.C., Maryland and Virginia. The can design contest, which was announced in July, combined two of Hogan’s passions: beer and graphic design. Ever since his in-laws bought him a home-brewing kit for Christmas several years ago, making beer has become such a hobby that Hogan’s wife, Michelle, refers to the basement of their Springfield home as “the brewery.” Hogan, who designed his own tattoo to commemorate the Capitals’ Stanley Cup title in 2018, has brewed dozens of styles under his home-brew label “Devils Horns.” A heavy metal fan and an admirer of artist Tim Hastings, who has designed heavy metal-inspired labels for Purcellville’s Adroit Theory Brewing Company, Hogan has created homages to several of his favorite bands with his beers and custom labels. Some of Hogan’s heavy metal-inspired home brews include “SlipKnut,” “HazelStorm,” “Metalli-Cocoa,” “Lamb of Gourd” and “Guns N Rosemary.” The last one, he noted, tasted “atrocious.” Hogan said his most popular home brew is “R.I.P. Rest in Peaches.” (The style and process are a secret, but he said the recipe involves grilled peaches and a special type of malt.) Hogan has worked as a designer with SOCIALDEALER, a Herndon-based automotive marketing agency, for more than five years. He would like for brewing and designing beer labels to become more of a regular gig, and he is in the early stages of launching a nanobrewery with a friend. Hogan, who can now add award-winning beer can designer to his résumé, said they have a name, logo and concept picked out. “This [contest] gives me some peace of mind that I am in fact capable of designing a professional looking beer label if my job depends on it,” Hogan said. Read more on the Capitals: Alex Ovechkin on the Russia Olympic ban: ‘It’s sad news’ Some NHL defensemen bristle at being called ‘offensive,’ but what does it even mean? Alex Ovechkin ready to retire ‘right away’ if he breaks Wayne Gretzky’s goal record Forget the Norris Trophy. John Carlson deserves to be the NHL’s MVP.


I fought in Afghanistan as a Marine. Here’s how I am wrestling with the lies of the war and my Catholic faith.

Stunning reporting this week from The Washington Post confirms what service members and others have known for years: There is something twisted in the story we’ve been told about the war in Afghanistan. As a Marine veteran who served in Afghanistan and a Catholic, it’s been hard for me to reconcile the stories senior U.S. government officials have told with the war I experienced and the faith that helped bring me home. The crucifixion, the center of my Catholic faith, is a moment of accountability. The ugliness of sin, of violence, is written on the body of Christ. There is no hiding the horror of our human failings. It is there, in the nails punched into his flesh by soldiers … soldiers like me. Like the horrible violence inflicted at the crucifixion, war is the business of violence. However, there has been, until now, a failure of accountability, of public acknowledgment of how deeply the war in Afghanistan failed, despite its tremendous costs in dollars and blood of U.S. service members, Taliban fighters and Afghan civilians. When people ask me about the war, I tell the story about the first dead body I saw in Afghanistan. We had tracked fighters coming out of a house in a village called Krum. The large blimp that floated 1,000 feet above our combat outpost (COP) had a high-powered camera. My patrol was a few kilometers away from the outpost when the COP radioed us to tell us about the enemy activity. I was nervous and excited and fumbled with the knobs on the Leopold scope of my MK-12 rifle. We maneuvered for the next few hours without seeing the enemy until the Marines at the COP confirmed they were trapped against the Helmand River. The patrol called in a gun run from two A-10 close air support planes. Four enemy fighters were killed; the rest scattered. After the gun runs, we conducted a battle damage assessment. We walked across the open field to the river bank. I took a security position on the banks, while other Marines went down the embankment to find the bodies. A crusty staff sergeant asked me if I wanted to come see one of the bodies. I did. I had been in Afghanistan for three months, and I hadn’t seen a bad guy. We hadn’t killed one for me to get close enough to see a face. I


U.S. bars Saudi diplomat over killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi

The State Department on Tuesday barred a Saudi diplomat from entering the United States, citing his involvement in “gross violations of human rights” in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi last year. Mohammed al-Otaibi was the Saudi consul general in Istanbul when Khashoggi was killed in the consulate as he tried to obtain paperwork for his upcoming marriage. Otaibi was heard on a tape the Turkish government retrieved from the consulate saying, as Khashoggi was being tortured, “Do this outside. You are going to get me in trouble.” Otaibi left Turkey shortly after the killing and reportedly was fired from his position. Otaibi was one of 17 Saudis sanctioned last November for their involvement in the death of Khashoggi, a contributing columnist for The Washington Post. U.S. lawmakers have complained that the Trump administration has not done enough to punish the perpetrators in an effort to preserve its military and political relationship with the kingdom. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has appeared irritated when reporters have asked about the status of a U.S. probe into who in the Saudi hierarchy knew about the plot. “Our action today is another important step in responding to Khashoggi’s killing,” the State Department said in a statement announcing Otaibi’s blacklisting. “The State Department continues to urge the Government of Saudi Arabia to conduct a full, fair, and transparent trial of those responsible for Mr. Khashoggi’s death, and to hold accountable all those involved in his death,” the statement said. “We will continue to seek all relevant facts, consult Congress, and work with other nations to hold accountable those involved in the killing.” The Saudis have been conducting a secret trial of 11 suspects in the case but have not even named the defendants. Otaibi is not believed to be among them. Earlier this year, Agnès Callamard, a U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, criticized the Saudi investigation for failing “to address the chain of command” to determine who ordered Khashoggi’s murder and said that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the king’s son and designated heir, should have been looked into. The move against Otaibi was one of several actions taken to mark International Human Rights Day. The State Department also barred entry to two Paraguayan officials for corruption and a Russian official U.S. officials have accused of presiding over the summary execution of 27 men in Chechnya. The Treasury Department sanctioned 18 people


FTC reaches $191 million settlement with University of Phoenix in deceptive-advertising probe

career-relevant higher education, and to avoid any further distraction from serving students that could have resulted from protracted litigation.” Tuesday’s settlement brings to a close a probe that began in 2015 and spawned other regulatory headaches for Phoenix. Shortly after the FTC began its inquiry, Apollo Education Group, which owns Phoenix, said the Defense Department was considering banning the university from participating in its tuition assistance program, citing the FTC investigation in addition to other government investigations. About the same time, the Defense Department suspended the for-profit college from recruiting on military bases and placed a six-month moratorium on access to education funding dedicated to service members. The decision stemmed from allegations that the university sponsored recruiting events in violation of an executive order preventing for-profit colleges from gaining preferential access to the military. Veterans groups have criticized federal agencies for not doing enough to keep education benefits out of the hands of colleges that they say prey on members of the military. This year, three dozen advocacy groups urged Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie to intensify monitoring of college programs that enroll veterans after an audit found lax oversight could result in $2.3 billion in tuition benefits going to predatory schools during the next five years. “Enough is enough. It’s time to stop the fleecing of America’s veterans and service members by predatory colleges,” said Carrie Wofford, president of Veterans Education Success, an advocacy group. “We thank the FTC for its leadership and call on VA and the Defense Department to protect veterans and service members.” During the FTC investigation, the advocacy group connected the commission with half a dozen whistleblowers who served as recruiters for Phoenix. Wofford said the FTC settlement puts pressure on VA to enforce federal law requiring the agency to cut off GI Bill funds to schools that engage in deceptive and misleading recruiting and advertising. VA did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Education funding earned by men and women who serve in the U.S. military has become a stable source of revenue for many colleges — especially for-profit schools. The aggressive recruiting practices of some for-profit colleges have been well-documented. A 2012 Senate investigation found evidence of schools deploying teams at veterans hospitals and Wounded Warrior centers to enroll students. Some recruiters misled or lied to veterans in telling them that their military benefits cover the full cost of tuition.


In classical music it was a year of building, deconstructing and, occasionally, rescuing

Every year has highs and lows. Sometimes they’re even connected. In 2019, classical music wrestled with topical issues and economic concerns that were reflected in some of the year’s most significant triumphs. It was the year of new flexible, multiuse performance spaces. In New York, the Shed debuted with a goal of bringing a culture of new art to offset the gleaming consumerism of Hudson Yards. In Lenox, Mass., the Linde Center expanded Tanglewood’s offerings to a year-round calendar. And in Washington, the Kennedy Center’s $250 million Reach annex, which opened with a 16-day festival, prompted debate about whether “they will come” is always what follows “if you build it.” Waking up at last to the lack of people of color both on and behind the stage, classical music is attempting, sometimes clumsily, to tackle the problem. This year saw world premieres of operas about race and injustice (“The Central Park Five,” Long Beach Opera) and white cops shooting black youths (“Blue,” Glimmerglass Festival opera company, coming to Washington National Opera next year), which is good, but there was also more pigeonholing of black artists such as the tenor Russell Thomas, in WNO’s “Otello” this fall. Epitomizing the problem was the Metropolitan Opera’s lavish “Porgy and Bess.” Maybe next year we’ll see more works that truly spotlight and celebrate black culture. The Baltimore Symphony pump-faked fans by announcing a summer season and then locking out its musicians for nine weeks, citing steep revenue losses. But the two sides managed to find a way forward, and the musicians are now playing under a one-year contract. Meanwhile, the announced demise of the National Philharmonic, based at Strathmore in Bethesda, Md., prompted hand-wringing and an 11th-hour bailout. Will it last? Stay tuned. The countertenor Iestyn Davies, always a source of dazzling and thoughtful music, offered not one but two programs in Washington this calendar year: the first at the Library of Congress with the ensemble Fretwork and the second at the Kennedy Center with his longtime collaborator, lutenist Thomas Dunford. The beauty of “Akhnaten,” in Phelim McDermott’s production, marked a moment when the beleaguered and often mediocre Metropolitan Opera had a chance to turn things around. At least the company took a step toward a much-overdue housecleaning by announcing the impending departure of Jonathan Friend, the longtime casting director, who will be succeeded by Michael Heaston, formerly of the Washington National Opera. The


Russia banned from 2020 Tokyo Olympics and 2022 Beijing Games

The World Anti-Doping Agency executive committee handed down the most severe punishment to date in the years-long Russian doping saga, issuing a four-year ban Monday that will bar Russia from competing at the next two Olympic Games. The decision, barring a successful court challenge, means Russia will have no formal presence at next year’s Summer Games in Tokyo or the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, and it will be barred from most major international competition through 2023, which includes FIFA’s World Cup, the Youth Olympic Games, Paralympics, world championships and other major sporting events subject to World Anti-Doping Code. Similar to the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, Russians who have not been implicated in the country’s state-sponsored doping scheme will be allowed to compete in Tokyo and Beijing as unaffiliated athletes. In PyeongChang, 168 Russians competed as “Olympic Athletes from Russia.” After being banned from the 2018 Games, the country and its Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) were conditionally reinstated in September 2018, but Russian officials were caught earlier this year manipulating data from their Moscow anti-doping laboratory and misleading WADA investigators, prompting a new chapter in a doping scheme that continues to roil the international sports community. WADA’s executive committee met Monday in Lausanne, Switzerland, where it considered recommendations from WADA’s Compliance Review Committee. The executive committee voted unanimously to give RUSADA formal notice of its noncompliance with the World Anti-Doping Code. “For too long, Russian doping has detracted from clean sport,” WADA President Craig Reedie said in a statement. “The blatant breach by the Russian authorities of RUSADA’s reinstatement conditions, approved by the [executive committee] in September 2018, demanded a robust response. That is exactly what has been delivered today.” Russia has 21 days to respond. It can protest the matter to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which would have final say. Svetlana Zhurova, a former Olympic speedskater who is now a deputy in Russian parliament’s lower house, said RUSADA’s board would meet Dec. 19 and decide whether to accept the latest sanctions, according to the Tass news agency. “I am 100 percent sure [Russia will go to court], because we must defend our athletes,” she said. Russian Olympic officials had been bracing themselves for Monday’s decision. Yuri Ganus, head of RUSADA, has called for replacing officials in the Russian sports world who are still relying on old methods to remain competitive. “It is critically important to change


Lawyer for Democrats calls Trump ‘a clear and present danger’ as he argues case for removal

recent travels in Ukraine as evidence of the president’s continued willingness to abuse his power. Allegations pushed by Trump and Giuliani that Biden acted corruptly in his own actions toward Ukraine are “patently false,” Goldman said. “But that did not deter President Trump during his phone call with the Ukrainian president, and it does not appear to deter him today,” he continued. “President Trump’s persistent and continuing effort to coerce a foreign country to help him cheat to win an election is a clear and present danger to our free and fair elections and to our national security.” By: Mike DeBonis 10:45 AM: Treasury targets corruption, makes no mention of Ukraine Shortly after the Judiciary Committee hearing began, the Treasury Department announced anti-corruption action against people in several countries including Latvia, Serbia, Cambodia and Venezuela. A senior Treasury official told reporters the new sanctions target people who attempt to bribe public officials, and was timed for the United Nations International Anti-Corruption Day. Ukraine was not among the countries targeted, and there was no mention of the competing Ukraine-related corruption claims at issue in the House Judiciary inquiry that is expected to result in an impeachment vote against Trump. “Corruption is a global problem. It undermines the abilities of governments to adequately care for their citizens; erodes the legal, moral, and ethical fabric of society; and facilitates transnational crime,” a news release from Treasury said. The sanctions target Aivars Lembergs, described as a Latvian oligarch and mayor of the town of Ventspils. Lembergs is accused of “the misappropriation of state assets, the expropriation of private assets for personal gain, corruption related to government contracts or the extraction of natural resources, or bribery.” Cambodian businessman Try Pheap and military official Kun Kim were accused of widespread illegal logging and land appropriation. Serbian arms dealer Slobodan Tesic was accused of using bribes to get around travel restrictions imposed by the U.N. Treasury listed him as well as a network of entities and individuals around him. Treasury also took action against two Venezuelan government figures, Gustavo Adolfo Vizcaino Gil and Juan Carlos Dugarte Padron. Both were accused of abusing their office as the country’s senior immigration official. All the sanctions affect any property of money the targeted people may hold in the United States and prohibit U.S. business or financial dealings with the individuals unless specifically authorized. By: Anne Gearan 10:30 AM: GOP lawyer


The war in Afghanistan: A visual timeline of the 18-year conflict

southern region. Large parts of the province eventually fall back into the hands of the Taliban. | The number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan reaches 100,000. | U.S. troops suffered more casualties in 2010 than in any other year of the war. In May 2011, U.S. Special Operations forces kill bin Laden during a raid at a compound in Pakistan. In June 2011, Obama orders a partial, staged withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. | In December 2011, U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq. Throughout 2012 and 2013, U.S. and NATO officials work to put Afghan forces in the lead for security across Afghanistan, despite worrying signs suggesting that local troops remain unequipped to keep the Taliban at bay without substantial foreign assistance. In October 2014, the United States and Britain hand over two major bases — Camp Leatherneck and Camp Bastion — to the Afghan military, and on Dec. 28, 2014, the NATO combat mission, Operation Enduring Freedom, officially ends. It is replaced by two missions: Resolute Support, in which NATO forces provide training and support to Afghan forces, and Freedom’s Sentinel, in which U.S. forces continue to carry out Special Operations raids and other counterterrorism operations with some assistance from Afghan units. But by the time Obama leaves office in January 2017, his promise to withdraw all U.S. troops has fallen short: 8,400 U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan. | His successor, President Trump, decides it is not enough. In September 2017, he announces he will sends back several thousand more U.S. troops to help the Afghans. In 2018, Afghanistan ranks as one of the most corrupt countries in the world, according to the Corruption Perceptions Index released by Transparency International. More than 775,000 U.S. troops deployed over the 18-year conflict, many repeatedly. Of those, 2,300 died in Afghanistan and 20,589 were wounded in action, according to Defense Department figures. More than 60,000 members of Afghan security forces have been killed, a casualty rate that U.S. commanders have called unsustainable. And estimates put the number of Afghan civilians killed in the war at more than 43,000. Today, about 13,000 U.S. troops remain. | The Trump administration continues to escalate the war from the skies to prevent the Taliban from taking over. | A recent U.N. report declared 2018 as the deadliest year for civilians in the conflict. It noted a particular increase in child casualties from U.S. and coalition airstrikes.


Alex Ovechkin on the Russia Olympic ban: ‘It’s sad news’

Washington Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin said Monday the four-year ban that will bar Russia from competing at the next two Olympic Games is “sad news” and “disappointing to hear.” “It’s always disappointing to hear something like that,” Ovechkin said. “I hope everything’s going to be well. We still have a long time till the Olympics to figure out what to do, what’s better to do. Hope everything’s going to be fine.” The World Anti-Doping Agency voted Monday to ban Russia from major international sporting events for the next four years. Athletes determined to be clean can compete, but not under their country’s flag or anthem. Similar restrictions were imposed in 2018 in PyeongChang, where 168 Russian athletes competed as “Olympic Athletes from Russia.” Ovechkin, one of Russia’s most prominent athletes, was not able to compete in the 2018 Winter Games after the NHL decided against allowing players under contract to participate. He released a statement just before training camp in 2017, accepting that he would not be able to go. On Monday, Ovechkin said he watched the 2018 Games but didn’t pay much attention to the restrictions that were imposed involving Russian athletes competing under a neutral flag. The OAR team won gold in PyeongChang without Ovechkin and the other NHLers. “To be honest with you, I just looked at the scores and cheered for our guys,” Ovechkin said. “I didn’t pay too much attention [to] it. I was just happy for our guys scoring goals.” When asked whether he would compete under a neutral flag in the 2022 Beijing Olympics — if NHL players were allowed — Ovechkin said he will “see what happens.” In August, deputy commissioner Bill Daly said the NHL is “nowhere near a resolution” on whether players will compete in the 2022 Games. Ovechkin visited China over the offseason as an NHL ambassador to promote the sport. The league has made a concerted effort to tap into the Chinese market over the past few years. Ovechkin represented Russia in the Olympics in 2006, 2010 and 2014. He also has represented Russia at 11 world championships, winning three. Russia did not medal in the 2006 Olympics, losing in the quarterfinals to Canada in 2010. Hosting the 2014 Games in Sochi, Russia again lost in the quarterfinals, this time to Finland. After winning the Stanley Cup in 2018, Ovechkin is missing only an Olympic medal on his


Amazon, Microsoft execs call for closer alliance between Pentagon and big tech

want a strong national defense or don’t you? I think you do … and we have to support that,” Bezos said. Smith, also Microsoft’s chief legal officer, seemed to riff on Bezos’s remarks later that day. In a panel discussion named for the “technological cold war” with China, Smith sat next to uniformed National Security Agency chief Paul Nakasone and two members of Congress. Smith said Microsoft would provide all its technology to the U.S. military, and pushed back on the idea that contributing to weapons development is somehow unethical. “What I have said repeatedly to our employees is that there are more than a million people in the United States military, and every one of them … has pledged that before the sun sets they will sacrifice their life if that’s what they need [to do] to keep us safe,” Smith said. “Of course we will provide all of our technology to them,” he said. “How could we possibly not do that?” Almost three years after the Pentagon’s national defense strategy called for a realignment around “great power competition” with nations such as China and Russia, Amazon and Microsoft have emerged as two of the national security establishment’s closest friends in the world of big tech. Amazon has been the CIA’s primary cloud computing provider since 2013, something that has earned it the Pentagon’s highest-level IT certification for managing classified data. It has separately pitched its facial recognition technology to the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. And the Army and Defense Health Agency have tapped AWS to manage sensitive data, according to public contract documents and reporting by the trade publication NextGov. But the two companies, which compete in the commercial cloud computing market, are locked in a bitter fight over who will supply the backbone of the U.S. military’s cloud computing infrastructure. Amazon is suing the Defense Department and Microsoft over a lucrative contract called the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, known as JEDI. It was awarded to Microsoft in late October — jilting Amazon, the commercial market leader — following a high-level intervention from President Trump, who has long expressed animosity toward Bezos. It is worth up to $10 billion over a 10-year period. The award follows a separate Microsoft win on a different project called Defense Enterprise Office Solutions, or DEOS, a $7.6 billion, 10-year contract awarded this summer. Under DEOS, defense agencies’


‘Modern-day Pentagon Papers’: Comparing the Afghanistan Papers to blockbuster Vietnam War study

“A massive study of how the United States went to war in Indochina, conducted by the Pentagon three years ago, demonstrates that four administrations progressively developed a sense of commitment to a non-Communist Vietnam, a readiness to fight the North to protect the South, and an ultimate frustration with this effort — to a much greater extent than their public statements acknowledged at the time.” That was the lead of the New York Times’s first earthshaking Pentagon Papers story, published on June 13, 1971. Nearly half a century later, it bears a striking resemblance to revelations about the 18-year war in Afghanistan published Monday in The Washington Post. A confidential trove of documents obtained by Post reporter Craig Whitlock shows U.S. officials made rosy pronouncements about the war they knew to be false. Here’s how the Afghanistan Papers compare to the Pentagon Papers. The study that became known as the Pentagon Papers was originally ordered by then-Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara in June 1967, but it was actually written primarily by the obscure Office of International Security Affairs, with assistance from State Department and White House staffers. From the Truman to Carter administrations, the ISA played a role in policy planning, arms transfers and liaisons with the National Security Council and State Department, according to political scientist Geoffrey Piller in a 1983 paper. But it also played an outsize role in major foreign policy initiatives during the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies, Piller wrote. As the Times noted in 1971, many of the officials who wrote the Pentagon Papers “had helped develop or carry out the policies that they were asked to evaluate.” The Afghanistan Papers come from another obscure agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, known as SIGAR, which was created by Congress in 2008 to investigate waste and fraud in the war. They are a byproduct of a project called “Lessons Learned” that evaluated policy failures in Afghanistan. The Lessons Learned reports have been released since 2016; the papers The Post published Monday are the previously confidential interview notes with generals, diplomats, aid workers and Afghan officials from which the report drew its conclusions. The Pentagon Papers comprised 40 volumes — 3,000 pages of analysis, plus 4,000 additional pages of supporting documents including cables, memorandums and draft proposals. The Times originally obtained all but one of the volumes (more on this later). The Post


Mya Kretzer fought for girls high school wrestling in Kansas. After four years, she won.

million last year. “Without Title IX, we simply would not be here after decades and decades and decades of being told girls weren’t interested in sports or wouldn’t be very good if they played,” said Mary Jo Kane, director of the University of Minnesota’s Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport. “What we have found is that girls and women are deeply interested in playing sports if they are given an opportunity.” For decades, however, female athletes have had to battle a hostile culture, if not outright bans, for that opportunity. Kretzer was hardly the first to lead the fight. In 1967, distance runner Kathrine Switzer defied the Boston Marathon's ban on female competitors with a brazen act, entering the race as simply "K.V." Switzer. Once an official spotted her in the field of men, he lunged and tried to pull her off the course. But Switzer’s boyfriend, running alongside, shoved him aside, enabling her to finish the 26.2-mile distance. Nonetheless, women’s marathon didn’t become an Olympic sport until 1984 — and only after the American College of Sports Medicine concluded there was no scientific or medical evidence that long-distance running posed health risks to trained female athletes. In 2008, female ski jumpers filed a lawsuit for the right to compete in the 2010 Vancouver Olympics after years of being denied a place in the Winter Games for reasons that kept changing. “My favorite one is that [ski jumping] would damage our reproductive organs,” recalled Jessica Jerome of Park City, Utah, now 32, who was among the 15 international plaintiffs. In 2009, the Supreme Court of British Columbia found that the athletes had been discriminated against but didn’t compel the International Olympic Committee to add women’s ski jumping to the Vancouver Games. Its debut came at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, where Jerome placed 10th, the top-finishing American. Heading into the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, female ski jumpers still don’t have the same opportunity to compete as men. They’re restricted to the smaller of two jumps, while men can also compete on a hill that’s roughly 100 feet taller. There’s a similar inequity in Olympic racewalking. While men compete at the 50-kilometer and 20-kilometer distances, women are restricted to the 20-kilometer distance. Veteran American racewalker Erin Taylor-Talcott has pushed for an opportunity to contest the 50 kilometers in the Olympics for years only to be told


Boeing, NASA clash over push for Congress to fund new stage for moon rocket

At a ceremony this week at NASA’s New Orleans assembly plant where Boeing is building what will be the most powerful rocket ever to fly, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine cheered the “beautiful, beautiful” progress its prime contractor had made on the gigantic and much maligned project. He declared the troubles that have long plagued the development of the rocket’s main section to be in the past. What he did not mention was the fight brewing behind the scenes over Boeing’s effort to force NASA to fast-track the company’s next offering: a new, enhanced second stage that would give the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket dramatically more oomph than even the mighty Saturn V that sent astronauts to the moon during the Apollo era. Developing the second stage would create another potential financial windfall for Boeing. NASA, already stung by delays and billions of dollars in cost overruns in the SLS program, is openly opposed to speeding up development of the upper stage. Having spent $34 billion so far on SLS, the Lockheed Martin-built Orion spacecraft and the associated ground systems, a cost that NASA’s inspector general said would grow to $50 billion by 2024, NASA wants to slow down work on a project it fears will suffer the same fate as the SLS main stage: More cost overruns. More delays. No moon landings. NASA’s budget request for next year was clear about its intentions. Citing “delays and performance issues,” the “final design efforts” on the version of the rocket that would use what’s known as the Exploration Upper Stage, or EUS, are to be “deferred” so that Boeing, the program’s prime contractor, can remain focused on completing the core section of the SLS rocket. That, NASA has said, is key to meeting a White House mandate to return people to the moon by 2024, a program NASA calls Artemis. In an interview, Bridenstine said that while the upper stage will be a great asset for NASA some day, he said “any plan that requires an EUS to be ready by 2024 is a plan that reduces the probability of success. It’s just not going to be ready.” While Boeing said its top priority is delivering the rocket’s core stage, it is also pushing aggressively for additional resources, lobbying Congress and trying to win public support. It’s an effort that demonstrates how the industry stalwart, facing one of the darkest moments


The decade’s last full moon will occur at 12:12 a.m. on 12/12

The last full moon of the decade will occur tonight, at 12:12 a.m. Eastern time on Dec. 12. It’s called the full “cold moon." The moon will appear full all night, first becoming visible in the east with a saffron-colored tinge as it climbs just above the horizon. The moon rises at 4:35 p.m. in Washington, 5:18 p.m. in Atlanta, and at 5:08 p.m. in Oklahoma City. That’s also within 15 minutes of sunset for each city; full moons, since they’re opposite the sun in our sky, always rise at sunset. Full moons appear fully illuminated to us Earth-dwellers since the side catching the sunlight is facing us. That means the sun, moon and Earth are all in a nearly perfect lineup. The moon will emerge into the sky at 99.9 percent illumination, peaking briefly at full brilliance at 12:12 a.m. Eastern Thursday (9:12 p.m. Pacific). By moonset (which will occur shortly after sunrise Thursday morning), the moon will be back down to 99.9 percent full. Its radiance will continue to dwindle, waning until the new moon occurs on Christmas night. The December full moon has been dubbed a “cold moon,” for reasons everybody (well, everyone except folks in Florida) can probably guess. The unusual and causal landing of the full moon on 12/12 at 12:12 a.m. has many reverting to superstition or ritual. In Chinese astrology, there are 12 animals that each represent a year; 2019 is the year of the pig. Hindu mythology calls the sun by 12 different names. And in Western culture, the number 12 reportedly has significance based on Judeo-Christian tradition teachings of Jesus’ 12 apostles. Others have their own ideas of what the 12/12 moon will mean. While the auspiciously timed full moon will be a beacon of curiosity for some, it’s slated to put a damper on Friday night’s Geminid meteor shower, outshining many of the fainter meteors. The next full moon occurs on Friday, Jan. 10, 2020.


What we learned from the Afghanistan Papers

research has demonstrated. Thousands of U.S. military personnel returned home having survived injuries that would have proved fatal in past wars. While improved survival rates are one of the war’s few success stories, they also mean that families and taxpayers will bear the human costs of war for decades to come. — Tanisha Fazal (@tanishafazal) is an associate professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. Wartime state-building programs cannot fix underlying social problems One U.S. official whose interview is included in the Afghanistan Papers reported “we were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan.” Despite this lack of knowledge, the U.S. nevertheless pursued intensive state-building projects alongside a military campaign that cost the American people over $900 billion — and thousands of American and Afghan lives. The state of Afghanistan today, captured within the Afghanistan Papers report, reflects research that wartime governance and state-building programs are not a panacea to underlying social problems and frequently cannot replace preexisting political structures. Additionally, some of the policies the U.S. and international community pursued could have second-order consequences that put collaborators or the intended beneficiaries of U.S. and internationally supported programs at risk — especially if the U.S. military withdraws. For instance, research illustrates that governance programs that successfully alter status hierarchies between social groups may see retaliatory violence initiated by those who perceive a threat to their status positions. In Afghanistan specifically, women and girls attending schools were often the targets of violence, and women who hold political positions at the encouragement of the U.S. and the international community fear assassination at the hands of the conservative forces. Though the empowerment of women is a critical goal, the lack of knowledge about preexisting social structures, clear plans for implementation and the potential consequences for altering these structures ultimately could create additional problems and risks for the very people the U.S. sought to help. — Megan A. Stewart (@Megan_A_Stewart) is an assistant professor at American University’s School of International Service. Don’t miss anything! Sign up to get TMC’s smart analysis in your inbox, three days a week. Read more: Hoping that peace comes to Afghanistan? Dream on. Iran’s cooperation with the Taliban could affect talks on U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan U.S. troop drawdown in Afghanistan raises big questions Yes, Iran shot down a U.S. drone. Here’s why you (still) don’t need to worry. The reports of war’s demise have been exaggerated


Man indicted in fatal shooting that occurred in 1998 in Northeast Washington

A 48-year-old man has been indicted on murder and robbery charges in connection with a shooting that occurred more than two decades ago in the Eckington neighborhood of Northeast Washington. Police said Kenneth “Kennyman” Bryant Jr., of Northeast, has not yet made an initial appearance in D.C. Superior Court, and an attorney could not be located. Authorities released few details of the case and did not describe what led detectives to Bryant after so many years. The victim was identified as James Lane, 35, of Southeast. The shooting occurred shortly after 5 p.m. on Aug. 10, 1998 in the 200 block of S Street NE. Lane died at a hospital. The indictment filed in D.C. Superior court charges Bryant with first-degree murder while armed and robbery while armed. It alleges Bryant took money and drugs from Lane and then shot him. peter.hermann@washpost.com


Milo the cat went missing at the airport. Two months later, he’s been reunited with his owner.

feels relieved now, she recounts feeling anger, hopelessness and frustration at points during the process, and admitted to not feeling optimistic in the moments before she learned he had been found. “It was the best and most unexpected surprise,” she said. “My main takeaway from the experience is that persistence is key, and that it’s important to start building a support network right away when you lose a pet, especially when the animal in question is lost at an airport or other facility with restricted access.” Once Milo was found, thousands of “likes” and messages of support and relief poured in on the page. “He looks like he’s amazed he’s back home!” one commenter said. “I’m crying happy tears for you and Milo,” wrote another. “I hope he’s in good health after his adventure. Welcome home Milo, you had so many people rooting for you!” Others involved in the search efforts said they were grateful to have helped. “Anytime we can catch an animal and return it to their owner, it’s an awesome feeling,” Stewart said in an email. “I spoke with the owner several times during Milo’s Dulles excursion and became personally invested in seeing his capture through. It’s an awesome feeling to know he was safely returned in time for the holidays.” “We are very happy that Milo was returned to his owner,” said Christina Semmel, a spokeswoman for Lufthansa airlines. As for Milo himself, McFadden said he’s “doing well” outside of being a little tired after his more than two months in the wild. And she’s happy he’s been reunited with his brother Beau, too. For people who may experience something similar, McFadden said the more awareness that can be built early on, the better odds of rescue, and that finding support from communities who are passionate about animals to rally around a missing pet makes all the difference. “If it happens to someone else’s pet in the future, especially someone returning home, I hope I can be as much help to them as everyone was to me,” she said. Read more: An overweight cat was denied by a Russian airline. His owner hatched an elaborate scheme using an impostor. Bei Bei the panda is heading to China. He has a better travel setup than you ever will. Someone left a heartfelt note in an airport breast-feeding pod. Now there are thousands like it across the country.


The Energy 202: ExxonMobil just won a big climate court case in New York. But it’s not in the clear yet.

THE LIGHTBULB ExxonMobil just beat the state of New York in a closely-watched climate fraud case. But other state and local governments suing the oil and natural gas company say they remain confident they can still prevail in their own legal fights. The nation’s largest energy company successfully fended off claims Tuesday by New York that it misled investors for years in how it calculated the financial risks of climate change. The high-profile trial marked the culmination of a four-year-old probe under three top prosecutors in New York. But Exxon is not yet in the clear. Congress too gridlocked to pass major climate legislation, other left-leaning cities and states have also turned to the courts to hold oil companies accountable for their role in climate change — and are making their cases on arguments different than those brought in New York. “The New York suit was based on one specific alleged violation of a statute that is peculiar to New York,” said Michael Gerrard, a professor of environmental law at Columbia Law School. “That theory didn’t fly. But it has little bearing on the wide variety of other legal theories that are being deployed in climate change cases.” New York Supreme Court Judge Barry Ostrager ruled that the state failed to show that the oil giant broke state securities laws when describing to shareholders how it analyzed the effect of future greenhouse gas regulations on the company’s bottom line, Steven Mufson and I reported. During a 12-day trial this fall, the state tried to wield a powerful anti-fraud state law, called the Martin Act, that does not require prosecutors to prove that a company intended to deceive investors. The office of New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) tried to show the company lied to investors by keeping two sets of books — one public, one private — for estimating the cost of complying with future climate regulations. But even with that relatively low bar, Ostrager found New York’s allegations “to be without merit” and the use of the state’s securities law to be a stretch. Ostrager found that Exxon had been transparent about the two different ways it calculated those costs and that New York had failed to show that “any reasonable investor” would have been misled. Taking heed of that ruling is Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (D), who brought a similar suit against Exxon in October. Her