East Africa’s new war on Internet expression

the past, and a critical longtime cartoonist suddenly lost his outlet. While these developments in East Africa may appear unconnected, these three so-called democracies are descending into censorship at best and authoritarianism at worst. Not surprisingly, all three countries ranked in the bottom half of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2017. Only dictatorial governments demand to license bloggers and charge exorbitant fees in order to snuff out ordinary voices from the national discourse. It is a signature move of tyrants to restrict media coverage through intimidation, harassment, and heavy taxes or fines. But when those efforts do not go far enough, a total media or Internet switch-off entrenches an environment of fear among reporters. Cameroon shut down social media and messaging apps for English-speaking parts of the country, and Ethiopia restricted Internet access late last year at the height of the Oromo protests, but these always seemed far away from the relative comfort of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. In censoring the Internet and mainstream media, East African countries are reading from the undemocratic playbook of their favorite business partner, China. These actions must be seen for what they are: desperate attempts to crack down on freedom of speech by governments that are not ready to be accountable to their citizens. What are those in power trying to hide? Not only are these elected governments presiding over a systematic shrinking of the democratic space in East Africa, but all three countries are also engaging in cultural censorship. These crackdowns serve as sideshows to distract the citizenry while democratic gains are rolled back. Kenya just banned a lesbian movie “Rafiki“ ahead of its debut at the Cannes Film Festival because its “promotes” homosexuality. In Tanzania, popular musician Diamond Platnumz was forced to apologize for posting a video of himself kissing a girl on his Instagram page. Uganda created an entire taxpayer-funded committee to find pornography — as if that is the most pressing issue of our time. Morally inclined East Africans support weak nods to vague “African values” when they involve opposition to homosexuality, “immorality” in the media or perceived neo-colonial influences on Internet forums. Meanwhile, East Africans’ freedoms are fading fast. It is a dangerous time to be someone with an opinion in the region. It won’t be long until jails begin filling up again with political dissidents who oppose the new state creed: Hear nothing, see nothing, say nothing.


Local Digest: Teenager killed near NoMa-Gallaudet Metro was stabbed in chest, D.C. police say

THE DISTRICT Slain teen was stabbed in chest A 16-year-old D.C. high school student who was killed during a fight Tuesday near the NoMa- Gallaudet Metro station was stabbed in the left side of his chest, according to a D.C. police report. Police on Wednesday identified the student as Tyshon Perry of Northeast Washington. Officials at KIPP D.C. College Preparatory high school said Tyshon had been enrolled there. “We are heartbroken,” Susan Schaeffler, chief executive of the charter school network KIPP D.C., wrote in a letter to parents. The stabbing occurred about 4:30 p.m. in the 1300 block of Second Street NE, just outside the Florida Avenue entrance to the Metro station. Police Chief Peter Newsham said the youth was in a “large group of teens” and that after the stabbing, “they scattered.” Police have not found a weapon. — Peter Hermann MARYLAND Man is fatally shot in Waldorf A man was shot and killed in Waldorf on Tuesday, officials said Wednesday. About 10 p.m. Tuesday, officers responded to the 2200 block of Stream Vista Place for the report of a shooting, the Charles County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. They found 20-year-old Antonio Lamount Harper Jr. of Waldorf suffering from gunshot wounds, and he was pronounced dead, the statement said. Officials said Harper was walking toward an apartment when he was shot several times, and the shooter fled. Police asked that anyone with information about the shooting contact them at 301-609-6513. — Dana Hedgpeth Two are slain in Capitol Heights A man and woman were fatally shot Wednesday in Capitol Heights, police said. The incident unfolded at 3:05 a.m. in the 4700 block of Omaha Street. Officers with Prince George’s County responded to a call of a shooting. They found Dan Leake, 64, and Wilhelmina Leake, 62, inside a home with “multiple gunshot wounds,” according to a tweet from police. The couple were pronounced dead at the scene. Detectives are trying to determine a motive in the case. — Dana Hedgpeth and Lynh Bui


Tech giants to Trump: We need Chinese workers

Technology giants are urging President Trump to leave what they call a crucial talent pool out of the trade discord: Chinese workers. Dean Garfield, chief executive of the Information Technology Industry Council, which represents Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and other companies, said its members are alarmed at reports the White House is considering a ban on Chinese citizens conducting high-tech research at American universities and businesses. The firms rely on skilled foreign labor to develop new products, Garfield said. “We’ve heard from many, if not all, of our members,” he said, “that steps to limit access to talent have a direct negative impact on their ability to run their businesses.” President Trump has pledged to shrink the $375 billion trade gap between the United States and China, which he says destroys jobs in the Rust Belt. Beyond threatening to slap tariffs on Chinese goods, Trump has floated ideas to curb student visas for Chinese citizens. A high-level U.S. delegation, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, is scheduled to begin talks Thursday with Chinese leaders in Beijing. The New York Times reported this week that the Commerce Department, spooked by China’s advancing technological capabilities, might move to bar Chinese citizens from participating in “sensitive” research at U.S. universities and technology companies. (The White House and the Commerce Department did not respond to requests for comment.) Which projects the White House considers “sensitive” remains unclear, according to the Times, but Beijing has announced its intentions to outpace the world in microchip, electric car and artificial intelligence technologies. Business leaders cautioned that such a ban could hurt the U.S. economy. Tech firms often work with scientists from across the globe, Garfield said. “With AI, for example, you may have a scientist in California partnering closely with a scientist from Beijing or Brussels,” he said. “Stopping that talent from moving freely is against the national interest.” About 600,000 technology jobs sit open in the U.S. today, he said. Companies in Silicon Valley and other tech hubs often recruit foreign workers because of a shortage of Americans with specialized skills. About a tenth of the nation’s visas for high-skilled foreign workers went to Chinese citizens last year, slightly more than in 2016, said Sarah Pierce, who studies such employment trends for the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. That’s roughly 36,000 workers. Seventy percent of the 179,049 H1-B visas granted


Smugglers drop bag with tiger cub near Mexico border

Smugglers left behind a tiger cub in a duffel bag when they fled back to Mexico after attempting to cross the Rio Grande into Texas. Customs and Border Protection officials Tuesday said the male tiger, believed to be 3 or 4 months old, has been placed at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville. Border Patrol agents patrolling Monday along the river near Brownsville saw three people trying to enter the United States illegally. An agency statement says the trio abandoned a bag and returned to Mexico. Officers discovered the cub stuffed inside the bag. Agent Robert Rodriguez said Tuesday the tiger appeared calm and was possibly drugged. Last summer, the Border Patrol discovered another tiger cub during an inspection of a vehicle coming into the country from Mexico. That cub, a Bengal tiger, was sent to the San Diego Zoo. He is being raised with a similar-age Sumatran tiger cub that the National Zoo sent to San Diego last fall after his mother stopped caring for him. — Associated Press


Traveling internationally for work — with kids — is tough, but worth doing

advocated returning to Shanghai. I knew attempting the discussions by phone would be disastrous. At this point, I was near-obsessed with my goal, establishing my firm’s Chinese operation. My sleep-all-day-baby was an active toddler by then, making it impossible for my husband to work remotely during my meeting-filled trip. I scrambled to stitch together child-care I was comfortable with. I hired a Chinese ayi (nanny) for 10 days through a local agency and my sister-in-law for the second half. My employer agreed to cover the babysitting fees and I dismissed fears about the financial drain of yet another trip. My personal needs felt small against this complicated business challenge — the kind I liked best. The deal happened. Barely. I loved seeing my best professional self again and was exhausted but dizzy with accomplishment when that phase ended. The astronomical costs of traveling with my family etched a hole in our savings. At the time, I justified it as a career investment. I didn’t want motherhood to alter my work trajectory or image. But it was a huge sacrifice. Now, employers vying for talent, provide better options to breast-feeding moms. Two years ago, The Washington Post reported the “newest benefit for working moms” was for companies to cover travel expenses for a caregiver and baby during the return to work transition. Now, companies are offering to ship breast milk when a new mother is on a business trip to allow for more work/life flexibility. These perks are a positive shift. Striving for retention does not equal promoting growth. According to the CDC, nearly one-third of first-time moms are now over age 30, marking a steady increase in maternal age. With more women starting families later, the need to support mothers already established in demanding roles will expand. Unfortunately, many opportunities for career growth are still wrapped in un-family-friendly packaging. Understandably, we scrutinize anything that reduces time with our kids, from networking events to travel. However, with almost two-thirds of American mothers primary, sole or co-breadwinners for their families, we can’t afford to stagnate professionally. Ambitious assignments can lead to more senior roles that ultimately offer greater flexibility and control. If traveling with your baby makes work/life integration feasible, ask your employer to help with the costs. It’s been five years since my last China trip. It wasn’t easy and the use of savings made us financially vulnerable later. Despite the


A single jawbone has revealed just how much radiation Hiroshima bomb victims absorbed

At 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945, the United States dropped the first combat atomic bomb, “Little Boy.” It exploded 43 seconds later, creating a massive fireball that incinerated much of Hiroshima. Nearly 350,000 people were in the Japanese city that day, and most were civilians. Twenty-seven years later, a scientist from across the Pacific Ocean arrived in Hiroshima with what was considered then a novel idea. Brazilian physicist Sérgio Mascarenhas, at the time a visiting professor at Harvard University, said that exposure to radiation makes human bone magnetic, and that “magnetic memory” existed in the bones of atomic bombing victims years after the explosion. Scientists could measure radiation exposure by examining the bones of victims, Mascarenhas proposed. With the help of two Japanese scientists in Hiroshima, Mascarenhas obtained several samples of victims’ bones, including a jawbone that belonged to a person who was less than a mile away from Ground Zero. They were able to estimate the amount of radiation present in the bones, according to a paper Mascarenhas presented to the American Physical Society meeting in April 1973 in Washington, but specific calculations could not be achieved with 1970s technology. Mascarenhas brought the samples home to Brazil, where they sat in storage for the next four decades — until two other Brazilian scientists continued his research using more advanced technology. The result was astonishing. Using a technique called electron spin resonance, the researchers measured that the jawbone had absorbed 9.46 grays of radiation from the Hiroshima attack. (A gray or Gy is a unit used to measure the amount of radiation absorbed by an object or a person.) To place this in context: A cancer patient receiving radiotherapy treatment is exposed to about 2 to 3 grays on a very localized part of the body where a tumor is located. Whole-body radiation with about 5 grays — nearly half of the amount calculated from the jawbone — is enough to kill a person, Oswaldo Baffa, one of the researchers and a professor at the University of São Paulo, told The Washington Post Tuesday. Teeth have been used to measure the amount of radiation a person had been exposed to. In 1997, scientists from Taiwan measured the radiation dose that patients with nasopharyngeal cancer (in which cancer cells form near the throat behind the nose) had absorbed from radiotherapy by examining their jawbones. But the researchers in Brazil said


Why farmers only get 7.8 cents of every dollar Americans spend on food

For every dollar consumers spend on food, only 7.8 cents goes to farmers — a record low that reflects shifts in how Americans eat, according to the Department of Agriculture. Where once consumers cooked most of their meals at home, they’re now buying just as many at cafes and restaurants. And while shoppers were once content to husk their own corn and slice their own apples, they now buy those foods — and thousands of others — pre-husked, pre-sliced and otherwise processed. Economists say those trends, coupled with low commodity prices, caused farmers’ share of consumer food spending to fall 1.2 cents in 2016, reaching the lowest point, adjusted for inflation, since USDA began the measure in 1993. (It's the latest year for which data is available). While falling share doesn’t hurt farmers, necessarily, it does expose the long-term, macro trends that shape the supply and cost of food. “This measure basically asks, ‘what value was added at each stage of the process?'” said Patrick Canning, a senior economist at USDA. “Long-term, we definitely see the farm share trending down over several decades.” Even a simple food, like an ear of corn, takes a long journey to get to consumers’ plates. Before that corn is planted, farmers buy seeds, fertilizers and farm equipment to get it in the ground. Once the corn is grown, it must be picked, packed, sorted, stored and shipped to grocery stores and restaurants — and each of those steps incurs labor and logistical costs. USDA’s food dollar series, which tracks average annual consumer expenditures in retail food stores and restaurants, attempts to break down which steps cost the most, relative to the final value of food. In each of the past four years, farmers’ share has dropped sharply. The relative importance of farms, agribusinesses (such as seed and fertilizer suppliers), packagers and processors have also fallen slightly since 1993. In 2016, agribusiness saw two cents of every food dollar, according to USDA. Canning cautions that it’s difficult to tease out individual causes. Higher transportation costs, which impact many crops, might have a lesser impact on produce from California, which is frequently consumed closer to the farm. In general, however, economists agree that a recent dip in commodity prices, driven by a surplus of corn, soybeans and milk, has pushed the farmers’ share down in the short-term. There has also been a separate, long-term erosion of


These are Tom Sietsema’s top 10 new restaurants in Washington

with minty rabbit dumplings and enough bone-in rib-eye for four, anointed with truffle butter and offered with a many-layered wedge of potatoes and blue cheese. The guiding light in the kitchen is Spike Gjerde, whose hyperlocal Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore landed him a James Beard Award for best chef in the Mid-Atlantic three springs ago. 1770 Euclid St. NW. thelinehotel.com. 3. Del Mar Few chefs enjoy the Midas touch of Fabio Trabocchi, whose see-and-be-seen Italian restaurants around Washington come with the advantage of terrific menus and top-flight service. The chef’s latest hit takes place on the Wharf and pays homage to the cooking of Spain, the origin of his equally savvy wife and business partner, Maria. Your first impression: What a sumptuous space! Then the food starts flowing from the visible kitchen, which counts a dedicated paella stove, and your attention is fixed on such riches (and rich they are) as blushing lamb chops arranged with fried artichokes and creamy Manchego sauce. 791 Wharf St. SW. delmardc.com. 2. Fancy Radish It’s “Hamilton” for vegans. Diners can thank the co-owner of the city’s best meatless restaurant for the umami-rich appeal of dan dan noodles that fill the mouth with flames and an avocado filled with pickled, “riced” cauliflower, sunny with turmeric. “I’ve got a carnivorous palate,” says chef Richard Landau. “But I’m a plant eater. This is a way to satisfy my cravings” — and, I would add, the appetite of anyone else who cares about fine food, regardless of their diet. 600 H St. NE. fancyradishdc.com. 1. Elle One of the owners, Nick Pimentel, is behind the Filipino phenom Bad Saint. Another principal launched Paisley Fig, the admired sweets seller. The top chef used to work at Blue Duck Tavern, and the drinks come from someone who shook and stirred at Columbia Room. Given all the talent involved, what’s to stop a memorable breakfast, lunch or dinner from happening? Not so long ago, people asking me what the District lacked heard “neighborhood restaurants.” A welcome wave of local gathering spots has changed my response, with Elle setting the pace not just in Mount Pleasant but also for the whole of Washington. 3221 Mount Pleasant St. NW. eatatelle.com. Read more: What was your most memorable dining or drinking experience in D.C.? Share the story with us. I tried the Big Mac, Whopper and Dave's Single. They share the same major flaw.


Biotech engineer found dead in sensory deprivation tank in D.C.

A controversial biotech engineer was found dead Sunday in a sensory deprivation tank at a spa in downtown Washington. D.C. police said the body of Aaron Traywick, 28, who ran a company called Ascendance Biomedical, was found by staff in an isolation pod at Soulex Float Spa in the 1000 block of Massachusetts Avenue NW, near Mount Vernon Square. A spokeswoman for the police department, Rachel Schaerr Reid, said the cause of death is pending an autopsy but “at this point, we don’t have any evidence to suggest foul play.” The flotation company’s website says the pods are a “scientifically proven, time efficient method to unwind and bring regeneration to the daily grind.” The spa did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday. Traywick was known as a bio-hacker, a genetic engineer or scientist who works outside the mainstream ethical and institutional guidelines established by private corporations, universities and the Food and Drug Administration. He once gained attention when he injected himself with what he called a genetically designed herpes treatment while on Facebook Live at a conference in Austin. Ascendance Biomedical was established in Delaware but has no contact information listed on its website. Traywick worked with several people scattered around the country. According to the company website, he was recruiting volunteers to participate in gene therapy studies for HIV and AIDS “elimination and immunization” and a way to preserve and augment bone density. David Ishe, 32, worked with Traywick until the two split recently. Citing the self-injection in Austin, Ishe said Traywick “wanted to go at a very fast pace with a lot of this stuff and sometimes that got him in trouble.” Ishe said Traywick had the motivation to succeed, and was driven by ideology that would not let him stop testing boundaries. But he said, “In the real practical sense, I don’t know if the goals he wanted to achieve were ever going to happen.” Traywick’s relatives in Alabama could not be reached for comment. peter.hermann@washpost.com Dana Hedgpeth contributed to this article


President Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech

“President Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize.” — South Korean President Moon Jae-in “No-bel! No-bel! No-bel!” — Audience at Trump’s Michigan rally Saturday NOBEL PEACE PRIZE ACCEPTANCE SPEECH OF PRESIDENT TRUMP OSLO, DEC. 10, 2018 Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee: I have received a lot of honors — like, a lot. I was on the cover of Time more than anybody else. I went to the best schools. I was elected president on my first try. It was the biggest electoral college landslide since Reagan. But people tell me this is a big honor — the biggest, maybe. And I think this is very good for you, because your ratings are going through the roof right now. This crowd is much bigger than Obama’s was. People don’t know this, but some other top guys like Nelson Mandela have won this award before. He’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, even though South Africa is a crime-ridden mess that is just waiting to explode — not a good situation for the people! Anyway, with me, you’re breaking all the records. You’re welcome. I love Norwegians! I want more immigrants from Norway and others who have the same merit-based complexion that Norwegians have. Why are we having all these people from shithole countries? Why do we need more Haitians? Take them out. They all have AIDS. I thought I was going get this peace prize when I told your prime minister in January that I was sending Norway some F-52 fighter jets. People laughed and said the F-52 only exists in the video game “Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.” But they aren’t laughing anymore, because we also sent Norway barrels full of Xbox Ones. You’re going to need those F-52s because there are a lot of bad hombres in Europe. You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this? They’re having problems like they never thought possible. Germany is a total mess. Brussels is a hellhole (although, I admit, Belgium is a beautiful city). Have you seen the videos of destructive radical Islamic terrorism in Britain? Paris is no longer Paris. The haters and the liars say I don’t deserve this award. They make up fake news about how I invented the country of Nambia, shoved the prime minister of Montenegro, thought the prime


U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan while providing security for Special Operations unit

A U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan was hit by gunfire in a district east of Kabul while providing security for a U.S. Special Operations unit, U.S. military officials said. Army Spec. Gabriel D. Conde, 22, was an airborne-qualified infantryman with the 25th Infantry Division’s 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, and was killed in Kapisa province’s Tagab district, the Pentagon announced. He had been in Afghanistan since September on his first deployment from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska. A U.S. military spokesman in Kabul, Martin O’Donnell, said Wednesday that Conde was carrying out an operation alongside Afghan forces against Taliban officials. Conde joined the Army in 2015 in Loveland, Colo., and was assigned to Army units in Alaska after going through basic training. His death marked the second U.S. combat death in Afghanistan this year. U.S. military officials would not clarify on Tuesday Conde’s exact role while deployed, but he was part of Operation Freedom’s Sentinel, in which the U.S. military targets terrorist groups in Afghanistan. The Pentagon primarily does that through the use of Special Operations troops, but it also uses conventional infantry soldiers such as Conde to bolster security. Conde was killed in an operation in which another U.S. service member was wounded and medically evacuated to Bagram Airfield north of Kabul for medical treatment in a military hospital. The death occurred during a bloody day in Afghanistan in which 31 people, including 10 journalists, were killed in twin bombings targeting civilians in Kabul, and a suicide bombing targeted a military convoy in Kandahar province, wounding eight Romanian service members and killing numerous children who were nearby, coalition military officials said. This story was originally published Tuesday, and updated Wednesday afternoon with additional information.


A Nobel Peace Prize for President Trump? It could happen.

has cast its votes for its hopes, rather than an actual achievement, or that it gives a prize as a means of sending a message. In 2009, Barack Obama won it when he had been in office less than nine months. Why? “To be honest, I still don’t know,” Obama deadpanned when comedian Stephen Colbert put that question to him. The same was true in the case of an earlier Korean Peninsula peace effort that turned out to be fruitless. In 2000, South Korean president Kim Dae-jung won for organizing the first inter-Korean summit. It later turned out South Korea had paid North Korea nearly a half-million dollars for participating in the talks. Another U.S. president, Theodore Roosevelt, was the first American to be awarded the medal. It was a controversial choice, given Roosevelt’s reputation for militarism. “The prize will, we trust, modify his own conventional ideas about the necessity of being armed to the teeth,” the Nation magazine wrote. But Roosevelt biographer Edmund Morris notes that Roosevelt merited the Nobel Prize for his deft diplomatic achievements. “He won it for his widely praised mediation of an end to the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, as well as for subtle diplomacy in the Moroccan Crisis of 1906, which threatened to degenerate into world war,” Morris wrote in an email. “At the time of his award in 1906-1907, TR was the most admired statesman in the world.” Roosevelt was scornful when one of his successors, Woodrow Wilson, declared war in 1917 because “the world must be made safe for democracy.” Wilson nonetheless won the peace prize in 1919, for being the chief architect of the League of Nations, But given the fact that the United States itself was refusing to join the organization, it was perhaps more a nudge than an accolade. The only other U.S. president to win was Jimmy Carter, though he was decades out of office by the time he won in 2002. His win was widely read as a dig at then-President George W. Bush. “The peace prize often carries a political message, but never before has it been so pointed,” the New York Times wrote at the time. Former vice president and failed White House contender Al Gore got the honor in 2007 for his environmental work. Gore’s former boss Bill Clinton, on the other hand, had been nominated so many times by his final year in


Ana brings food with a view to the waterfront

The following review appears in The Washington Post’s 2018 Spring Dining Guide. Ana at District Winery (Good) The city’s inaugural winemaker is also the uncommon restaurant without a Siberia. No matter where you settle, you’ll be treated to something arresting, either a gallery’s worth of presidential portraits on the wall (“Dads of Democracy”) or a view of the Anacostia River, for which the restaurant is named. If the light-filled space isn’t quite the food destination it was out of the gate — the heavy duck toast presents like Thanksgiving stuffing, and a ring of crab around a shimmering pool of spinach, Thai basil and vinegar is prettier to see than to eat — Ana can still impress, most recently with halibut set off with bright green curry, brighter asparagus and a jolt from lemon grass, the very picture of spring. News to toast: The adjoining winery, spun off from a sister operation in Brooklyn, just released its first quaff. Pretty in pink, it’s a dry rosé. 2 stars Ana at District Winery: Open: Prices: Sound check: Previous: --- The following review was originally published Nov. 8, 2017. At AhSo, a breakout chef takes his vision closer to home (Good/Excellent) Hands down, the most impressive food and wine pairing in Washington right now comes courtesy of New York. If that sounds like an affront to the city’s sommeliers, I encourage you to explore the gleaming new District Winery in the Navy Yard and its adjoining 56-seat restaurant, Ana. Created by the owners of Brooklyn Winery in Williamsburg, Brian Leventhal and John Stires, the glass-wrapped sister operation lets visitors observe the winemaking process, from the crushing, blending and aging of the grapes to their eventual bottling. Buy-local enthusiasts should know that Virginia doesn’t have enough grapes to fuel the portfolio here; the bulk of the fruit comes from California, Washington state and New York. Because of the time it takes to make wine, the D.C. site won’t release its wares, about 80,000 bottles, until next year. (First up will be a dry rosé in spring.) Outfitted with a handsome tasting bar and space for private events on multiple levels, the city’s first winery currently pours wines produced at its Brooklyn base. In a measure of the principals’ commitment to the District, one of 20 cities they considered for a second urban winery, the two owners, winemaker Conor McCormack and executive chef Michael


Rudy Giuliani’s revealing interview with Sean Hannity, annotated

then he immediately changed it. It's one lie after another. HANNITY: Rod Rosenstein — everyone forgets when he wrote that recommendation to fire Comey. He said the FBI cannot be reestablished if he stayed at the helm. GIULIANI: Yeah, why? Because he's a liar. His conduct of the Hillary Clinton investigation was a total disgrace. If Hillary Clinton had been elected president, he wouldn't have lasted past day one. We know she would have fired him. I don't think she'd deny that today. She was right. We should have fired him. When I say we, I mean the collective we here, day one. HANNITY: Let's talk about — GIULIANI: Let me say one more thing. HANNITY: Yes, sir. GIULIANI: This is the best president in my memory. In two years — even my hero, Ronald Reagan, he straighten the economy out the way President Trump did. But he didn't get this far ahead on foreign policy as fast as President Trump has. Look at what's going on with North Korea. I told the president, you're going to get the Nobel Peace Prize. My proudest moment is when you tell them to shove it. Sorry. HANNITY: By the way, no, no, no, this is cable. You're — we're good here. You said about — let's talk about the leak questions. You know, I mean, I have them here in front of me. What are your thoughts? What did you think about Comey? What did you think about Sessions? GIULIANI: Comey should be prosecuted for leaking confidential FBI information when he leaked his report intended to develop a special prosecutor for the president of the United States. I have never, ever turned over a document — you know me, Sean, you know me when I was U.S. attorney, a lot of allegations — HANNITY: Took down the mob. GIULIANI: — never leaked a damn thing. I would have considered resigning if I ever did that, or if one of my assistants did it. Did the FBI leak? Did the SEC leak? I'm sorry, guys, you did. HANNITY: Let me ask you this. There's so many lawyers that I respect, that you know and respect — Alan Dershowitz, Joe diGenova, these are heavy hitters. Our own Gregg Jarrett — GIULIANI: All my friends. HANNITY: The president should never spend a minute — you said it would be narrow and focused today, and you


In Burma, the jailing of journalists sheds light on a deeper crisis

in civilian clothing to disguise their roles. In other words, those giving the orders were trying to cover up their responsibility for the atrocities. By the time the report appeared, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo had already been detained. They were arrested in December for allegedly violating Burma’s Official Secrets Act, a harsh law dating back to the British colonial era. They each face up to 14 years in prison. There is little doubt that Burmese state security was retaliating against the two men for casting light on its criminal behavior. Last month, a police whistleblower testified at the two men’s trial. He told the court that the journalists had been “set up” by security forces, who had arranged for two policemen to offer Wa Lone “confidential documents” during a meeting at a restaurant. The two journalists were arrested immediately afterwards. Shortly after giving his testimony, the whistleblower was himself arrested for “violating police discipline” and his family was immediately evicted from their government housing. The signal being sent by the authorities is clear: Do not defy us. In a hopeful sign, the court yesterday accepted the whistleblower’s testimony. But none of this bodes well for the future of democracy in Burma. Many Burmese, who harbor long-established prejudice against the Rohingya, appear to approve of the military’s campaign to expel the group. Suu Kyi, who received the Nobel Peace Prize for her heroic opposition to the military junta, has notably failed to say anything against the atrocities. Her defenders say she is boxed in by the still-powerful military. Critics accuse her of a catastrophic moral failure. Needless to say, a country cannot claim to be making progress towards democracy when it is systematically victimizing one of its own minority groups. The protection of minorities is a fundamental principle of any democratic state. This is exactly the sort of problem a free press should be exposing to public view. That Burmese officialdom feels compelled to punish those who have done so reveals a fundamental disconnect between the country’s democratic aspirations and its grim reality. If the Burmese government — and its de facto leader, the once-revered Suu Kyi — are serious about moving toward an open society, they should start by shutting down the farcical trial of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo. Given the magnitude of Burma’s current crisis, however, even that would be a small step toward redemption.


Elderflower soda and lavender lattes: Flowers are suddenly everywhere in food

Go to any women’s clothing store and you’ll notice: Floral prints are having a moment right now. Shirts and skirts and dresses — and even men’s clothing — are festooned with flowers, in prints that are a throwback to the ‘60s or ‘90s. In the words of “The Devil Wears Prada’s” icy editor in chief Miranda Priestly: “Florals? For spring? Groundbreaking.” But here’s an area in which florals are actually novel. The trend is also sprouting up in food and, especially, beverages. It’s a natural evolution of several previous trends, including our love for rainbow colors and all things pink. “Food, like fashion, is driven by trends, seasonality and the occasional gust of hype,” said food writer Lee Tran Lam in Australian Vogue. Floral flavors were one of the biggest trend predictions for 2018, and one that has borne out right on time: just as those April showers bring May flowers. Like spring crocuses, floral foods are starting to pop up in mainstream consumer products. The flavors you’re most likely to see are lavender, hibiscus and elderflower — each with its own distinct botanical flavor. These are tiny white flowers that smell like perfume and honey. You probably know them from the liqueur St-Germain. You might also find it in gin, and it’s a flavor that pairs really well with gin cocktails. Try it in: Belvoir Fruit Farms Elderflower Lemonade, Blue Ridge Bucha’s elderflower sunrise kombucha. There are a lot of flowers in the hibiscus family, but they are found in tropical and subtropical climates. Hibiscus flowers have been used for tea throughout history in many parts of the world, and they play a role in the cuisine of several cultures, especially in central America. They have a tart, berry flavor. Try it in: Farmhouse Culture’s strawberry hibiscus “gut punch” sparkling probiotic veggie drink, Potter’s craft grapefruit hibiscus cider, Rishi hibiscus berry tea, Whole Foods’s 365 tropical hibiscus fruit bars. It’s a divisive flavor, because some people can think it tastes like soap. But it’s gained popularity as the lavender latte, which uses lavender syrup, has become an unexpected coffee shop hit. Try it in: Lavender lattes at your local coffee shop, lavender honey, Ice Cream Jubilee’s honey lemon lavender ice cream. Other floral flavors you might encounter include orange blossoms, roses, violets and nasturtiums. Also sprouting in popularity: edible flowers as a decoration on salads and cakes (like my


One of Stephen Hawking’s final scientific acts: Tackling the multiverse

Turner said. To do so, they draw on Hawking's “no boundary" theory — an idea developed in the 1980s to explain how the universe arose — and a concept known as the “holographic universe,” which suggests that the universe can be seen as a hologram and that a three-dimensional reality can be mathematically collapsed into only two dimensions to make calculations easier. As a result, they were able to bring some measure of order to the sprawling, incomprehensible multiverse. Pocket universes in this model would be less numerous, and they would share certain fundamental qualities, making them easier to analyze. “We are not down to a single, unique universe, but our findings imply a significant reduction of the multiverse to a much smaller range of possible universes,” Hawking said in an interview with Cambridge University last fall. The proposed model isn't fully developed, said Katie Mack, a cosmologist at North Carolina State University. “It's more like a simplified version of something just to see what happens,” dependent on concepts that are not yet widely accepted and mathematical tools that are still new. She also pointed out that Hawking and Hertog do not offer any quantifiable predictions in their paper, making it hard to test the idea. “It's not 42,” Turner agreed — referencing a joke from the novel “A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,” in which the number is “the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.” But for scientists, it's something just as good: Not a solution to all the problems in the universe, but an intriguing — if somewhat wacky-sounding — idea. A potential path to follow, though they don't know where it might lead. In that, it's a fitting legacy for the physicist. “Stephen Hawking was a human being,” Linde said. “He was not a genius who said all correct things every day of the week. He was struggling through the same scientific problems through which we all are struggling” — albeit amid greater adversity and with sharper insight than most people can hope to achieve. With this paper — which Cambridge University says is his “final theory on the origin of the universe” — Hawking has given his colleagues one more thing to think about as they tackle the problems of “life, the universe and everything.” “But it is very sad that Stephen is not here to talk about it with us,”


2018 Spring Dining Guide

meal puts the customer first, from the leather banquettes that support leisurely meals to leftovers that are retrieved from the host stand. Office mates might envy you your cuttlefish stew with sweet scallops and bright herbs the next day. Then again, they might also covet your having scored a reservation at one of the best restaurants, in one of the most exciting neighborhoods, in the entire region. 791 Wharf St. SW. 202-525-1402. delmardc.com. Open: Lunch Tuesday through Friday, dinner daily, brunch weekends. Prices: Dinner mains $30 to $38. Sound check: 78 decibels / Must speak with raised voice. No. 4 A RAKE’S PROGRESS (Not yet rated) Name a dining trend, and this cavernous restaurant, on the second floor of the habanero-hot Line hotel, likely embraces it. Some of the cocktails are mixed at the table, bread plays a starring role, a hearth in the open kitchen cooks much of the food and ... can someone get me a flashlight so I can read what’s for dinner? The little votives don’t help. Still, the best meals in recent visits have paired pork belly and greens on a small plate, bouillon bobbing with minty rabbit dumplings and enough bone-in rib-eye for four, anointed with truffle butter and offered with a many-layered wedge of potatoes and blue cheese. Baked Alaska? It’s as good for the flavor as the fire show. Don’t ask for a lemon twist, though, not when the guiding light in the kitchen is Spike Gjerde, whose hyperlocal Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore landed him a James Beard Award for best chef in the Mid-Atlantic three springs ago. His debut Washington restaurant takes place in a former church, which accounts for the arched windows, the dramatic chandelier composed from organ pipes, and a reverence for what’s good and fresh. 1770 Euclid St. NW. 202-588-0525. thelinehotel.com. Open: Dinner daily, brunch Sunday. Prices: Mains $26 to $39. Sound check: 78 decibels / Must speak with raised voice. No. 5 LITTLE PEARL Beaming servers present the small plates as if they were gifts. “Angel eggs,” says an attendant as he places a couple of light-as-air morsels on the table. Flavored like deviled eggs, they have an ivory exterior made of meringue that disappears the moment it hits your tongue. “Anchovy toast” is translated as a cushion of honey wheat toast swabbed with fish butter and carpeted with minced dill and other herbs. Meanwhile, smoked eel


Abbas, photojournalist of Iranian revolution, religious extremism, dies at 74

including Hindu body piercers in India and Christian snake handlers in Alabama. “I wanted to explore religion not as faith,” Abbas said in a 2011 interview with Singapore’s Straits Times, “but its social, economic impact, and what people do in the name of God.” Abbas returned to Iran in 1997 for the first time in 17 years, taking new photographs that he included in a 2002 book, “Iran Diary, 1971-2002.” He later visited 16 Muslim countries for a deeper look at the connections between faith and extremism, depicted in his 2009 book, “In Whose Name? The Islamic World after 9/11.” He described his interest in religion and God as “purely professional.” “I mean, he doesn’t tell me what to do, how to photograph,” he said on “Fresh Air,” “and I don’t tell him how he should deal with his believers, you know.” Abbas Attar was born in early 1944 in Iran’s Baluchistan region, bordering Pakistan. He was 8 when his family moved to Algeria, and he lived through the country’s long war for independence from France. “I grew up in a situation of violence,” he said in 2011. “But war is not just ‘boom boom.’ I consider that a battle. Wars are a complex phenomenon, not only physical violence, but also psychological, social and emotional. I like to cover the whole span.” He decided at an early age to become a journalist and, at 18, took up photography, learning by trial and error. He got his first major break when he was hired by the International Olympic Committee to document Mexico’s preparations for the 1968 Summer Olympics. In 1974, he was in Congo, then called Zaire, to photograph Muhammad Ali before his “Rumble in the Jungle” heavyweight championship fight with George Foreman. “He was like a film director, and we were working for him,” Abbas said. Abbas used only his first name throughout his professional career and was deliberately vague about his family background, saying photographers “should stay on one side of the camera.” Little personal information could be learned about him, although Britain’s Telegraph newspaper reported he had four sons. In 2011, Abbas was asked about the dangers involved in covering wars and revolutions to capture what he called “the exalting and fragile moment.” ‘The shell doesn’t discriminate, does it?” he said. “If I could take pictures without the risk, I would. But I had to be there.” matt.schudel@washpost.com


At A Rake’s Progress, fire meets finesse

This review appears in The Washington Post’s 2018 Spring Dining Guide as No. 4 on a list of the year’s 10 best new restaurants. 4. A Rake’s Progress (Not yet rated) Name a dining trend, and this cavernous restaurant, on the second floor of the habanero-hot Line hotel, likely embraces it. Some of the cocktails are mixed at the table, bread plays a starring role, a hearth in the open kitchen cooks much of the food and ... can someone get me a flashlight so I can read what’s for dinner? The little votives don’t help. Still, the best meals in recent visits have paired pork belly and greens on a small plate, bouillon bobbing with minty rabbit dumplings and enough bone-in rib-eye for four, anointed with truffle butter and offered with a many-layered wedge of potatoes and blue cheese. Baked Alaska? It’s as good for the flavor as the fire show. Don’t ask for a lemon twist, though, not when the guiding light in the kitchen is Spike Gjerde, whose hyperlocal Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore landed him a James Beard Award for best chef in the Mid-Atlantic three springs ago. His debut Washington restaurant takes place in a former church, which accounts for the arched windows, the dramatic chandelier composed from organ pipes, and a reverence for what’s good and fresh. Not yet rated A Rake’s Progress: Open: Prices: Sound check: The Top 10 new restaurants of 2018: No. 10 Old Maryland Grill No. 9 The Tavern at Rare Steak and Seafood No. 8 Unconventional Diner No. 7 Chloe No. 6 Maydan No. 5 Little Pearl No. 4 A Rake’s Progress No. 3 Del Mar No. 2 Fancy Radish No. 1 Elle --- The following review was originally published Feb. 9, 2018. From start to finish, A Rake’s Progress tastes like a keeper For a change of pace, let’s start at the end: Few Washington restaurants do leftovers better than A Rake’s Progress in the Line hotel. It’s not so much the food I’m talking about, although some of it is very good, but the way any remains from dinner are bundled. Instead of dropping leftovers at the table, a server passes them off near the coat check when you exit. The packaging is of the sort you see when your most stylish, eco-conscious friend arrives with a host gift. Which is to say compostable butcher paper and black


Nobel literature prize canceled this year, following academy’s own #MeToo scandal

Embroiled in a sexual misconduct scandal, the Swedish Academy announced Friday that it will not award a Nobel Prize in literature in 2018. It has declined to award the prize seven times before, in years of war and when the academy determined that none of the nominees deserved it. The last time a Nobel literature prize was postponed was over six decades ago. “The Swedish Academy intends to decide on and announce the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2018 in parallel with the naming of the 2019 laureate,” according to a statement posted on the Nobel Prize website. “The crisis in the Swedish Academy has adversely affected the Nobel Prize. Their decision underscores the seriousness of the situation and will help safeguard the long-term reputation of the Nobel Prize.” It added that the awarding of the other prizes would not be disrupted. The announcement came days after Swedish media reported that French photographer Jean-Claude Arnault, the husband of an academy member and a recipient of academy funds, groped Swedish Crown Princess Victoria at an academy event in 2006. Arnault had already been accused of sexual harassment or assault, in some cases on academy property, by 18 women in November. He also allegedly leaked the names of at least seven Nobel winners but has denied all accusations against him. In connection with the scandal, the head of the academy, Sara Danius, has stepped down, and several other academy members, including Arnault’s wife, poet Katarina Frostenson, have given up their active membership. Eleven members of the 18-person committee remain active. Swedish officials welcomed the decision to postpone the announcement of the prize. The country’s head of state, King Carl XVI Gustaf, said Friday that the cancellation would allow the academy to “focus on restoring its reputation.” Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, a Social Democrat, voiced similar hopes, but also urged the academy to now work “tirelessly” to regain lost public trust. In a damning statement last week following an investigation, the secretive institution itself acknowledged that it was “in a state of crisis following a period of strong disagreement between members over important issues.” The statement was a surprisingly frank assessment of the organization’s failings in regard to sexual harassment allegations and upholding secrecy arrangements ahead of the winner’s announcement, which is made in early October. But last Saturday, the academy’s woes worsened further as details emerged about an alleged sexual harassment


There have never been so few children in Japan (at least, not since they started counting)

Self-driving cars. Food delivery robots on wheels. Automated checkout lines at the grocery store. As technology's capacity to replace human labor continues to grow, many workers in the West fear losing their jobs to robots. But in Japan, people might not be so upset if robots replaced them on factory assembly lines, a top official said Friday. “The Western way of thinking is 'robots will steal my job,' " Japanese Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Taro Aso said at a conference in Manila. “But in Japan, robots will reduce the ordinary man's load.” That's probably because Japan finds itself in a somewhat unique predicament: It's the world's third-largest economy, but its population is shrinking — and quickly. On Friday — the day before Japan's annual Children's Day celebration — the government released a stark statistic: Since the government started counting in 1950, there have never been so few children in Japan. That data point shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. This is the 37th year in a row that the population of children in Japan has continued to drop. In 2017, about 941,000 Japanese children were born — the lowest number since the country started recording its births, in 1899. And the year before marked another milestone: the first time in history that there were fewer than 1 million births recorded in the country. In countries with more than 40 million people, Japan is ranked the lowest out of 32 for its ratio of children to the overall population. This year, there are 15.53 million children living in Japan, down 170,000 from last year. Some 60 years ago, the country was home to nearly twice as many children as it is today. (The Japanese government classifies anyone 14 and younger as a child.) Economists point to number of reasons for Japan's shrinking youth population: more women in the workforce, the rising cost of caring for children and an increasing number of single adults are a few. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, fearing the economic consequences of an aging population, has called the low birthrate a priority for his government, and has taken measures to try to solve what could be a ticking time bomb for Japan's economy. In an effort to turn the numbers around, the Japanese government even took romance into its own hands and began offering matchmaking services to try to get young Japanese singletons


Obama should return his Nobel Peace Prize

Regarding the May 2 news article “Some talk of a Nobel for Trump on North Korea”: Trump supporters, judging eligibility for a Nobel Prize as worthy as his predecessor’s award, make a comparison that implies a bar low even by Trumpian standards. That 2009 Nobel decision represented a particularly hollow justification for the prize, given before then-President Barack Obama had barely had an opportunity to appreciate and meet the qualifying test laid down in Alfred Nobel’s will: having “done the most or best work for fraternity between nations.” It didn’t take Mr. Obama long to fail that test: among other things, a tsk-tsk response to Russia’s Crimea annexation; a dare for Russian President Vladimir Putin to continue his expansionist course, never mind Russia’s brazen dismissal of that threat with its follow-on incursion into eastern Ukraine, including the virtually certain downing by allied Russian militia of a Malaysian passenger aircraft. Perhaps most tellingly, there was Mr. Obama’s retreat from the “red line” he laid for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, allowing the Russians’ undeterred presence on the side of the Syrian dictator and his genocidal agenda. One can only guess how a more robust U.S. policy might have contributed to fewer deaths and asylum seekers and the untold misery that the Syrian conflagration has brought about. Not a trivial list of Obama administration failings. An honorable, if belated, step would be to return the prize to Oslo marked “unused.” Joel Darmstadter


Never mind the Nobel talk. Trump has a different mission on North Korea.

proved pivotal to the collapse of the Soviet Union five short years later. Trump has made clear that he, like Reagan, is willing to walk away. “If we don’t think it’s going to be successful, we won’t have it,” the president said of a summit with Kim. “If the meeting when I’m there isn’t fruitful, I will respectfully leave the meeting.” This is exactly the right approach. Trump needs to go into his summit not with visions of Nobel prizes, but with eyes wide open. As Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats pointed out last May, “Pyongyang’s enshrinement of the possession of nuclear weapons in its constitution, while repeatedly stating that nuclear weapons are the basis for its survival, suggests that Kim does not intend to negotiate them away at any price.” Just last year, an American college student, Otto Warmbier, died after being detained by North Korea, and Kim was promising to fire missiles at Guam. Now he is on a charm offensive designed to buy him breathing room, lift sanctions, extort money from the West and “decouple” the United States from its ally South Korea. To get these things, Kim will lie to Trump just as his father lied in 1994 when he promised the Clinton administration that he would abandon his nuclear program in exchange for light-water reactors and fuel oil. If Trump wants to succeed, he must want a deal less than Kim does. He must be willing to walk away and to make Kim understand that he is serious about a military option if negotiations fail. He can’t do so if he is even remotely thinking about a Nobel. Winning a Nobel Prize is irrelevant. Reagan never got a Nobel, but he is remembered as the president who brought about the peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union and won the Cold War. Barack Obama, by contrast, won a Nobel Prize just nine months after taking office for doing nothing (except not being George W. Bush). Simply by forcing North Korea to the negotiating table, Trump has already done more to deserve the prize than Obama did. History will judge Trump not by whether he won a Nobel, but by whether he was able to stop North Korea from deploying the capability to destroy an American city with a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile. If he fails, no prize will make up for the fact that millions


Mandatory GMO labels are coming to your food

Foodmakers will soon be required to disclose when their products contain genetically modified ingredients — but those labels may not be as obvious, or as comprehensive, as consumers expected. Food products may be exempted from labeling if they are made with some refined genetically modified sugars and oils, or if a product contains those ingredients in amounts that fall beneath a predetermined threshold, according to a proposed rule released by the Agriculture Department on Thursday. The proposed rule also instructs foodmakers to use the term “bioengineered” to label such foods instead of “genetically modified,” a more recognizable phrase. The proposed rule, which will now undergo a public comment period and could be finalized as early as this summer, represents a major milestone in the complicated, years-long process to regulate the labeling of genetically modified foods. Congress passed a mandatory-labeling law in 2016, but implementation has been delayed by questions about which foods should be covered and what types of labels foodmakers should use. Food and consumer groups said they were happy to see the rules move forward, though some expressed concern about provisions they say could leave many products excluded and many shoppers confused. “We think, at the most fundamental level, consumers expect the mandatory GM labeling standard to apply to all GM foods,” said Colin O’Neil, the legislative director for the Environmental Working Group. The proposed rule provides the best glimpse so far into what mandatory labels will look like — while still leaving some questions open. Food companies will have three options for disclosing the ingredients, the USDA said: a one-sentence label declaration, such as “contains a bioengineered food ingredient”; a standardized icon, such as the one used in the National Organic Program; or a QR code or other digital marker that directs shoppers to a website for more information. In a statement, the Grocery Manufacturers Association praised the flexible standard, pointing out that it has already put QR codes on 25,000 products through its SmartLabel program. “We welcome the release of the proposed rule ... and will be working with our member companies to review and develop comments on the draft rule and the USDA questions,” the association said in a statement. “Our comments to USDA will reflect the ongoing commitment of our member companies to providing consumers with the transparency they need to make informed product choices.” As to which foods will be considered genetically modified,


Human remains in D.C. are those of three female homicide victims, officials say

Two of the three women whose skeletal remains were found in a wooded area and crawl space in Southeast Washington last month were shot. The third woman suffered other injuries, District officials said Friday. The determinations were based on an examination of the skeletal remains, said Roger A. Mitchell Jr., the District’s medical examiner. Mitchell, who ruled the deaths homicides, said the decomposition of the remains suggested the three women had probably been dead for at least a year. Police and Mitchell said the identities of the women and when they were killed remain a mystery. The District’s forensic anthropologist is working to clean and assemble the skeletons and will use DNA to determine the ancestry — and hopefully the names — of the women. Mitchell said the FBI also has been tapped to work on the identifications, a process he said could take months. D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said authorities do not yet know whether the homicides are related. Newsham said in addition to clothing, some “personal items” were found at the scene, but he declined to say what those are. The first set of remains was found April 25 by contractors working under the first floor of a three-story red brick apartment building in Congress Heights. A crew enlarging a crawl space and digging up a basement in the 100 block of Wayne Place SE to build additional apartments found what appeared to be the bones of a hand, skull and jawbone about 10 inches beneath the surface. Using dogs to conduct a wider search, authorities on April 28 found two additional sets of remains in a shallow grave about 30 yards behind the residence in woods next to Mississippi Avenue. The woods had been a play zone for children in the residential neighborhood about half a mile from the Anacostia Freeway, and the discoveries were unsettling to people who live in the area. Mitchell said his office decided to announce what they had learned so far because he thought “it was important to provide updated information to the community and the public.” Newsham said the city has posted a $25,000 reward for information that could help in an arrest in the case. He added that because there are three sets of remains, the reward is actually $75,000 for information in all three cases. Mitchell said he was “not confident” that a facial reconstruction of the victims


World Digest: May 4, 2018

MIDDLE EAST Israeli troops fire at Gaza protesters Israeli troops fired live rounds and tear gas at Palestinians who thronged the Gaza-Israel frontier and rampaged at a border terminal Friday as part of a weeks-long protest. About 1,100 people were reported injured. Medics said about 82 people were wounded by live rounds along the Gaza side of the 25-mile border fence, where Palestinians set up tents March 30 for what they call the “Great March of Return.” The injured included 800 treated for gas inhalation, medics said. Israeli army gunfire has killed at least 43 Palestinians on the frontier over the past month. Youths rolled burning tires to within about 300 yards of the fence Friday, trying to use the smoke as cover for throwing stones, and protesters said they used slingshots to down two small Israeli observation drones. The army confirmed the losses. Hundreds of Palestinians entered Kerem Shalom, an industrial crossing point on the border. One said on social media that they had “torched rooms used by the Occupation [Israel].” The Israeli army issued footage showing fires at Kerem Shalom but said the damage was limited to the Palestinian side. — Reuters TURKEY Opposition nominates presidential hopefuls Turkish opposition parties nominated candidates Friday to run against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in next month’s election, which will centralize even more power into the hands of the president. Last month, Erdogan called the election for June 24, more than a year earlier than planned, and opposition parties have been scrambling to choose candidates. Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, nominated lawmaker Muharrem Ince for the presidency. Meanwhile, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, HDP, said its imprisoned former leader Selahattin Demirtas would be its candidate. The election is hugely important as it will transform Turkey’s governing system to an executive presidency. As part of the changes, the office of the prime minister will be abolished. — Associated Press SOUTH AFRICA Army is deployed to hospital amid strike South Africa deployed troops to look after patients at a hospital in its troubled North West province after staff went on strike over corruption and a collapsing health system they blame on the provincial premier. President Cyril Ramaphosa is under pressure to fire Premier Supra Mahumapelo, a senior member of Ramaphosa’s ruling African National Congress, amid accusations of corruption and violent protests over the poor state of local health care. Mahumapelo has


Then they came for Peppa Pig

Most Americans have never heard of Peppa Pig, the cartoon star of a British television show for preschoolers, which Chinese censors started purging from Internet apps and Chinese social media over the past week. Americans may not be bothered that an animated pig was deemed subversive by China’s state media and a bad influence on China’s youth. But we should be. That China would suppress Peppa at all shows the government’s insecurity about any cultural phenomenon it can’t control. But for foreigners, it may seem harmless. Last year, many reacted with bemusement when China began censoring Winnie the Pooh, partly out of concern he looks like Chinese President Xi Jinping. (Personally, I don’t see the resemblance.) China’s internal Internet censorship regime is part of its greater effort to control the behavior of its citizens. Combined with blanket surveillance, intrusive monitoring and a new Orwellian social credit score system, the Chinese Communist Party links loyalty to success in all aspects of Chinese life. But aside from altruistic belief in universal human rights, why should Americans care? The increasingly clear and alarming answer is that Chinese government Internet repression is no longer confined to China or reserved for Chinese citizens. As part of its global foreign influence campaign, the Chinese Communist Party is exporting that censorship and punishing U.S. companies and citizens that step out of line. “Now the Party is increasingly exporting its authoritarianism abroad, trying to suppress speech, stifle free inquiry and seek to control narratives around the world,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said at a recent hearing of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. “America and other like-minded nations must contend with this long arm of China and the threat it poses to our open democratic systems.” Earlier this year, the State Department officially warned Americans visiting China that they can be arrested for private messages critical of the Chinese leadership. Americans need not even travel to China to fall victim. Following severe Chinese government pressure, Marriott recently fired 49-year-old Omaha resident Roy Jones because he inadvertently “liked” a tweet by a pro-Tibet group. Most foreign companies prize Chinese market access over human rights, an unfortunate but understandable reality. Mercedes-Benz similarly scrubbed an Instagram post — not viewable in China — that quoted the Dalai Lama. “China is not content with censoring and controlling its own citizens. It is using the immense power of its financial resources in every country


Swedish Academy, embroiled in a #MeToo scandal, won’t award Nobel literature prize in 2018

The announcement comes days after Swedish media reported that French photographer Jean-Claude Arnault groped Swedish Crown Princess Victoria at an academy event in 2006. Arnault was accused of sexual harassment or assault, in some cases on academy property, by 18 women in November. He also stands accused of leaking the names of at least seven Nobel winners. He has denied the allegations. In connection with the scandal, the head of the academy, Sara Danius, has stepped down, along with several academy members, including Arnault’s wife, poet Katarina Frostenson. The Swedish Academy intends to award the next Nobel Prize in literature in 2019. It has declined to award the prize before, in years of war and when the academy determined that none of the nominees deserved it.This is a developing story. It will be updated.


Trump’s Stormy Daniels problem and other big political stories this week

We learned some things this week that the Trump White House would have rather have kept out of the news: His new lawyer broke news about hush money paid to Stormy Daniels, and his former doctor says his office was raided. The week started with blowback from Trump and lots of other people over political journalists’ annual dinner, and talk of a big prize for Trump. Let's run down the five biggest headlines of the week. 1. Why it matters that Trump basically paid Stormy Daniels Trump and his aides have been saying for months that the president didn't know about hush money his personal lawyer paid in 2016 to a porn star alleging an affair with Trump.That changed this week, when Trump's new lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, said that Trump reimbursed Michael Cohen for that money. Related link: How the Trump team's Stormy Daniels story shifted again and again 2. Will Trump give an interview to Mueller? It doesn't sound like it, even though the special counsel really wants to talk to Trump. Robert S. Mueller III recently threatened to subpoena the president to force him to sit down. But there are signs this week that Trump would face the subpoena threat rather than voluntarily be interviewed about Russia. Related link: The 7 most intriguing questions Robert Mueller wants to ask Trump 3. Trump + Nobel Peace Prize? Trump’s supporters chanted "Nobel!" at his rally last weekend, and on Monday, South Korea's president said that Trump should be the one to win the prestigious peace prize if North Korea gets rid of its nukes and signs a peace treaty. Related link: Trump's Nobel prize secret sauce 4. Why did Trump’s bodyguard ‘raid’ his doctor's office? Remember Trump's long-haired doctor, the one who during the campaign declared Trump would be the healthiest president ever? Harold Bornstein told NBC this week that Trump's team raided his office and took medical documents last year after he revealed to the New York Times that Trump takes a hair-growth drug. Related link: A potentially alarming prognosis for Trump: His former doctor could embolden others to talk 5. Did political journalists just step in it? -Mike Pence is what happens when Anderson Cooper isn't gay. -I [loved Sarah Huckabee Sanders] as Aunt Lydia in 'The Handmaid's Tale.' -Trump is racist though. Those are just some of the controversial jokes comedian Michelle Wolf fired off at Saturday's


At national parks and zoos, it’s prime time for baby animals

Alaskan wilderness, winter tends to take its time, and so baby animals frequently arrive later at Denali National Park than in the Lower 48. Many young animals experience their first breath as the busy summer season begins picking up. Bus tours (from $90 for adults and from $40 for children), which begin May 9, are the best way to safely spot wildlife in the summer, because private vehicles are prohibited in much of the park. If you go, look for moose and caribou calves, Dall lambs and gray wolf pups, all of which are born in May or June; and grizzly and black-bears cubs, which are born in January or February. Zoos around the country It’s babies everywhere at the nation’s zoos. In late March, the Denver Zoo welcomed a bright-eyed Sumatran orangutan, which is a critically endangered species. Her name is Cerah, which means “bright” in Indonesian. Also new to Denver Zoo: four bouncing, bounding African wild dogs. The endangered pups were born in November, and only recently entered their habitat for viewing. And a Linne’s two-toed sloth, born in late January (named Baby Ruth), has been a huge hit with visitors. The Indianapolis Zoo is home to three new critically endangered babies: two are ring-tailed lemurs, born March 14. And then there’s Carina, a sweet-looking addra gazelle calf that zookeepers have bottle-fed and cared for because her mom didn’t show any of interest. At the Chicago Zoological Society’s Brookfield Zoo, visitors can peep at a tiny chocolate-colored reindeer. The fawn was just 12 pounds when she was born April 2, and is growing quickly. A downy African penguin chick hatched in February at Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. It’s the first of the endangered species to hatch and be reared at the zoo. After 13 weeks in the den at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo, twin sloth bear cubs — which, true to their name, look like a bear crossed with a sloth — moved out on exhibit, so now the public can peek in on their antics. To keep tabs on what animals are born where, visit ZooBorns.com, which shares baby animal news from zoos and aquariums across the world. Farms galore Baby animals and spring go hand in hand at scores of farms. Mountain Flower Goat Dairy in Boulder invites visitors in during the lunch hour to meet, snuggle and bottle-feed their newborn kids ($20). The farm


The military paid for a study on sea level rise. The results were scary.

small as a baseball — in an effort to keep orbiting satellites and astronauts safe. The state-of-the-art project is being constructed for the Air Force by Lockheed Martin and is supposed to be fully operational later this year. But its location on the tiny atoll already has raised concerns that the site could face routine flooding threats within a matter of decades and that saltwater could damage its expensive equipment. The study underscores why many small island nations clamored to ensure that the 2015 Paris climate agreement included language requiring the world to strive to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, an extremely stringent target. Atoll-dependent nations that have been heavily involved in the push for climate action include the Marshall Islands, Maldives, Kiribati and Tuvalu. But with the planet already 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer, holding warming to 1.5 Celsius seems unlikely, because it would require extremely rapid shifts away from the current energy system toward renewables, rather than the more gradual change now underway. The new study did not address specific Paris climate targets, but Kopp’s additional analysis found that even under a 2-degree or 1.5-degree Celsius climate scenario, by late in the century, more than 40 centimeters of sea-level rise will probably occur. Still, these scenarios would buy atoll islands some time. “The research is a reminder of the immediate threat of sea-level rise,” said Simon Donner, a professor at the University of British Columbia who studies coral reefs and climate change and wrote a comment by email from Kiribati. “It is also a reminder that the people in atoll countries, who are not responsible for climate change, are not receiving the necessary international support,” he continued. “Despite the dire findings of this study, adaptation is not absolutely impossible: the construction by China on atoll islands in the South China Sea is evidence of that. Adaptation is, however, prohibitively expensive for developing countries like Kiribati (where I am currently).” Heine, the Marshall Islands president, said there is no ignoring the effects climate change already is having. Just last week, she said, waves washed over parts of the island nations, thanks to a combination of wind and ocean currents exacerbated by sea-level rise. Residents were left to clean up flooded roads and neighborhoods. “It’s more of a nuisance than anything, but things like that are coming every other month


Here’s how to make your own version of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s royal wedding cake

cakes bake and cool faster. You could certainly make the cake and the frosting — a simple confectioners’ sugar and butter combination — put them together and call it a day. (If you don’t own one, a small offset spatula will earn its very cheap price for frosting and filling this cake, not to mention many other kitchen tasks.) For an amped-up filling, use lemon curd (homemade, if you’re up for it) instead of frosting. Or go up one more level by mixing it with whipped cream, as I recommend here. You can decorate this cake as much or as little as you want. A pristine white cake is timeless. No fancy cake tools? Grab a spoon and spin a swirl into the top, or cut the corner of a food-safe zip-top bag to pipe dollops around the edge. Use store-bought candied lemon slices or peel for added pizazz. In the spirit of the actual royal wedding cake, I decorated this version with edible flowers. Be sure you source flowers that have been specifically grown for culinary use. I got mine from the District’s Little Wild Things City Farm, but you can also sometimes find them in the produce section of grocery stores. I crystallized some of the flowers and combined them with other fresh ones, gently pressing both types into the top and then in a cascade down the side of the cake. If you just want to use fresh flowers, that would be lovely, too. A note on ingredients: I found Belvoir Fruit Farms elderflower cordial (nonalcoholic), used for brushing the cake layers, at World Market. It can also be ordered from various sites online. (The brand’s products are carried at stores such as Whole Foods, Mom’s and Fresh Market.) Ikea sells an elderflower syrup as well. For additional elderflower flavor in the cake and frosting, I used St-Germain liqueur, but you can leave it out or use the cordial instead. Make Ahead: The baked, cooled cake layers that have been brushed with cordial can be refrigerated, well-wrapped, for several days or frozen for up to several weeks. You can refrigerate the buttercream several days in advance, too. Smooth out the chilled frosting with a stir by hand or mixer. The frosted and decorated cake can be refrigerated overnight in a cake caddy, under a cake dome or very loosely tented with plastic wrap. Ingredients For the cake


ما حدث عندما تعرضت لتحرش جنسي أثناء الحج

التحرش أثناء الحج في التلفزيون المصري، وكان الأمر محرمًا لدرجة أني كنت عرضة لفقدان عملي، ولكن كلما إستمريت في مشاركة ما حدث لي مع سيدات مسلمات زادت القصص وزاد عدد السيدات التي قلن ”أنا أيضًا“، وكان صمتهن طوال هذه السنوات لنفس السبب: كنا نعتقد أنه من المستحيل أن يكون أخريات قد مررن بهذا الإنتهاك في هذا المكان المقدس. في كتابي الذي نشر في ٢٠١٥ كتبت عن التحرش الجنسي الذي حدث لي لأني أردت سجلًا دائمًا لما حدث لي، وقامت سيدات مسلمات بالكتابة لي قائلات أن هذا الجزء جعلهن يبكين، والعام الماضي بينما كان المسلمين من حول العالم يستعدون للذهاب إلي مكة للقيام بمناسك الحج نشرت مجموعة من التغريدات عن التحرش الجنسي أثناء الحج لتحذير النساء المسلمات، فحتى تقوم السلطات السعودية التي تؤمن المكان باتخاذ خطوات جدية لحماية الحاجات علىنا حماية بعضنا البعض، وعلى الرجال أن يتوقفوا عن التحرش بنا لكن على النساء حول العالم، بغض النظر عن دينهن، أن يعرفن أنه حتى يتوقف الرجال عن التحرش علىنا حماية بعضنا البعض مثلها مثل الكثير من اللحظات الثورية، #أنا_كمان (#MeToo) هي نتاج سنوات من عمل النشطاء، حيث قامت الناشطة النسوية الأمريكية من أصل إفريقي تارانا بيرك باستخدام هاشتاق #MeToo لأول مرة في عام ٢٠٠٧ تضامنًا مع ضحايا العنف الجنسي، وحين بدأن ممثلات شهيرات باستخدام الهاشتاق للكشف عن الإعتداء الجنسي علىهن من قبل مخرجين مشهورين حصلت الظاهرة على الشهرة المطلوبة لتنتشر عالميًا، وعلىنا أن نعمل لتنتشر #MeToo بغض النظر عن خطوط اللون والطبقة الإجتماعية والجنس والدين التي تجعل من الصعب جداً أن يسمع صوت السيدات المهشمات، وكان مشجعًا جدًا أن أرى هاشتاق #ChurchToo (#الكنيسة_أيضًا) والذي يكشف عن التحرش في الأماكن المقدسة المسيحية، وقمت أشجع السيدات المسلمات أن يستخدمن هاشتاق #MosqueToo (#الجامع_أيضًا) للتحدث عن العنف الجنسي أثناء الحج وفي الأماكن المقدسة عامًة ماذا يمكن أن يحدث؟ أحث إمام المسجد الحرام بمكة أن يقدم عظة قبل موسم الحج يعترف فيها بتعرض النساء المسلمات للتحرش الجنسي أثناء قيامهم بمناسك الحج ويدعو فيها الرجال المسلمين لإحترام النساء في الأماكن المقدسة، وعلى السلطات السعودية أن تبدأ حملة عن سلامة الحاجات وإصرار السلطات على الحفاظ عليهن، ويمكن للسلطات السعودية أيضًا أن تقوم بتدريب الشرطة للتعرف على المتحرشين وتعريض أعضاء الشرطة نفسها الذين يقومون بالتحرش للمساءلة، ويجب أن ينتشر عدد أكبر من نساء الأمن في الأمكان المقدسة زيادة على النساء الموجودين على الأبواب للتأكد من إرتداء الحاجات لملابس مناسبة. أنا لست ساذجة، وأعلم جيدًا أن معظم النساء المسلمات تقعن بين المطرقة والسندان، فعلى يد تجد المعادين للإسلام والعنصريين الذين يرغبون في شيطنة الرجال المسلمين باستخدام تجربتي عن التحرش الجنسي كسلاح


Echoing Team USA, Brazilian gymnasts speak out about abuse

Lopes allegedly abused the athletes fired him in response to the allegations. Brazil’s Olympic Committee announced that it would create a sexual harassment hotline for athletes to report sexual abuse. The scandal has also sparked a national debate about the relationship between sports and abuse. Since 1982, almost 300 coaches and officials in U.S. Olympic organizations, across 15 sports, have been publicly accused of sexual misconduct. While abuse can happen in any environment, the intense training and traveling in professional sports create a sense of intimacy and privacy where abuse can flourish, said Cristiano Barreira, president of the Brazilian Sports Psychology Association. “With professional athletes, in addition to the fear of the abuse, there is the fear of the impact on their career. It can significantly affect their self-esteem and view of their potential,” he said. But global movements such as #Me Too can help victims recognize abusive behavior and come to terms with their experiences. “Collective movements empower them to see clearly that they are victims and avoid blaming themselves,” he said. The chief prosecutor of Brazil’s labor court, which is working on the case, said he saw parallels between the U.S. and Brazilian cases. “The sentencing in the United States showed the severity of verbal and sexual abuse in sports. The rise in the number of reports is worrying, but, on the other hand, authorities are better prepared to investigate and punish the perpetrators,” Gláucio Araújo de Oliveira said in an interview with local newspaper Estadao. In the United States, Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman, who accused Nassar of abusing her during trips abroad when she was 15, expressed her support for the Brazilian gymnasts. “Devastated to hear about the many gymnasts in Brazil who have been abused. Survivors must be heard & justice must be served,” she tweeted. Raisman is suing the U.S. Olympic Committee and USA Gymnastics for failing to prevent Nassar’s abuse. Many Brazilians are similarly outraged at their country's governing sports bodies for allowing the abuse to continue silently for years. According to one victim, another coach on the team and a psychologist knew that athletes were being abused by Lopes but did nothing to stop it. In a statement, the Brazilian Gymnastics Confederation said it would adopt urgent measures to address the accusations. “No case of harassment or abuse will go without a rigorous investigation and eventual sanctions, if applicable,” the agency said.


Feds sue an Albertsons that banned Hispanic employees from speaking Spanish, even on breaks

The Albertsons manager interrupted the conversation between Guadelupe Zamorano and Hermelinda Stevenson to chastise them for the rule they were publicly flouting, right in front of the grocery store. They were speaking Spanish. For months, according to an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit filed on behalf of the two women and other minority employees, the San Diego store had an unwritten rule that applied exclusively to the Hispanics who worked there: They could not speak Spanish anywhere on the premises, even if they were on break. Supervisors “verbally harassed” Hispanic employees, the complaint says, publicly reprimanding them and threatening to discipline them for violations of the “No Spanish” policy. Zamorano, Stevenson and other Hispanic employees are named in the court action filed Thursday against the grocery store chain. The suit involves incidents that happened in 2012 and 2013, when Hispanic employees say they were “subjected to disparate treatment and a hostile work environment because of their national origin.” Managers repeatedly told them they could not speak Spanish, but gave no such admonishments to people in Albertsons uniforms who were not Hispanic. Albertsons did not make a company official — or Richard Brown, the store director mentioned in the complaint — available for comment. Jenna Watkinson, a spokeswoman for Albertsons Cos., told The Washington Post in an email, “The company does not have, and has never had a policy in which such language usage is prohibited.” “While we cannot comment on this pending litigation specifically, Albertsons does not require that its employees speak English only,” a statement from the chain said. “Albertsons serves a diverse customer population and encourages employees with foreign language abilities to use those skills to serve its customers.” Albertsons Cos., based in Boise, Idaho, is one of the nation’s largest food and drug retailers, with 280,000 employees in 35 states. Stores operate under 19 banners, including Vons, Safeway, Amigos and Pavilions. The complaint stems from a training video that Albertsons developed in 2012 in which “managers and employees were instructed that employees should not speak Spanish as long as there was a non-Spanish speaking person present.” After that training, Brown, who was director of a store on Lake Murray Boulevard in San Diego, told “Hispanic employees that they could not speak Spanish anywhere on the premises regardless of whether they were on break.” Violators were threatened with discipline, court documents say, and routinely received public reprimands like


Federal agents peered into a duffel bag on the Mexico border. They found a tiger cub.

The three men crossed the U.S. southern border into Texas with a black duffel bag, on an apparent mission to deliver their lucrative product to the United States. But they caught wind of border agents nearby, readying to intercept them near Brownsville, officials said. It led to a calculation: Now what? And what to do with the unconscious tiger cub weighing down the duffel bag? The men retreated back into Mexico, leaving the bag, and the male cub became an unexpected ward of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “NOT an average day in the field,” Irma Chapa, a spokeswoman for the Rio Grande Valley sector of CBP, said in a tweet Monday. The tiger was turned over Brownsville’s Gladys Porter Zoo. It appears to be two months old and in good health, but it is likely that the cub was tranquilized to keep him still and quiet during the journey, senior veterinarian Tom deMaar told The Washington Post. “You’re not going to stuff a live tiger into a bag without an argument,” deMaar said Tuesday. The tiger has not been given a name, deMaar said. But the cub was recovered on the day Mexico celebrated Dia del Niño — or Children’s Day, so some at the zoo have given him an unofficial moniker, the veterinarian said: Niño. The cub was an apparent node in the billion-dollar trade of animal smuggling, and it is in unfortunate company. Last year, a tiger cub bought by a U.S. teenager was intercepted at a checkpoint in California. In 2010, border agents recovered a caged and abandoned tiger in Laredo, another Texas border town. And a decade ago, six tiger cubs were recovered from an attempted sale at a Walmart parking lot, also in Brownsville. They appeared to be southbound for Mexico, local media reported at the time. deMaar said those six cubs were also delivered to Gladys Porter Zoo — an inadvertent collection point for tigers caught in an international smuggling ring. Three are still at the zoo, he said, and two others were sent to a sanctuary. The sixth tiger died. About 350 million plants and animals are sold around the world annually, generating between $7 billion and $23 billion, Washington-based conservation group Defenders of Wildlife said in a 2015 report. Latin America has emerged as a fulcrum in the endangered and exotic species trade feeding the booming U.S. market, the group’s senior


How three leaders could win a Nobel Prize

Regarding David Von Drehle’s May 2 op-ed, “The precedent for a Trump Nobel Prize”: President Trump, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in would all be considered for the Nobel Prize by agreeing to just one joint operation. As a result of the Korean War (1950-1953), numerous U.S. servicemen who were killed in action were interred in soil that is under the control of North Korea. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) lists more than 4,000 U.S. remains resting in the ground north of the Demilitarized Zone. Before Mr. Kim became head of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the United States was permitted to send teams of forensic and pathologic experts into that country to search for, locate and bring remains back to the United States for further identification. However, under Mr. Kim, the doors have been closed, and the teams are not allowed to enter. Should the three leaders agree to once again send in these teams to locate and bring out additional remains, the humanitarian signs that this would send would more than justify the awarding of such a prestigious recognition to each of the leaders. This would be a win-win for all, not presenting any risks to either Korea and demonstrating quite clearly to the world that they are capable of reaching agreements that are tangible and would mean so much to the families of those U.S. war dead who seek closure. Fred C. Lash


Community deaths

The cause was complications from heart disease, said a sister, Alice Ducq. Mr. Mayberry was born in Washington. In 1999, he launched Mayberry & Associates and, as its president, served as executive director of several trade associations. Sheldon Meyers, EPA official Sheldon Meyers, 88, an Environmental Protection Agency official who retired in 1987 as director of the office of radiation programs, died March 6 at a medical-care center in Bethesda, Md. The cause was cardiopulmonary dysfunction, said a son, Paul Meyers. Mr. Meyers, a resident of Chevy Chase, Md., was born in New York City. He began working at what then was the Atomic Energy Commission in 1958 in New York, relocating to Washington in 1972. For a period, he moved among federal positions before settling at the EPA in 1982. After his federal retirement, he worked 12 years for Jacobs Engineering, a global technical-services organization. Razieh Adamiyatt, ambassador's wife Razieh Adamiyatt, 89, the wife of an Iranian diplomat who served as ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1962 to 1965, died Feb. 20 at her home in Chevy Chase, Md. The cause was heart ailments, said a daughter-in-law Kathleen Adamiyatt. Mrs. Adamiyatt was born Razieh Moazzezi in Gorgan, Iran. In the Washington area, she was active in Iranian social organizations. Hisao "Mat" Matsumoto, Hiroshima blast survivor Hisao “Mat” Matsumoto, 89, an American citizen by birth, Japanese by ethnicity, who survived the first wartime detonation of an atomic bomb over Hiroshima in 1945, died Feb. 13 at his home in Ashburn, Va. The cause was cardiac arrest, said a son, Cal Matsumoto. Mr. Matsumoto was born in Los Angeles to immigrant parents who returned to Japan in 1931 to care for aging relatives. He was 12 when Japan went to war with the United States and was pressed into service in a rifle factory on the outskirts of Hiroshima. In a 1995 interview with the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, he recalled being at work at 8:15 a.m., on Aug. 6, 1945. There was a blinding white flash of light, followed by a bang that collapsed the ceiling of his factory. Mr. Matsumoto was uninjured. His house, three miles from Hiroshima’s ground zero, became a makeshift hospital. In 1948, Mr. Matsumoto returned to the United States and served in the Air Force. He came to Washington in 1958 and worked 36 years for the Library of Congress, retiring in 1994 as


After years of unrest, Ethiopians are riding an unlikely wave of hope. Will it last?

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — When Ethiopia’s prime minister resigned in February after more than five years in office, there was little reason to think his successor would be an improvement. The East African country was under a state of emergency that followed a years-long crackdown on opposition political activity. Thousands of activists and dissident journalists had been detained, and hundreds had died in demonstrations crushed by government forces. Then came Abiy Ahmed, who at 42 is one of the youngest leaders on the continent. In his first month as Ethiopia’s premier, he has ushered in an unlikely wave of hope and even optimism in this close U.S. ally that serves as something of a linchpin to the stability of East Africa. While ostensibly a democracy, Ethiopia is a highly centralized state with only the ruling party and its allies in Parliament. In recent years, however, unrest has grown, and on April 10, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution urging the government to increase its respect for human rights and the rule of law. In a riveting speech at his April 2 inauguration, Abiy acknowledged some of Ethiopia’s enduring problems. He apologized for the deaths of protesters at demonstrations, welcomed differences of opinion and promised to heal the wounds between Ethiopia’s ethnic groups. The accession of Abiy, who hails from the Oromo community, brought a sharp drop in tension. Since he took office, Internet service has been restored to the countryside, charges against dozens of activists have been dropped, and he has embarked on meetings around the country, listening to grievances and promising reform, including term limits for his position. “As someone who grew up in Addis Ababa, one thing that is very foreign was seeing a prime minister come and organize town hall meetings and just sit down with people and discuss things,” said Zecharias Zelalem, a journalist and frequent commentator on Ethiopian affairs. “That has never happened, and it’s been going on for the past three weeks.” Activists, many of whom were released in the days following Abiy’s inauguration, pronounced themselves “cautiously optimistic” that, at long last, Ethiopia may be changing. “Our release means something. It is a signal for change, that he wants change,” said Eskinder Nega, a journalist who spent part of his youth in Washington, D.C, and had just spent six years in an Ethiopian prison for his writings. He was released in February


Elon Musk’s SpaceX is using a powerful rocket technology. NASA advisers say it could put lives at risk.

thousands of pounds of really highly energetic propellants on board. You’ve got mini controlled explosions going off. You’ve got to survive the rigors of space, which is not very friendly for the human body. And then you’ve got to reenter the atmosphere, and the spacecraft gets heated up to thousands of degrees.” SpaceX pulled off 18 successful launches last year, a record, and is aiming for more this year. But it has also lost two of its Falcon 9 rockets in explosions, and amid all its triumphs, it has never attempted flying humans. The first failure happened in 2015, when a rocket blew up a couple of minutes after liftoff as it was flying cargo and supplies to the space station. No one was on board, and no one was injured. Then, just over a year later, another rocket exploded, this time on the launchpad while being fueled ahead of an engine test. At the time, Musk declared that if crews had been aboard they would have been safely ferried away by the rocket’s abort system. Still, that mishap is forcing the company to redesign bottles of pressurized helium that sit inside the rocket’s fuel tanks. Now SpaceX is getting ready to fly astronauts on an upgraded version of the same rocket. And its decision to add propellant to the rocket with astronauts on board is attracting scrutiny. To get more power out of its rocket, SpaceX brings its propellants — liquid oxygen and refined kerosene — to unusually low temperatures. That causes them to become dense, meaning SpaceX can pack more fuel into its rockets. To SpaceX, the approach is another example of how it is breaking the mold. The densified propellant “provides greater propellant margin for increased reliability,” the company said in a statement. In other words, should something go wrong on the mission, the rocket would have more propellant to adjust to emergencies. SpaceX’s dramatic booster landings also require additional propellant. But to others it is an unnecessary risk. At a Capitol Hill hearing earlier this year, members of Congress pressed Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX’s vice president for build and flight reliability, about the safety of the load-and-go procedure. Koenigsmann said that the fueling takes only about a half-hour, a “relatively quick procedure, and we believe that this exposure time is the shortest and therefore the safest approach.” And the company points out that if anything goes wrong


.السعودية توقف بالقوة رئيس وزراء لبنان

واشنطن – بات رئيس الوزراء اللبناني السابق سعد الحريري معتقل من قبل السلطات السعودية، فيما يمكن وصفه تحت إقامة جبرية بمنزله بالرياض حسب وصف مصادر لبنانية، فيما يبدو انه جزء من حملة ضغط .سعودية على إيران وحليفها اللبناني حزب الله تفاصيل مذهلة حول الاحتجاز القسري للحريري توفرت الجمعة من قبل مصدر مطلع في بيروت. تعطي ادلة جديدة ومهمة للأسلوب الذي يتبعه ولي العهد السعودي محمد بن سلمان لتعزيز سلطته بتحريك مشاعر .معادية لإيران في الداخل والخارج شائعات ما يمكن وصفه “خطف ” للحريري و الذي استقال كرئيس للوزراء مساء السبت الماضي اثناء وجوده بالسعودية صدمت العالم العربي. فمسؤولين لبنانيين قلقون ان أبن سلمان، ولي العهد ذي 32 عاما يريد دفع لبنان نحو مواجهة مع إيران، بعض المحللين هناك يشكون ان السعوديين يعاملون اسرة الحريري .الممولين من الرياض منذ عقود، كما لو كانوا ممتلكات هامشية حسب ما يؤكده مصدر لبناني جيد الاطلاع، بدأت القصة يوم الاثنين 30 أكتوبر، عندما سافر الحريري للسعودية للقاء شخصي مع ابن سلمان، كان مع ولي العهد ثامر السبهان، مستشاره الهام للعلاقات مع الدول .العربية مضى اللقاء بشكل طيب، كما يقول المصدر اللبناني، كان الحديث مؤكدا لاستمرار الدعم السعودي للبنان، .بالرغم من هيمنة حزب الله على الحكومة التي يرأسها الحريري عاد الحريري لبيروت في الأول من نوفمبر، واجتمع مع مجلس وزرائه ليطلعهم على مجريات الزيارة، تقول المصادر انه أبلغهم ان السعودية ستدعم خطط لمؤتمر دولي في باريس لدعم اقتصاد لبنان، واجتماع اخر في روما لدعم جيشها، بالإضافة الى مجلس سعودي لبناني مشترك لتشجيع الاستثمارات. ابلغ الحريري وزرائه بهذه الاخبار بما في ذلك ممثلي حزب الله في المجلس. وانه بالرغم من كون ابن سلمان سيتخذ موقفا .متشددا حيال إيران، الا انه طمئنهم بأن لبنان لن يكون هدفا لذلك. هذه التطمينات تأكد خطئها الان خطط الحريري للعودة للرياض للاجتماع مع الملك سلمان يوم الاثنين، 6 نوفمبر، ولكن الجدول تغير عندما تلقى اتصالا عاجلا من برتوكول ابن سلمان يبلغه ان الأمير يريد الاجتماع به يوم الجمعة الثالث من نوفمبر وان يقضي نهاية الأسبوع معه. لم يتم لقاء الجمعة وظل الحريري منتظرا ببيته الفاخر بطريق التخصصي .بالرياض ما حصل بعد ذلك هو الجزء المرعب من القصة، فحوالي الثامنة صباح السبت، وهو موعد مبكر للاجتماعات في السعودية، استدعي الحريري على عجل للاجتماع ببن سلمان، البرتوكولات المعتادة اختفت، ومضى الحريري لاجتماعه في سيارتين لا يرافقه غير حراسته الخاصة، اختفى تماما لعدة ساعات، ولم يظهر الا على شاشة التلفزيون حوالي الساعة 2 بعد الظهر يقرأ بيانا يعلن فيه استقالته من منصب رئيس الوزراء مبررا ذلك بتهديدات إيرانية على حياته، وان طهران تصدر ” الفوضى