WAPO 2-27

2月27日的华盛顿邮报阅读

Despite finding, no direct penalty for Saudi prince

The Biden administration will impose no direct punishment on Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, despite the conclusion of a long-awaited intelligence report released Friday that he “approved” the operation, administration officials said.
“The relationship with Saudi Arabia is bigger than any one individual,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a news conference. By making public the intelligence report — withheld by the Trump administration for two years — and taking other actions, President Biden has moved toward a promised “recalibration” of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, he said.
But for many lawmakers, human rights activists and Saudi
dissidents, it was not enough.
The crown prince “should suffer sanctions, including financial, travel and legal — and the Saudi government should suffer grave consequences as long as he remains in government,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), whose legislation in early 2019 mandated release of the report by the Office of the Director of National

Maybe the summer won’t be so cruel

It’s been months since David Rubin’s children have seen their 87-year-old grandmother, and only from a distance because of the coronavirus. But Rubin, an epidemiologist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, is now making plans for a family reunion this summer — hunting for a rental property big enough to fit four families。

“As a modeler, my mind works in terms of probabilities, and the probability of a great summer is really increasing,” said Rubin director of the hospital’s PolicyLab.

There is a good chance that by summer, American life will look
and feel very different. Eating inside a restaurant or a friend’s
house may no longer be controversial. Cookouts and summer vacations may return. Many aspects of life will be reminiscent of
a time before the coronavirus — as long as vaccinations continue
to increase and Americans stay careful during the spring, when more highly transmissible variants could proliferate and lead to an increase in cases, according to interviews with more than a dozen epidemiologists, modelers and virologists.

“There are wild-card factors that could change this, but I’ve been telling people if there are things you’ve been wanting to do, think July or late summer,” said Jeffrey Shaman, an infectious disease expert who leads the modeling team at Columbia University.

Some of the growing reasons for optimism: Cases, hospitalizations and deaths have fallen steeply the past few weeks in the United States and worldwide. The World Health Organization reported an 11 percent global

Mail delays are creating financial pain for customers

Mark Currie of Virginia had three checks snagged in postal delays in three months. In New Jersey, Lois Fitton says she was forced to pay interest on a credit card balance because the bill never arrived. Jim Rice says two insurance companies canceled policies for his property management business in Oklahoma after the payments got lost in the mail.

As the service crisis at the U.S. Postal Service drags into its eighth month, complaints are reaching a fever pitch. Consumers are inundating members of Congress with stories of late bills — and the late fees they’ve absorbed as a result. Small-business owners are waiting weeks, even months, for checks to arrive, creating cash-flow crunches and debates on whether to switch to costlier private shippers. Largescale mailers, such as banks and utilities, are urging clients to switch to paperless communication, a shift that would further undercut the agency’s biggest