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Writing last week’s five-part series about knees taught me many things, including that knees look amazing from the inside. (See my colleague Aaron Steckelberg’s glorious knee graphics.)
More importantly, I learned knees can remain intact and healthy lifelong — if we take care of them. I’m now using these four tips from the series to keep my knees healthy.
- Keep running. Howard Luks, an orthopedic surgeon and knee expert, reassured me running won’t ruin my knees. “Moving and using the knee aren’t wearing away cartilage,” he told me. “Movement nourishes cartilage.” At 63, he runs three or four time a week.
- Sit less. A study I covered found that four hours of daily sitting, not counting at work, increased the risk for knee arthritis by 25 percent. I was sitting to write this. I’m getting up now.
- Be cautious with ibuprofen. My go-to painkiller is linked to an increased risk for knee arthritis in some people with prolonged use, new studies show.
- Jump at the gym. I’m no spring chicken, barely a late-autumn duck, but Luks’s gym workout, with jump squats and jump-ups, inspired me. Last week, I tried my first box jump in decades. My knees approved.
The world’s oldest subway system is confronting one of the world’s newest forms of obnoxious behavior — passengers playing music or streaming shows so loudly that other travelers become a hostage audience.
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced an initiative Monday aimed at compelling audio scofflaws to put on headphones or risk being removed from Britain’s famous tube system and double-decker buses.
“We’ve all been on the train when someone starts blasting music or videos from their phone,” Burnham said. “It gets on your nerves and can quickly spoil the journey.”
Underground etiquette is not exactly the most pressing issue facing the British government, but polls show that at least 60 percent of voters see “headphone dodgers” as a scourge worth tackling.
The initiative will start with new public service messages urging riders to “share the carriage, not the noise,” followed by stepped-up enforcement measures including fines up to 1,000 British pounds (about $1,330) for “nuisance” behavior.
When the trendy Super Bowl pick Los Angeles Rams lost to the San Francisco 49ers in Week 1 in Melbourne, Australia, it was easy to blame jet lag. When they lost to the Denver Broncos in Week 3, maybe that was some bad luck on a controversial call. When they went down to the Buffalo Bills in Week 5, well, the Bills are a dangerous team.
But then, on Sunday, the Rams lost to the Arizona Cardinals (No. 24 in yards gained on offense, No. 25 in yards allowed on defense). It might be time to accept that this Rams team, now 2-4 and tied for last place in the NFC West, is just not very good.
That’s unfortunate because L.A. mortgaged the future for this year’s roster. It traded its 2026 first-round draft pick and three other picks to the Kansas City Chiefs for cornerback Trent McDuffie. And it sent Defensive Rookie of the Year Jared Verse, its ’27 first-round pick and two other picks to the Cleveland Browns for defensive end Myles Garrett.
This is the Rams’ preferred team-building strategy — the selection that netted Verse was the only time they used their own first-round choice since ’17, and they’ve made the playoffs every year but two in that span. But eventually that method stops working in the present, and then there’s not much to look forward to in the future.
In 2020, investigators were alerted to a strange shape on a satellite image of a remote Pacific island: An object they believed could be wreckage from the plane of legendary aviator Amelia Earhart, who vanished almost 90 years ago while attempting to become the first woman to fly around the world.
On Monday, an American team that went to investigate said the object was probably a collection of large trees that had mostly washed away.
“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to find that smoking gun,” Steve Schultz of Purdue University said in a video from the Nikumaroro atoll in the island nation of Kiribati.
Over the years, there have been many theories about the fate of Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan — from initial conclusions that their plane crashed into the ocean to the possibility they were captured by the Japanese.
Despite the lack of new findings, the team still supports a hypothesis that the pair crash-landed on Nikumaroro, then known as Gardner Island, where human bones — thought by some to have belonged to Earhart — were discovered in 1940.
Good morning. It’s Monday, Oct. 19, and I can’t wait to see the new Elizabeth Holmes documentary, even though it broke columnist Monica Hesse’s brain.
Today’s edition of The 7 briefing leads with the surprising House battlefields emerging ahead of the midterm elections. The political environment appears increasingly favorable for Democrats and grim for Republicans, meaning districts once considered locks for the GOP are suddenly in play.
The 7 also picks up two important world stories that developed over the weekend — President Donald Trump’s increasingly bitter feud with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a night of widespread violence in France following protests on Saturday over the cost of living.
Further down, we take a look at emerging research showing that routine vaccines may protect your heart. And did you get the Sunday scaries last night? We have advice for dealing with nighttime anxiety.
Read today’s edition of The 7 here.
East Potomac Golf Links has undergone plenty of changes since golfers first teed off there more than a century ago. Few, though, have transformed the landscape as quickly as what happened last weekend.
In a matter of hours on Oct. 10, National Park Service crews cut down more than 400 trees across two large swaths of the federally-owned course. By Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes had ordered the cutting to stop through at least Oct. 26, finding that NPS probably violated federal environmental law and warning of damage that could not be undone.
“Destroyed trees cannot be replaced,” she wrote.
In a sharply worded filing on Friday, the government urged Reyes to “end the drama now” and lift her order on the tree cutting, accusing the court of overstepping its authority. NPS also disclosed that the project is larger than previously estimated: About 729 trees are targeted for removal, roughly 300 of which remain standing.
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Satellite images of East Potomac Golf Links from October 8 and October 13 show views before and after the Park Service removed hundreds of trees. Source: Satellite imagery via Planet Labs PBC.
Before removal
After removal
Oct. 8
Oct. 13
Areas where
trees were
removed
Zone A
Zone A
Potomac River
Zone B
Zone B
D.C.
Detail
2,000 FEET
Source: Satellite imagery via Planet Labs PBC
Before removal
After removal
Thursday, Oct. 8
Tuesday, Oct. 13
Zone A
Zone A
Areas where
trees were
removed
Washington Channel
Potomac River
Zone B
Zone B
D.C.
Detail
Hains
Point
2,000 FEET
Source: Satellite imagery via Planet Labs PBC
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According to the filing, crews removed approximately 369 trees from Zone A, which runs from the 17th green to about midway down the 16th fairway on the Blue Course. They took down another 63 trees in Zone B, which stretches from behind the 12th green through the 13th hole and into the first half of the 14th. That puts the government’s current estimate of trees removed at about 432, though NPS cautioned that it plans to verify the number by counting stumps.
Unlike trees NPS removed earlier this year because they were dead, dying, hazardous or invasive, the trees targeted last weekend were healthy and noninvasive, according to NPS officials’ testimony. This week, freshly cut trunks and leafy branches remained piled between the fairways.
NPS said the removals were intended to carry out recommendations in a 2019 cultural landscape report that called for thinning trees to restore the open, links-style character envisioned when the course was designed a century ago. The agency has maintained that the work is separate from President Donald Trump’s planned overhaul of East Potomac.
Reyes was skeptical, concluding that officials raced to undertake the tree work because Trump “demands haste on his redesign,” rather than because of “some newfound zeal” to implement the old report.
Additional Coverage
Arizona is joining Nevada in suing over the federal government’s plan for the dwindling Colorado River, warning that it could lead to devastating water cuts.
Arizona on Friday filed a motion to intervene in Nevada’s lawsuit filed in August. Tom Buschatzke, the director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, told reporters that the federal plan unfairly penalizes three “Lower Basin” states: California, Nevada and Arizona.
“Like Nevada, Arizona believes the federal government’s new operating framework ignores basic elements of the law of the river and could result in cuts … that would devastate Arizona’s economy,” Buschatzke said.
The Interior Department’s plan — released after states failed to come to an agreement on their own — means that Arizona, California and Nevada will get about 20 percent less water from the river over the next two years.
But Arizona officials said they are most worried about the possibility of deeper cuts. The steepest cuts allowed under the plan could “effectively dry up” the Central Arizona Project, a water system serving much of the state, Buschatzke said.
An Interior Department spokesperson said in a statement that it is “unfortunate to see Arizona playing politics instead of working toward meaningful solutions.”
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