D.C. mayor moves to legalize dispensaries

District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser announced legislation Friday to legalize recreational marijuana dispensaries in the nation’s capital, the latest effort by Ms. Bowser and city lawmakers to raise tax revenue and offer a business boost to low-income communities of color disproportionately impacted by pot criminalization.

Under a 2014 voter-approved law, district residents may grow and possess small amounts of marijuana for recreational use. But they cannot legally buy it — and the city cannot tax sales of it — because of a provision in the federal budget that prohibits the district from using funds to regulate and tax such transactions.

Advocates have long hoped Congress would kill that budget rider, which was added by House Republicans. Removing it appears more likely now with Democrats in control of both chambers of Congress and the White House.

Ms. Bowser’s bill, dubbed the Safe Cannabis Sales Act of 2021, would require automatic expungement of records for certain cannabis convictions and direct sales tax revenue toward certain wards and programs to help disadvantaged residents. It contains other provisions aimed at equitably distributing the program’s benefits and opportunities.

By train, bus, and railroad handcart — that’s how Russian diplomats working in North Korea eventually made it home after a grueling 34-hour journey this week.

The employees of the Russian Embassy in Pyongyang left the country amid worsening conditions brought on by the government’s harsh coronavirus measures, including bans on everything from hard currency to foreign cargo.

According to Russia’s Foreign Ministry, the departing group included eight embassy employees and their families. In two photographs accompanying a Facebook post, the embassy’s third secretary, Vladislav Sorokin, is shown pushing his young children and the family’s luggage down railway tracks on a handcart, which they used to reach the Russian border.

North Korea, in a bid to shield its people and poor health system from the pandemic, has halted all train and air transport to neighboring countries and even prohibited imports from China, where the virus was first discovered more than a year ago.