RIO DE JANEIRO - The coolest sport in Brazil takes place outside the Olympic bubble. There are no cameras and anthems, certainly more mettle than medals.

To find it, you need only stroll along Ipanema beach, where young boys fly kites and tourists and locals alike spread their towels. In the mornings, it's usually quiet, the waves crashing the shoreline and vendors just starting to hawk everything from sunglasses to grilled meats to alcoholic drinks. It's not too early for a caipirinha, apparently, and it's not too early for Marcello Lepre, the top-ranked footvolley player in Rio de Janeiro.

The 26-year-old is an acrobatic whiz in a sport that requires as much athleticism, flexibility and quickness as most of the Olympic competitions being staged here this month. Footvolley is a hybrid sport, born on Copacabana beach more than 50 years ago when football players, either bored or enterprising, began juggling a soccer ball over a net. It's part volleyball, part soccer and wholly intoxicating. Imagine volleyball in which players can use any body part except their arms and hands. Getting the ball over the net might be as simple as a header or as beautiful as a bicycle kick.

Lepre has been playing since he was 5 years old, gravitating toward footvolley rather than soccer. He's a professional in a sport that isn't particularly lucrative, but the lithe young man is recognizable to any regular along Ipanema beach, where footvolley nets outnumber volleyball courts. Lepre arrives every morning for training and returns each afternoon to play all-comers. Pick-up games could draw crowds, especially those inclined to lay down a bet or two.

"It's a beautiful sport," Lepre says. "It's fun to play, and it's beautiful to watch."

Lepre, who has won two world championships, is hopeful the sport continues to grow. As it is now, he scores modest cash prizes from winning tournaments and makes ends meet by helping at his family's ice cream parlor.

Renato Adnet is the founder of the Rio de Janeiro Footvolley Federation and has organized leagues and tournaments across the country. He commissioned a study that found more than 40,000 players in Brazil and said the sport has spread to 70 countries in some fashion. In Brazil, former soccer stars such as Romário and Ronaldinho are some of footvolley's most famous adherents.

Once the Olympics packs up its rings and leaves town, the beach volleyball arena on Copacabana beach will be used for footvolley's world championships. Organizers are hopeful they can fill 12,000 seats and ride the Olympic wave toward more international exposure. Twenty-three countries will take part, including teams from the United States, Japan and Australia, in two-person and four-person tournaments. Adnet thinks the sport's popularity is nearing a point for Olympic consideration.

"Our biggest problem is the women," he said. "We do not have enough women playing."

The sport is still in its infancy in the United States. There's a fledgling tour, a handful of high-level players, some sponsorship and regional cable network deals. But American organizers are still trying to grow its ranks.

"Understand that this is a difficult sport to pick up," said Eric Montoya, head of the Florida-based U.S. Footvolley Association, "but that is also the opportunity for growth because it does require training, dedication, and most importantly it is very fun to play."

In Brazil, the sport can be found at all hours of the day on most of Rio's beaches - as long as the rain isn't falling and the wind is calm - and also in parks of land-locked cities such as Manaus and Brasilia. One recent morning on Ipanema, Jerson Fernandes, a 53-year-old former professional soccer player who now trains footvolley hopefuls, barked instructions at a young woman.

He booted a serve from the backline over the net - the court is slightly smaller than ones used for volleyball and the net is lower, 7 feet 2 inches off the ground - and watched as the young player let the ball bounce off her chest.

"Higher!" he yelled in Portuguese. "Put the ball higher. How are you gonna do this? You're too cold."

While some of the footwork might translate to the beach, many soccer players still struggle adapting to the sport. Moving on sand is more difficult. Using the shoulders and chest to pop the ball to a teammate takes some learning. Keeping the ball skyward can be counter-intuitive.

"It is hard to compare," Fernandes said. "Yes, you use your feet at times, but the rest is different. The posture and dynamics are totally different, the things you must do are totally different."

With a soft playing surface and less ground to cover, there aren't as many injuries and top players compete into their 40s and 50s. Pick-up games match men and women of all ages.

João Neto, 31, is Portuguese, and he came to visit Rio de Janeiro for Carnival two years ago.

"I saw a crowd gathered on the beach," he said. "I had no idea what they were doing. But then I saw footvolley, and I kind of fell in love."

He moved to Rio and spends all of his free time on the beach. Those first games earned him a variety of bruises, as his shoulders and chest struggled receiving the ball. But he slowly learned to make soft passes to his partner, drill headers hard over the net and make diving kicks to save a point.

A game with highly-skilled players looks as much like a ballet as a competition, players flying through the air, manipulating their bodies like acrobats, desperate to keep the ball in the air. The Summer Games brought the best athletes in the world to Rio de Janeiro. Some of them might have already been here, twirling and kicking far away from the spotlight.

"It needs infrastructure. It needs to grow," Neto said. "But with the Brazilians pushing the sport forward, hopefully it can be in the Olympics someday."

On a sleek white coffee table in Apple CEO Tim Cook's fourth-floor office in late July, beneath framed posters of Robert F. Kennedy, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Jackie Robinson, a rose-gold iPhone 6s sits in its original box. Earlier that morning, Cook had stood in front of employees at Apple headquarters and held up the phone, which a staffer had hand-delivered from a store in Beijing to commemorate a notable occasion: Apple had sold its billionth iPhone.

That celebratory milestone - Cook laughs when asked by a reporter if he'll stop counting, as McDonald's did with its hamburgers - aptly coincides with another big moment for the technology giant's chief executive. A few weeks later, Cook would mark the fifth anniversary of what has been the most closely watched transition of power in corporate history: On Aug. 24, 2011, just six weeks before his death, Apple's iconic founder, Steve Jobs, permanently handed his chief operating officer the reins. "It's been a blur in a lot of ways," says Cook, who had filled in for Jobs during medical leaves. "It feels like it was yesterday in some respects."

It is fitting that these two milestones arrive so close together. That's because the iPhone, launched by Jobs, has been the biggest driver of Apple's massive growth during Cook's tenure. It led the company to soaring valuations and accounted for nearly two-thirds of Apple's revenue in the past year. Just the tally on iPhone sales, almost $141 billion over the past four quarters, is more than the annual sales figures of Cisco, Disney and Nike - combined.

But the iPhone has been a source of recent disappointment, too. In its most recent quarter, iPhone sales fell 23 percent from a year ago, contributing to a 14.6 percent drop in overall revenue. It was Apple's second consecutive quarterly drop in sales after 13 years of growth.

Just after Apple disclosed those results, Cook sat down with The Washington Post to discuss his first five years in one of corporate America's most glaring spotlights. In two sprawling and self-reflective interviews - one in his office and another by phone just before he left for vacation in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks - Cook described why the visibility of the job has been "shocking," how he's learned to deal with the scrutiny, and who he's turned to for advice at pivotal moments (Warren Buffett, on his decision to return cash to shareholders, and Anderson Cooper about publicly disclosing he is gay).

He spoke in candid terms about the mistakes he's made on the way, such as his first hire to run Apple's retail stores ("that was clearly a screw-up"). He fiercely defended Apple's tax policies. He touched on succession planning and the importance of grooming internal candidates. He was at his most spirited when talking about privacy and the long-term future of Apple and the iPhone - calling Apple's big presence in the smartphone industry "a privilege, not a problem" - and quieted considerably when talking about Jobs's memory. "I know this sounds probably bizarre at this point," he said, "but I had convinced myself that he would bounce."

Cook, 55, chooses his words carefully, taking long pauses and speaking with a slight Alabama drawl. Though he has favorite phrases - many things are "deep," and Apple's mission is always its "North Star" - he eschews the jargon many CEOs use. And while he's quick to trumpet Apple, he is also unassuming, quickly noting, after saying his job can be "lonely," that "I'm not looking for any sympathy. CEOs don't need any sympathy."

That reflects how Cook's imprint on Apple has often been described - making it more systematic, more transparent, more team-oriented, more humble. He has engaged on social issues more than most CEOs, writing op-eds on legislation that limits gay rights and making the extraordinary decision earlier this year to oppose the FBI's request to unlock the San Bernardino, California, killer's phone.

As CEO, he gets high marks for managing the company's growth, keeping margins high and expanding further into markets such as China (Apple had four retail stores in China five years ago. Today it has 41.) He has pushed into the enterprise market, grown Apple's product lineup and positioned Apple to make more money off the devices it's already sold: Its services business, which includes things like iTunes, iCloud and a mobile payments service, is projected to be the size of a Fortune 100 business next year - all on its own. Apple remains the most valuable and most profitable company in the S&P 500 index.

Yet as the company deals with declining sales in its major device categories and in markets like China, critics and some investors have fretted about Apple's innovation mojo under Cook. The first all-new device during his tenure, the Apple Watch, is not yet a mega hit. The iPhone juggernaut faces a saturated smartphone market, growing competition from low-cost startups and longer upgrade windows from consumers. Rumored big concepts behind the curtain - such as a reported car project - appear to be years away.

Some analysts say such impatience is shortsighted, and that the long-term potential for things like services, augmented reality and even a possible car could ultimately transform the way Cook's tenure is viewed. "Investors are so finicky that they lose track of the big picture," says Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray who covers Apple. "I think the wisdom and legacy of Tim Cook is going to be determined by what happens in the next five years."

In the conversation below, Cook looks back as well as ahead at those next five years - hinting at augmented reality but refusing to comment about a car project, saying Apple believes people love a surprise. It has been edited for length and clarity.

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Q. Your first day in this job, you sent a memo to employees that said, "I want you to be confident that Apple is not going to change." Five years later, it has to have changed. What qualities of Apple are immutable, in your view?

A. The DNA of the company is really what I was talking about there. The North Star has always been the same, which for us, is about making insanely great products that really change the world in some way - enrich people's lives. And so our reason for being hasn't changed.

Other things do change. But that's the thread that ties everyone together.

Q. And what has changed?

A. The obvious things are we have more employees. The company is four times larger [by revenue since 2010]. We've broadened the iPhone lineup. That was a really key decision and I think a very good one. We've gone into the Apple Watch business, which has gotten us into wellness and in health. We keep pulling that string to see where that takes us. Lots of core technology work has been done.

Q. You've said you don't want to be a traditional CEO. What do you mean by that?

A. I think of a traditional CEO as being divorced from customers. A lot of consumer company CEOs - they're not really interacting with consumers.

I also think that the traditional CEO believes his or her job is the profit and loss, is the revenue statement, the income and expense, the balance sheet. Those are important, but I don't think they're all that's important. There's an incredible responsibility to the employees of the company, to the communities and the countries that the company operates in, to people who assemble its products, to developers, to the whole ecosystem of the company. And so I have a maybe nontraditional view there. I get criticized for it some, I recognize. But I've never wanted to be the stereotypical CEO. I don't think I'd be very good at it, honestly. And I don't think for Apple that would in the long run be good for the company. If you care about long-term shareholder return, all of these other things are really critical.

Q. You've got the billionth iPhone on the table here. One thing that has changed is that in 2011 about 44 percent of the company's sales came from iPhone. Now it's close to two-thirds. How can Apple move forward when so much of its business is tied up in the iPhone and an industry that's cooling off?

A. This is actually a privilege, not a problem. Think about this: What other products do you know where the ratio of people to the product, for a consumer electronics product, will be one-to-one over the long haul? I don't think there is another one.

Q. Meaning?

A. The global sales of PCs each year are about 275 million right now. That number's been declining. The global market for smartphones is 1.4 billion. Over time, I'm convinced every person in the world will have a smartphone. That may take a while, and they won't all have iPhones. But it is the greatest market on Earth from a consumer electronics point of view.

Look at the core technologies that make up the smartphone today and look at the ones that will be dominant in smartphones of the future - like AI. AI will make this product even more essential to you. It will become even a better assistant than it is today. So where you probably aren't leaving home without it today - you're really going to be connected to it in the future.

That level of performance is going to skyrocket. And there is nothing that's going to replace it in the short term or in the intermediate term, either.

I realize that the people who are focused on this 90-day clock say, "Oh, my God, the smartphone industry only grew by 1 percent or decreased by 6 percent." You know, the global economy's not that great right now. But if you're in it for the long haul, this is the best market on earth.

Q. So to those who ask where's the next big, world-changing category for Apple - it's sitting on this $231.5 billion pile of cash - are you saying there's nothing like the smartphone?

A. Technology is one of these industries where every week there's a new shiny object that people are skating to. Netbooks - look back, everybody was writing like netbooks were this unbelievable thing, everyone was asking us, "Why aren't you making one?" Same thing with the PDA. Remember what happened with the PDA? Up and down. It was like the hula hoop. Technology is full of those.

I'm not saying we're not going to do anything else. I'm saying this is still an unbelievable product category to be in, and not just for this quarter, year or for years. So I would not want anybody to think this, oh, this "better days are behind us" thing.

Q. Some analysts have said that.

A. And it doesn't bother me. Because honestly, they were saying that about Apple in 2001. They were saying it in 2005. They were saying it in 2007 - this stupid iPhone, whoever dreamed up this thing? Then they were saying that we peaked in 2010, then it was 2011. We got to $60 billion [in revenue], and they said you can't grow any more from this. Well, last year we were $230 billion. And, yes, we're coming down some this year. Every year isn't an up, you know. I've heard all of it before. And I don't subscribe to it because it's traditional thinking in a lot of ways: You can't get large because you are large.

Q. How do you make the case that Apple is still a long-term growth company?

A. In today's products we have services [iCloud, App Store, Apple Pay and the like], which over the last 12 months grew about $4 billion to over $23 billion [in sales]. Next year we've said it's going to be a Fortune 100 company in size.

What else? The iPad Pro. What we saw in this past quarter is that about half of the people who are buying one are using it at work. We have an enormous opportunity in enterprise. Last year we did $25 billion or so in it around the world. We're collaborating much better with key partners because it's important, if you're making a decision to use our products or anybody's products in the enterprise, that they work well together. And so we're working with Cisco because they're incredible with the network infrastructure. We're working with IBM, who's written a number of apps. We're working with SAP because they own the back of the house, in terms of the processing. They own three-quarters of the world's transactions, in terms of it running on their products.

And then, of course, the markets. We have done fairly well in China. India is fast-growing, but our base there is smaller. One of the big things that has held India back is the cellular infrastructure. They have two major carriers putting in a lot of investment to bring 4G. You can imagine if you didn't have 4G today. You can't enjoy video on a 3G. Periodically you can, but not consistently. This is a game changer.

And so I look at it and say: markets? Enterprise - huge. Geographies? India is one I've talked about, but there are others. Products? We purposely don't talk about that one. But you can imagine. Step back and say what's Apple so great at? Apple is the only company that can take hardware, software and services and integrate those into an experience that's an "aha" for the customer. You can take that and apply to markets that we're not in today. There's not a limitation that we can only do that in the smartphone area or in the tablet or Mac or watch area.

Q. You succeeded one of the icons of American business. What does it feel like to step into those shoes?

A. To me, Steve's not replaceable. By anyone. [Voice softens] He was an original of a species. I never viewed that as my role. I think it would have been a treacherous thing if I would have tried to do it. When I first took the job as CEO, I actually thought that Steve would be here for a long time. Because he was going to be chairman, work a bit less after he came back up the health curve. So I went into it with one thought, and then weeks later - six weeks later, whatever -

Q. Quickly.

A. It was very quickly. [The day he died] was sort of the worst day ever. I just - I had really convinced myself. I know this sounds probably bizarre at this point, but I had convinced myself that he would bounce, because he always did.

Q. What did you think you knew about leading Apple that turned out to be wrong?

There's nothing like sitting in the chair, so to speak. I was reminded that customers have a really deep love for the company. I started just getting an avalanche of customer mail. I don't mean complaints. Email. Positive. Negative. Points of view. Not the 'hey, this broke, I'm mad.' Largely not that kind of stuff. Things much deeper than that. Moved by how they were treated in a store. Lots of people have written me about FaceTime and how they could be near their mother's or father's bedside before they died only because of it.

Q. But what about in terms of running the company?

A. I learned that the scrutiny was much higher than I thought. Media interest and scrutiny - social networking was taking off at that time - and so a lot of the "love," so to speak, and interest from customers, I think, transfers to media interest as well. And so there's a lot of visibility on the company. We can do very few things without it being reported somewhere.

Q. You and Alan Greenspan or Janet Yellen would probably have a lot to talk about. It seems like every word you say is scrutinized. How do you get used to that?

A. You don't. You're both praised and criticized, and the extremes are wide - very wide. And that can happen all in a day. You build up - my skin got materially thicker after August 2011. And I don't mean in a bad way. I don't mean that I'm callous and don't care. I think I'm a bit better today about compartmentalizing things and not taking everything so personally.

That was just downright shocking to me, honestly. I thought the visibility went with Steve, not the company. And so I thought with a different CEO, with me, that would instantly change. It didn't.

Q. You've been more outspoken on social issues than any other CEO of a company your size. Do you think companies have a responsibility to publicly take on such issues as civil rights and climate change?

A. I think everybody has to make their own decision about it. Maybe there are compelling reasons why some people want to be silent. I think for us, though - for a company that's all about empowering people through our products, and being a collection of people whose goal in life is to change the world for the better - it doesn't sit right with me that you have that kind of focus, but you're not making sure your carbon footprint isn't poisoning the place. Or that you're not evangelizing moving human rights forward. I think every generation has the responsibility to enlarge the meaning of human rights.

I do view that a CEO today of Apple should participate in the national discussion on these type of issues.

Q. Who were you thinking about when you decided to write the op-ed where you publicly came out as gay?

A. I was thinking about kids. I was getting notes from kids who knew I was gay, or assumed I was, because of something they had read on the Web. And they were kids who were distraught. Some had been pushed out by their families. They thought they couldn't achieve anything. They couldn't do anything. They were seeing the national discourse around it and feeling isolated and depressed. And I just thought - I've got to do something.

Q. And you speaking out would do what?

A. I thought it would minimally say you can do pretty good in this world and be gay. That it's not a limiter. It's okay to be. That it's okay to be honest about it. I figured if I could help one person, it would be worth it.

It had been planned for quite a long time. It was not something that was done in a moment, by any means. It was probably a year. Just thinking through what to say, how to say it, where to say it, how to do that in a way that advanced what I was trying to do.

I wanted it to be in a business [publication]. That's what I know, that's who I am. There was a lot of work there. I visited people. I talked to Anderson Cooper at length - multiple times. Because I thought that the way that he handled his announcement was really classy. I was getting advice from people who I thought were really great people who had really deeply thought about it.

Q. There are few jobs in corporate America that have the same scope, breadth and size as yours. Geopolitics. National security. Consumer retail. Global supply chains. The entertainment industry. It's mind-boggling. Where do you turn to for advice?

A. Whoever I think can help me. When I was going through [the question of] what should we do on returning cash to shareholders, I thought who could really give us great advice here? Who wouldn't have a bias? So I called up Warren Buffett. I thought he's the natural person, and so I try to go through that process on everyone. That doesn't mean I always do what they say. But I think it's incumbent on a CEO to not just listen to points of view but to actually solicit them. Because I think, if not, you quickly become insular. And you're sort of living in the echo chamber.

Q. Who else?

A. For the hearing [in 2013 before the U.S. Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations about Apple's tax practices], I've never testified in front of Congress before. So I called up [Goldman Sachs CEO] Lloyd Blankfein, because I looked back to say who's done this before? I knew Lloyd and thought he'd be honest with me. He gave me great advice. I called up President [Bill] Clinton. He knows a lot about the politics. I'd not met him through a political connection. I'd met him through the foundation. And he was great. I went to Laurene, Steve's wife. Laurene has the lens of knowing me and deeply understanding Apple.

And so, obviously, I get a lot of advice internal to Apple. But I think it's important on these things that are also new to the company to solicit some people outside, even if you conclude to not do what they say.

Q. With the fight with the FBI, did you have any idea what you were getting into?

A. We knew it was going to be very, very difficult. And that the cards were stacked against us. But we spent a lot of time on "what is right here?" People who were really key on this decision are folks like [senior vice president of software engineering] Craig Federighi. This at its heart is a deep, deep technical question. You first have to understand that to do anything else.

The lightbulb went off, and it became clear what was right when we did the first piece of work: Could we create a tool to unlock the phone? After a few days, we had determined yes, we could. Then the question was, ethically, should we? We thought, you know, that depends on whether we could contain it or not. Other people were involved in this, too - deep security experts and so forth, and it was apparent from those discussions that we couldn't be assured.

The risk of what happens if it got out, we felt, could be incredibly terrible for public safety.

We knew the positioning on the outside would not be public safety. It would be security vs. privacy - security should win. But we went through the deep, deep, deep discussions on that. It became clear that the trade-off, so to speak, was essentially putting hundreds of millions of people at risk for a phone that may or may not have anything on it, and that likely didn't, because of other things that we knew about. We thought this actually is a clear decision. A hard one, but a clear one. Then it became more of a matter of how do we explain this. Because this is not easy. You can imagine. You just hear: locked phone. Terrorist. People dead. Why aren't you unlocking this?

Q. Did the FBI fight change how you view the mandate of your job?

A. Customers should have an expectation that they shouldn't need a PhD in computer science to protect themselves. So I think they depend on us to do some things on their behalf. So with that responsibility comes an obligation to stand up. And, in this case, it was unbelievably uncomfortable and not something that we wished for, wanted - we didn't even think it was right. Honestly? I was shocked that they would even ask for this. That was the thing that was so disappointing that I think everybody lost in the whole thing. There are 200-plus other countries in the world. Zero of them had ever asked this.

Q. You've talked about privacy being part of Apple's values. How personal is it for you? You're known as a very private person. You grew up gay in a red state. Did those early years have an impact on how you lead Apple and on your public stances about privacy?

A.. Undoubtedly, your childhood and your upbringing is a constant across your life in terms of the things you learn and your point of view.

But in terms of privacy, I wouldn't link the two. There's a broader thing in play. Privacy, in my point of view, is a civil liberty that our Founding Fathers thought of a long time ago and concluded it was an essential part of what it was to be an American. Sort of on the level, if you will, with freedom of speech, freedom of the press. The other thing is how all this data sits out there in different places. I do worry about people not really understanding deeply about what kinds of things are out there about them. So it's really both of those - not really the growing up in the South.

Q. Back in 2009, you said, "We believe in saying no to thousands of projects." Name one product or project in the past five years you have put on the shelf.

A. [Laughs]. I don't know if I want to do that, because it gives competition some heads-up about things. But be assured that we have. More than one. Because the wonderful thing about Apple is there are many ideas about doing things. We have resources to do a few, but you can only do a few things deep and well, and so you have to say no and have debates about what things are in versus out. So more than one big thing has left the page.

Q. When you look back, are there mistakes you've made that you've learned something from?

A. Maps was a mistake. Today we have a product we're proud of. But we had the self-honesty to admit this wasn't our finest hour and the courage to choose another way of doing it. That's important. It's the only way an organization learns. The classic big-company mistake is to not admit their mistake. They double down on them. Their pride or ego is so large that they can't say we did something wrong. And I think the faster you do that, the better - change gears to something else. If you're honest, people will give you the benefit of the doubt. But if you have your head stuck in the sand and you just keep doing it, I think you lose your employees and your customers as well.

Q. What else?

A. I hired the wrong person for retail [former Dixons CEO John Browett] initially. That was clearly a screw-up. I'm not saying anything bad about him. He didn't fit here culturally is a good way to describe it. We all talked to him, and I made the final decision, and it was wrong. We fairly quickly recognized it and made a change. And I'm proud we did that. A lot of companies would have said, "Oh, he hasn't been here very long." But when you're looking at more time with [then] 50,000 people in retail - that's a lot of people that you're affecting in the wrong way. That was a mistake. I probably have a long list.

It's sort of a lonely job.

The adage that it's lonely - the CEO job is lonely - is accurate in a lot of ways. I'm not looking for any sympathy. You have to recognize that you have blind spots. We all do. Blind spots move, and you want to not just have really bright people around you, but people who will push on you and people to bring out the best in you. People that amplify whatever you're good at. And then also the people who plug the parts that you're not and may never be.

Q. What are you reading?

A. I have two books going right now: One is the Bobby Kennedy book ["Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon," by Larry Tye] that just came out. The other is quite an old book. It's a Gandhi book ["Mohandas K. Gandhi, Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth"] that I got interested in because we went to the Gandhi museum when we were in India recently. I tend to like nonfiction and particularly reading about people and how they lived and how they fought, and what motivated them and their philosophy and so forth.

Q. When Steve handed you the reins, he said Apple had never had an orderly transition of CEO, and he wanted that to happen. What are you doing now to make sure the next transition, whenever it happens, is orderly?

A. At the end of every board meeting, I discuss succession with the board because I might step off the wrong curb or something. We have the good discipline to do that. Then my role is to make sure that the board has great candidates to pick from internally. And I take that role extremely seriously. Look around at the great people I get to work with - there's some really just superb talent in the company.

Q. You've made more acquisitions at Apple, including the purchase of Beats, which was its largest ever, at $3 billion. At its current size, does Apple need big acquisitions like that to grow?

A. Do we need them? No. But we always are looking for companies that have really talented people and great intellectual property, and when we find them we do acquire them. To put that into context, we've acquired 15 to 20 companies a year for the last four years.

Q. Do you think there will be more at that size going forward?

A. I think we'll continue to acquire companies. If you're asking me would we do another one the size of Beats -

Q. Or bigger? You certainly could.

A. We clearly are capable of doing it both from a management-depth point of view and a financial point of view. But we'd only do it if it were great for Apple strategically. We don't acquire for revenue. So the essential for us is the talent and/or [intellectual property]. Those are the things that we optimize around. Now with Beats, we also got revenue. But it wasn't the purpose of it. The purpose was that we were going into streaming - we'd already made a decision to do that. And we looked around at people who might be able to help us.

I think we got Apple Music out probably a little sooner than we would have otherwise. It's infused some great talent on the team.

Q. Sales in greater China were down 33 percent in the most recent quarter. Low-cost competitors like Huawei are getting into building premium phones. Let's talk about China. How much are you worried about competitive and regulatory threats there?

A. We make our investment decisions based on long term. We have to report every 90 days because that's the rules, but it's not how we run the company. So as I look in the long term, I think China is an unbelievable market - not only from a demand point of view and the revenue potential there, but also as a great source of talent. We have over a million and a half developers there. The reach is unbelievable. There are, sort of, speed bumps now with the economy. In a year-ago quarter, we were up 112 percent. So I think you have to back up and put it in perspective. If you look at it over a two-year basis, we were up over 50 percent in the quarter.

Q. We were talking about getting advice from people before your first testimony on Capitol Hill. That hearing focused on the corporate taxes Apple pays. Apple is now awaiting a European Union ruling on whether you owe billions in back taxes, and corporate tax reform is a big election-year issue. Does either a Trump or a Clinton campaign give you or the company any hope that there could be corporate tax reform anytime soon?

A. I think it's in the best interest of the U.S. to have corporate tax reform, regardless of which political party is in charge of the White House. Because if you look at it, the U.S. rules today are that international companies like us and many others can keep their earnings that they earn overseas overseas, and then when they bring them back it triggers the tax liability.

What I've always felt should happen is that every dollar should be taxed immediately with no deferral. But as a consequence of doing that, you should have free flow of capital. What would happen is if a system like that were put in place, it should have more investment going into the United States. We're the only major country in the world that has a system like this. It's not good for the U.S., it's not good for the economy, it's not good for jobs, it's not good for investments.

I think there's wide agreement to that in both parties, by the way. There's a difference of view with different people about how to fix it, but I think everybody agrees the current system isn't working. So I'm optimistic that, in 2017, there will be some sort of corporate tax reform. The U.S. needs to invest more in infrastructure - so what would be great is, if they take the tax proceeds of a corporate tax reform and invest it in infrastructure and roads and bridges and airports.

Q. What do you say in response to Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz's comments on Bloomberg [television], where he called Apple's profit reporting in Ireland a "fraud"?

A. I didn't hear it. But if anybody said that, they don't know what they're talking about. Let me explain what goes on with our international taxes. The money that's in Ireland that he's probably referring to is money that is subject to U.S. taxes. The tax law right now says we can keep that in Ireland or we can bring it back. And when we bring it back, we will pay 35 percent federal tax and then a weighted average across the states that we're in, which is about 5 percent, so think of it as 40 percent. We've said at 40 percent, we're not going to bring it back until there's a fair rate. There's no debate about it. Is that legal to do or not legal to do? It is legal to do. It is the current tax law. It's not a matter of being patriotic or not patriotic. It doesn't go that the more you pay, the more patriotic you are.

And so what we've said - we think it's fine for us to pay more, because right now we're paying nothing on that and we leave it over there. But we - like many, many other companies do - wait for the money to come back.

In the meantime, it's important to look at what we do pay. Our marginal rate, our effective rate in the U.S. is over 30 percent. We are the largest taxpayer in the United States. And so we're not a tax dodger. We pay our share and then some. We don't have these big loopholes that other people talk about. The only kind of major tax credit that we get is the R&D tax credit, which is available to all companies in the United States. That's important to know. The second thing I would point out is we have money internationally because we have two-thirds of our business there. So we earn money internationally.

Q. Do you feel picked on by the EU?

A. You know, they haven't ruled yet. I don't know how they will rule. I hope that we get a fair hearing. If we don't, then we would obviously appeal it.

It's important for everyone to understand that the allegation made in the EU is that Ireland gave us a special deal. Ireland denies that. The structure we have was applicable to everybody - it wasn't something that was done unique to Apple. It was their law.

And the basic controversy at the root of this is, people really aren't arguing that Apple should pay more taxes. They're arguing about who they should be paid to. And so there's a tug of war going on between the countries of how you allocate profits.

Q. Let's jump to Apple's future. You made some statements in the earnings call about artificial intelligence that got a lot of attention. Can Apple catch up with the AI efforts from companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon?

A. Let me take exception to your question. Your question seems to imply that we're behind.

Let's take a look at that. We've been shipping Siri since 2011, and Siri is with you all of the time. Which I think most people would want an assistant with them all the time, whether they're at work or at home or in between or on the soccer field. You don't think of your to-do list, so to speak, only when you're in your kitchen. And the breadth of Siri is unbelievable. Increasingly, Siri understands things obviously without having to memorize certain ways to say things. The prediction of Siri is going way up. What we've done with AI is focus on things that will help the customer. And we announced in June that we're opening Siri to third parties, so third-party developers can now use Siri. So a simple example with that, whatever kind of ride-sharing app you might use, Uber or Lyft in the United States, you could just - using your voice - order the car. So third-party developers are writing tons of those that will be available to the public in the fall. And that's how we're broadening Siri in a huge way.

But there are other things in there, like if you're typing in mail, the prediction capability of the next word or next phrase that you will use has just - Siri has gotten a lot smarter about that. The simple things, like do you drive to the airport? I haven't done that in a little while, but when I did, I always forgot where I put my car.

Q. I just take a picture of the sign on the wall.

A. But you don't even have to do that anymore because Siri will know where you parked. And so things like this really make a difference to people - we do all of that while protecting your privacy. Instead of passing all that information to the cloud, where we're maintaining it all, we do a lot of it on the device itself. So you're in control of your own data.

Q. Do you have a concern about privacy as you push into AI?

A. No. I think that talented people can come up with fantastic ways of using AI without violating privacy. There's a new technology called differential privacy which essentially looks at large data sets to predict user behaviors and requests without going to the precise individual, which might violate privacy.

Now there are some things that we do look at - like if you buy songs, it's a reasonable expectation that we know what songs you buy because you buy them from us. And we use that information with machine learning to recommend other songs you might like.

Q. What about augmented or virtual reality?

A. I think AR [augmented reality] is extremely interesting and sort of a core technology. So, yes, it's something we're doing a lot of things on behind that curtain that we talked about. [Laughs.]

Q. You mentioned earlier about how much more difficult it is to keep things secret. There's been a number of reports about Apple's car project - the people who are being hired or moved into place to lead it. It gets enough attention that it almost seems like an open secret. Why not say something about it?

A. I can't answer a question about something we haven't announced. [Laughs.]

Q. But there's just constant attention about it. Is it tempting to share any kind of details?

A. We've always viewed that people love surprises. We don't have enough anymore in our lives.

Q. Sometimes it seems like Silicon Valley companies are all blending together - everyone's converging on the same big race. Self-driving cars, AI, Google is reportedly building a smartphone. In a tech industry where companies are trying to be "all things to all people," how does Apple's longtime philosophy of simplicity, and being very focused, move it forward?

A. It's as important as it ever was. We're a bit larger today, so we can do a bit more than we could do 10 years ago or even five years ago. But we still have, for our size, an extremely focused product line. You can literally put every product we make on this table. That really is an indication of how focused it is. I think that's a good thing. Regardless of who you are, there's only so many things that you can do at a very high-quality and deep, deep level - personally and in business. And so we're not going to change that. That's core to our model and way of thinking.

Q. Apple has really ramped up spending in research and development. One analyst noted your [incremental] R&D is now greater than the 14 largest automakers, combined. What's the most exciting technology out there to you right now?

A. That one I don't want to answer, because it would give too much of an insight into the things we're doing. But we have ramped up R&D because we are heavily investing in the future - both in current product lines and things that aren't visible as well, including in services. In due time, some of those things will be visible. But there will always be other things that will replace those things that are invisible.

Q. Any final reflections on your tenure? Moments that stuck out at you?

A. I've got the best job in the world. I think about my day and weeks and months and years - I put them in three buckets: people, strategy and execution. I sort of move between those on a daily basis as to where I put my time. I always think the most important one of those is people. If you don't get that one right, it doesn't matter what kind of energy you have in the other two - it's not enough.

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Videos

Tim Cook: 'The job itself is a lonely job' | On Leadership

Apple CEO Tim Cook talks about when it's important to seek out advice, and who he turns to when he does. (Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)

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Tim Cook says Steve Jobs was 'heat shield' for Apple | On Leadership

Apple CEO Tim Cook describes how co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs acted as cover for Apple, taking both praise and blame for the company. (Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)

Short URL: http://wapo.st/2aMPgR7

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Economic distress and anxiety across working-class white America have become a widely discussed explanation for the success of Donald Trump. It seems to make sense. Trump's most fervent supporters tend to be white men without college degrees. This same group has suffered economically in our increasingly globalized world, as machines have replaced workers in factories and labor has shifted overseas. Trump has promised to curtail trade and other perceived threats to American workers, including immigrants.

Yet a major new analysis from Gallup, based on 87,000 interviews the polling company conducted over the past year, suggests this narrative is not complete. While there does seem to be a relationship between economic anxiety and Trump's appeal, the straightforward connection that many observers have assumed does not appear in the data.

According to this new analysis, those who view Trump favorably have not been disproportionately affected by foreign trade or immigration, compared with people with unfavorable views of the Republican presidential nominee. The results suggest that his supporters, on average, do not have lower incomes than other Americans, nor are they more likely to be unemployed.

Yet while Trump's supporters might be comparatively well off themselves, they come from places where their neighbors endure other forms of hardship. In their communities, white residents are dying younger, and it is harder for young people who grow up poor to get ahead.

The Gallup analysis is the most comprehensive statistical profile of Trump's supporters so far. Jonathan Rothwell, the economist at Gallup who conducted the analysis, sorted the respondents by their Zip code and then compared those findings with a host of other data from a variety of sources. After statistically controlling factors such as education, age and gender, Rothwell was able to determine which traits distinguished those who favored Trump from those who did not, even among people who appeared to be similar in other respects.

Rothwell conducted this kind of analysis not only among the broad group of Americans polled by Gallup. He was also able to focus specifically on white respondents, and even just on white Republicans. In general, his results were the same regardless of the group analyzed.

Rothwell's research includes far more data than past statistical studies of Trump. It also provides a detailed view not only of the people who support him but also of the places where they live. Academics and other analysts will continue to study the Trump phenomenon in months and years to come, and may, of course, reach different explanations.

This research leaves some mysteries unsolved. Something is afflicting the places where Trump's supporters live, but Trump's supporters do not exhibit more severe economic distress than do those who view him unfavorably. Perhaps, Rothwell suggests, Trump's supporters are concerned less about themselves than about how the community's children are faring. Whatever it is, competition from migrant labor or the decline of factory work appear to be inadequate explanations.

Trump is giving his supporters a misleading account of their ills, Rothwell said. "He says they are suffering because of globalization," Rothwell said. "He says they're suffering because of immigration and a diversifying country, but I can't find any evidence of that."

Trump's support does come from a place of adversity, though, and Rothwell said Trump's prescriptions - tariffs on imported goods, restrictions on immigration and mass deportation - seem disconnected from his voters' real problems.

"I don't see how any of those things would help with their health problems, with the lack of intergenerational mobility," Rothwell said.

Five findings in particular from Rothwell's work are noteworthy: those related to economic factors such as income, manufacturing and opportunity, as well as his conclusions about health and racial diversity.

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Income

From polls, it is clear that Trump's supporters tend to be blue-collar men with lower levels of education. Yet important questions remain. For instance, do these people support Trump because they are on the margins of the economy or for other reasons?

To answer these questions, Rothwell gathered data, mostly from Gallup's regular telephone interviews. In those interviews, pollsters asked how favorably respondents viewed the presidential candidates and collected a variety of other information, including where respondents lived, their race and ethnicity, their religion, their education, their employment and their income. Rothwell also compiled information about the communities where people lived - how healthy the residents were, the local effects of trade, and the level of economic opportunity. He compared all these factors to determine which were closely associated with Trump's supporters.

Among people who had similar educations, lived in similar places, belonged to the same religion and so on, those with greater incomes were modestly more likely to favor Trump. They were just as likely to be either working or looking for work as others.

In one respect, that conclusion was expected. White households tend be more affluent than other households, and Trump's supporters are overwhelmingly white. The same is true of Republicans in general. Yet when Rothwell focused only on white Republicans, he also found that demographically similar respondents who were more affluent viewed Trump more favorably.

These results suggest that personal finances cannot alone account for Trump's appeal. His popularity with less-educated men is probably due to some other trait that these supporters share.

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Trade

Several recent analyses have attributed Trump's success to the disappearance of the factory worker, and to competition with imported goods - especially from China. An essay in the Atlantic in May attributed Trump's success to the gradual decline of employment in the manufacturing sector because of technology and globalization.

"Manufacturing provided steady work for unionized workers without a four-year diploma," Derek Thompson wrote. "When it collapsed, so did unions and the fortunes of non-college men."

On Thursday, a Wall Street Journal report was published online with the headline "How the China Shock, Deep and Swift, Spurred the Rise of Trump." The authors concluded that Trump had won the Republican primary in 89 of the 100 counties most negatively affected by competition from China, measured according to an index developed by a group of academic economists.

Trump's supporters do live and work in economies reliant on manufacturing that have been exposed to intense competition from China. They themselves believe their personal finances have been negatively affected by trade: A poll by the Pew Research Center during the primary found that 60 percent of Trump's supporters said trade had hurt their family's finances, compared with 42 percent of Ohio Gov. John Kasich's supporters and 36 percent of those supporting Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

Yet the Gallup analysis shows that Americans who live in places where employment in manufacturing has declined since 1990 are not more favorable to Trump. Rothwell did not find a relationship when he focused only on white respondents, either, or even specifically on white Republicans.

Trump's supporters have many other traits in common with the factory workers whose economic prospects have been negatively affected by automation and global trade. They tend to be less educated men who hold blue-collar occupations.

Yet those two broad trends in factory work do not account for Trump's appeal, Rothwell's analysis suggests. In fact, among those who share other traits, those who live in districts with more manufacturing are less favorably disposed toward Trump.

Rothwell even found that evidence that people in places affected by Chinese competition viewed Trump more unfavorably. Rothwell, however, was less confident in this finding because of statistical uncertainty.

Rothwell said the results make sense, even though he was surprised by them initially.

Trump's supporters are blue-collar, and many people working in those occupations have jobs in construction, repair or transportation - all of which are protected from Chinese competition. Chinese workers might be assembling semiconductors, but they are not adjusting the thermostat or changing the oil.

Republicans who belong to unions outside of the public sector are not more likely to favor Trump than those who are not in a union, but self-employed Republicans view the candidate more favorably, after adjusting for other factors.

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Opportunity

Trump supporters might not be experiencing acute economic distress, but they are living in places that lack economic opportunity for the next generation.

Rothwell used data from Harvard economists Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren, who studied how children born in the 1980s moved up or down the economic ladder depending on where they grew up. Children raised in places with high economic mobility, such as Boston or Pittsburgh, often surpassed their parents in socioeconomic status. Children raised in places with low economic mobility, such as Raleigh, North Carolina, and Indianapolis, struggled just to do as well as their parents in adulthood.

Trump was especially popular in these parts of the country.

Why does Trump's message resonate the most in these low-mobility areas? The data do not provide a clear answer. It is possible that Trump's supporters, while still better off than many of their neighbors, are worse off than they might have been in the past. Rothwell examined their incomes, but he did not have data on how those incomes had changed over time.

Polling conducted by The Washington Post and ABC News earlier this year, for example, also found no connection between current income and support for Trump. Respondents were also asked, however, whether they felt they were struggling to maintain their standard of living or whether they felt comfortable in their situation and that they were moving up. Those who said they felt they were struggling were more likely to support Trump.

Rothwell also suggested the reason might have something to do with parents and children. Trump voters tend to be older, blue-collar workers, and recent generations have had more difficulty getting well-paying jobs that didn't require much education. Those opportunities have largely dried up. And now, Trump supporters tend to live in places where the world has gotten visibly tougher for the kids on the block. It's easier to agree with Trump's narrative about American decline when you have seen your own child fall down the economic ladder.

This may help explain one puzzle that has stumped election observers so far. Trump has found success playing up economic grievances, stoking anxieties about immigrants, and complaining about Chinese competition. How is it then, that so many of his supporters seem to be economically secure? It could be that Trump supporters aren't worried for themselves, but for their children.

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Health

As The Post reported in March, the counties that supported Trump in the GOP primaries were the same counties in which middle-aged whites suffer from abnormally high death rates. Rothwell's report confirmed this connection and expanded on it.

Among Americans who were similar in terms of income, age, education and other factors, those who lived in places where people were less healthy had more favorable views of Trump. In these communities, whites are dying faster, there is more obesity, and people report more health problems. Again, this pattern held when Rothwell focused on white respondents only and on white Republicans specifically.

In other words, between two people who earn the same amount of money and have the same amount of schooling, the person who comes from a place with bad health is more likely to support Trump. It's hard to say what is causing this bad health, but at least some of this probably has roots in cultural practices - diet and exercise habits, patterns of drinking and smoking, and more.

It's unclear what's going on here, but it's not a recent phenomenon. Economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton recently documented startling increases in the middle-aged white death rate in the past decade, but Rothwell finds that people's support for Trump didn't seem to be affected by changes in the white death rate where they lived. The places where Trump is popular are places where people have been unhealthy for a long time.

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Diversity

Although Trump voters tend to be the most skeptical about immigration, they are also the least likely to actually encounter an immigrant in their neighborhood.

Rothwell finds that people who live in places with many Hispanic residents or places close to the Mexican border, tend not to favor Trump - relative to otherwise similar Americans and to otherwise similar white Republicans.

Among those who are similar in terms of income, education and other factors, those who view Trump favorably are more likely to be found in white enclaves - racially isolated Zip codes where the amount of diversity is lower than in surrounding areas.

These places have not been effected much by immigration, and Rothwell believes that is no coincidence. He argues that when people have more personal experience of people from other countries, they develop friendlier attitudes toward immigrants.

Research from Pew suggests that there is a relationship between the character of people's neighborhoods and their views on immigrants. A study from 2006 found that native-born Americans living in Zip codes with lots of immigrants tended to hold immigrants in higher esteem. For instance, they were about twice as likely to say that immigrants "strengthen the US with their hard work and talents."

This was true, apparently, even after taking into account people's backgrounds and their political leanings. "Analysis of the survey indicates that their more favorable views do not merely reflect their demographics or political composition, but suggests that exposure to and experience with immigrants results in a better impression of them," Pew noted.

Donald Trump's week of bad polls just got much worse.

Four new NBC News/Marist College polls released Friday show Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton leading her Republican rival by five points in Florida, nine points in North Carolina and double digits in Colorado (14) and Virginia (13). All four states have been battlegrounds in recent presidential elections.

And really, it's those last two numbers that show just how massively difficult Trump's path to the presidency is right now. Because without Colorado and Virginia - and a third state where he trails by double digits, Pennsylvania - he's all but sunk.

National polls have gone up and down, and a few this week even show Trump within striking distance of Clinton. But national polls aren't what matter; the Electoral College does. And the numbers in Colorado, Virginia and Pennsylvania are basically prohibitive for Trump right now.

According to Real Clear Politics, the last four polls in Pennsylvania have shown Trump down by 10 to 11 points. In Colorado, the last three polls show margins of 10 to 14 points. In Virginia, Trump has trailed by double digits in the last two polls and by as much as seven and nine points in other recent polls.

The Clinton campaign and its allied super PAC have even taken the bold, confident step of pausing ads in Colorado and Virginia.

But here's the thing: These aren't just three of a handful of battleground states. Trump simply can't lose all three to win. And he probably can't even lose two of them.

That's because Democrats have a built-in advantage in the Electoral College. Clinton basically starts with 242 of the 270 electoral votes she needs if she can just hold the 19 states that Democrats have won in each of the last six presidential elections, which includes Pennsylvania. If she wins all those and adds Florida, with its 29 electoral votes, it's game over.

In that scenario, she can even lose Colorado, Virginia and essentially every other regular swing state - along with New Mexico, which isn't competitive this year but which Republicans have won in recent decades - and still win the election.

Now, Trump has actually polled quite competitively in Florida, with most recent polls showing a virtual tie. But even if he wins there, he can't survive losing Colorado, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Losing all three and New Mexico would put Clinton at 269 electoral votes - just one shy of victory.

From there, all Clinton would need to do is win one of the following: Nevada (6 electoral votes), Iowa (6), Ohio (18), New Hampshire (4) or North Carolina (15). Oh, and remember that the new NBC/Marist polls shows Clinton up nine points in North Carolina, and a poll this week showed Clinton up 17 in New Hampshire.

And if you throw in New Hampshire and give Clinton every battleground state in which she currently leads by double digits in the most recent poll, she's already won with 273 electoral votes.

Again, this is assuming Trump wins every state in which he's not currently down double digits. He still loses.

As we move forward in this campaign, the polls in Florida will be really important. But Florida is a moot point if Trump continues to trail by double digits or even close to it in Colorado, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

MIRAGRAM, Pakistan - With its neat stone walls and paths, bountiful tomato and wheat fields and miniature sheep that graze right up to doorsteps, this picturesque village has an air of timelessness. But the 110 families who live here only have to glance out their doors to see that their irrigated idyll may not last forever.

For generations, the glacier clinging to Miragram Mountain, a peak that towers above the village, has served as a reservoir for locals as well as powering countless streams throughout Pakistan's scenic Chitral Valley. Now, though, the villagers say that their glacier - and their way of life - is in retreat.

"We worry it may even vanish, and there will be no drinking water," said Abdul Nasir, 60, pointing up at the 19,000-foot mountaintop streaked with thin, patchy snow. "Every year it's melting."

With 7,253 known glaciers, including 543 in the Chitral Valley, there is more glacial ice in Pakistan than anywhere on Earth outside the polar regions, according to various studies. Those glaciers feed rivers that account for about 75 percent of the stored-water supply in the country of at least 180 million.

But as in many other parts of the world, researchers say, Pakistan's glaciers are receding, especially those at lower elevations, including here in the Hindu Kush mountain range in northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Among the causes cited by scientists: diminished snowfall, warmer temperatures, heavier summer rainstorms and rampant deforestation.

To many, the 1,000-square-mile Chitral Valley has become a case study of what could await the rest of the world if climate change accelerates, turning life-supporting mountains into new markers of human misery.

"It's already happening here, and my thinking is, in the coming years it will just go from bad to worse," said Bashir Ahmed Wani, a Pakistani forestry specialist with the Asian Development Bank.

Over the past six years, the Chitral Valley has also experienced three major floods that many Pakistani scientists attribute to climate change. The floodwaters killed more than 50 people and stranded hundreds of thousands while undercutting a once-vibrant tourist industry still struggling to rebound after Sept. 11, 2001.

While climate change is a factor in the region's calamities, the valley has also come to symbolize the way a poorly educated populace can make the situation worse, creating a cycle of hardship. Its glaciers offer a stark example.

The valley's population has soared - from 106,000 in 1950 to 600,000 today - and most residents get just two to four hours of electricity a day. Without reliable refrigeration, residents turn to vendors hawking chunks of the valley's shrinking snowpack.

Every day, they say, scores of these entrepreneurs drive five to seven hours to the mountain peaks, where they hack into the glaciers - or scoop up the pre-glacial snow - and load the haul into their jeeps and trucks. Back in the valley, they shovel the snow and ice into shopping bags and sell it for 50 cents a bag.

"There are no fans, no refrigerators working, so I will store this for cooler water and then use it for drinking," said Ubaid Ureh, 46, as he held two dripping bags.

Hameed Ahmed Mir, a local biodiversity expert who has worked for the United Nations, said that one cubic yard of ice weighs about a ton - enough to supply four to seven families with drinking water for several days - and one vehicle can carry three to four tons of snow or ice. "Then multiply that by 200 vehicles per day."

Khalil Ahmed, a former project manager for the U.N.-supported Glacial Lake Outburst Floods Project, said Pakistani law does not make it clear whether the government or the public owns the country's vast glacial reservoirs.

"We are trying to initiate a dialogue with the local people, but these are poor people," he said, noting that glaciers in the neighboring territory of Gilgit-Baltistan are also being sold off.

Other scientists play down the threat, saying there are so many glaciers in Pakistan that it's like taking water from an ocean. But even they admit that the sight of desperate families waiting to buy snow underscores the challenges facing this valley.

Ghulam Rasul, head of the Pakistan Meteorological Department, said the country's weather patterns have shifted dramatically over the past two decades.

When 30-year temperature averages from 1961 to 1990 are compared with those from 1981 to 2010, temperatures in the northern third of Pakistan, where the glaciers are located, increased by 1.2 degrees Celsius, Rasul said.

Summer snow lines on Pakistan's mountains have also crept up an average of 3,395 feet since 1981, he added. And the number of glacial lakes - which form when melting ice gets locked up in or around a glacier - has jumped from 2,420 a decade ago to 3,044 today, according to a recent study.

Equally alarming, Rasul said, the annual South Asia monsoon is growing more dynamic as temperatures spike over land and clash with cooler ocean waters. Now, instead of the late summer monsoon affecting mainly southern and eastern Pakistan, it has also been pumping deluges over the mountains.

"I believe this is an impact of global warming," Rasul said. "If this continues, the glaciers will be melting at a fast rate, producing glacial lakes - and the lakes will burst," triggering disasters.

The weather changes have not seriously threatened the ice packs in Pakistan's northernmost regions, where five of the world's 14 highest peaks - all topping 26,000 feet - are located.

Some researchers think that the glaciers in the Karakorum and Himalayan mountains in Gilgit-Baltistan may even expand as weather patterns shift and more precipitation falls over the highest peaks as snow. Many of Pakistan's glaciers are also covered in silt and debris, which helps insulate them.

But farther south in the Chitral Valley, where most mountains are no higher than 22,000 feet, there is little doubt that the glaciers are under stress, researchers say.

In the village of Reshun last July, a 20-foot wall of water crashed over 126 houses and killed a 4-year-old girl "on a very hot day," said Azmat, 19, who uses only one name.

"We resided here for at least the last 200 years, and we never faced any kind of flood like this," said the girl's father, Nizam Uddim, who estimates that he is 52.

Siraj ul-Mulk, the 71-year-old owner of the Hindu Kush Heights Hotel in Chitral, has been trekking in a different part of northern Chitral since he was a young man.

"It used to take me a whole day to cross the glacier," he said. "Now, it will take me two hours."

But just as in the broader global debate over climate change, some Pakistani researchers remain skeptical that warmer weather is causing Chitral's glaciers to melt.

Arshad Abbasi, a water and energy expert, said Pakistanis alone are responsible for their plight.

He noted that tree roots stabilize the ground that the glaciers bind to - and that Pakistan has retained just 2 to 5 percent of its tree cover. Even worse, he said, goat herders, tourists and even the country's army are allowed to trek over them.

"People say global warming, but in fact, it's human activity" that most threatens the glaciers, said Abbasi, who has studied the effect of Pakistani and Indian military encampments on the shrinking Siachen Glacier in the Himalayan range near the disputed Kashmir region.

Local activists agree that lax environmental standards are magnifying the danger. Inayatullah Faizi, an expert on local culture, noted that much of Chitral's garbage and sewage is dumped directly into streams and the Chitral River - another reason residents buy snow from the glacier.

Aisha Khan, head of the Islamabad-based Mountain and Glacier Protection Organization, said a massive conservation campaign is needed to combat public ignorance. She noted that many mountain-area families still try to make glaciers grow by "fertilizing them," cutting ice from a dark, debris-clogged glacier (male) and setting it next to a clear one (female).

Still, there are signs that younger Pakistanis, even in remote places, are realizing what is at stake.

In Sonoghur, a small village north of Miragram that was devastated by a glacial lake flood in 2007, a middle-age man began telling a reporter that India and Israel are responsible for glaciers melting because they don't want overwhelmingly Muslim Pakistan "to grow and prosper."

But Amir Shahzaib, 17, spoke up.

"We don't believe that, and our new generation wants to take care of the earth," he said, adding that he and his friends were trying to get older residents to stop throwing plastic bottles in waterways.

They can't do it all, he added.

"We are just partly responsible for climate change," Shahzaib said of his village. "Mostly, the city people are responsible."

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The Washington Post's Aamir Iqbal in Peshawar contributed to this report.

The Latin American refinery bust has proved to be a boon for U.S. fuel makers.

From Brazil's Petroleo Brasileiro to Mexico's Petroleos Mexicanos, state oil companies have failed to complete nine projects worth at least $36.4 billion that would have supplied 1.2 million barrels of gasoline and diesel daily. U.S. refiners have stepped up to help fill the gap, with exports almost doubling in the past six years, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Falling oil prices, high levels of debt and failure to find partners to help finance the plants are among the reasons cited by Pemex, Costa Rica's Refinadora Costarricense de Petroleo and Colombia's Ecopetrol for postponing their plans. Brazil's Petrobras has been slowed by the price drop as well as a corruption scandal.

"Refinery investment plans in the region have really fizzled out over the past year or so," Mara Roberts, a BMI Research analyst based in New York, said in an e-mail. "Latin America is keen to take in growing U.S. supplies."

U.S. exports to the region have been rising steadily and reached a record 1.88 million barrels a day this year. Latin America now accounts for 42 percent of America's fuel exports, up from 38 percent a decade ago. U.S. fuel output increased 4.1 percent over two years to a record 19.9 million barrels a day in 2015, EIA data show.

Companies including Valero Energy Corp., Marathon Petroleum Corp. and PBF Energy Inc. have boosted the operating rates of their refineries, and with U.S. domestic demand growing more slowly, the outlet to Latin America is helping sop up excess fuel supply. The utilization rate was at 93.3 percent in the week ended July 29, the highest since November.

Buoyed by cheap oil and gas from shale formations, U.S. refiners increased runs and invested in export terminals, said John Auers, executive vice president of Turner Mason & Co., a Dallas-based consulting firm. Latin America is an "obvious" destination for the U.S. fuel because of its proximity to the Gulf Coast and the delays in building refineries there, he said.

"It's a hand and glove situation," Auers said. About 25 percent of Latin America's fuel demand is currently met by the U.S., he said.

A vessel carrying gasoline or diesel from the Gulf Coast can deliver to Mexico in two days compared with at least 15 for a cargo coming from European rivals.

"We have a competitive advantage going to Mexico and South America," Gary Simmons, Valero's senior vice president of supply and international operations, said on the company's July 26 earnings call.

U.S. refiners are facing competition from Europe, the Middle East and Asia, where exports are surging. Brazil imported diesel from China and Hong Kong in May for the first time in at least five years.

"Certainly we are seeing stray barrels from the Middle East coming into LatAm, and we could see more if European distillate demand deteriorates, but U.S. Gulf Coast refiners are well-positioned to take advantage of LatAm demand growth," Andrew Echlin, a New York-based analyst with Energy Aspects Ltd.

Petrobras has ended up with four unfinished refinery projects amid the slump in oil prices and a corruption scandal that broke in March 2014 when police arrested a former refining chief, accusing him of involvement in a pay-to-play scheme. The former chief, Paulo Roberto Costa, was found guilty of money laundering and is under house arrest after agreeing to cooperate with the investigation.

Brazil's state-controlled energy company halted construction of two 300,000-barrel-a-day refineries, the Premium I and Premium II plants. It stopped work on the 165,000 barrel-a-day Comperj petrochemical complex and postponed an expansion of the Abreu e Lima refinery.

In response to a request for comment, Petrobras said decisions on the construction of new refineries will be announced as part of its next five-year investment plan. It didn't disclose when that announcement will be made. Ecuador's ministry of strategic sectors, which is in charge of the project to build the new Pacifico refinery, didn't return calls and e-mails seeking comment. Valero, Marathon and PBF declined to comment.

Pemex shelved plans to build the 300,000-barrel-a-day Tula Bicentenario refinery and is seeking partners to operate its six existing plants after posting 15 consecutive quarterly losses. Last year for the first time Mexico imported more gasoline than it produced.

Pemex declined to comment on plans for future or existing refineries.

Ecuador's government is seeking partners to build the Pacifico refinery, a project that would process 300,000 barrels a day. Colombia's Ecopetrol said it suspended the expansion of the Barrancabermeja plant until oil prices recover. Costa Rica's national refiner canceled plans to expand the country's only plant.

Countries including Brazil are preparing for increased foreign shipments by seeking to expand import terminals, while others, such as Mexico, are building pipelines to connect with the supplies, said Roberts of BMI Research. Poor maintenance at Latin American plants and the shelved projects mean U.S. processors can rely on the region to absorb excess supply for years to come, she said.

"I don't foresee a major risk to the U.S.'s role in Latin America," she said.