Doctors in the U.S. are increasingly employing a new approach when treating tumors, thanks to the new technology of genomic sequencing. It allows them to look at each patient and his or her cancer as an individual, and develop a customized therapy. The new approach is showing some promising results. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Month: October 2017
Doctors in the U.S. are increasingly employing a new approach when treating tumors, thanks to the new technology of genomic sequencing. It allows them to look at each patient and his or her cancer as an individual, and develop a customized therapy. The new approach is showing some promising results. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Two-time Emmy Award-winning actor Robert Guillaume, who became one of the most prominent black actors on U.S. television playing the cantankerous title character in the hit 1980s series Benson, died of complications from prostate cancer on Tuesday, his wife said. He was 89.
The gravelly voiced Guillaume, who thrived in Broadway musicals before starring on the TV series Soap and its spinoff Benson, died at his Los Angeles home, his wife Donna Brown Guillaume said in a statement. It is not known how long he had been battling cancer.
Robert Guillaume first played sarcastic and irascible butler Benson DuBois on the over-the-top soap opera parody series Soap, which debuted in 1977 and also starred Katherine Helmond, Richard Mulligan and Billy Crystal.
His work on that show won Guillaume won the Emmy for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series in 1979.
His character became so popular that the ABC network created Benson for him and that series ran for seven seasons from 1979 to 1986. Guillaume’s character had been a butler on Soap but on Benson he served as a state governor’s director of household affairs, then state budget director, lieutenant governor and candidate for governor.
Guillaume won the Emmy for outstanding lead actor in a comedy series in 1985 for Benson, the last of six times that he was nominated for an Emmy playing the character. He became the first black actor to win that award.
In accepting the Emmy, he joked, “I’d like to thank Bill Cosby for not being here,” referring to the fact that the star of The Cosby Show and the leading contender for the award had earlier taken himself out of the running for it.
Guillaume said he was sensitive about not playing his character as a racial stereotype and was pleased that Benson evolved from being a butler to a political power player — albeit one that retained the same crotchety attitude.
‘Upward mobility’
“In all honesty and candor and modesty, I always wanted the character to have that kind of upward mobility because it mirrored the American dream,” Guillaume told the Washington Post in 1985.
“When I took a role like Benson, which was in that time-honored sense ‘another black person in a servant’s role,’ I only took the part because it was a good part, it was a part in which I thought, with my own set of ideas about things, I could say something. And, indeed, that has been the case. We saw Benson was in no way anyone’s inferior.”
After the end of Benson, he starred in the short-lived sitcom The Robert Guillaume Show in 1989, as well as the series Pacific Station (1991-1992) and Sports Night (1998-2000). He suffered a stroke in 1999 on the set of Sports Night, but was able to return to his role within weeks.
On film, Guillaume provided the voice for the mandrill Rafiki in Disney’s animated 1994 hit The Lion King and appeared with Morgan Freeman in the 1989 drama Lean on Me.
In 1977, he earned a Tony Award nomination for his role in the Broadway musical Guys and Dolls. He also had leading roles on stage in Purlie and Golden Boy.
Born Robert Peter Williams on Nov. 30, 1927, he changed his name to Robert Guillaume to make it more distinctive (Guillaume is French for William). He was raised by his strong-willed grandmother in a St. Louis slum after his alcoholic mother gave up her children and his father abandoned the family.
After a brief military stint, he worked a series of jobs including as a trolley driver to save money for college.
He studied music at Washington University in St. Louis, where he was noticed by a Hungarian opera singer who helped him get a scholarship to the 1957 Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado. That was followed by an apprenticeship at a theater in Cleveland where he made his professional debut.
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The world’s most famous sled dog race has become engulfed in a doping scandal involving a four-time champion’s team of huskies, giving animal rights activists new ammunition in their campaign to end the grueling, 1,000-mile Iditarod.
The governing board of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race disclosed Monday that four dogs belonging to Dallas Seavey tested positive for a banned substance, the opioid painkiller Tramadol, after his second-place finish last March.
It was the first time since the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog race instituted drug testing in 1994 that a test came back positive.
Seavey strongly denied administering any banned substances to his dogs, suggesting instead that someone may have sabotaged their food, and race officials said he would not be punished because they were unable to prove he acted intentionally. That means he will keep his titles and his $59,000 in winnings this year.
But the finding was just the latest blow to the Iditarod, which has seen the loss of major sponsors, numerous dog deaths, attacks on competitors and pressure from animal rights activists, who say the huskies are often run to death or left bleeding and desperately ill.
“If a member of the Iditarod’s ‘royalty’ dopes dogs, how many other mushers are turning to opioids in order to force dogs to push through the pain?” People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said in a statement Tuesday.
It added: “This doping scandal is further proof that this race needs to end.”
“The race is all about winning and getting to the finish line despite the inhumane treatment towards the dogs,” said Fern Levitt, director of the documentary Sled Dogs.
Earlier this year, the Anchorage-to-Nome trek lost a major corporate backer, Wells Fargo, and race officials accused animal rights organizations of pressuring the bank and other sponsors with “manipulative information” about the treatment of the dogs.
Five dogs connected to this year’s race died, bringing total deaths to more than 150 in the Iditarod’s 44-year history, according to PETA’s count. And last year, two mushers were attacked by a drunken man on a snowmobile in separate assaults near a remote village. One dog was killed and others were injured. The attacker was given a six-month sentence.
Seavey won the Iditarod in 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016. He finished second this year to his father, Mitch, and has had nine straight top-10 finishes.
Dogs are subject to random testing before and during the race, and the first 20 teams to cross the finish line in Nome are all automatically tested.
Latest controversy
“I have never given any banned substance to my dogs,” the 30-year-old Seavey said in a video posted on his Facebook page. He said that security is lax along the route and that someone might have tampered with his dogs’ food.
He added that he wouldn’t be “thrown under the bus” by the race’s governing board and that he has withdrawn from the 2018 race in protest.
Seavey said he expects the Iditarod Trail Committee to ban him from the race for speaking out. Mushers are prohibited from criticizing the race or sponsors.
Iditarod spokesman Chas St. George said that decision would be up to the committee’s board of directors.
The committee decided to release the name of the offending musher on Monday after scores of competitors demanded it do so. Race officials initially refused to do so because, they said, it was unlikely they could prove the competitor acted intentionally and because a lawyer advised them not to make the name public.
At the time of this year’s race, the rule essentially said that to punish a musher, race officials had to provide proof of intent. That rule has since been changed to hold mushers liable for any positive drug test unless they can show something happened beyond their control.
Wade Marrs, president of the Iditarod Official Finishers Club, said he doesn’t believe Seavey intentionally administered the drugs to his animals. Marrs said he believes the musher has too much integrity and brains to do such a thing.
“I don’t really know what to think at the moment,” Marrs said. “It’s a very touchy situation.”
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Arctic sea ice may be thinning faster than predicted because salty snow on the surface of the ice skews the accuracy of satellite measurements, a new
study from the University of Calgary said on Tuesday.
The report from the Canadian university’s Cryosphere Climate Research Group published in the academic journal Geophysical Research Letters found satellite estimates for the thickness of seasonal sea ice have been overestimated by up to 25 percent.
That means the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free much sooner than some scientific predictions, which forecast sea ice will first disappear completely during summer months between 2040 and 2050, according to lead author Vishnu Nandan.
Ice-free summers in the Arctic Ocean would impact global weather patterns by increasing the magnitude and frequency of major storms, and alter the Arctic marine ecosystem, making it harder for animals like polar bears to hunt.
There are a wide range of projections as to when Arctic sea ice will start disappearing in summertime as a result of warming global temperatures, and the University of Calgary study calls into question satellite measurements provided so far.
“The problem is, microwave measurements from satellites don’t penetrate the salty snow very well, so the satellite is not measuring the proper sea ice freeboard and the satellite readings overestimate the thickness of the ice,” Nandan said.
The sea ice freeboard refers to ice that can be seen above sea level and co-researcher John Yackel said, “Our results suggest that snow salinity should be considered in all future estimates on the Arctic seasonal ice freeboard made from satellites.”
Reporting by Nia Williams; editing by Diane Craft.
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An unprecedented Chinese financial and construction effort is rapidly developing Pakistan’s strategically located Arabian Sea port of Gwadar into one of the world’s largest transit and transshipment cargo facilities.
The deep water port lies at the convergence of three of the most commercially important regions of the world, the oil-rich Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia.
Beijing is developing Gwadar as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, known as CPEC. The two countries launched the 15-year joint mega project in 2015 when President Xi Jinping visited Islamabad.
Under the cooperation deal construction or improvement of highways, railways, pipelines, power plants, communications and industrial zones is underway in Pakistan with an initially estimated Chinese investment of $46 billion.
The aim is to link Gwadar to landlocked western China, including its Muslim-majority Xinjiang region, giving it access to a shorter and secure route through Pakistan to global trade. The port will also provide the shortest route to landlocked Central Asian countries, including Afghanistan, through transit trade and offering transshipment facilities.
Chinese fuel imports and trading cargo will be loaded on trucks and ferried to and from Xinjiang through the Karakoram Highway, snaking past snow-caped peaks in northern Pakistan.
‘Qualitative change’
Gwadar will be able to handle about one million tons of cargo annually by the end of the year. Officials anticipate that with expansion plans under way, the port will become South Asia’s biggest shipping center within five years, with a yearly capacity of handling 13-million tons of cargo. And by 2030, they say, it will be capable of handling up to 400-million tons of cargo annually.
China has in recent months begun calling CPEC the flagship project of its global Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI. The “qualitative change” from an experimental project to flagship project underscores the importance Beijing attaches to CPEC, said Zhao Lijian, the deputy chief of mission at the Chinese embassy in Islamabad.
Out of 39 “early harvest” projects under CPEC, 19 have since been completed or are under construction with a Chinese investment of about $18.5 billion, Lijian told VOA. The progress makes it the fastest developing of all of at least six BRI’s corridors China plans to establish, added the Chinese diplomat.
Gwadar is a “symbol of regional peace and prosperity” because it will connect countries around Pakistan to serve their trading interests, said port Chairman Dostain Khan Jamaldini.
Jamaldini dismissed as “not true” concerns that skilled Chinese laborers, engineers and businesses will flood Pakistan, hurting domestic industries. About 65 percent of the labor force on construction and other projects at Gwadar is Pakistani, and the number of Chinese is currently just over 300, he added.
Security concerns and India’s claims over some of the territory crossed by the massive project remain key challenges for Gwadar and CPEC in general. Pakistani and Chinese officials dismiss reported assertions that Beijing is expanding its presence at Gwadar to be able to handle naval ships and military transport planes.
The collaboration has “no strategic or political” aims against a third country, insisted Lijian. He went on to assert that the purpose of CPEC” is to help our iron brother Pakistan” to improve its economy and to strengthen the bilateral relationship.
Pakistani officials have trained and deployed about 15,000 troops and paramilitary forces to guard CPEC-related projects and the Chinese working on them. Islamabad alleges that the Indian intelligence agency has been tasked to plot subversive acts to derail CPEC.
Sleepy fishing town
Gwadar, with a population of around 100,000, mostly fishermen and boat makers, is often referred to as a sleepy fishing town.
The costal city’s poverty-stricken residents are hoping new employment opportunities will be created for them in the wake of the massive development underway in Gwadar.
But their immediate challenges are shortages of clean drinking water and hours long daily power blackouts.
“We are happy Chinese are building port, hospitals, schools and roads but right now we out of power during most of the day and limited water availability,” said fisherman Khalil Ahmed.
The family, like other fishermen in Gwadar, has been plying unspoiled crystal blue waters of the Arabian Sea for decades with age-old fishing techniques and barely surviving on limited income because financial resources do not allow them to buy modern fishing tools.
However, ongoing massive economic activity will “qualitatively” change the lives of its poverty-stricken residents for the better, says Mushahid Hussain, who chairs a parliamentary committee on CPEC.
He says a fisheries processing plant is being installed at the port and arrangements are being planned to train and equip fishermen to improve and export local fish to other parts of Pakistan and China.
Senator Hussain believes economic projects under construction in Gwadar will help its people and address long-running grievances of the province of Baluchistan, where the port is situated.
The poverty-stricken largest Pakistani province has long been in the grip of a low-level Baluchistan separatist insurgency, which mainly stems from demands from the federal government for local control over Baluchistan’s vast natural resources.
Gwadar’s existing 50-bed government hospital is being extended to 300 beds, a technical and vocational institute is being constructed, a 300-megawatts coal-based power plant and a desalination plant are being installed, a new international airport and a six-lane international standard expressway are being built to connect Gwadar port with the rest of Pakistan and neighboring countries, including Iran and Afghanistan.
Local officials say most of the projects, including the new airport, are being built with Chinese financial grants. The rest of the projects in Gwadar and elsewhere in Pakistan under CPEC are being built with “interest-free” and “soft-loans” from China.
“Sex and the City” star Kim Cattrall says she didn’t have kids in-part because of the demanding production schedule of the long-running HBO series.
The 61-year-old actress told Piers Morgan for an interview on Britain’s ITV that she decided against undergoing fertility treatments when she was starring on the show in her early 40s because she questioned how she could keep up with 19-hour days while raising a child.
Cattrall also opened up about her relationship with her co-stars on the franchise, telling Morgan she has “never been friends” with Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis or Cynthia Nixon.
Cattrall says she turned down the chance to appear in a third “Sex and the City” film and will never play her character Samantha Jones again.
The U.S. economy is expected add another 11.5 million jobs by 2026, as an aging population and longer life spans raise the need for health care providers. The total U.S. workforce is expected to grow to 167.6 million people.
Tuesday’s projections come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which says job growth will accelerate slightly from its current pace, but it will not return to the brisk gains seen the over previous decades. The BLS updates its job outlook every two years as new information becomes available.
The percentage of the workforce over age 55 will rise to nearly one-quarter in 2026, a sharp increase from the less than 17 percent back in 2006. People in their 50s and 60s may retire, which is one reason experts expect workforce participation rates (the percentage of working age people who have jobs or are seeking work) to decline.
Over the decade, nine out of 10 new jobs will be in the services sector, particularly health care. Employment by companies that produce goods is expected to grow at a meager one-tenth of one percent a year, with a gain of just 219,000 jobs by 2026.
The workforce is expected to become more diverse as Asian and Hispanic parts of the U.S. population grow more quickly than average. Whoever is in the workforce will find additional education important, as two out of three jobs in the fastest-growing areas require at least some post-secondary education and training.
And the whole economy is predicted to expand at a two percent annual rate. That is faster than the current growth rate, but below the gains seen in previous decades.
Hope is the thing with feathers, poet Emily Dickinson wrote. For Richard Thorns, the feathers are pink.
Thorns’ hope? To prove that a colorful duck is not extinct. This week, he launches a seventh expedition into the inaccessible wilds of Myanmar to search for the pink-headed duck that hasn’t been seen alive since 1949, and that was in India. No one has seen the bird alive in Myanmar in more than a century.
Thorns, a British writer who quit his shop clerk job 20 years ago after reading about the pink-headed duck in the book “Vanishing Birds,” has spent $20,000 of his own money on previous fruitless trips. His birder brother called him mad.
“I could have had a lot of nice things,” the 53-year-old said. “I don’t want nice things. I want to see a pink-headed duck.”
This time, he is backed by the Global Wildlife Conservation group, which launched a hunt for “lost species” — 25 quirky and elusive plants and animals beginning with the duck. A sports optic company and cheesemaking company are also helping pay.
Thorns and three others plan to head to the wetlands north of the vast Indawgyi Lake during the rainy season where they believe they have a better chance of spotting the duck. And Thorn thinks he has a secret weapon: elephants.
He used canoes in the past and thinks he probably spooked the shy birds. Now he plans to bring elephants stomping through the wetlands.
“Clearly a bird isn’t going to hunker down if there are 2-ton elephants,” said Thorn.
As crazy as it may seem, Thorns may be onto something, said ornithologist Kevin McGowan at Cornell University who isn’t part of the expedition.
“Fairly regularly birds get rediscovered,” says McGowan, who has gone on unsuccessful expeditions for the ivory-billed woodpecker. “We don’t see all the world that is in front of our eyes.”
A Cornell student found Bermuda petrels, rare seabirds thought to be extinct for 300 years. Other rediscovered animals include a crow species in Asia and a nocturnal parrot in Australia. These birds survive by not being noticed “so what’s your certainty that it’s gone?” said McGowan.
One thing that keeps Thorns going is the thought that someone else might find the pink-headed duck first.
Every time he goes out, the bird “breaks my heart,” he said. “Sometimes I wish I hadn’t seen that picture.”
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A US government bunker, originally built in case of nuclear war, is now offering protection for a happier purpose. VOA’s Karina Bafradzhian shows us how America’s entertainment history is preserved in an underground space near Washington.
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Nearly 30 years ago, 1,000 children a day were paralyzed by the polio virus. So far this year, 11 children have been diagnosed with polio, thanks to a global effort to wipe out the polio virus. The effort has produced amazing results, but as VOA’s Carol Pearson reports, those behind it say it’s not time yet to celebrate.
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After a deadly earthquake in 1985, authorities in Mexico City decided they must start constructing houses that can withstand strong shakes. Government buildings, hospitals and schools are now built according to stricter rules, while architects are pushing for their application to other structures too, especially high rise apartment buildings. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Facebook Inc said on Monday it was testing the idea of dividing its News F eed in two, separating commercial posts from personal news in a move that could lead some businesses to increase advertising.
The Facebook News Feed, the centerpiece of the world’s largest social network service, is a streaming series of posts such as photos from friends, updates from family members, advertisements and material from celebrities or other pages that a user has liked.
The test, which is occurring in six smaller countries, now offers two user feeds, according to a statement from the company: one feed focused on friends and family and a second dedicated to the pages that the customer has liked.
The change could force those who run pages, everyone from news outlets to musicians to sports teams, to pay to run advertisements if they want to be seen in the feed that is for friends and family.
The test is taking place in Bolivia, Cambodia, Guatemala, Serbia, Slovakia and Sri Lanka, and it will likely go on for months, Adam Mosseri, the Facebook executive in charge of the News Feed, said in a blog post.
Mosseri said the company has no plans for a global test of the two separate feeds for its 2 billion users.
Facebook also does not currently plan to force commercial pages “to pay for all their distribution,” he said.
Facebook, based in Menlo Park, California, frequently tests changes big and small as it tries to maximize the time people spend scrolling and browsing the network. Sometimes it makes changes permanent, and other times not.
Depending on how people respond, two news feeds could mean that they see fewer links to news stories. News has proved to be a tricky area for Facebook, as hoaxes and false news stories have sometimes spread easily on the network.
The test has already affected website traffic for smaller media outlets in recent days, Slovakian journalist Filip Struharik wrote over the weekend in a post on Medium.
Publishers might need to buy more Facebook ads to be seen, he wrote: “If you want your Facebook page posts to be seen in old newsfeed, you have to pay.”
When Britain’s Cambridge University put physicist Stephen Hawking’s 1966 thesis on line for the first time Monday, the university’s website collapsed.
Professor Hawking’s “Properties of Expanding Universes” has been the most requested item in the university’s library.
To meet the demand, and with Hawking’s encouragement, Cambridge made it available on line.
About 60,000 people sought to access it, causing the system to periodically shut down throughout the day Monday.
Hawking is the world’s best-known physicist and expert on the cosmos.
His landmark 1988 work “A Brief History of Time” has sold more than 10 million copies.
With his thesis now available for anyone to read, Hawking said he hopes to “inspire people around the world to look up at the stars and not down at their feet, to wonder about our place in the universe and to try and make sense of the cosmos.”
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A chocolate bar may make you feel better when you’re down, but a cup of yogurt or a handful of cashews might be a better choice.
“I think about our body in some ways like a car engine,” says therapist Leslie Korn. “We need to give it the right fuel. And each of us have a need for a particular combination of proteins, and carbohydrates and fats.”
Korn has been treating people for trauma and depression for more than 40 years. She noticed that when her patients changed their diet and began eating foods like dark chocolate, sweet potatoes, eggs and cherries, they had much more success in lifting their depression and decreasing their pain.
She turned her observations into a book: The Good Mood Kitchen. It contains recipes and nutrition tips that can help put you in a good mood.
Fat for the brain
Fats, she explains, are not the nemesis many diets have made them out to be. We need fats in our diet because our brain is made up of fat. “It’s made up of chemicals that talk to each other and that are lubricated by the fat in order to communicate across the synapses, and contribute to our ability to focus, to apply attention and to lift our mood. Indeed, there is some very good research going on in the military looking at the role of Omega 3 fatty acids for not only treatment of depression and anxiety, but also for suicide prevention.”
Taking care of the digestive system, which breaks down the fat, is essential for the brain to benefit, and Korn has a suggestion for that, too.
“For example, if your liver and if your gallbladder is not working, you can’t break down fats that are absorbed into the blood stream and then support brain function. What we know is that the greens, in particular bitter greens, help us digest fats and send those fats to the brain where we need it.”
The Brainbow diet
Those greens are part of what Korn calls the “Brainbow” diet. She says the colors in the food represent different nutrients. “Your orange, and kind of yellow foods provide lots of vitamin A, lots of vital nutrients. The variety of greens are very good for our digestion. Your purple food and your red food are very anti-inflammatory. These are beets and our eggplants and our berries.”
The “Brainbow” Food list also includes:
Red foods: red cabbage, radishes, watermelons
Orange foods: carrots, sweet potatoes, oranges, pumpkins
Yellow foods: lemons, bananas
Green foods: kale
White foods: garlic, onion, nuts
Foods for every symptom
Therapist Korn says probiotics are important in treating depression and lifting our mood. She calls them “psychobiotics.” Those can be found in yogurt and fermented food.
For people who suffer from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), she recommends foods rich in Omega 3 fatty oils like salmon, flaxseed oil and nuts.
Cocoa and chocolate are known to be good for improving the brain’s cognitive function.
Caffeine helps the brain focus. It stimulates the brain to release dopamine, a chemical messenger that helps in the transmission of signals in the brain and other vital areas.
Cherries and chamomile help the brain release melatonin and anti-anxiety chemicals for a good night’s sleep.
Around the world with good mood food
Every country, Korn says, has certain foods that enhance mental well-being. In her book, she offers recipes for them — fresh raw sauerkraut from Eastern Europe, kimchi from Korea and miso soup from Japan. Plantain is a popular food in India, Mexico and countries in Africa and the Caribbean. The Good Mood Kitchen includes a recipe for Plantain Soup.
“Plantains are large bananas, very starchy and a little bit sweet. And I add some lemon, and butter and chopped onion, and garlic. And you make it with either a vegetable broth or a chicken broth. Then you add coconut milk, and blend. And then I top it with cilantro, Chinese parsley and garlic, grated orange peel and lime juice.”
Sweet potatoes are familiar to people around the world. In her book, Korn offers a simple recipe for preparing them. “Add butter, sea salt and bake. This is good for stress.”
Relax and savor
Korn says because mood follows food, we have to improve our digestion in order to improve our mental health. And since stress and hyperactivity slow down the enzymes our body releases to digest food, once you have prepared a dish designed to improve your emotional balance, it’s important to slow down, take some deep breaths, relax and enjoy eating the meal.
Good Mood Recipes
Baked Wild Salmon
Sprinkle sea salt and a little olive oil on the salmon and place it on a cookie sheet.
Bake for 10 minutes at 350 degrees, then place it under the broiler for at least 5 minutes.
Keep an eye on the salmon. It should be pink on the inside.
Garlic Yogurt Salad Dressing
½ -3/4 cup plain cow or goat milk yogurt
1 small garlic clove (minced)
¼ tsp. dried basil
½ tbsp. apple cider vinegar
1/16 tsp. stevia powder
1 tsp. chopped fresh parsley
4 tbsp. organic mayonnaise
Whisk all ingredients together in a bowl and serve.
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The New York attorney general has opened an investigation into sexual harassment and possible violations of civil rights laws at the Weinstein Company, the movie studio co-founded by Harvey Weinstein, and sent the company a subpoena Monday, a source familiar with the investigation said.
The subpoena, which has not been made public, requests information regarding how each complaint related to sexual harassment or other discrimination was handled by the Weinstein Company, the person familiar with the probe said.
It also asks for management’s criteria for hiring, promoting, casting, rejecting or terminating applicants or employees, the person said. The source added that the New York subpoena is part of an investigation into whether executives at the company violated state civil rights or New York City human rights laws.
Harvey Weinstein was fired from the company earlier this month in the wake of media reports that he sexually harassed or assaulted women in incidents dating back to the 1980s.
Weinstein has denied having nonconsensual sex with anyone. Reuters has been unable to independently confirm any of the allegations.
Representatives for the Weinstein Company did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In response to a request for comment on the investigation, the attorney general’s office emailed a statement from New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman that said, “No New Yorker should be forced to walk into a workplace ruled by sexual intimidation, harassment, or fear.
“If sexual harassment or discrimination is pervasive at a company, we want to know.”
The New York Times reported earlier this month that Weinstein, 65, had reached eight previously undisclosed settlements with women who accused him of sexual harassment and unwanted physical contact. The New Yorker magazine reported that 13 women had claimed that Weinstein sexually harassed or assaulted them.
The New York City Police Department has said it is investigating an allegation of sexual assault by Weinstein in 2004. The Los Angeles Police Department also said earlier this month that it is investigating a 2013 sexual assault allegation against movie producer Harvey Weinstein.
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Amazon said Monday that it received 238 proposals from cities and regions in the United States, Canada and Mexico hoping to be the home of the company’s second headquarters.
The online retailer kicked off its hunt for a second home base in September, promising to bring 50,000 new jobs and spend more than $5 billion on construction. Proposals were due last week, and Amazon made clear that tax breaks and grants would be a big deciding factor on where it chooses to land.
Amazon.com Inc. said the proposals came from 43 U.S. states as well as Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, three Mexican states and six Canadian provinces. In a tweet, the company said it was “excited to review each of them.”
Besides looking for financial incentives, Amazon had stipulated that it was seeking to be near a metropolitan area with more than a million people; be able to attract top technical talent; be within 45 minutes of an international airport; have direct access to mass transit; and be able to expand that headquarters to as much as 8 million square feet in the next decade.
Generous tax breaks and other incentives can erode a city’s tax base. For the winner, it could be worth it, since an Amazon headquarters could draw other tech businesses and their well-educated, highly paid employees.
The seven U.S. states that Amazon said did not apply were: Arkansas, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming.
Ahead of the deadline, some cities turned to stunts to try and stand out: Representatives from Tucson, Arizona, sent a 21-foot tall cactus to Amazon’s Seattle headquarters; New York lit the Empire State Building orange to match Amazon’s smile logo.
The company plans to remain in its sprawling Seattle headquarters, and the second one will be “a full equal” to it, founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said in September. Amazon has said that it will announce a decision sometime next year.
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It was a source of national pride — technology and discipline besting a crippling lack of water.
But four years of drought have overtaxed Israel’s unmatched array of desalination and wastewater treatment plants, choking its most fertile regions and catching the government off-guard.
“No one imagined we would face a sequence of arid years like this, because it never happened before,” said Uri Schor, spokesman for Israel’s Water Authority.
The Sea of Galilee, technically a lake near the border with Syria, is forecast to hit its lowest level ever before winter rains come, despite the fact that pumping there was massively reduced. Underground aquifers, the other main freshwater source, are nearing levels that will turn them salty.
How to cope with the crisis is becoming an increasingly touchy subject in Israel. Proposed cuts to water use for the coming year, more than 50 percent in some areas, prompted vehement opposition from farmers, who already face tough restrictions and would have been the hardest hit. The government quickly backtracked.
In the Middle East, one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change, water is also the subject of wider tensions.
Intense pressure on already scarce water resources could lead to an increase in migration and the risk of conflict, the World Bank has warned.
Syria and Jordan depend on some of the same water sources as Israel, which as added to tensions in the past. Palestinians have long complained of inadequate access to water, which is mostly under Israeli control in the occupied West Bank. Israel has said it has supplied more water than required under interim peace deals.
Under discussion for a possible long-term solution to Israel’s water problem is the construction of an additional desalination plant, an industry official said. A similar facility in Israel has cost more $400 million.
Several new reservoirs to catch rain and flood waters could also relieve some pressure as a quick, $60 million fix, the official said, asking to remain anonymous due to the political sensitivity of the subject.
Just a few years ago Israel, a country two-thirds arid, declared an end to the water shortages that hounded it for decades. A longstanding nationwide awareness campaign ceased and Israelis could take long showers and water their gardens.
There was even talk of exporting surplus water to its neighbors. This came as a result of a massive investment drive which saw Israel put 15 billion shekels ($4.3 billion) in its national water grid and sewage treatment centers. The commercial sector invested another 7 billion shekels into the construction of five desalination plants.
Supply issues are being hardest felt among farmers in the northern tip of Israel, the region where Dubi Amitay, a fourth-generation farmer and president of the Israel Farmers Federation, lives.
Amitay said the shortage had made him decide to dry out 3,700 acres of land, which will take a toll on future harvests.
His home region of eastern Galilee, a lush swath of land between the coast and the Golan Heights, could lose up to 500 million shekels this season, he said.
The lack of reliable waters supply leaves farmers with deep uncertainty.
“Will we have water or not?,” he said.
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