Daily News Channel
Walk past the southern face of the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, and you will be greeted by a massive wall of brilliant green foliage — an 8,600 square feet plant installation by the designer Patrick Blanc, featuring more than 170 different species. The mass of leaves and flowers seems to be swallowing the building — and provides a proud symbol of resurgent nature in this busy, downtown district.
The fate of Iran’s Islamic revolution now rests in the hands of an enigmatic cleric who is little understood at home, let alone by the outside world. For the past 20 years, pictures of Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, with his oversize glasses, black turban and untrimmed white beard, have adorned shops, government offices and living-room walls throughout Iran. His modest childhood home in Mashhad has become a virtual shrine, his edicts are binding and his powers absolute
President Obama signed landmark legislation Monday giving the Food and Drug Administration new power to regulate the manufacturing, marketing and sale of tobacco. The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act gives the FDA power to ban candy-flavored and fruit-flavored cigarettes, widely considered appealing to first-time smokers, including youths. It also prohibits tobacco companies from using terms such as “low tar,” “light” or “mild,” requires larger warning labels on packages, and restricts advertising of tobacco products
Food Safety: Improvements Needed in FDA Oversight of Fresh Produce By the U.S. Government Accountability Office 71 pp. The Gist: Amid increasing reports of food-borne illness, the GAO is calling out the Food and Drug Administration for failing in its duty to ensure the safety of the nation’s food, particularly its fresh fruits and vegetables. Thousands of people have been sickened; the produce industry has lost millions of dollars
New York officials want to know how a jail inmate threw a lavish bar mitzvah for his son inside a detention facility, complete with live music and catered kosher food.
The U.S. Senate on Thursday struck the most devastating legislative blow in history to Big Tobacco, giving the Food and Drug Administration authority over the industry. The new bill, which passed in the House in April, includes tough new restrictions on advertising, like allowing only black-and-white-text ads in magazines with substantial youth readerships; mandates that manufacturers prove or stop using claims like “light” and “low tar”; a ban on flavored cigarettes ; and provisions for large, graphic warning labels
As Gabon begins a month of mourning and condolences pour in for President Omar Bongo, the world’s longest serving President, who died on Monday at 73 in his 42nd year in power, it’s worth remembering that Bongo was precisely the kind of leader Gabon, and Africa, could have done without. Gabon has a tiny population and vast oil reserves, and after four decades of exporting hundreds of billions of dollars of crude, the biggest testament to the corruption and ineptitude of Bongo’s rule is that he somehow contrived not to turn his country into an African Kuwait. A third of all Gabonese still live on less than $2 a day, and as the oil fields begin to dry up, Bongo’s subjects are facing up to the reality that he sacrificed the country’s future to fund his own fantastically opulent lifestyle.
When it comes to humanity’s darkest moments, time is both a blessing and a curse. Firebombed cities get rebuilt.
In this groundbreaking 2008 book Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, Danish brand consultant Martin Lindstrom showed how neurology, as much as economics, drives consumer behavior.
Let’s just say it. The whole thing sounds insane. For six days, people from across the world — accountants, school teachers, farmers, CEOs — will run 150 miles, the equivalent of five consecutive marathons, across one of southern Africa’s most remote landscapes.