April 19, 2010

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HEALTH

TONICS

Orange corn is particularly high in beta carotene, which converts to vitamin A during digestion. Experts hope it could play an important role in developing countries: up to half a million children, mostly in Africa or Southeast Asia, go blind each year due to vitamin A deficiency.

WORLD

Face veils? No. Racy lingerie? Yes.

The sometimes fraught, often conflicted world of European Muslims took a strange turn last week. On the same day media outlets covered a Belgian parliamentary committee’s decision to outlaw face veils in public, the press also reported on a new online sex shop in next-door Holland selling sex aids deemed halal, or permissible under Islam. By PATRICIA TREBLE

INTERVIEW

Neurologist Martin Samuels on the brain and aging, supplements, special diets, and why old people know more than young people

What are the big controversies in neurology regarding cognitive impairment associated with aging? A: There are thousands. One is that nobody really knows the causes of Alzheimer’s disease. One hypothesis, invented by a colleague of mine, is that something called the amyloid precursor protein is the cause.

MAIL BAG

‘Assisted suicide is reasonable for a 95-year-old who wants to die in a dignified manner’

YOUR COVER story (“The real Jesus?” Faith, March 29) was interesting and well-balanced. We must stop encouraging fundamentalist nutbars from spreading nonsense about immaculate conceptions and resurrections, which, as Brian Bethune points out, is not unique to the Jesus story.

WORLD

AMERICA IS ANGRY

Late last week, as families across the U.S. prepared for Easter, gubernatorial staff in state capitals across the U.S. were busy dealing with a strange homegrown security threat. An organization calling itself the Guardians of the Free Republics, according to its website committed to the “behind-the-scenes peaceful” dismantling of the U.S. government “without controversy, violence or civil war,” had sent letters to all 50 governors telling them to resign within three days or face removal. By NICHOLAS KÖHLER

EDUCATION

You’re an elephant. On a job hunt.

It’s difficult to know exactly what Lisa Byers, 36, does wrong in her job interviews. Perhaps she’s just not what potential employers were looking for, but it could also be that sometimes she forgets to breathe or she speeds through her answers when she’s nervous. By ALEXANDRA SHIMO

HOW THEY DO IT IN...

It is the product of two simultaneous happenings. One: the price of square footage in N.Y.C. has shot through the roof. Two: takeout culture has wiped out home cooking. The result? Tight-onspace New Yorkers are transforming their refrigerators, ovens and kitchen cabinets into closets.

THIS WEEK

NEWSMAKERS

In the Hollywood version, Indiana’s Butler University, a private school of some 4,000 undergraduates, would have won the NCAA championship Monday, and Gordon Hayward would have been the hero. The Butler Bulldogs’ final game against basketball powerhouse Duke University was a close contest.

ACCORDING TO TV...BIG REPUBLICAN SEX PARTY

“The Republican National Committee had a big party at some kind of a sex club in Los Angeles. They spent $2,000 of campaign donation money on the bill. But the guy who organized the big Republican sex party apologized on the Golf Channel, so that’s good.”

April 122010