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<\/a>Food deserts and the Walk for Food, with Whitney Pipkin<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\nTwo miles isn\u2019t too far to march for a worthy cause, as people are prone to do in the nation\u2019s capital. But it is a long way to walk for groceries.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the impression organizers of a recent\u00a0Grocery Walk<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>in Washington, D.C.\u2019s Anacostia neighborhood wanted to invoke when they gathered nearly 500 people to walk that far \u2014 wielding carrots and \u201cfood justice\u201d signs \u2014 in the latest effort to address the intractable problem of\u00a0food deserts<\/a>. More than half of the participants were residents who live in or near the District\u2019s Ward 8, where a Giant Foods store is the only full-service grocer serving 70,000 residents, leaving fresh, affordable foods out of reach for many.<\/p>\n
Nearly 40 million Americans live in communities with these so-called\u00a0grocery gaps<\/a>, where it is easier for people to buy grape soda than a handful of grapes, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.<\/p>\n
Lauren Shweder Biel, executive director of the nonprofit\u00a0DC Greens<\/a>, which organized the event, says having so many residents involved demonstrates how strong the demand is for the healthful produce. She says she hopes that city officials \u2014 some of whom participated in the walk \u2014 retailers and the rest of the country would take notice.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think one of the most powerful impacts of an action like the Grocery Walk is that it silences the myth that poor people don\u2019t want healthy food,\u201d says Shweder Biel.<\/p>\n
That perception keeps many food retailers from locating to low-income neighborhoods, says Christopher Walker, senior campaign director for the\u00a0American Heart Association in Austin, Texas<\/a>. There, food access advocates hosted a similar \u2014 but much smaller \u2014 stroll in 2015 through an underserved community near Austin\u2019s airport. They wanted to illustrate how difficult it can be to cross basic items off a shopping list \u2014 let alone make a nutritious meal \u2014 by trekking to the handful of corner stores that constitute the only retail options within walking distance.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think people realize how important it is to have a grocery store until they don\u2019t have one,\u201d says Walker. \u201cWe talk about grocery stores as if they\u2019re a luxury, but that\u2019s not the way we live our lives. Other than work, we go to the grocery store more than any other place \u2014 and we have entire neighborhoods and communities that don\u2019t have that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This story is now starting to look fishy<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n
Key elements of the women\u2019s account are contradicted by authorities, and are not consistent with weather reports or basic geography of the Pacific Ocean. The discrepancies raised questions about whether Appel and her sailing companion, Tasha Fuiava, could have avoided disaster.<\/p>\n
On their first day at sea, the two women described running into a fierce storm that tossed their vessel with 60 mph (97 kph) winds and 30-foot (9-meter) seas for three days, but meteorologists say there was no severe weather anywhere along their route during that time.<\/p>\n
After leaving \u201cwe got into a Force 11 storm, and it lasted for two nights and three days,\u201d Appel has said of the storm they encountered off Oahu. In one of the first signs of trouble, she said she lost her cellphone overboard.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were empowered to know that we could withstand the forces of nature,\u201d Appel said. \u201cThe boat could withstand the forces of nature.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the National Weather Service in Honolulu said no organized storm systems were in or near Hawaii on May 3 or in the days afterward. Archived NASA satellite images confirm there were no tropical storms around Hawaii that day. Appel expressed surprise that there was no record of the storm. She said they received a Coast Guard storm warning while sailing after sunset on May 3.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This story is already looking selfish<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n
PHILADELPHIA \u2014 Embattled\u00a076ers<\/a>\u00a0center\u00a0Jahlil Okafor<\/a>\u00a0admitted that his time with the team is likely over, saying he\u2019s fine with them not picking up the fourth-year option of his deal and that he has requested a buyout or trade from the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, I did not want them to pick up my option,\u201d Okafor said at the team\u2019s shootaround Wednesday. \u201cThis is my life. This is my career, and I\u2019m not getting an opportunity here, which is fine. The team looks great and I\u2019m not a part of that. I want the team to do great things, but at the same time I want to play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Okafor had fallen out of the team\u2019s rotation this season, appearing in just one game against Toronto in which he played 22 minutes and finished with 10 points and nine rebounds.<\/p>\n
A buyout would allow Okafor to test the market, potentially sign a short-term contract, and then set himself up for free agency in 2018, but Okafor says that team president Bryan Colangelo has so far been resisting his request for a buyout, despite failing to find a trade for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve asked for a buyout,\u201d he said. \u201cI had a talk with Bryan about that yesterday, just because I want to play. I know that\u2019s not being here. I know a buyout is one of the options where I get an opportunity to play elsewhere and to get on the court. But Bryan didn\u2019t think that would be a good idea because he said then they would be giving me away to a team for free, but that\u2019s pretty much where we stand right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that he would like a resolution to his situation as soon as possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cA buyout or a trade,\u201d Okafor said. \u201cA buyout\u2019s not the only option. It\u2019s just, I want to get on the court. That\u2019s not happening here. It could be a buyout, it could be a trade. I just want something to happen rather quickly.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Dear Gene<\/strong><\/a>, using stereotypes of non-Lutherans doesn\u2019t make it easier to describe Lutherans accurately. Your hero said\u00a0Was Christum treibet<\/em>, stick with that.<\/p>\n
Speaking of the Reformation, there\u2019s some serious Protestant-cum-Pentecostalism vs. Catholicism at work in South America, and Sarah Pulliam Bailey<\/strong> <\/a>has the pulse of at least one arm:<\/p>\n
\nSpeaking from a stage encircled by 12 large wooden crosses, Gabriel Camargo held up wads of fake Brazilian money, showing his flock what could be theirs.<\/p>\n
\u201cGod will bless you if you give a lot more to the church,\u201d said Camargo, a Pentecostal pastor with the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God.<\/p>\n
Then he extended an arm and pointed a black pouch toward his parishioners in the working-class neighborhood of Osasco.<\/p>\n
Pick up your wallets and purses, he said, instructing his flock to look for Brazilian\u00a0reais. About a dozen people hurried forward to dump bills and coins into the bag.<\/p>\n
Those without cash didn\u2019t have to worry: An usher held out a credit card machine. \u201cYou\u2019ll have so much money\u201d after giving generously to the church, the pastor boomed, that \u201csmoke is going to come out of the machine.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a country struggling with the worst economic crisis in its history, with long lines at unemployment offices and public health clinics, perhaps it\u2019s not surprising that Brazilians are increasingly drawn to the promises of personal wealth.<\/p>\n
The belief that faith can lead to riches \u2014 known as the prosperity gospel \u2014 is a form of Pentecostalism, a Protestant movement that, in a modern-day version of the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago, is challenging the dominance of the Catholic Church in Latin America\u2019s most populous country.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The Neanderthals never had a chance<\/strong><\/a>, AP News:<\/p>\n
NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 What killed off the Neanderthals? It\u2019s a big debate, and now a study says that no matter what the answer, they were doomed anyway.<\/p>\n
Our close evolutionary cousins enjoyed a long run in Europe and Asia, but they disappeared about 40,000 years ago after modern humans showed up from Africa.<\/p>\n
The search for an explanation has produced many theories including climate change, epidemics, or inability to compete with the modern humans, who may have had some mental or cultural edge.<\/p>\n
The new study isn\u2019t intended to argue against those factors, but just to show that they\u2019re not needed to explain the extinction, says Oren Kolodny of Stanford University.<\/p>\n
He and colleague Marcus Feldman present their approach in a\u00a0paper<\/a>\u00a0released Tuesday by the journal Nature Communications.<\/p>\n
They based their conclusion on a computer simulation that represented small bands of Neanderthals and modern humans in Europe and Asia. These local populations were randomly chosen to go extinct, and then be replaced by another randomly chosen population, with no regard for whether it represented the same species.<\/p>\n
Neither species was assumed to have any inherent advantage, but there was one crucial difference: Unlike the Neanderthals, the modern humans were supplemented by reinforcements coming in from Africa. It wasn\u2019t a huge wave, but rather \u201ca tiny, tiny trickle of small bands,\u201d Kolodny said.<\/p>\n
Still, that was enough to tip the balance against the Neanderthals. They generally went extinct when the simulation was run more than a million times under a variety of assumptions.<\/p>\n
If survival was a game of chance, \u201cit was rigged by the fact that there\u2019s recurring migration,\u201d Kolodny said. \u201cThe game was doomed to end with the Neanderthals losing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kolodny said the evidence that such migrations actually occurred is suggestive rather than conclusive. Such migrations would not be expected to leave much of an archaeological trace, he said.<\/p>\n
Experts in human origins said the paper could help scientists pin down the various factors that led to the Neanderthals\u2019 demise. It fits in with other recent attempts to explain the extinction without assuming behavioral differences between Neanderthals and our ancestors, said Wil Roebroeks of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. The notion of such differences is largely disproven, he said.<\/p>\n
Katerina Harvati of the University of Tuebingen in Germany said while the new work could be useful in solving the extinction mystery, it doesn\u2019t address the question of why modern humans dispersed from Africa into Europe and Asia. It\u2019s important to figure out what was behind that, she said in an email.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n