AMSTERDAM (AP) ? Justin Bieber wrote an entry into a guestbook at the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam, saying he hoped the Jewish teenager who died in a Nazi concentration camp "would have been a Belieber" ? or fan of his ? if history were different.
The message triggered a flood of comments on the museum's Facebook page Sunday, with many criticizing the 19-year-old Canadian pop star for writing something they perceive to be insensitive.
Calls made and emails sent to Bieber's publicist and agent in Los Angeles weren't immediately returned.
Museum spokeswoman Maatje Mostart confirmed that Bieber visited Friday evening. She said the museum was happy to have received Bieber and didn't see anything offensive in his remarks.
Anne Frank hid with her family in a small apartment above a warehouse during the Nazi occupation of World War II. Her family was caught and deported, and Anne died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen in 1945.
The diary she kept in hiding was recovered and published after the war, and has become the most widely read document to emerge from the Holocaust.
Bieber's whole note read: "Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a Belieber."
Mostart said Bieber called ahead and was given a guided tour.
Bieber's remarks led to criticism from some quarters, as a Facebook response insulting Bieber received more than 1,000 "likes" ? slightly more than the museum's original post about the incident.
Meanwhile on Twitter, posts mocking Bieber and imagining that he had visited the museum and walked away thinking only of himself began circulating Sunday, though the message is open to interpretation.
Some of Bieber's 37 million followers also tweeted messages of support. Others in his fan base ? which is heavily weighted toward young girls ? tweeted that they didn't know who Anne Frank was.
Frank was 13 years old when she began keeping her diary in 1942. Like many teenage girls, she made a collage of the celebrities of her day ? movie stars, dancers, and royalty ? and kept it on her bedroom wall.
"Our little room looked very bare at first with nothing on the walls; but thanks to Daddy who had brought my film-star collection and picture postcards ... with the aid of a paste pot and brush, I have transformed the walls into one gigantic picture," she wrote on July 11, 1942, just days after going into hiding. "This makes it look much more cheerful."
Many of those pictures can still be seen on the walls of the museum Bieber visited Friday.
Bieber has had a tough few weeks in Europe. He had to leave a monkey in quarantine after landing in Germany without the necessary papers for the animal. Before that, the 19-year-old singer had a trying stay in London. The star struggled with his breathing and fainted backstage at a show, was taken to a hospital and then was caught on camera clashing with a paparazzo. Days earlier, he was booed by his fans when he showed up late to a concert.
He performed in Arnhem, Netherlands, on Saturday night, and will next perform three nights in Oslo, Norway.
Getting to the root of horseradish root problemsPublic release date: 15-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Susan Jongeneel sjongene@illinois.edu 217-333-3291 University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
URBANA Approximately 55 percent of the horseradish produced in the United States is grown in the Collinsville, Ill., area, the self-proclaimed "Horseradish Capital of the World." The product is of such high quality that Europeans import it for gourmet and industrial use. But when crop sciences professor Mohammad Babadoost first arrived at the University of Illinois in 1999, he was told that growers had been experiencing significant yield reductions due to internal discoloring and root rot.
"If the roots are discolored, they are not accepted for processing," Babadoost said.
U of I researchers have been looking at various bacteria and fungi for more than 30 years, trying to identify the agents causing the problem. In the 1980s, they isolated a fungus called Verticillium dahlia, which was linked to horseradish disease at many locations in the United States.
Babadoost, however, was not convinced that this fungus alone was responsible for all the damage.
"When I came here, I realized that it's a serious problem, and I thought it could be a complex problem rather than a single-pathogen/single-disease problem," he said.
He was right. In 2004, he and his team determined that internal discoloration of horseradish roots is due to a disease complex caused by at least three fungi: Verticillium dahlia, Verticillium longisporum, and Fusarium solani.
"But I was still not completely convinced that that was the end of the story," he said. He was seeing a lot of root rot that did not appear to be caused by the identified pathogens.
He and his graduate student, JunMyoung Yu, carried out fungal isolations from horseradish roots from commercial fields in Illinois and Wisconsin. They first identified isolates to genus; those identified as Fusarium were further identified to species based on their morphological and molecular characteristics.
They selected 11 isolates that they identified initially as Fusarium oxysporum. After further analysis, they found that six of them were actually Fusarium commune, a species that was identified in 2003.
To compare the pathogenicity of the two species, they inoculated asymptomatic horseradish roots with either F. commune or F. oxysporum and monitored root quality at monthly intervals.
They found that plants inoculated with F. oxysporum developed internal root discoloration. However, roots inoculated with F. commune had more discoloration, and 83 percent of them developed root rot by four months after inoculation. This was the first time that F. commune had been linked to horseradish disease.
Knowing the source of the disease, however, does not solve the problem. Although infected roots can be dug up, washed, and replanted, the process is labor-intensive, and the plants remain susceptible to the pathogens that remain in the soil.
Babadoost said that growers are interested in developing resistant cultivars, but doing so will not be an easy task. "I don't know if cultivars resistant to the internal root discoloration will ever be available because of the complexity of the disease," he said. "You have to go through a long process of testing against each individual pathogen and combination of pathogens to come up with a reasonably resistant cultivar."
He recommends that growers use an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approach. Infected roots can be cleaned in hot water and replanted. Biocontrol agents or fungicides can be used to protect the roots from infection for 12 weeks, and it takes roughly the same amount of time for root damage to reach unacceptable levels.
"If these two techniques are combined, by the end of the season in the fall the roots are either not infected or discoloration from infection is negligible, so you can sell the roots," he said.
###
The research is described in "Occurrence of Fusarium commune and F. oxysporum in Horseradish Roots" by J. M. Yu and M. Babadoost, which was published by the American Phytopathological Society in the April 2013 issue of Plant Disease and can be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-06-12-0538-RE.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Getting to the root of horseradish root problemsPublic release date: 15-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Susan Jongeneel sjongene@illinois.edu 217-333-3291 University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
URBANA Approximately 55 percent of the horseradish produced in the United States is grown in the Collinsville, Ill., area, the self-proclaimed "Horseradish Capital of the World." The product is of such high quality that Europeans import it for gourmet and industrial use. But when crop sciences professor Mohammad Babadoost first arrived at the University of Illinois in 1999, he was told that growers had been experiencing significant yield reductions due to internal discoloring and root rot.
"If the roots are discolored, they are not accepted for processing," Babadoost said.
U of I researchers have been looking at various bacteria and fungi for more than 30 years, trying to identify the agents causing the problem. In the 1980s, they isolated a fungus called Verticillium dahlia, which was linked to horseradish disease at many locations in the United States.
Babadoost, however, was not convinced that this fungus alone was responsible for all the damage.
"When I came here, I realized that it's a serious problem, and I thought it could be a complex problem rather than a single-pathogen/single-disease problem," he said.
He was right. In 2004, he and his team determined that internal discoloration of horseradish roots is due to a disease complex caused by at least three fungi: Verticillium dahlia, Verticillium longisporum, and Fusarium solani.
"But I was still not completely convinced that that was the end of the story," he said. He was seeing a lot of root rot that did not appear to be caused by the identified pathogens.
He and his graduate student, JunMyoung Yu, carried out fungal isolations from horseradish roots from commercial fields in Illinois and Wisconsin. They first identified isolates to genus; those identified as Fusarium were further identified to species based on their morphological and molecular characteristics.
They selected 11 isolates that they identified initially as Fusarium oxysporum. After further analysis, they found that six of them were actually Fusarium commune, a species that was identified in 2003.
To compare the pathogenicity of the two species, they inoculated asymptomatic horseradish roots with either F. commune or F. oxysporum and monitored root quality at monthly intervals.
They found that plants inoculated with F. oxysporum developed internal root discoloration. However, roots inoculated with F. commune had more discoloration, and 83 percent of them developed root rot by four months after inoculation. This was the first time that F. commune had been linked to horseradish disease.
Knowing the source of the disease, however, does not solve the problem. Although infected roots can be dug up, washed, and replanted, the process is labor-intensive, and the plants remain susceptible to the pathogens that remain in the soil.
Babadoost said that growers are interested in developing resistant cultivars, but doing so will not be an easy task. "I don't know if cultivars resistant to the internal root discoloration will ever be available because of the complexity of the disease," he said. "You have to go through a long process of testing against each individual pathogen and combination of pathogens to come up with a reasonably resistant cultivar."
He recommends that growers use an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approach. Infected roots can be cleaned in hot water and replanted. Biocontrol agents or fungicides can be used to protect the roots from infection for 12 weeks, and it takes roughly the same amount of time for root damage to reach unacceptable levels.
"If these two techniques are combined, by the end of the season in the fall the roots are either not infected or discoloration from infection is negligible, so you can sell the roots," he said.
###
The research is described in "Occurrence of Fusarium commune and F. oxysporum in Horseradish Roots" by J. M. Yu and M. Babadoost, which was published by the American Phytopathological Society in the April 2013 issue of Plant Disease and can be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-06-12-0538-RE.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
In the first interview since her husband’s death, Laurene Powell Jobs dedicated her sizable platform to advancing immigration reform, while remaining notably tight-lipped about the private life of the late Steve Jobs. We’ve included highlights (with context) from her interview with Rock Center host, Brian Williams. On Steve Jobs: “Pretty Cool” Legacy BRIAN WILLIAMS: It’s another way of saying we’re left with a world of really cool stuff. I always wanted to know what it was like to be a Kennedy and drive to Kennedy Airport; and what it’s like to be you at a light and watch ten people cross, and the only thing they have in common are white ear buds. What’s that like? LAURENE POWELL JOBS: It’s pretty cool. BRIAN WILLIAMS: (LAUGHS) It’s pretty cool. I mean, that changed our world. LAURENE POWELL JOBS: Yeah. To do what you wanna do, to leave a mark– in a way that you think is important and lasting, that’s a life well lived. On Immigration Reform Powell Jobs has been a vocal advocate of immigration reform, partnering with director Davis Guggenheim (Waiting For Superman, An Inconvenient Truth) on a documentary highlighting the struggles of talented, patriotic American youth who have been denied entrance into the military and college, because they are undocumented immigrants. To add public pressure for Congress to pass a bill that provides a pathway to citizenship for children of immigrants who came to America illegally, the film (trailer below) is accompanied by a grassroots campaign and website. BRIAN WILLIAMS: Climb into the minds of our viewers watching you guys on Friday night. So help us process this. How are we supposed to feel about their parents, who did do something bad? This is ill-gotten gains, because the first entry into this country was wrong. How are we supposed to feel about the bureaucracy we would now have to have just to hand Social Security numbers to our Marine, our civil engineer? LAURENE JOBS POWELL: Yes. It’s understandable that people are conflicted about this. And, yes, the parents broke the law. And so I think that’s why Congress is trying to find a way to make amends. So have them pay a penalty, have them pay back taxes. Have them wait for two decades in order to have the chance to have citizenship. I mean, there are penalties that can be brought out. But then you have someone
Veteran quarterback Matthew Hasselbeck had an eventful couple of days last month.? Cut by the Titans, he quickly landed in the same division, with the Colts.
Now the clear-cut backup to Andrew Luck after being in 2012 the clear-cut backup to Jake Locker, Hasselbeck?s work will be deemed a success if he can constantly nudge Luck to be the best quarterback he can be.
?I feel like I learned a lot in my role with Jake Locker this past year and it really was fulfilling to work with a young guy that?s talented and eager to work and eager to learn,? Hasselbeck told Monday?s edition of Pro Football Talk.? ?I think the thing that I could probably do a better job is just really bringing a competitive spirit to the room.? Obviously, Andrew Luck?s gonna be the starting quarterback there but I can still come in and bring an element of like just being the best that I can be, each and every day.
?I do remember as a young quarterback with the Green Bay Packers, the atmosphere was just very, very competitive.? I mean and everyone knew if Brett Favre had two broken legs, he was still going to be the starting quarterback but the atmosphere was that, ?Hey we?re going to come in and we?re going to compete with each other, each and every day and really just try to push each other in any way that we can sort of like one-up a guy.?? We are just gonna go for it and I think it just, I don?t know if it made Brett any better but I know it made me better and so I think that?s probably the lesson that I learned or one of the lessons that I learned and so I?m looking forward to being around a great talent like Andrew Luck.? I think it?ll probably improve my game just having that mentality and in the end ironically it?ll help the Indianapolis Colts be a better team because of it.?
But it likely won?t result in Hasselbeck ending up as a starter elsewhere.
?I would be shocked if this is not the last stop,? Hasselbeck said.? ?I signed a two-year deal.? My goal right now is just to play those two years and make them two great years but this whole ride has been a dream come true for me.? I was a sixth-round draft pick, wasn?t invited to the Combine, really when I got uh drafted by the Green Bay Packers if I had left training camp with a free pair of Green Bay Packer shorts I would have chalked it up as a victory so this really is a dream come true for me to get to do this for a living.? And it?s not easy.? It takes everything you?ve got each and every year.? You?ve got to bring it 100 percent to have a successful season but I?m committed to two years right now and I?d be shocked if there?s anything beyond that.?
Despite the commitment level required to thrive in the NFL, Hasselbeck has other interests.? His appearance on Monday?s show came in connection with his work with the End It Movement, which has made April 9 an international effort to bring awareness to and ultimately to abolish the ongoing global slavery problem.
There are now more slaves in the world that at any point in history.? You?ll learn that troubling fact and others if you visit the End It Movment?s website.
AAA??Apr. 5, 2013?5:30 PM ET Halle Berry, Olivier Martinez expecting a baby AP
FILE - This Oct. 24, 2012 file photo shows actors Olivier Martinez, left, and Halle Berry at the Los Angeles premiere of Berry's film, "Cloud Atlas," in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles. A representative for the 46-year-old actress confirms that Berry and her fiance, Olivier Martinez, are expecting their first child together. Berry and Martinez announced their engagement last year. Berry has a four-year-old daughter, Nahla, with ex-boyfriend Gabriel Aubry. (Photo by Todd Williamson/Invision/AP, file)
FILE - This Oct. 24, 2012 file photo shows actors Olivier Martinez, left, and Halle Berry at the Los Angeles premiere of Berry's film, "Cloud Atlas," in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles. A representative for the 46-year-old actress confirms that Berry and her fiance, Olivier Martinez, are expecting their first child together. Berry and Martinez announced their engagement last year. Berry has a four-year-old daughter, Nahla, with ex-boyfriend Gabriel Aubry. (Photo by Todd Williamson/Invision/AP, file)
FILE - This Oct. 24, 2012 file photo shows actors Olivier Martinez, left, and Halle Berry at the Los Angeles premiere of Berry's film, "Cloud Atlas," in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles. A representative for the 46-year-old actress confirms that Berry and her fiance, Olivier Martinez, are expecting their first child together. Berry and Martinez announced their engagement last year. Berry has a four-year-old daughter, Nahla, with ex-boyfriend Gabriel Aubry. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, file)
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Halle Berry is pregnant.
A representative for the 46-year-old actress confirms that Berry and her fiance, Olivier Martinez, are expecting their first child together.
Publicist Meredith O'Sullivan Wasson offered no other details.
Berry and Martinez announced their engagement last year. Berry has a daughter with her ex-boyfriend, Gabriel Aubry. The two settled their custody battle over the 5-year-old in November.
The Beastie Boys' Mike D is fighting for more than the right to party -- he's been helping serve Hurricane Sandy victims warm meals from a food truck.
The musician, whose full name is Michael Diamond, spoke to GOOD Magazine on Tuesday about the project. Since the storm, more than 19,000 free meals have been served.
Seeing the damage to Rockaway Beach, he launched the Rockaway Plate Lunch truck with restauranteur and friend Robert McKinley.
The cooking expertise come from Sam Talbot of 'Top Chef' fame, who is working with teams at New York's Spotted Pig and Fat Radish restaurants, to serve up rice, beans, chicken and vegetables.
In the Vimeo video above, Mike D explains that a food truck allowed easy navigation through the changing post-Sandy landscape. The team feeds anywhere from 200 to 500 people daily.
"The willingness to get involved has been amazing," McKinley says in the video. "There's been no egos and everyone is working really hard."
Story continues after photo
Five months after the storm, Mike D wants to transition the project to a full-time restaurant staffed by residents.
"There?s still the need for warm food out there, but our real goal for this summer is to help revitalize the local economy," he told GOOD magazine.
On The Daily Show?last night, Jon Stewart went after Jeff Zucker's newfangled approach at CNN, taking aim at hologram goats, vegetarians who eat bacon, and horrifying murder recreations. Stewart screamed in horror after showing the network's segment on how the Jodi Arias murder happened. "This is the middle of the day," Stewart said. "That piece could have been seen by any child?traveling through an airport."?