Renowned for its exquisite Cantonese dishes and a distinguished 95-item dim sum menu, Sun Sui Wah Seafood Restaurant is poised to bring its culinary expertise to Bellevue, Washington. Marking its first venture into the United States, this Vancouver-based restaurant aims to replicate its Canadian success by catering to the diverse palate of Bellevue’s food enthusiasts. With anticipation building, the restaurant’s opening at the end of April is subject to final clearance from city and health department officials.
Strategic Expansion into the U.S. Market
After serving dim sum aficionados in Richmond, B.C., and Vancouver for over three decades, Sun Sui Wah’s expansion reflects a broader trend of Chinese culinary establishments venturing into new territories. Bellevue, with its vibrant food scene, presents an ideal launching pad for the restaurant’s U.S. journey. This move is not just about geographical expansion but also about testing the waters for further growth in the American market, with Seattle earmarked as a potential future location. The decision to expand south of the border comes after meticulous planning and market analysis, demonstrating Sun Sui Wah’s commitment to extending its culinary legacy.
Offering Authentic Cantonese Delights
At the heart of Sun Sui Wah’s popularity is its commitment to authenticity and quality. The upcoming two-story restaurant in Bellevue Marketplace shopping center promises to offer a culinary experience reminiscent of its Canadian counterparts. Diners can look forward to indulging in an array of Cantonese cuisine staples, including har gow (shrimp dumplings), siu mai (pork and shrimp dumplings), and the much-loved roasted squab. With a menu boasting 95 dim sum items, the restaurant aims to cater to both traditional tastes and those looking to explore new culinary horizons.
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Are you tired of the tendency of the media to only report the ugly, sensational and violent news? If you want a break and find some good news, click on this site to relax your soul: https://informationisbeautiful.net/beautifulnews/
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Americans ages 65 and older should receive an additional dose of the latest Covid vaccine this spring, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday.
The spring shot would be a second dose of the most recent iteration of the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna or Novavax vaccines introduced in the fall. People who are immunocompromised are already eligible for additional doses of the vaccine.
At a meeting of the agency’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices earlier on Wednesday, federal researchers presented preliminary data showing that the latest vaccines have an effectiveness of about 40 to 50 percent against symptomatic infection or hospitalization, although estimates against currently circulating variants were based on small numbers.
In October and November, adults who received a fall dose accounted for 4 percent of Covid-related hospitalizations. Those who got a booster in the fall of 2022, but not the updated vaccine this fall, accounted for 25 percent.
Still, a second dose this spring would not be cost-effective for adults 18 to 64 years old, who are at lower risk of severe illness and hospitalization than older adults, according to modeling presented at the meeting.
Older adults and those with weakened immune systems because of illnesses or medications would benefit the most from a spring dose, the advisers concluded.
“I was impressed with data supporting the need for an additional dose of vaccine for those 65 years and older,” Dr. Camille Kotton, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and a member of the scientific advisory panel, said in an interview.
“Given the risk of severe, even life-threatening, disease, I would encourage those who are moderately to severely immunocompromised to take the opportunity for another dose,” she added.
Adults ages 65 and older accounted for two-thirds of all hospitalizations related to Covid between October 2023 and January 2024, and those ages 75 and older accounted for nearly half. Adults in this age group were also the most likely to have opted for the fall shot.
More than 43 percent of Americans aged 75 and older got the fall shot, compared with fewer than 10 percent of adults aged 18 to 29 years. Vaccination rates were lowest among Native Americans and Alaska Natives, and among those who lived in rural areas. Fewer than 13 percent of pregnant women opted for the vaccine.
Nearly half of those who did not plan to get the vaccine said they were concerned about unknown serious side effects, according to data from the National Immunization Survey in January.
Other reasons for the low uptake may be the lack of vaccine availability in the first few weeks following the C.D.C.’s recommendation, and confusion over insurance coverage for the shots.
The agency’s advisers met in September to discuss whether to recommend the shots, and for whom, but that allowed little time for vaccine manufacturing and distribution before the fall peak of infections, said Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos, an infectious disease physician and C.D.C. researcher.
Dr. Panagiotakopoulos presented a revised plan for a decision on next fall’s Covid shot, with the C.D.C. advisers meeting in June to make recommendations regarding who should get the vaccine. A meeting of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration, which must precede the C.D.C. guidance, is already scheduled for May 16.
At the meeting on Wednesday, C.D.C. advisers wrestled with whether to suggest that older adults “may” opt to get a spring Covid vaccine in consultation with their health care providers, or to recommend more emphatically that they “should” do so.
Some panelists said the softer recommendation would be more palatable to Americans, and less likely to contribute to vaccine fatigue. Others argued that stronger language would make it clearer to those at high risk from the virus that a vaccine would afford them protection through the spring.
The advisers ultimately voted to recommend that Americans ages 65 and older “should” receive a spring shot. Dr. Cohen, the C.D.C. director, accepted the recommendation later in the day.
“I hope that clarity of the need for a second dose may encourage vaccination and protection in both those who have not yet had a first vaccine and those who would benefit by a second vaccine,” Dr. Kotton said.
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In an Alabama Supreme Court decision that has rattled reproductive medicine across the country, a majority of the justices said the law was clear that frozen embryos should be considered children: “Unborn children are ‘children.’”
But the court’s chief justice, Tom Parker, drew on more than the Constitution and legal precedent to explain his determination.
“Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God,” he wrote in a concurring opinion that invoked the Book of Genesis and the prophet Jeremiah and quoted at length from the writings of 16th- and 17th-century theologians.
“Even before birth,” he added, “all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”
The Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that frozen embryos should be considered children.READ DOCUMENT 131 PAGES
Just as the case, which centers on wrongful-death claims for frozen embryos that were destroyed in a mishap at a fertility clinic, has reverberated beyond Alabama, so has Justice Parker’s opinion.
His theological digressions showed why he has long been revered by conservative legal groups and anti-abortion activists, and also why he has inspired apprehension among critics who regard him as guided more by religious doctrine than the law. (continued)
An advisory panel to the CDC is expected to vote on whether to recommend a spring booster during a Feb. 28 meeting, a source close to the panel told NBC News. The panel is expected to focus on the safety of high-risk Americans, including people 65 and older and anyone with a weakened immune system.
“The discussion will be aimed at the people who are most accepting of public health recommendations,” Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., told NBC News. “The committee, in its rigorous fashion since the question has come up, will be considering a second dose for people at high risk or for people who wish to get it.”
A spring booster would be the same shot approved last fall, which targets the XBB.1.5 subvariant. Luckily, that booster formulation also works well against the JN.1 subvariant, the leading cause of most COVID infections in the United States at the moment.
Experts said a spring booster shot makes sense.
“Waiting till the fall, I think, is a mistake,” Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told NBC News. “We have clear evidence that either vaccine or previous infection probably gives four to six months of relative protection against serious illness, hospitalizations and deaths, but wanes substantially after that.”
Still, even vulnerable groups like transplant patients, who tend to follow their doctors’ advice, are feeling vaccine fatigue, Dr. William Werbel, associate director of epidemiology and quantitative sciences with the Johns Hopkins Transplant Research Center in Baltimore, told NBC News.
“Some people have had seven, eight vaccines,” Werbel said. “Transplant recipients would be more receptive and much more likely to follow recommendations, particularly if recommended by the transplant center, but the ceiling is kind of lowered because of this societal fatigue and societal disenchantment with COVID.”
Experts generally recommend that even high-risk patients wait at least two months after a COVID vaccination or COVID infection before getting another shot.
For a glorious decade or two, the drink was lauded as good for the heart. What happened?
Ed Note: Tom Lehrer sang, “Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air” but he didn’t sing about wine. Now the bottom line is in: have a glass now and then but don’t expect your heart to like it.
In a 1991 segment of “60 Minutes,” the CBS correspondent Morley Safer asked how it could be that the French enjoyed high-fat foods like pâté, butter and triple crème Brie, yet had lower rates of heart disease than people in the United States.
“The answer to the riddle, the explanation of the paradox, may lie in this inviting glass,” Mr. Safer said, raising a glass of red wine to viewers.
Doctors believed, Mr. Safer said, that wine had “a flushing effect” that prevented blood clot-forming cells from clinging to artery walls. This, according to a French researcher who was featured in the segment, could reduce the risk of a blockage and, therefore, the risk of a heart attack.
At the time, several studies had supported this idea, said Tim Stockwell, an epidemiologist at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research. And researchers were finding that the Mediterranean diet, which has traditionally encouraged a glass or two of red wine with meals, was a heart-healthy way of eating, he added.
But it wasn’t until the “60 Minutes” segment that the idea of red wine as a virtuous health drink went “viral,” he said.
It would take decades for the glow of wine’s health halo to fade.
How our understanding of alcohol and health has evolved
The possibility that a glass or two of red wine could benefit the heart was “a lovely idea” that researchers “embraced,” Dr. Stockwell said. It fit in with the larger body of evidence in the 1990s that linked alcohol to good health.
In one 1997 study that tracked 490,000 adults in the United States for nine years, for example, researchers found that those who reported having at least one alcoholic drink per day were 30 to 40 percent less likely to die from cardiovascular disease than those who didn’t drink. They were also about 20 percent less likely to die from any cause.
By the year 2000, hundreds of studies had reached similar conclusions, Dr. Stockwell said. “I thought the science was in,” he said.
But some researchers had been pointing out problems with these kinds of studies since the 1980s, and questioning if the alcohol was responsible for the benefits they saw.
Perhaps moderate drinkers were healthier than non-drinkers, they said, because they were more likely to be educated, wealthy and physically active, and more likely to have health insurance and eat more vegetables. Or maybe, these researchers added, it was because many of the “non-drinkers” in the studies were actually ex-drinkers who had quit because they had developed health issues.
Kaye Middleton Fillmore, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, was among those urging more scrutiny of the research. “It is incumbent on the scientific community to assess this evidence carefully,” she wrote in an editorial published in 2000.
In 2001, Dr. Fillmore persuaded Dr. Stockwell and other scientists to help her sift through the previous studies and reanalyze them in ways that could account for some of these biases.
“I’ll work with you on this,” Dr. Stockwell remembered telling Dr. Fillmore, who died in 2013. But “I was really skeptical of the whole thing,” he said.
As it turned out, the team found a surprising result: In their new analysis, the previously observed benefits of moderate drinking had vanished. Their findings, published in 2006, made headlines for contradicting the prevailing wisdom: “Study Puts a Cork in Belief That a Little Wine Helps the Heart,” The Los Angeles Times reported. (continued)
At the end of March, the Washington State Transportation Commission will be sending you a link to a new FROG survey that will ask for your input on WSF’s recent performance from January to March 2024.
To have as many people involved as possible, we are hoping we can enlist your help in getting more people to join the FROG and take the survey. The more people we hear from, the more impact your collective voice will have.
HERE IS THE LINK YOU CAN SHARE FOR OTHERS TO JOIN FROG
If you know of any ferry riders or people interested in ferry issues, who might want to participate, please pass this email along to them. All they need to do to sign up is click on the link below and fill out a short form: CLICK HERE TO JOIN the Ferry Riders’ Opinion Group – It only takes a few minutes to join!
We truly do appreciate you taking the time to share your views via the surveys and appreciate any help you can lend us in getting more folks to join the FROG community.
Sincerely,
Debbie Young, Chair Washington State Transportation Commission http://wstc.wa.gov/
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Toward the end of the interview Robinson talks about President Joe Biden and his age: “I’m less than a year younger than Joe Biden, so I believe utterly in his competence, his brilliance, his worldview. I really do. You have to live to be 80 to find this out: Anybody under 50 feels they’re in a position to condescend to you. You get boxed into this position where people who deal with you are making assumptions about your intellect. It’s very disturbing. Most people my age are just fine. What can I say? It’s a kind of good fortune that America is categorically incapable of accepting: that someone with a strong institutional memory, who knows how things are supposed to work, who was habituated to their appropriate functioning is president. I consider him a gift of God. All 81 years of him.”
Here’s the full article: For years, I had a secondhand paperback copy of Marilynne Robinson’s 1980 novel, “Housekeeping,” on my bookshelf that I never got around to reading. Then one day I picked it up. Not altogether too long later, I put it down, finished. In the plain-spokenness of its language, the grace and dignity of its characters, the simplicity of its story and its intimations of spiritual transcendence, “Housekeeping” is a book that transformed how I see my place in the world. (And I’m not alone: Former President Barack Obama has talked about how Robinson’s work influenced him.) Robinson, who for years taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, hasn’t given us a new novel since “Jack” in 2020, but she does have a new nonfiction book that will be published next month. “Reading Genesis” is, as the title suggests, Robinson’s literary analysis of the first book of the Old Testament — one writer’s appreciation of the enduring work of others. Like so much of Robinson’s writing, the book is alive with questions of kindness, community and how to express what we so often struggle to put into words. “An argument that I make in the book,” Robinson says, puckishly implying a counterargument to contemporary mores, “is that God is patient, loves human beings, suspends judgment and is not inclined toward punitive behaviors.”
To start, I don’t think I’m making any great leap in saying that the subject of goodness is something you often write about. I think that’s true.
Looking around our country right now, goodness and grace and mercy feel in short supply. I wonder if that makes you think any differently about the work that you do or have done. Maybe it makes it feel more urgent? Maybe it feels more difficult? Well, I have to say I’m very surprised, shocked, disillusioned perhaps by the turn that things have taken in this country in the last decade or so. The vulgarity and mercilessness that have entered public conversation, and a kind of meagerness and unwillingness to be a source of benefit to the people in the country at large. A stinginess has settled in that’s intellectual and economic and very appalling to me, and contrary to any notion that I have of what is good.
What do you think we could do about it? We have to rethink some very basic things. Genesis has a lot to do with the way people who claim to be religious understand the nature of God. I think it has in various ways been badly misinterpreted. I think that idea that people can claim the word “God,” often in association with something bizarre, like the word “guns,” and feel that they’ve taken the position of righteousness, that’s just a terrible corruption of the whole idea of religion.
Do you still go to church? Well, I moved. The church of my heart is in Iowa City. They stream their services, and I watch them here in New York.1
1 Robinson splits her time between upstate New York and California. I keep meaning to attach myself to another church, but I just love watching the old faces, hearing the old songs. I’ve got to get over it. (continued)
A study by researchers at the University of Washington and Northwestern University found 84% of Black parents and 76% of white parents spoke to their 8- to 11-year-old children about the Black Lives Matter, or BLM, movement within a year of the 2020 murder of George Floyd.
However, the research revealed key differences in the language parents used to explain BLM. While 78% of Black parents affirmed Black lives and acknowledged systemic racism, only 35% of white parents reported similar messaging.
The study, recently published online in Developmental Psychology, was prompted by the widespread calls in 2020 for national conversations on race that included children, as highlighted in a Sesame Street Town Hall. The researchers wanted to learn what parents were saying to their children during this sociopolitical moment of upheaval.
“Parents are experiencing the stresses and ‘us versus them’ divisions in society, but what are they telling their kids about this?” said co-author Andrew Meltzoff, UW professor of psychology and co-director of the UW Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences.
Data for the study were collected via online survey between November 2020 and January 2021 from more than 700 socio-economically diverse parents of children aged 8-11. Study participants were evenly divided between Black and white parents. Respondents were asked whether they had spoken to their children about BLM, and, if so, were then asked what they had told their child. Open-ended question responses were then coded and categorized by the research team.
“While it is notable that many parents, including white parents, were talking with their children about Black Lives Matter, it is more important to consider what parents said,” said Leoandra Onnie Rogers, lead author and professor of psychology at Northwestern University and principal director of the DICE lab.
Rogers, who did her postdoctoral fellowship with Meltzoff at the UW and later became a research assistant professor before being hired at Northwestern, said the responses showed not all “yes” responses were substantive, and importantly, the conversational approaches varied by race.
Black parents were more likely to acknowledge inequality — shown through responses like: “I talk with my son about the wrongful deaths of men and women of color at the hands of police” — and affirm Black lives with messages such as: “I try to remind him that he is important and worthy despite what the media tells us.”
White parents who gave substantive responses were more likely to communicate very general messages about equality without pointing to existing injustices, such as: “All lives matter no matter your skin color.”
The research team also noted a pattern of verbatim responses copied from the internet. This type of response was mostly used by white parents — 14% vs. 1% of Black parents — who had answered the survey with apparent credibility but could not or did not actually report their own thoughts when talking about BLM. In fact, 27% of white parents provided uncodeable responses, which included nonsensical comments or content copied and pasted word-for-word from Internet sources.
“Encouraging parents to talk about race, to break the silence, is necessary but insufficient,” Rogers said. “The upside is these data suggest that parents are listening to the societal conversation, and the concerted effort to engage parents and families in race talk did seem to influence the overall frequency of the reported conversations. However, the depth and substance of these conversations warrants further attention.”
Added Meltzoff: “Parents wonder when it’s appropriate to talk with their children about race and what’s the most helpful thing to say. We looked at the strategies taken by hundreds of parents across the country. Parents can teach us a lot about how to have conversations about race — not only with children but among ourselves.”
Other study co-authors were David Chae, associate professor at Tulane University; Katharine Scott, assistant professor at Wake Forest University; Northwestern research assistants Chiara Dorsi and Finn Wintz; and Sarah Eisenmann, now a behavioral research coordinator at Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.
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Thanks to Sybil-Ann. Ed note: I just have one to add. Years ago, when the 747 jet landed in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, the flight attendant announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Dhahran, it’s a warm 99 degrees outside and if you’d like to reset your watches, please turn them back 2000 years!”
House Bill 2166 (with revisions) recently passed the House unanimously (97-0). This bill allows our POLST forms to be placed in a statewide registry, so that our POLSTs can rapidly be retrieved by 911 responders or emergency rooms. Oregon has had a similar very successful registry. In addition bracelets/medallions can be certified and worn indicating our wishes–especially if we do not wish CPR. Physicians, nurses, palliative care and hospice providers all strongly support this bill. Senator Pedersen has historical issues with the POLST form itself (related to surrogate signatures) and there is a concern he may block the bill in the Senate. Please consider contacting his office to support HB 2166: jamie.pedersen@leg.wa.gov
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