Uptown Radio

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Anna Maria Jakubek, age 10, at a snake farm in Bangkok, Thailand. Photo by Zygmunt J. Jakubek.

Anna Maria Jakubek reports on food. But she also has a  love for the weird and the vile, which ends up taking over. Her work grosses us out, but, as she explains, that’s our short-coming, not hers.

Anna Maria Jakubek:

We all have things about us so ingrained that whether we like it or not, they won’t go away. In my case, it’s an interest in bizarre, disgusting, off-putting, taboo topics. And being a journalist is great for that. I’ve covered leeches, urine, rat infestations, vomit, and I’ve even snacked on bugs. My professional body of work – it’s one big eww. As my friend Kate puts it, I’m a tiny, soft-spoken gal who’s elbow-deep in the gross. Her theory is that I’m an alien. I look at everything through an unbiased lens, as if I’d just landed from outerspace. The result: What’s gross to you is tabula rasa to me.

Like most things, that there is rooted in my childhood, or one could say “uprooted.” I grew up hopping from country to country. I was the perpetual outsider. I was born in Poland, we moved to Boston when I was four, Japan at nine, Canada at 12, and there were many short trips in-between. In the two years we lived in Japan, we visited 15 of the neighboring countries. And no matter where we were, we did as the locals do. Here’s my mum, Beata:

“In Poland we ate with forks and knives and spoons, in Japan with chopsticks, in Malaysia with our hands, and we never said that this is right or this is wrong. It’s just different.”

She and my dad Zygmunt are Polish, really Polish, going back at least 800 years. They grew up under communism and always wanted to travel but didn’t have the money or the family ties to do so. So when the opportunity came up in their twenties, they grabbed it – for themselves AND for me, their only child. I grew up travelling, because they wanted me to see what else was out there; all of it – the good, the bad and the ugly.

Wherever we were, my scientist parents sought out the unique. In Bangkok, we visited a snake farm and watched them milk cobras for venom. In Katmandu, we saw an open-air cremation. I watched a man’s elbow crack in two and fall through the flame. I can still smell the rotten-egg stench of his burnt fingernails and hair. In Malaysia, we visited a temple where dozens of snakes slept coiled on platters, right out there in the open. And in Tibet, we went to a mountain littered with dead bodies left for the vultures to eat. I can see what’s unusual about that kind of travel now, but at the time I took it as the norm.

Here’s my dad:  “We didn’t consider it gross, we considered it interesting.”

The same goes for my work now: I look for the interesting. But, as my dad points out, because of my early travels, the bar is raised high on what will draw me in.

Zygmunt: “You try to find something which is potentially interesting and since you are exposed to so many different things, something potentially interesting would have to be something from outside the boundaries of normal for you.”

My parents taught me to keep my eyes open and to look hard without judging. I didn’t always want to. But now my eyes don’t shut, and that’s a personal choice.

With a tiny tissue sample, the DMR, can detect cancer cells in an hour and can be interfaced with an ordinary iPhone. Photo by Jonah Comstock/Columbia Radio News.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Checking for cancer isn’t a quick process. From the time doctors first notice a tumor-like growth, it takes as much as a week before they can be sure of what they’re seeing.  But a new technology could change all that. Doctors at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital have completed clinical trials on what they’re calling a Diagnostic Magnetic Resonance device, or DMR. The machine is smaller than a shoebox, and can diagnose cancer in an hour.

Dr. Ronald Ennis is the director of radiation and oncology at New York’s St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital. He says cancer diagnosis usually starts with an MRI or CAT scan, and then a biopsy, which involves taking a lot of cells with a large needle.

“There can be some tissue damage caused by the biopsy itself,” he said. “Those risks are usually low, but in the lung for instance there can be a possibility of causing lung collapse”

But risks like these could soon become obsolete—along with the waiting time for test results. The DMR uses a tiny fraction of the cells a biopsy takes, and can screen them for cancer within an hour.

In Boston, at his lab at Mass General, engineer Hakho Lee showed me to the DMR prototype, which was in three pieces on a table. A metal cylinder in a clear plastic cube, a little smaller than a shoebox, was connected to a plain metal box–like an external hard-drive. That was attached by a jury-rigged cable to an iPhone.  Lee touched the smartphone’s screen, displaying a red chart.

“And this little computer or little electronics is being interfaced with this iPhone here, so, just with a tap, you can start the measurement,” he said.

The “MR” in DMR is the same as in MRI – magnetic resonance.  That’s because the DMR is essentially a scaled down, stripped down MRI machine.  The DMR uses a magnetic field to scan tissue samples for particular proteins, the calling cards of whichever kind of cancer the doctors are looking for.

Cesar Castro–another doctor at Mass General–says that in tests like this one, DMR also detected cancer more accurately than traditional biopsies. But speed and ease of use are where the machine really shines. With a DMR, patients could get an immediate diagnosis at their bed-side, or even from their family doctor.

“It essentially equips the clinician and the researchers with more information about the status and kind of a snapshot of the cancer throughout the course of therapy. We haven’t been able to do that previously with prior technologies,” Castro said.

Cancer may not be the only disease the DMR can detect. By changing the protein markers, engineer Hakho Lee envisions using the device in third-world countries as a near-instant test for tuberculosis. The machine is also cheap to make – about $200 each if they were mass-produced – though Castro says the DMR will still need to be handled by medical professionals.

Dr. Ronald Ennis is cautiously optimistic about this invention. He says the greatest benefit could be to patients, who experience a lot of anxiety waiting to hear about test results.

“If that could be shortened to an immediate procedure instead of you know a week or two of one scan and then a biopsy and then waiting for the results, that would be great in terms of patient experience,” he said.

Ennis warned that technologies that look good in a lab don’t always make it into the real world, and he admits that a cancer detector that’s smaller, faster, cheaper, AND more accurate than current methods sounds too good to be true.  But if the DMR makes it through clinical trials, it may turn out to be just that.

Photo Courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Today New York got a sneak peak at Harry Potter: The Exhibition.  The show at Discovery Times Center in Times Square fans gazed at the original props and costumes from the film adaptations of J.K. Rowling’s books.

The 14,000 square foot exhibit took nearly a month to craft.  It is a collaboration between Las Vegas-based Global Experience Specialists and Warner Brothers, which produced the films.  Creative director Robin Stapley says there are some major logistics involved.

“It takes 21 big rigs and as you can see there’s quite a bit of scenery and props and artifacts,” Stapley said Friday.

“So it takes 21 trucks and it generally takes about 3 or 4 weeks to set this up. We move into the venue. Obviously when we come in here its an empty facility, bring in the walls paint them black and then start setting up the scenery.”

The Exhibit has already drawn crowds in Seattle, Chicago, Toronto and Boston.

Fans will pay twenty-five muggle dollars to get inside.

The grand opening of the Harry Potter exhibit will be held Monday and organizers expect to draw 14 original cast members including Daniel Radcliffe, who is appearing just a few blocks away in a revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

Reporting by Juliana Schatz.

A cobra snake, similar to the one in this file photograph, was thought to have escaped the Bronx Zoo last week Saturday. Photo by Richard DuBarton via Fair Lawn Animal Control / AP.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Even though it’s April Fool’s day – this is a true story.

For the past week, New Yorkers and the nation have been nervously following the Bronx Zoo’s attempt to
locate its female Egyptian cobra.

The snake, one of the world’s more venomous species, went missing from its home in the zoo’s reptile house last Saturday.

After searching around the city–and shutting down the cobra exhibit — zoo workers found the snake INSIDE the reptile house and captured it.

But the missing cobra had become a running — or slithering — joke on late-night TV.

David Letterman said “the good news is they have captured the deadly Egyptian cobra!” last night on his show.

“When they found the snake, it had a bus ticket to Tipton, Indiana.”

And on another network–Conan O’Brien went Letterman one better –booking the snake for his show.

“It was a good get for us. He sat in with the band.”

So O’Brien was understandably confused about the whole recapture thing.

“He was in the zoo the whole time,” O’Brien said Thursday night.

“Which got me wondering, who’s the cobra that’s been sitting in with OUR band this week?”

O’Brien said he liked the “moxie” of the snake on set, pretending to be the Bronx Zoo Cobra.

And we at Uptown Radio appreciate the “moxie” of the still mysterious person who’s been tweeting as the snake last week: with the Twitter handle: @BronxZoosCobra.

Since Monday, the account gained more than 225,000 as @BronxZoosCobra tweeted about being a tourist in the Big Apple, using the hashtag “snake on the town”

On Wednesday it tweeted:

“Getting on the ferry to Ellis Island. Let’s hope this goes better than that time on the plane.”

And the tweets are still coming from inside the zoo.  Today @BronxZoosCobra said it was hungry… and invited folks to help with a real escape recipe:

“2 cups sugar, 4 eggs, 1 cup milk, 2 cups self-rising flour, 1 saw, 1 stick butter. And mix. Bring it by the zoo..”

The joke is so big Ryan Seacrest’s twitter account has been “hijacked” by the snake. And another Twitter feed, at- new-york-mongoose, started tweeting: supposedly on the Cobra’s trail.

We can’t make this up…

We reached out the email account linked @BronxZoosCobra for an interview, and got this response:

“Thanks for the interest, but I am too self conscious of my lisp to do phone interview. But thankssss.”

Reporting by Joe Danielewicz.

Activists rally for jobs outside Sen. Charles Schumer's office, following the release of March unemployment statistics. Photo by Willow Belden/Columbia Radio News

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

A group of about 15 New Yorkers rallied in the rain outside Senator Chuck Schumer’s office this afternoon, asking for jobs.

The protesters say the state budget — and the federal budget that Congress is considering — will cause unemployment to increase because government workers will be laid off.

“How do you think we’re gonna get out of a problem by cutting and cutting and cutting?” said Bill Henning, vice president of the Communication Workers of America Local 1180.

The rally came despite the fact that the unemployment rate is dropping. Labor Department statistics released today show that 8.8 percent of Americans are jobless, compared to nearly 10 percent in November. It’s the lowest rate in two years.

But protesters, who have been rallying each month since December, said that growth doesn’t get us anywhere near pre-recession unemployment levels.

“There was a time when four percent unemployment was considered normal,” said Neil Frumkin, a member of AFSCME’s Local DC 371. “Right now, close to 10 percent in New York City — they’re basically looking at that as the new normal. And that’s not acceptable.”

Protesters also said unemployment numbers can be misleading.

“If you count in all of the people who are working part-time and really need full-time jobs but can’t get them, as well as the discouraged workers who have given up looking for work — add that to the official unemployment rate, and it brings it to something like near 16 percent,” said Sheila Collins, one of the founders of the National Jobs for All Coalition.

Collins says in order to get people working again, the government should do the opposite of cut; it should create public service jobs, similar to what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt did during the Great Depression.

Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration created jobs for eight million Americans.

“We need that kind of commitment today from our democrats in Congress and from our Democratic president,” Collins said.

Collins wants the federal government to create jobs in a variety of fields: clean energy and conservation, infrastructure and transportation, education and public services.

Protesters say they’ll keep turning out every month, on the day jobs numbers are released, until they feel the unemployment rate has reached a reasonable level. They didn’t cite a specific number, but they said they’d know it when they see it.

Photo by Karla Zabludovsky / Columbia Radio News.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Growing up in comfort in Mexico City turned commentator Karla Zabludovsky on to Communism, making her think that ideology was the answer to the world’s inequalities. So in 2009, she and a friend went to Cuba to see the revolution’s success’ firsthand. But the lessons the island taught her were not what Marx and Castro might have liked.

Long before I visited Cuba, I was sure it would feel like home to me. My family disagreed. When my father dropped my friend Lucia and I off at the airport to catch our flight to the island, he told me I’d be back in two weeks. ‘He’s so wrong’, I thought. ‘I’m not coming back.’

We planned to comb the island from East to West by car. Lucia would leave but I’d settle in Santa Clara, the adopted city of Che Guevara, and join the revolution.

I did notice my new home was lacking in some ways. Upon arrival in Santiago, we settled into one of the safest-looking restaurants for a late-night snack. They were out of bottled water—and everything else on the menu—except for ham sandwiches. ‘It happens often’, the bartender told us.

The next morning, daylight showed dilapidated buildings, groups of bored looking men, and pharmacies with nearly empty shelves. But I wasn’t about to doubt the revolution just yet.

Soon we hit the road.  The highway was lined with Communist slogans on billboards. ‘Homeland or death.’ ‘Socialism is humanity’… At first my heart swelled with pride. But I started wondering why the government felt people needed to be reminded so forcefully about the revolution’s ideals.

In Camaguey, Lucia and I went for a drink at a local bar. A group of twenty-something locals and a Dutch tourist joined us. After our second round of mojitos, Lucia discreetly kicked me under the table. I looked to her left and saw the Dutch man running his hand up and down one of the girl’s legs. She didn’t look very comfortable. I remembered people telling me that women in Cuba sell themselves to tourists for a drink, or a pair of jeans, but –until then–I hadn’t believed them. A couple of our new friends walked us back to our homestay and I asked them if it was true. ‘We all do it. We can’t afford nice things otherwise’, they said.

I felt sick. And after that, nothing seemed quite right.  In a bookstore in Cienfuegos, all the “New Books” were yellowed hardcovers about Marxism, Leninism and Castro’s life.

At a ration store, the gentleman behind the counter told customers there was no milk or rice… or cigarettes. The man explained to me that the food –when he had any–wasn’t free, like I thought.

The night before Lucia left, she asked me if I still believed in the revolution. But I couldn’t even find words to express how deeply disillusioned I was.

I flew back to Mexico a couple of days later–feeling lost and angry. But in the end, my father was wrong. It didn’t take two weeks for me to realize that communism doesn’t work—it took three. But for me capitalism isn’t the answer either. I’m still looking for a happy medium— and a place to live that feels like coming home.

Photo by Karla Zabludovsky.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Editor’s Note:  A false report about the Wisconsin Governor made air.  We regret the mistake.  Governor Scott Walker did not resign on April 1, 2011 – April Fools’ Day.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg says tough economic times mean the city will have to cut its police force. On the John Gambling show this morning, he said the police department and other city agencies had been asked to recommend cuts of 2 to 4 percent.  But, he says, the NYPD can make due with a smaller staff.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said “Raymond Kelly he has five or 6 thousand fewer cops that when we came into office in 2002. On the rate that we’re going first quarter, we’re going to set a new record in crime.”

A few hours later, Bloomberg spokesman Marc LaVorgna said that the administration does not plan to layoff uniformed officers. Bloomberg also said that the city must shrink the fire department. His current budget proposal would close 20 fire companies.

Nasdaq is teaming up with InterContinentalExchange to make a counteroffer of 11.3 billion dollars for the New York Stock Exchange’s parent company, NYSE EuroNext.

That’s over a billion dollars more than what Deutsche Boerse, the owner of the Frankfurt stock exchange, had offered to pay for it.

Shares of NYSE Euronext jumped more than 11 percent on the news today.

An eighteen-year-old high School student was struck in the head by an express train earlier this morning. Witnesses say the student stumbled across the platform at the 14^th street-Union Square Station and was struck around 8 am. The victim was knocked unconscious and taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he is in extremely critical condition. Police are investigating.

If shopping for clothes is how you plan on spending your April fools day, you may be in luck—starting today, New York State will exempt clothing and shoes that cost less than 55 dollars from its four percent sales tax. The state used to exempt clothing and shoe purchases up to 110 dollars, but that tax break ended in October, to help meet the budget shortfall. The old sales tax exemption will be restored next April.

Alex Alper Columbia Radio News

April is Sexual Assault Awareness. The topic has been in the news recently after reports of sexual assaults from women fleeing Libya, along with western journalists covering conflicts in the region. The New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault is working to bring awareness to local assaults. Sandhya Dirks spoke with Wendi Bazan about the issue.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Unidentified troops drive past in the city of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Friday, April 1, 2011.Heavy fighting raged Friday near Ivory Coast's presidential palace and mansion and the state TV broadcaster as armed forces loyal to the elected leader tried to install him to power and oust the country's strongman. Photo by: Emanuel Ekra / AP

The stand-off between an ousted president and the elected successor is being fought in the streets between armed groups, loyal to each side.

The country’s last president, Laurent Gbagbo, has blocked Alassane Ouattara from taking office since the election in November.

Linda Abi Assi spoke with Michael McGovern, a professor of political anthropology at Yale University. McGovern has written about Ivory Coast and said Ouattara’s armed followers have gained considerable ground since yesterday.