On Wednesday, Take Two will address what the latest White House breach means for the Secret Service, large Hong Kong protests, comic book hero Thor debuting as a woman, farmers not getting much profit in the farm-to-table fad, a new California bill allowing for four-year community colleges and more.
More details about White House security breach point to breakdowns
Officials say it took seconds for Omar Gonzalez to scale the White House fence, cross the grounds and enter the residence of President Obama.
Things keep getting worse for the Secret Service.
First, we learned that a disgruntled Iraq war veteran made it much further into the White House than was previously disclosed almost two weeks ago.
And now we're hearing about what's probably a worse breach three days before that.
A private security contractor - who's a convicted felon - rode in an elevator while carrying a gun with President Obama in Atlanta.
For more, we're joined by Ronald Kessler. He's a contributor for Politico Magazine and author of "The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents."
Hong Kong protests continue on China's National Day
China's National Day kicked off today as thousands of people took to the streets in Hong Kong.
Safe to say they were not there to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the Communist Republic.
The pro-democracy protests attracted the biggest crowds yet, in large part comprised of young people who are calling for big change.
Gordon Chang, author of "The Coming Collapse of China" and a columnist with Forbes joins Take Two for more on why young people in Hong Kong are the driving force behind the protests.
New York Times plans to cut 100 newsroom staffers
The New York Times plans to cut about 100 newsroom jobs as well as a smaller number of jobs from its editorial and business operations, the paper announced Wednesday. That's about 7 and a half percent of the staff.
The Times hopes to make the cuts through voluntary buyouts but will start layoffs if not enough buyouts are taken.
"The job losses are necessary to control our costs and to allow us to continue to invest in the digital future of The New York Times, but we know that they will be painful both for the individuals affected and for their colleagues,” a note from Publisher Arthur Sulzberger and New York Times Co. CEO Mark Thompson to employees said.
The Times also says some of its new digital initiatives aren't working out as planned.
NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik shares more.
US Ambassador to Mexico nominated: Who is Maria Echaveste?
Policy advisor and Berkeley law school lecturer Maria Echaveste has been nominated to the post of U.S. Ambassador to Mexico. She’s the daughter of Central California farmworkers and previously served in both Clinton and Obama administrations.
For more on who she is and what she faces if appointed, reporter Michael Doyle of the McClatchy newspapers weighs in.
Community colleges now can offer 4-year degrees
This week Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation that could have a dramatic effect on higher education in California.
Thanks to the bill, SB 850, some community colleges will soon be allowed to offer four-year baccalaureate degrees. Supporters of the new program hail it as a way to offer highly sought after degrees at a fraction of the cost.
Take Two speaks with the author of the bill: San Diego State Senator Marty Block.
Thor is now a woman with 'big huge boobs'
If you're a comic book fan, you'll notice something a little different about the Marvel character Thor on news stands Wednesday.
He is now a she.
We're used to seeing Thor as a man, thanks to Chris Hemsworth in the Hollywood treatment of the character.
But now that the hammer-wielding Viking god has two X chromosomes, will this encourage more women to pick up comic books?
Melody Severns, president of Girls Drawin Girls, says it's a disappointment that a popular male character was getting a reboot rather than developing an original female character who can build her own fan base.
"Imagine Thor, but put a big set of boobs on Thor," she says. "Big huge boobs."
EVENT: Girls Drawin' Girls co-hosts a screening of the Cecil B. DeMille classic, "Cleopatra," on its 80th anniversary. For tickets and info, find more details here.
'Great Streets': What can LA learn from pedestrian-friendly New York?
One of the major goals for Mayor Eric Garcetti is something he calls "Great Streets" — a project with the Department of Transportation to create more pedestrian-friendly streets.
The plan would create avenues closed off to cars, for example, allowing for cafes, boutiques and more foot traffic.
New York made similar moves with areas in Times Square.
Former New York City Department of Transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan helped New York out with that and now she is consulting with L.A.
Ben Bergman spoke with her earlier in the week at the Atlantic CityLab conference and asked her how her experience in New York might translate to the streets of L.A.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
How does your New York experience translate to Los Angeles?
Like New York, cities face a lot of the same challenges: population growth, climate change, pollution, sustainability and figuring out ways to leverage the advantages these cities have is a key strategy for ensuring their economic success. So I think LA is looking to find different ways to get people around. It's difficult to build your way out of congestion; only so many lanes you can build on the 405. So I think it's a really smart strategy investing in transit; the subway system, the light rail system and exploring a bike share system. These are smart strategies for cities like LA that are looking to grow in sustainable ways, economically competitive ways and ways that are convenient and affordable for Angelenos.
But L.A. is so spread out and has such a car culture compared to New York.
It's true, it's a very different footprint. But I think you take a look at the backbone you can build in a city like LA. You can actually set up a strong transit infrastructure that can get you most of the way you need to go and then looking at building out attractive and convenient first mile, last mile options, so there is a system at the end that can get you to those place you want to go in a flexible way.
I think the sharing economy is going to be very interesting. I think there are going to be new options with your iPhone to get yourself a car, bike, bus to where you need to conveniently and when you need to get there.
Do you see the CityBike program being replicated in other cities?
You're seeing that already. There is an exponential explosion in cities that are implementing a bike share program. It’s becoming the mark of world-class cities, so I see it coming to LA definitely. In New York it was the first new transportation system in 60 years and was no-cost to tax payers because we had sponsors who paid for the system. I think in an era of shrinking federal and state resources cities are going to have to look for alternative ways to get their transportation funded. So I think this is one new avenue to explore when cities are looking to expand transportation options in an era of constrained resources.
You were able to transform Times Square famously with, as you just said, a little bit of paint. What do you think can be done to create more public space in LA?
I think it’s a great strategy to use paint to transform spaces because it's about reclaiming spaces and changing the use of the space is key and it doesn’t have to take a lot of time and money. In New York we reclaimed 180 acres of former roadway space and transformed it into space for people on foot, bike, for people to enjoy the city.
You look on the streets of Los Angeles and you can paint the city you want to see. I think there's tremendous opportunities all over the city to reclaim former roadway space and transform it into new public space for Angelenos to use.
It's a really key quality of life strategy and economic development strategy as well.
Study finds link between early, frequent antibiotic use and childhood obesity
Parents and pediatricians often turn to antibiotics when a child is sick. These medications can serve as quick and effective panaceas for a variety of illnesses.
But a new study may give some pause before filling that prescription. It found a link between early and frequent use of antibiotics and obesity.
Dr. Charles Bailey is one of the authors of the study, recently published in JAMA Pediatrics. He is also an attending physician at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. His study looked at the medical records of almost 65,000 babies and children and found that those who received repeated courses -- 4 or more -- of antibiotics before the age of two, were 11% more likely to become obese by the age of five.
The study found that, though many antibiotics are highly effective at killing off harmful bacteria that causes infection, they are also really good at killing the beneficial bacteria in the body -- specifically the bacteria in our guts, which help us digest properly and burn calories.
Bailey cautions, however, that this study shows a link, but not necessarily causation. "Because we're looking at just health records and we're looking back in time, we don't have the information that would let us specifically say the antibiotics were the cause of obesity," he said.
'Farm to table' helps restaurants, but not farmers
"Farm to table" may be a phrase that entices foodies, but small farmers rarely reap the benefits.
It's a term more restaurants around the country use on their menus: it evokes the idea that the food on your plate comes directly from a small, local farmer who's collaborated with the chef to bring you something fresh and tasty.
However some farmers say that that relationship is mostly one-sided.
Establishments can charge a premium for food sold this way, but growers, themselves, might still be struggling to get by.
Rebecca Thistlethwaite is a small farmer in Oregon and she consults for other small farms all across the country.
"Chefs pay a lot of lip service to the idea of 'farm to table,'" she says, "but most restaurants aren't willing to make a commitment and buy all that a farm produces through the good times and bad."
Blue Hill Chef and respected slow food advocate Dan Barber also spoke out about farm to table at LA CityLab recently, saying it "does not really work" because chefs pick a small percentage of what they want from a farm and do not take crop rotation into account.
Thistlethwaite adds that there's a big mark-up at the dining table for the ingredients that chefs use, but farmers are still kept to very slim profit margins that help them stay afloat. She shared more on the trend and its effects.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
The National Restaurant Association has said farm to table has been the number one trend in restaurants the past five years. It sounds so good on paper and most diners feel like they're helping out the small farmer by cutting out the middle men. What's going on?
I think a more apt description should be warehouse to table because truthfully if a restaurant is buying less than 10 percent of their food budget from local farmers and the rest is coming off the Cisco truck it's truly a drop in the bucket for local farmers and I see a lot of restaurants using it more as a marketing ploy unfortunately.
Why aren’t restaurants buying more from local smaller farmers instead of the warehouse?
There's a lot of logistical issues. It's a lot easier to call Cisco and put in one order and have $4,000 worth of product show up at your door the next day, whereas if you order direct from farmers you'll probably have to call 10 different people that grow different crops and raise different animals. So it is a lot more effort to do it. I think price and margins definitely come into play. I think restaurants don't have big budgets to work with either so they often have to make financial decisions and that involves buying from the warehouse companies instead of from the farmers.
What happens when restaurants go to you—what do you sell, how much do you charge and how much do restaurants turn around and sell that product for to their diners?
I sold whole or half pigs to restaurants. We'd deliver maybe one pig every other week to restaurants. But that one pig involves a lot of logistics. I've got to take it to the slaughterhouse and it's got to get slaughtered and cleaned and then delivered to the restaurant. A lot of times it just doesn’t make financial sense for me as a farmer to go out of my way to make that delivery. If you're a vegetable farmer and you sell two boxes of purple cauliflower to a restaurant, that's $40 in your pocket—are you really going to go out of your way to service that restaurant for such a small purchase? So there's a lot of transportation and logistical things that come into play.
Why not, as a farmer, just charge more for your products?
That would be great if they weren't competing with the likes of United Foods and Cisco and the big aggregators but they are so their prices still have to be somewhat in line. Granted the small farmer probably has better quality and better shelf life for their products, so a farmer to really be competitive really has to push that quality and also grow things that aren't available from the big aggregators.
How big of a role are sales to restaurants in terms of the overall businesses of most small farmers these days?
I am consistently finding farms that are dropping their restaurant sales because they find it to be too cumbersome and find chefs to be too finicky. One week it's purple cauliflower, the next week it's black garlic, the next week it's microgreens. The trendiness factor in restaurants doesn't bode well for farmers to do long-term planning so I know a lot of farmers who have stopped delivering to restaurants and they focus more on farmers markets and CSAs, which are community-supported agriculture methods.
And yet, at least in California, I have not seen a decrease in the saying "farm to table." It's popping up on restaurant menus all the time.
They love it. What restaurant wants to say 'Cisco to table' or 'warehouse to table?'
What do restaurant owners have to say about this? Are you getting any empathy from them?
There are a small handful of restaurant owners, a lot of them are very involved in slow food groups or Chef's Collaborative, a national organization that really tries to promote sustainability and helping out farmers. So there are some genuine chefs and restaurateurs that are making a concerted effort to support local and family farmers. But there's not enough of them and those are typically pretty high-end restaurants so that leaves out all the mid-scale and lower-end restaurants in this country people eat at.
Is there a way, as a diner, that I can be sure when I see "farm to table" on a menu to tell if it is genuinely farm to table?
First look at the menu and see if they list their suppliers or if they have a chalkboard that lists the farms they buy from. Ask the waiter, 'Truthfully, where is this beef coming from' or 'where are these eggs coming from?'
Peanut allergy? The dry roasting process may be to blame
The peanut used to be America's favorite nut. But now they've become persona non grata at schools and on airplanes because of allergies.
Scientists have struggled to pinpoint exactly why peanut allergies are on the rise. And it turns out the peanut itself may not be to blame.
That's according to new research recently published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
Quentin Sattentau from Oxford University led the study, which found that chemical changes that occur during dry roasting may increase the odds of an allergic reaction to peanuts.
'Love Me Slender': New book encourages couples to stay heathy together
It's a story as old as time.
Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love.
Boy and girl start eating out all the time and they start staying in watching TV while eating pizza and gelato. All of a sudden boy and girl have ballooned three pants sizes.
Yes, the quandary of watching our waistlines while navigating the ups and downs of love is one many of us can relate to.
It's also the subject of a new book titled "Love Me Slender: How smart couples team up to lose weight, exercise more and stay healthy together."
Its authors Thomas Bradbury and Benjamin Karney are the co-directors of the UCLA Relationship Institute. And they join us now.
Take Two turns two: Flashback to Latin band La Santa Cecilia
All this week we're celebrating Take Two turning two with a look back to some of our favorite interviews featuring twosomes.
Our next slice of birthday cake comes from the Latin alternative band La Santa Cecilia.
They recently won a Grammy Award for Best Latin Rock, Urban or Alternative Album for their work "Treinta Dias."
But before they won the Grammy, band mates Jose "Pepe" Carlos and lead singer Marisol Hernandez talked to host A Martinez about their music and how LA figures into their sound.
Related: La Santa Cecilia wins a Grammy for best latin rock album