NATION/WORLD
VIRUS: Do not touch
House backs bill to ease
calorie labeling requirements or handle rodents
Page 10A
East Oregonian
Continued from 1A
WASHINGTON (AP) —
Fast-food chains would get
some relief from government
rules on listing calories for
things like bacon-wrapped
deep dish pizza or double
cheeseburgers under legisla-
tion the House approved on
Friday.
The vote was 266-144.
The legislation now heads
to the Senate, where its fate
is uncertain. The Obama
administration
said
it
opposes the measure though
it stopped short of threat-
ening a presidential veto
Republicans say the
calorie labeling rules sched-
uled to go into effect this
year are too burdensome,
and they have sought to ease
the requirements and lessen
potential ¿nancial penalties
for businesses that have to
comply. Many restaurants
and other food retail outlets,
such as grocery stores, will
have to post the calorie labels
by December.
The FDA rules will
require restaurants and other
establishments that sell
prepared foods and have 20
or more locations to post
the calorie content of food
“clearly and conspicuously”
on their menus, menu boards
and displays. That includes
prepared foods at grocery
and convenience stores and
in movie theaters, bakeries,
coffee shops, pizza delivery
stores and amusement parks.
The bill by Rep. Cathy
McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash.,
would leave the Food and
Drug Administration rules
requiring the labeling in
place but make it easier for
some businesses to comply.
“This bill at its very core is
about Àexibility,” McMorris
Rodgers said during House
debate.
Republican Rep. Fred
Upton, whose state of Mich-
igan is home to Domino’s
Pizza, said it made no sense
to require that calories be
posted on a menu board at
the fast-food chain’s loca-
tions when some 90 percent
of orders are placed online.
Democrats argued that
people want more informa-
tion, not less, when deciding
what to eat.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky,
D-Ill., who said she fought
in the 1970s to get expira-
tion dates on food, said the
calorie labeling rules would
help consumers make better
decisions. She said it is
critical at a time when more
than 70 million Americans
are obese, at a cost estimated
to be $147 billion a year.
Schakowsky said Cali-
fornia, Vermont, New York
City and some smaller cities
and towns have already
implemented the rules.
“This unnecessary legis-
lation would deny consumers
critical information about the
food they eat,” she said.
The
administration,
in a statement this week,
said the bill “would reduce
consumers’ access to nutri-
tion information and likely
create consumer confusion
by introducing a great deal of
variability into how calories
are declared.”
The legislation would
narrow labeling require-
ments for supermarkets,
which have complained that
the rules are confusing and
broad, by allowing stores to
use a menu or menu board
in a prepared-foods area
instead of putting labels on
individual items.
It would also allow
restaurants like pizza chains
that receive most of their
orders remotely to post calo-
ries online instead of at the
retail location. Pizza restau-
rants would also have more
Àexibility in the way they
post calories, and restaurants
and retailers could determine
what constitutes a serving
size, in some cases.
In addition, the bill seeks
to ensure that establishments
aren’t punished for misla-
beling due to inadvertent
human error.
The
menu
labeling
rules were ¿rst required by
Congress in 2010, but FDA
took several years to write
them as the supermarkets,
convenience stores and pizza
companies
aggressively
lobbied against them.
Heat, dry spell stoke drought worry
SONOMA, Calif. (AP) —
Where did El Nino go?
Winter has suddenly
switched off the rain and
Àipped on heat up to 95
degrees in California, raising
jitters that the strong El Nino
might not be the drought-
buster the crispy state had
hoped.
“Forget El Nino, this is El
No-no!” YouTube celebrity
Hannah Hart tweeted.
Heat records have fallen
across the West in recent
days, from Oregon to
Phoenix to Los Angeles,
where surfers hit the beaches
and golfers strolled fairways.
Much
of
California
marked its 10th straight day
on Friday without measur-
able precipitation. The blue
skies were increasingly
unwelcome in a state that just
logged its four driest years
on record. California has
been looking for a robust and
rainy El Nino to bring it out
of mandatory water cutbacks.
“It’s nice to have the
weather, but we hope to have
the rain,” Tia Gavin of Santa
Rosa said as she showed
out-of-town visitors around
the adobe central plaza of
the wine country town of
Sonoma. Strollers in shorts
surveyed restaurant windows
and lolled on blankets on
green grass under the sun.
The dry spell came after
El Nino dropped near-normal
rain and snow earlier this
winter.
“If you just looked at the
precipitation, you wouldn’t
think that there was an
El Nino going on,” said
Sam Iacobellis, a climate
researcher at Scripps Institu-
tion of Oceanography in San
Diego. He has been taking
note of early blooming
Àowers as he drove to work
this week.
Strong El Ninos such as
the one this year typically
bring strong rain, Iacobellis
said. However, there have
been few modern El Ninos
on the scale of this one,
making comparisons trickier,
he said.
National Weather Service
forecasters were quick to
offer soothing messages of
drizzle yet to come.
“No
need
to
be
concerned,” forecaster Steve
Anderson said.
The balmy weather has
“been awesome. It’s been
great. But it’s not going
to last,” he said. “It’s still
winter.”
Californians are partic-
ularly concerned about
whether the warm stretch is
melting the above-average
snowpack in the Sierra
Nevada. The snow generally
provides about a third of the
state’s water when it thaws in
OI¿cial¶s email sa\s sKiIt to
)lint RiYer maGe too quickl\
FLINT (AP) — As the
city of Flint, Michigan,
prepared to begin drawing
its drinking water from the
Flint River, an of¿cial with
the municipal water plant
said his superiors were
prodding him to move too
quickly, an email released
by the governor’s of¿ce
Friday shows.
“If water is distributed
from this plant in the next
couple weeks, it will be
against my direction,” Mike
Glasgow wrote to of¿cials
with the state Department
of Environmental Quality
on April 17, 2014, when he
was the plant’s laboratory
and water quality supervisor.
He is now the city utilities
administrator.
“I need time to adequately
train additional staff and
to update our monitoring
plans before I will feel we
are ready,” he wrote. “I will
reiterate this to management
above me, but they seem to
have their own agenda.”
The city made the switch
to the Flint River eight days
later, marking the occasion
with a ceremony April 25.
Flint had long relied on
treated Lake Huron water
from Detroit’s system,
but turned to the river as a
temporary measure to save
money when the city was
under emergency ¿nancial
management.
Of¿cials
planned eventually to get
Lake Huron water from a
new pipeline.
Flint did not use an
anti-corrosion
chemical
treatment as Detroit had
done,
which
of¿cials
acknowledge was a drastic
failure that enabled the
corrosive river water to
scrape lead from aging
pipes and taint water that
reached some homes. Even
before the lead problem
was discovered, residents
complained repeatedly that
their water had become
smelly, bad-tasting and
discolored.
Gov. Rick Snyder’s
of¿ce, accused by critics
of
mishandling
and
downplaying the crisis for
months, released about
20,000 related emails and
records Friday in response to
open-records requests. The
emails came from several
state departments, including
Environmental
Quality;
Technology, Management
and Budget; Health and
Human Services; Agricul-
ture and Rural Development;
and Treasury.
the spring.
There again, not to worry,
forecaster Travis Wilson
said.
Parts of the Sierras
broke heat records on at
least two days this month,
but nights have all fallen
below freezing, keeping the
precious new snow intact, he
explained.
The heat is expected to
peak around Monday, with
more record highs possible
all the way to Washington
state and in parts of Arizona.
More seasonal weather
patterns were expected to
bring some rain back to
California midweek.
Californians are adjusting
in the meantime. Bryan Stra-
nahan had to do something
unusual for this time of year
when he went out Friday to
run errands in Los Angeles.
“I normally don’t have to
look for a shady parking spot
until August or September,”
the New York native said.
“I’m not complaining,” he
added.
sure. Symptoms include
fever, headache, and
muscle ache, and rapidly
to severe breathing dif¿-
culty and, in some cases,
death.
Hitzman
offered
the following advice to
prevent spread:
Keep food in tightly
sealed containers and
store it away from rodents.
Keep rodents out of
buildings by removing
stacked wood, rubbish
piles, and discarded junk
from around homes and
sealing any holes where
rodents could enter.
When cleaning a
sleeping or living space,
open windows to air out
the area for at least two
hours before entering.
Take care not to stir up
dust. Wear plastic gloves
and a mask. Spray areas
contaminated with rodent
droppings and urine with
a 10 percent bleach solu-
tion or other household
disinfectant and wait at
least 15 minutes before
cleaning the area. Place
the waste in double plastic
bags, each tightly sealed,
and discard in the trash.
Wash hands thoroughly
afterward.
Do not touch or
handle
live
rodents
and wear gloves when
handling dead ones.
Spray dead rodents with
a 1:10 dilution of bleach
and water, or other virus
killing compound, and
dispose of in the same
way as droppings. Wash
hands thoroughly.
If there are large
numbers of rodents in a
home or other buildings,
contact a pest control
service to remove them.
For additional infor-
mation on preventing
hantavirus, visit the
federal CDC’s hantavirus
page.
———
Contact Kathy Aney
at kaney@eastoregonian.
com or call 541-966-0810.
Saturday, February 13, 2016
LOVE: Apologize
in person and look
them in the eye
Continued from 1A
of frustration, anger or need
on a scale of 1 to 10 so both
know where the other is on
an issue.
“And then visit a marriage
or family therapist for a few
sessions — with the emphasis
on a few sessions — to get
back on track,” Garrett said.
Those on the dating
scene also can be proactive.
Garrett said while she is
not an online dating expert,
relationship websites and
apps such as eHarmony.
com or Christianmingle.com
provide dating pro¿les and
assessments.
“Bottom line,” she said,
“that is a great way to rule in
and rule out who is a match
and who isn’t.”
And in spite of the line
from the 1970’s romantic
drama “Love Story” that
love is never having to say
you’re sorry, Garrett said
when you do apologize to the
person you love, be an adult
about it, do it in person and
look him or her in the eye.
CAMBIER: Fellowship supplies $52,000 annually
Continued from 1A
Cancer Research Founda-
tion awarded Cambier a
four-year fellowship that
will fund his research. The
fellowship encourages the
nation’s most promising
young scientists to pursue
careers in cancer research.
At PHS, Cambier wasn’t
the stereotypical science
nerd. He played soccer and
baseball. He was personable
and well-liked, said Dr. Jake
Cambier, C.J.’s father and
a Pendleton radiologist. He
got good grades.
“He’s always had an
inquisitive mind,” said the
elder Cambier.
C.J.’s curiosity caught
¿re in Jess Cooper’s physics
and chemistry classes.
“I’ve always been inter-
ested in science. It’s kind of
came easy for me,” Cambier
said. “Mr. Cooper was the
best chemistry teacher I ever
had — he was committed to
making sure we understood
everything.”
In college, he said, “it
was sink or swim.”
After high school gradu-
ation in 2003, he headed to
Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo.
“I started off wanting to
save the planet,” Cambier
said. “I wanted to be an
ecologist.”
After a while, though, he
realized he wasn’t attracted
to the classes as much as
the idea of living green. He
drifted to molecular and
“I’ve always been interested in sci-
ence. It’s kind of came easy for me,”
— C.J. Cambier, Stanford University research scientist
cellular biology and began
studying a phenomenon
called polymerase chain
reaction — a way of cloning
pieces of DNA.
At age 21, Cambier
temporarily broke away
from studies to become a
bone marrow donor. He
traveled to the City of Hope
Hospital near Los Angeles
where doctors used needles
to withdraw liquid marrow
from his pelvic bone. The
recipient of Cambier’s
marrow was a 68-year-old
man with multiple myeloma.
After college he worked
as a lab technician for two
years at the University of
California at San Francisco
before heading to graduate
school at the University of
Washington in Seattle. He
became fascinated by immu-
nology, the study of the
immune system. These days,
he is a post-doctoral fellow
at Stanford University. The
Runyon fellowship, which
supplies $52,000 annually
for four years, gives Cambier
the ¿nancial freedom to do
his genetic research without
worrying about funding.
He spends a lot of quality
time with zebra¿sh, which
are like lab rats with ¿ns. In
their larval stage, the ¿sh are
transparent.
“You can do all sorts of
genetic manipulation with
these ¿sh,” he said. “You
can knock out gene X and
see if the ¿sh is more sick or
resistant to infection.”
Through the zebra¿sh’s
transparent skin, Cambier
can observe the voracious
macrophage cells doing
or not doing their job,
depending on the scientist’s
manipulations. He hopes to
learn about inÀammation’s
role in cancer and other
disease and how to mediate
that inÀammation.
Despite his fascination
with his research, Cambier
said he feels like a fairly
well-rounded guy who
escapes the lab to run, hike,
cycle or rock climb.
“A lot of ideas come to
me on a long bike ride or
climbing a mountain,” he
said.
Cambier’s high school
science
teacher
isn’t
surprised about Cambier’s
chosen career.
“It doesn’t surprise me
he’s a research scientist,”
said Jess Cooper. “He was
very bright, very motivated
and very inquisitive.”
———
Contact Kathy Aney at
kaney@eastoregonian.com
or call 541-966-0810.