Latest news with #Orchid
NZ Herald
17 hours ago
- Business
- NZ Herald
Embryo screening start-up Orchid Health raises ethical questions
Orchid, Siddiqui said in a tweet, is ushering in 'a generation that gets to be genetically blessed and avoid disease'. Right now, at US$2500 per embryo-screening on top of the average US$20,000 for a single cycle of IVF, Siddiqui's social network in Silicon Valley and other tech hubs is an ideal target market. These are the data-obsessed biohackers who buy smart rings and consume boutique services like annual full-body MRIs. They are comfortable with a brave new world of probabilistic, data-driven medical decision-making, and can afford the extra costs to give their children a genetic edge. Siddiqui, who intends to have four children using her own Orchid-screened embryos, advocates a bolder idea gaining ground in the tech world: that increasingly available and sophisticated fertility technologies will supplant sex as a preferred method of reproduction for everyone. SO INCREDIBLY PROUD to share 2 HUGE updates: 1) The first baby was born using @OrchidInc technology — and he's super cute 🥰 2) I tested my own embryos with Orchid — we got SO much information & l feel confident now 🚀 This is the future of how babies will be born! — Noor Siddiqui (@noor_siddiqui_) April 22, 2024 'Sex is for fun, and embryo screening is for babies,' Siddiqui said in a video she shared on X. Soon, she suggests, it will be unremarkable for hopeful couples to choose their embryos by spreadsheet, as her current clients do, weighing, say, a propensity for heart disease that is 1.7 times the risk of the general population against a 2.7 score for schizophrenia. Zilis, the mother of four of Musk's at least 14 children, has been an Orchid client, according to two people close to the company, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. They said at least one of Musk and Zilis' offspring is an Orchid baby. Siddiqui declined to comment on that assertion, which was first reported by the Information, a tech industry news site, last summer. Musk and Zilis did not respond to requests for comment. Orchid represents a slice of a broader cultural movement in which powerful people in Washington and Silicon Valley are pushing the importance of producing offspring. Vice-President JD Vance, Musk and Siddiqui's early benefactor, the conservative billionaire investor Peter Thiel, have all repeatedly argued that falling birthrates threaten the future of industrialised nations and that people should have more children to counteract the decline – a viewpoint known as pronatalism. Julie Kang and Roshan George of San Francisco had Orchid undertake polygenic screening of 12 of their embryos; their baby, Astra Meridian, was born this spring. Photo / The Washington Post, Camille Cohen This growing movement, which is far from a monolith and has fierce debates within it, is giving a huge boost to a fertility industry already experiencing heightened demand. In February, the Trump White House issued an executive order pushing for expanded access to IVF. And while the loudest voices arguing that people should have more babies are on the right, there's broader political support for increasing access to fertility treatments: a new California law, set to go into effect next July, mandates that all large insurers cover IVF and other fertility services. In Silicon Valley, innovations that could make these services more affordable and accessible are coming, some of them backed by people concerned with population decline. Thiel has funded the egg-freezing robotics start-up TMRW, launched a US$200 million fund to bring fertility services to Asia and bankrolled a family planning app connected to a right-wing magazine. The investor, who is gay, has recently become a father to four children through IVF and surrogacy, according to people familiar with his family choices, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe personal relationships. Thiel declined, through a spokesperson, to comment. Siddiqui, who has already created 16 of her own embryos and plans to do more IVF rounds, says her company has an important role to play in advancing people's ability to have more children. She told the Post that being able to have a healthy child should be considered a basic human right, and she has hosted a podcast episode on Fighting the Fertility Crisis, a discussion about the causes of population decline. The extensive genetic screening Orchid provides, she said, can help more people have babies – by improving the IVF success rate and allaying parents' fears about future babies' health risks. 'I think everyone who wants to have a baby should be able to have one,' she said, adding that IVF and genetic testing should be made available and affordable for everyone. But Orchid doesn't just help people have children; it helps them shape their future children in dramatically new ways. And that has sparked controversy. Some critics see its polygenic scoring as veering towards a contemporary form of eugenics, enabling a world in which the rich leap even further ahead with super intelligence and superior health starting from birth. Orchid founder Noor Siddiqui says "everyone who wants to have a baby should be able to have one". Photo / Washington Post Musk, who has funded a population research institute at the University of Texas, wants to produce offspring with genes for superior intelligence, Zilis told one of Musk's biographers. The two people close to the company said Siddiqui has provided intelligence screenings in the past to couples on an ad hoc basis – including, one of them said, to Zilis and Musk. Orchid declined to comment on that and vociferously rejected any association with eugenics. Siddiqui said Orchid helps prospective parents who would otherwise fear having children because of potential genetic disorders. IVF was controversial when it began in the 1970s, she said; protesters showed up with 'pitchforks' at the offices of the scientists pioneering the breakthrough and tried 'to put them in jail' for playing God. If they had prevailed, she added, '12 million people wouldn't exist today'. Orchid screens for intellectual disability but does not provide intelligence predictions, Siddiqui said. A growing number of start-ups do, however. One of them is the Thiel-funded start-up Nucleus; another is Heliospect Genomics, the research arm of Herasight, an executive of which is a bioethicist who advocates 'liberal eugenics' – casting that term as applying not to governmental efforts to weed out undesirable births but instead to parents' use of emerging biological tools to enhance their children's prospects. Until last month, Orchid's website featured advice from that bioethicist, Jonathan Anomaly, on overcoming scepticism about its service. 'We intentionally alter our environments, breed crops so that they're more nutritious and easier to harvest, and we've invented lightning rods and vaccines to make us less likely to die from natural disasters,' he wrote. 'I find the playing God objection a bit tiresome.' Orchid removed the page after the Post asked about it. Anomaly said he now prefers the term 'genetic enhancement' to 'eugenics'. Delian Asparouhov, a partner at Thiel's Founders Fund who has invested in Nucleus, made a similar argument. 'When you choose your married partner, you're using a form of eugenics,' he said. 'When your kids are older, you invest in tutors and great schools. What's the harm in using a tool that allows you to amplify that type of effect?' 'Russian roulette' or a jet to the future? In the United States, there are virtually no restrictions on the types of genetic predictions companies can offer, and no external vetting of their proprietary scoring methods. Orchid and a handful of other start-ups offering polygenic risk scores are barrelling forward in this largely unregulated milieu. The first Orchid baby was born in late 2023, and Orchid is now in 100 IVF clinics in the US – more than twice as many as a year ago. (The company won't say how many babies have been born using its service.) Nucleus launched its screenings, which test embryos for more than 900 heritable traits and conditions, last month. Yet several genetic scientists told the Post they doubt Orchid's core claim: that it can accurately sequence an entire human genome from just five cells collected from an early-stage embryo, enabling it to see many more single- and multiple-gene-derived disorders than other methods have. Experts have struggled to extract accurate genetic information from small embryonic samples, said Svetlana Yatsenko, a Stanford University pathology professor who specialises in clinical and research genetics. Genetic tests that use saliva or blood samples typically collect hundreds of thousands of cells. For its vastly smaller samples, Orchid uses a process called amplification, which creates copies of the DNA retrieved from the embryo. That process, Yatsenko said, can introduce major inaccuracies. 'You're making many, many mistakes in the amplification,' she said, rendering it problematic to declare any embryo free of a particular disease, or positive for one. 'It's basically Russian roulette.' George Church, a genomic sequencing pioneer at Harvard University and an Orchid investor, harbours no such doubts. Questioning the advancement that enables Orchid to sequence the full genome from such a small sample – enabling long-term health predictions and near-term defect detections in an embryo – is 'like asking how much faster is a jet than walking,' Church said. Relying on a small number of cells is not the technology's only shortcoming, other experts said. Numerous fertility doctors and scientists also told the Post they have serious reservations about screening embryos through polygenic risk scoring, the technique that allows Orchid and other companies to predict future disease by tying clusters of hundreds or even thousands of genes to disease outcomes and in some cases to other traits, such as intelligence and height. The vast majority of diseases that afflict humans are associated with many different genes rather than a single gene. These algorithmic scoring methods are increasingly accepted by scientific and medical experts because they have shown promise in predicting the occurrence in a general population of a growing number of common ailments, including coronary artery disease, type 2 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease and breast cancer. Researchers and clinicians hope that such complex genetic predictions will come to significantly enhance the quality of medical care. But the genetic code reflects only propensities: much is still unknown about how constellations of genes and gene variants interact with an individual's environment and with one another to contribute to the likelihood of any individual getting a disease in life. And for traits such as intelligence, polygenic scoring has almost negligible predictive capacity – just a handful of IQ points. Critics say such scoring could compel couples who have struggled with fertility issues to discard perfectly good and hard-won embryos based on inaccurate or incomplete information. A 2024 paper raised concerns that the scores could encourage couples to unnecessarily incur the cost and physical burden of additional rounds of IVF. Or parents might select against an unwanted trait, such as schizophrenia, without understanding how they may be screening out desired traits associated with the same genes, such as creativity. 'Maybe we don't want to screen those people out of our society,' said Lior Pachter, a computational biologist specialising in genomics at the California Institute of Technology. Embryos are tested for viability in IVF labs. Photo / Getty Images In response to questions from The Post, an Orchid spokeswoman, Tara Harandi-Zadeh, said the company explicitly counsels patients not to throw away embryos. Company executives also downplayed the value of Orchid's polygenic scores, which one described in an interview as merely an 'add-on' benefit of the full-genome sequencing the company provides. The primary benefit of its service, she said, is the ability to detect many more single-gene-derived diseases and non-hereditary mutations than a standard genetic test conducted in an IVF clinic. 'Hundreds of serious monogenic diseases – each with well-established genetic causes – can now be detected before implantation,' Harandi-Zadeh said in a statement. 'These aren't vague risks or statistical associations; they're clear, causal mutations that lead to profound outcomes: seizures, organ failure, inability to walk or speak, early death. These are missed without comprehensive whole genome embryo screening.' Orchid's marketing materials and Siddiqui's own descriptions have repeatedly showcased polygenic disease screening, however. 'The parents and their physician get much more information' from polygenic scoring, Siddiqui said in a 2023 video. 'They get information about neurodevelopmental disorders, birth defects, pediatric hereditary cancers, complex conditions, meaning conditions where it's not just a single gene, but dozens, hundreds, to millions of genes that contribute risk.' Three-month-old Astra Meridian plays at home with her parents, Julie Kang and Roshan George, who used Orchid for a full genome screening of 12 embryos and selected one that didn't have a hearing-loss gene they both carried. Photo / The Washington Post, Camille Cohen The American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics calls the benefits of screening embryos for polygenic risks 'unproven' and warns that such tests 'should not be offered' by clinicians. A pioneer of polygenic risk scores, Harvard epidemiology professor Peter Kraft, has criticised Orchid, saying on X that 'the science doesn't add up' and that 'waving a magic wand and changing some of these variants at birth may not do anything at all'. Still, many of those same experts say the scientific evidence supporting the validity of polygenic scoring methods is only getting better and already making its way into clinical use for adults. Consumer attitudes are liable to change, too. Asparouhov, the investor, said he was still critical of embryo selection based on polygenic scores. 'Right now it's a false choice,' he said. 'But in the future, it's the trust fund.' 'A license to do things' The availability and power of consumer genetic tests have exploded in the past six to 10 years, powered by far cheaper human genome sequencing and large public and private biobanks that store genetic data from hundreds of thousands of volunteers. Researchers have used that data to explore connections between genes and population-wide disease outcomes, in what are known as genome-wide association studies, or GWAS. An influential 2018 paper in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Genetics showed that groups of genes could be analysed to identify people at significantly increased risk for five common ailments, including coronary artery disease, type 2 diabetes and breast cancer. That paper and others opened up the possibility for clinicians to give people specific medical advice and treatments based on their genetic propensity. Siddiqui founded Orchid the following year. She had moved to Silicon Valley from Northern Virginia after winning, in 2012, a $100,000 grant from Thiel for aspiring entrepreneurs willing to ditch college to pursue a business idea. Forgoing a university education was anathema to her Pakistani immigrant parents, she has said, so she applied in secret as a high school senior. Siddiqui's parents eventually came around, and she credits her mother with being the impetus for Orchid. When Siddiqui was a child, her mother developed retinitis pigmentosa, an eye disease caused by a rare genetic mutation. Siddiqui became acutely aware that some people were 'genetically privileged' – while others were not, like her mum, who was functionally blind. 'For people who haven't had that type of tragedy hit them or their family, it's really hard for them to relate,' she said. In a later stint at Stanford, where she completed degrees in computer science, Siddiqui became fascinated by the way data science was transforming biology, creating new potential applications for reproduction. She also became steeped in a close-knit milieu of self-described builders who looked up to Thiel. Her husband is a cybersecurity entrepreneur she met while a Thiel fellow; a friend, Laura Deming, who was in Siddiqui's Thiel Fellowship class, has been working on age-reversing technologies since she was a teenager. One of Siddiqui's early investors, billionaire Brian Armstrong, the right-leaning CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, said he invested after seeing a tweet about a class she was teaching at Stanford, called 'Frontiers of Reproductive Technology'. He has tweeted that preimplantation genetic testing is part of a 'Gattaca stack' – a reference to a 1997 dystopian science fiction film – of emerging innovations that will 'accelerate civilisational progress'. Had she not come to Silicon Valley at an early age, Siddiqui said, she would never have had the confidence to start a company. 'Everyone here took me incredibly seriously as a 17-, 18-year-old, working on medical start-ups,' she said in an interview next to San Francisco's Ferry Building. 'It's just a place where everyone has a licence to do things.' Noor Siddiqui at 18 in her home in Clifton, Virginia, in 2012, after she won a Thiel Fellowship enabling her to pursue a project of her own design before going to college. Photo / The Washington Post, Ricky Carioti Securing early funding from Armstrong, ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, bitcoin and genetics entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan, 23&me founder Anne Wojcicki, and others, Siddiqui got to work combing through scientific literature to build the company's proprietary polygenic scoring methods. In 2022, Orchid had what it describes as its big breakthrough: an innovation that enabled it to sequence all 3 billion base pairs of the human genome from as few as five embryonic cells. But the paper laying out that breakthrough, published last year in the peer-reviewed journal F&S Reports, is fundamentally flawed, according to Stanford's Yatsenko and Aleks Rajkovic, chief genomics officer at the University of California at San Francisco Health Center for Clinical Genetics and Genomics. It excluded results that didn't fit its thesis, Yatsenko said, and both scientists said that by using Orchid's own lab to check those results, its authors didn't adhere to ideal scientific practice. Orchid said that the paper's findings had been verified by independent labs and that there were 'zero discrepancies' in the results. Todd Lencz, the leader of a federally funded research project examining polygenic embryo screening, said the science isn't clear enough for use in a clinic. Subtle differences among different companies' algorithms 'can produce strikingly different results in clinical contexts,' said Lencz, a professor at Hofstra University's Zucker School of Medicine. 'There's no gold-standard consensus about which method is best.' Orchid countered that slight differences in algorithms' results are no argument for preventing people from benefiting from the best scientific knowledge available. Another big issue facing Orchid and other start-ups is that polygenic scores can be up to half as accurate, according to some researchers, for some people with non-European ancestry. The primary pools of genetic data available to researchers come from European and American sources, especially the UK Biobank, a large database in the United Kingdom that includes the genetic data of a half-million people. Siddiqui told The Post that Orchid is well aware of the potential for bias, noting that she is South Asian and her husband has Middle Eastern ancestry. She said the company uses standard statistical methods to correct for limitations in the scores. In some circumstances, she said, Orchid does not offer any score. The data used to create risk scores draws on the genetics of people who are now adults and often elderly, and it's unclear how much the risks faced by people now in their 70s apply to babies being born today, said Patrick Turley, a statistical-genetics researcher at the University of Southern California. Environmental factors that affect the genes of present-day embryos in-vitro, such as microplastics and endocrine-disrupting chemicals, are different from environmental factors many years ago, he added. And lifestyle and behaviour, which also impact genes and life outcomes, are different today than for generations past. 'It's hard to make projections about how well [polygenic scores] are going to predict in the future when the world's a different place,' Turley said, while emphasising that genetic embryo selection could benefit certain couples, such as those who are carriers of rare diseases. Orchid said research has shown that genetic predispositions are 'remarkably stable' across decades. 'Genetic signal doesn't vanish just because the world changes,' spokeswoman Harandi-Zadeh said. Pachter, the Caltech computational biologist, has called Orchid's offerings 'amoral nonsense' and said conveying genetic information in numerical scores gives a certain 'class of people' the illusion of more control than they really have, and validates the feeling that 'one's own genome must be special'. Orchid rejected Pachter's criticism, too. 'It's easy to moralise from an ivory tower when your child isn't the one who might be born with a fatal disease,' Harandi-Zadeh said. 'This isn't about 'some illusion of control.' It's about giving families the ability to prevent real suffering based on the most accurate information modern science can provide.' Seeking 'peace of mind' Roshan George, a start-up executive in San Francisco, said that when he and his wife, Julie Kang, used Orchid last year, the company's genetic counsellors gave detailed explanations about the probabilities of different predictions, emphasising that 'nothing is 100 percent certain'. The couple sought out Orchid after learning, during a standard parental genetic screening process at their IVF clinic, that both were carriers of a rare genetic mutation that causes irreversible hearing loss soon after the child is born. Julie Kang and Roshan George with their 3-month-old baby, Astra Meridian, in their home in San Francisco in late May. Photo / The Washington Post, Camille Cohen The couple's main concern was whether they were passing the hearing loss variant on to their embryo. Though they probably could have found out by screening the embryos at an IVF clinic through standard processes, which amplify a snippet of the genome, George sought out full genome screening for 'a more complete picture' and 'peace of mind,' he said. George and Kang produced 12 embryos and used Orchid to screen all of them – a cost of $30,000 on top of IVF. Six were viable. Two had the hearing loss gene variant. Another two were carriers, which meant they could pass the gene on to their children but wouldn't be affected themselves. And two, called embryos JK3 and 6-JK in Orchid's report, were unaffected. The couple pored over their spreadsheets, debating which of the two to select. One embryo had a 1.5% lifetime risk of bipolar disorder, about half that of the general population. But its type 2 diabetes risk – 29% – was slightly above average, about 1.2 times that of a typical person. Another had a slightly higher risk of obesity. Given his and Kang's ethnicities – South and East Asian, respectively – George took the predictions with 'a grain of salt'. After weighing all the other factors, the polygenic scoring became 'the tiebreaker,' George said. Kang gave birth in March; so far, their daughter, Astra Meridian, has perfect hearing. Julie Kang and Roshan George play with their baby in their home in San Francisco. Photo / The Washington Post, Camille Cohen The family's experience is likely to be a window into the future, scientists said, in which an abundance of data offers families improved odds for healthy children and fraught reproductive choices. If families seek that information, the medical industry shouldn't be 'paternalistic' and deny them, UCSF's Rajkovic said, but companies have to be careful not to promise more certainty than science can deliver. Orchid's offerings are 'not ready for prime time,' according to Rajkovic. But the premise the company is pursuing – better odds for healthy babies – is 'commendable in terms of pushing the barriers,' he said. 'Because genetic disease can be devastating.' Nitasha Tiku contributed to this report.
Hype Malaysia
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hype Malaysia
From St.Regis Kuala Lumpur To Moxy Putrajaya: New Dining Menus & Spots To Check Out!
If you're a foodie who's always looking out for something new to feast on, the coming week brings a fresh lineup of exciting new dining menus from some of KL's best eateries! Whether you're planning a romantic date night, a casual catch-up with friends, or a solo foodie adventure, these new eateries and menus are worth adding to checking out. This week, we're bringing you picks from some of Klang Valley's best hotels and a new dining spot in the area! Here are some the best new dining spots and promos to explore this month: The Drawing Room @ The St. Regis Kuala Lumpur The St. Regis Kuala Lumpur proudly unveils The Flower Society Afternoon Tea, a limited-edition collaboration with celebrated Malaysian fashion house, Rizman Ruzaini. At the heart of this collaboration is a collection of floral motifs drawn from the Astor Garden, long associated with femininity, transformation and grace. Every course of the afternoon tea carries forward the spirit, structure and symbolism of each floral muse – Orchid, Rose, Dahlia, Camellia, Lavender, and Hydrangea. Held within The Drawing Room, this seasonal limited-edition experience is crafted by Executive Chef Norazizi Raslim and Pastry Chef Azizul. The Flower Society Afternoon Tea is available from 1st July 2025 onwards. Availability: 12pm to 6pm daily, from 1st July 2025 Price: RM198 per adult, RM99 per child As part of the collaboration, Rizman Ruzaini has designed a custom couture uniform for St. Regis Kuala Lumpur's butlers, marking a bold revolution to the signature butler uniform. Rizman Ruzaini also brought their couture mastery to a collection of gowns and scarves, inspired by the afternoon tea. For more information on The Flower Society Afternoon Tea and the exclusive The St. Regis Kuala Lumpur x Rizman Ruzaini collection, please visit The Drawing Room at Lobby Level of The St. Regis Kuala Lumpur, call +603 2727 6696 or email at Moxy Putrajaya Moxy Putrajaya is turning up the heat this July with the Penang Heritage Food Bazaar, a bold street food takeover in collaboration with Courtyard by Marriott Penang. Held at the Three.6.5 restaurant every Friday and Saturday from 11th to 26th July, this curated hawker-style celebration promises to immerse guests in the rich culinary traditions and bold street flavours of Penang — all without leaving Putrajaya. This cross-city culinary exchange brings together chefs, cultures, and iconic dishes, transforming Moxy Putrajaya into a sizzling tribute to Malaysia's food capital. From the wok-charred aroma of Char Koay Teow to the comforting spice of Penang Hokkien Mee, each evening is a deep dive into Penang's culinary soul. Live stations brim with authentic hawker favourites and signature creations such as Penang Char Koay Teow by Chef Muslimim (Courtyard Penang) and White Curry Mee and Penang Popiah by Chef Zaim (Courtyard Penang). Guests will also enjoy a Goreng-Goreng Corner, Durian Cendol Bar, and over 10 live-action counters featuring Seafood On Ice, Chargrilled Meats, and Penang-Style Desserts from Bubur Cha Cha to a full sized Onde-Onde Whole Cake. Availability: 6.30pm to 10.30pm, from 11th to 26th July 2025 Prices: RM138 per adult, RM69 per child. For reservations, contact +603 8328 1111 / +6012 824 9101 or visit Flock @ W Kuala Lumpur W Kuala Lumpur invites you to take your mornings slow and indulgent with Late Breakfast Sundays at Flock, a new breakfast-meets-brunch experience that's made for both the early birds and the sleep-in champions. Designed to be an elevated twist on your usual morning ritual, Late Breakfast Sundays serve up an extended spread from 6:30am to 12pm, perfect for easing into the day on your own terms. At Flock, mornings start strong and stay stylish. Guests can indulge in a dynamic selection of elevated made-to-order items such as the whimsical Egg on Egg on Egg, the indulgent Cappuccino French Toast, the ever-classic Eggs Benedict, and more handcrafted favorites. It's not just breakfast, it's a morning moment worth savoring. If you're brunching with friends or flying solo, guests can sip their way into the afternoon with à la carte alcohol selections, special mimosa pricing, and curated beverage packages for those who prefer a spirited start to their Sunday. So sleep in, rise slow, and treat yourself — because the best mornings are the ones that don't rush. Late Breakfast Sundays Date: 20th July & 17th August 2025, from 6:30am to 12pm Price: RM130 per adult, RM65+ per child (6–12 years old) Beverage package available CIMB & Standard Chartered cardholders can also enjoy 15% off their reservations. For reservations or more information, contact us at +60 3-2786 8888 / WhatsApp +60 12-347 9088 or email Santan Santan, the F&B brand under Capital A, is delighted to announce the opening of its outlet at Food District, the recently launched food hall located at gateway@klia2. This new outlet brings together a curated selection of popular Asean dishes, Santan's signature coffee, and its most-loved inflight favourites — all in one convenient location. Travellers and food enthusiasts can now enjoy iconic meals like Pak Nasser's Nasi Lemak, Uncle Chin's Chicken Rice, Thai Green Curry With Rice, Nasi Padang Beef Rendang and more served on the ground for just RM14. Also available are Santan's viral Ready-to-Eat products, such as the Mala Beef Soup Noodle with Chicken Slices, made using freeze-dried technology, offering a hot, satisfying meal in just minutes. These meals are also available for takeaway, perfect for enjoying later at home. The outlet also features The OG Burnt Cheesecake, another viral favourite that has become a must-try item among Santan fans. In addition, customers can enjoy a full beverage line-up, including crowd favourites like The Best Santan Latte, ZERO Pistachio Latte, and other refreshing drinks from the Club ZERO range. To mark the grand opening, Food District is brewing up something special — for a limited time only, buy Pak Nasser's Nasi Lemak (RM14) and get The BEST Santan Latte for Only RM5 (Normal price: RM13). Chan Rak BBQ & The Farm @ Subang Parade Ever been to a place where it has two restaurants under one roof? If not, head over to Subang Parade, where you can experience Thai Street Flavours and Farm-to-Table Comfort all within a couple of steps apart from one another. Starting with Chan Rak BBQ, its aim is to be a pork-free, all-you-can-eat Thai BBQ and suki (hotpot) experience that all can enjoy, bringing the favourites of Thai street-style dining into a welcoming and vibrant space. At the buffet, diners are greeted with a bountiful spread of marinated meats, fresh vegetables, and over 30 house-made sauces and condiments to choose from. Whether you enjoy spice or not, Chan Rak BBQ gives guests the choice of 20 different spice levels for their signature Red Tom Yum soup base. Availability: 10am to 10pm, Daily Price: Starts at RM42+ with a selection of fish, chicken breast, and beef chuck roll. Additional RM24+ for their premium beef cuts and seafood extravaganza sets, respectively. You can tell you've moved onto the next restaurant from the ceiling, from a Chan Rak's warm brown-orange tones to The Farm's calming olive greens, we shift not only in interior palette but the meals as well. Highlighting its freshness and sustainability, The Farm had a dedicated hydroponics display where they plant their greens for each meal. Their all-day dining meals combine fresh, wholesome ingredients that are inspired to replicate authentic flavours. Having a list of Thai-inspired menus that gives a twist to the comfort foods you know and love, such as Sabai Sabai Cobb Salad, Thai-Style Steak Frites and many more. To book reservations for Chan Rak BBQ, contact them at info@ For reservations under The Farm, you can reach them at Lok Lok Buffet Now at Courtyard by Marriott Kuala Lumpur South Substance at Courtyard by Marriott Kuala Lumpur South is turning up the heat this July with its 'Lok Into July' buffet. Diners can look forward to over 20 types of skewers, two flavourful soup bases including a signature house broth, and five house-made sauces to mix and match. The spread also includes seafood on ice, fresh sushi and sashimi, along with a variety of local favourites. A Buy 1 Free 1 offer at adult price is available for both lunch and dinner, making it a great reason to gather friends or family for a satisfying meal. The buffet is available on weekends for lunch and from Wednesday to Sunday for dinner at Level 3 of the hotel. Come hungry and let the feast begin.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Elon Musk Using Eugenics Startup to Inspect DNA of Potential Babies for Intelligence
An Austin eugenics startup apparently counts billionaire Elon Musk and his girlfriend, Neuralink director Shivon Zilis, among its clients. That company, Orchid Health, provides tony clients the opportunity to screen their embryos for genetic illnesses starting at around $22,500. While there are a handful of similar genetic prediction firms, Orchid stands out by claiming that it can sequence embryos' entire genome using as few as five cells and predict far more than its competitors. And according to two sources close to the company who spoke to the Washington Post, its services have been used for at least one of Zilis and Musk's four children. While it's not at all news that Musk, the father of at least 14 children by multiple women, is obsessed with reproduction, this claim — which expands on reporting from The Information last year — casts the billionaire's pronatalism in a new and even more unsettling light. One of WaPo's Orchid insiders, who was not named to protect their privacy, told the newspaper that 30-year-old company founder Noor Siddiqi had provided Musk and Zilis with special screenings, which supposedly use bespoke algorithms to determine the embryo's potential for being intelligent. (While the company insists it's not involved in "eugenics," a word meaning "good genes," it is very literally helping parents select good genes, and the alleged intelligence selection does sound a lot like the dictionary definition of the practice.) That claim appears to fall in line with a telling tidbit Zilis divulged to Musk biographer Walter Isaacson: that the billionaire "really wants smart people to have kids," and that she chose to procreate with him after he encouraged her to have her own. When WaPo reached out to Orchid to ask about Musk and Zilis, as well as those intelligence screening allegations, the company declined to comment and claimed that although it does screen for intellectual disabilities, it does not offer any predictions about a future child's intelligence. Be that as it may, services like Orchid's are mired in both ethical and practical issues. Along with the perception that such services are tantamount to playing God, genetics experts who spoke with WaPo were very skeptical about Orchid's claim that it can sequence an embryo's entire genome from just five cells. According to Svetlana Yatsenko, a Stanford research genetics specialist, the company's use of a process called amplification, which copies DNA strands from small samples for analysis, is problematic because it's essentially using photocopies that could introduce inaccuracies to either rule out or declare genetic disorders. "You're making many, many mistakes in the amplification," Yatsenko told WaPo. "It's basically Russian roulette." Beyond the broad strokes, Orchid's own accountability problems appear much darker when considering how often Musk has cast bigoted aspersions on other races for their purported intellectual inferiority. More on genetic services: Genetics Startup Advertises App-Based Eugenics Service for Parents to Select "Smartest" Embryos Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Been Busy': Tame Impala Teases New Music With Social Media Update
Tame Impala frontman Kevin Parker has teased big happenings in the near future, seeming to confirm a new record with his latest social media update. Taking to Instagram on Saturday (July 13), Parker uploaded a series of images which captured his last few months. Captioned with the phrase 'Been busy,' the collection showed pictures depicting Parker with friends and family, behind-the-scenes shots of the promotional video for his Orchid musical 'ideas machine,' and snaps of him surrounded by music-making equipment both in and out of the studio. More from Billboard Doja Cat, Tems, J Balvin & Coldplay Join Forces for Unifying FIFA Club World Cup Final Halftime Show Performance King Crimson's Manager Warns of 'Premature' Excitement Following New Album Rumors Fans Choose Justin Bieber's 'Swag' as This Week's Favorite New Music The last image, however, showed a whiteboard which ostensibly has been used to track the progress of the next Tame Impala album. Notably, all tracks included in the image are listed as 'Done.' The photographic update comes a matter of weeks after Parker previewed new Tame Impala material during a surprise DJ set at Barcelona's Nitsa Club. 'You guys want to hear a new song? 'You want to hear a new Tame Impala song?' he asked the crowd. 'You're going to be the first ones to hear it, you realize? There's no going back from this point on, you realize?' As it stands, it's been five years since the last full-length release from Tame Impala. In February 2020, The Slow Rush became the project's fourth studio record, peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard 200. This was one position higher than the previous album, 2015's Currents, which served as a commercial breakthrough for Parker. In the time since the last record, Parker has been busy with myriad other projects. In 2023, second album Lonerism would receive a tenth anniversary reissue, and would be followed by the release of the track 'Journey to the Real World' for the Barbie soundtrack. Additionally, Tame Impala would also be credited with remixes of songs from Crowded House and Elvis Presley, and would appear as a guest artist on cuts from Diana Ross and Gorillaz. In 2024, Parker would serve as a producer and guest musician for Dua Lipa's Radical Optimism album, and would also serve as a guest artist on two tracks from French outfit Justice's Hyperdrama album. One of those collaborations, 'Neverender,' would see Parker win his first Grammy for best dance/electronic recording in 2025. Most recently, Justice also announced a series of Australian tour dates for December 2025, with a Tame Impala DJ set listed as the main support alongside Busy P. Best of Billboard Chart Rewind: In 1989, New Kids on the Block Were 'Hangin' Tough' at No. 1 Janet Jackson's Biggest Billboard Hot 100 Hits H.E.R. & Chris Brown 'Come Through' to No. 1 on Adult R&B Airplay Chart
Time of India
12-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Arunachal to be ‘Orchid Capital of India'
1 2 3 4 5 6 Itanagar: In a bid to promote Arunachal Pradesh's rich natural and cultural heritage, chief minister Pema Khandu on Friday chaired a review meeting with the planning department, focusing on a series of initiatives aimed at enhancing the state's unique identity. Among the key proposals discussed was the branding of Arunachal as the 'Orchid Capital of India', highlighting its status as home to over 600 orchid species — the highest in the country. The move is expected to boost the state's visibility as a biodiversity hotspot and attract nature-based tourism. The meeting also explored ways to position kiwi as Arunachal's unique selling proposition (USP), with plans to scale up production and market access. The development of integrated tourism circuits was another major focus, aimed at tapping into the state's scenic and cultural diversity to boost the local economy. Khandu also took stock of efforts to revive and preserve Mon Shugu — the traditional handmade paper craft of the Monpa community. The chief minister stressed the importance of protecting indigenous art forms and ensuring that traditional knowledge systems are passed on to future generations."These initiatives reflect our commitment to sustainable development while protecting the state's cultural roots and ecological wealth," Khandu said. Officials said the govt plans to align these projects with broader strategies for economic growth, eco-tourism, and rural empowerment.
