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My parents were South African Jews. They'd come from Lithuania, [but] they grew up [in South Africa]. My dad came to England as a young doctor at the end of World War II, then went back. And he abhorred apartheid. He was actually the dean of the last black house within the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. And then he saw how, as a result of apartheid, black students were no longer able to attend, and that for him was the last straw.

I lived there as an infant and then would go back every year, and there was always this faint menace in the horizon. That blacks were going to rise up and sweep away these beautiful homes where I stayed in Johannesburg. And I remember cousins saying to me, "Enjoy the swimming pools — next year they'll be red with blood." And I didn't quite get it. Sometimes I would sit on the wrong bench or wander into the wrong place. Because I was part of South Africa, but I wasn't from there.

And of course, one of the particularities of apartheid was that blacks were banished except in the most intimate of settings: the home, the family. More or less every white family had black staff. And I would wonder why these utensils were set apart, and I would see [the black workers] going to sleep in these little concrete outhouses with their baleful single windows. So there was this combination of intimacy, of closeness, and of threat, fear, menace, always out there. It gave me a profound abhorrence of this evil.

You know, I spent a lot of time in the Middle East. I don't think Israel practices apartheid ... When it comes to Palestinians, some people use that phrase. But there are echoes. You know, when you're in the West Bank, and you're on the road, and it says, "Only for Jews, only for settlers, only for Israelis and not for Palestinians," those echoes are there. And it's one of the reasons why I'm a Zionist who believes very strongly that Zionism must involve two states for two peoples.

On coming to America, and whether it's easier to assimilate here

It is easier ... that's why I love it. That's why I became an American citizen. You can't imagine what a relief it was as a Jew to arrive in New York City.

The bright star, as I think I put it in the book, of immigration, of moving on, is new opportunity. And its black sun is loss. The loss of a home, the loss of a country, the loss of a community. And for some people, the project of beginning again is overwhelming. It's too much. That was the case with my mother. Even in America, for me, it's hard.

But even the most open of European societies has nothing like the openness of the United States, which is a country that is still — in my view — endlessly enriched by immigration.

Read an excerpt of The Girl from Human Street

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One of Ireland's most prominent politicians, Health Minister Leo Varadkar, has become the first government minister ever to come out as gay — a move that comes just four months before the traditionally conservative Catholic country holds a nationwide referendum on same-sex marriage.

Varadkar, 36, told Ireland's RTE Radio 1 today: "I'm a gay man. It's not a secret, but it's not something that everyone would necessarily know."

He said the referendum was one of the reasons he'd decided now was the time make his sexual orientation known to the public.

"What I really want to say is that I'd ... like the referendum to pass because I'd like to be an equal citizen in my own country, the country in which I happen to be a member of government," Varadkar said. "And, at the moment, I'm not."

NPR's Ari Shapiro says Varadkar "is a prominent, well-known figure in Ireland's government. His party is considered right-of-center."

Reuters adds that the health minister "is widely seen as one of the strongest contenders to succeed 63-year-old Prime Minister Enda Kenny as leader of the ruling party."

And, by way of background, the news agency says:

"The Roman Catholic Church dominated Irish politics until the 1980s and the country only legalised homosexual acts in 1993.

"But Ireland has become much more liberal in recent years as the Church's public influence waned in the wake of a string of child sex abuse scandals."

The Guardian last month reported that an opinion poll, conducted by The Irish Times, showed 71 percent of Irish electorate would vote yes on gay marriage.

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The self-declared Islamic State has released a group of some 200 elderly members of the Yazidis religious minority, allowing them to cross out of territory controlled by the extremists.

It is not clear why the militants released the men and women, many infirm, but The Associated Press quotes Gen, Shirko Fatih, the commander of the Kurdish peshmerga in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk as saying "It probably became too expensive to feed them and care for them."

As you might recall, the Yazidis have been a frequent target of the extremist group, who views the religious minority as apostates. In August, tens of thousands of Yazidis fled when ISIS militants captured the town of Sinjar near the Syrian border, but hundreds of others were captured by the extremists, and some forced into slavery, according to human rights groups.

The Guardian says: "The militants transported the captives from the northern town of Tal Afar, where they had been held for the past five months after the militants raided their towns last summer. The militants dropped them off on Saturday at the Khazer bridge, near the Kurdish regional capital of Irbil, Fatih said. They were being held on Sunday by Kurdish authorities for questioning, he said."

The AP reports that "[almost] all of the freed prisoners are in poor health and bore signs of abuse and neglect. Three were young children. The former captives were being questioned and receiving medical treatment on Sunday in the town of Alton Kupri."

In a statement quoted by Al-Jazeera, peshmerga member Sihamee Omar said most of the Yazidis were more than 50 years of age and that they were transferred in a convoy.

Khodr Domli, a leading Yazidi rights activist at a health center where the refugees were taken, tells Agence France-Presse: "Some are wounded, some have disabilities and many are suffering from mental and psychological problems."

"These men and women had been held in Mosul," he said.

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Islamic State

The United Nations has 193 member states. And United Noshes aims to recreate meals from every last one of them, alphabetically, as a series of dinner parties.

The project was started by Jesse Friedman and his wife, Laura Hadden, three years ago, as a way to explore the culinary bounty of New York City. As they cooked food from Algeria to Djibouti to Guyana, United Noshes hosted dinners that ranged from just a few friends gathered around a living room table, to dozens of guests assembled in a banquet hall. And the ingredients have ranged as well — from cashew juice to French charcuterie to fermented corn flour.

These ingredients can be hard to find — especially those that haven't yet won fans in America.

The Salt

Gastrodiplomacy: Cooking Up A Tasty Lesson On War And Peace

"One time I walked into an African market, and the person behind the counter asked me, 'So where did you do Peace Corps?' " Friedman laughs. "Because that's the only time a non-African would come into their store." Funny, enough, Friedman notes, Peace Corps cookbooks can be a surprisingly good recipe source, especially for some of the world's smaller countries.

In addition to exploring global culinary diversity, Friedman has also been happy to cook for people — which doesn't always happen in New York City. The dinners started with friends and family. Then, as articles cropped up and their blog readership and mailing list grew, the meals came to include interested strangers (some from other countries themselves).

From there, Friedman says, it was a natural step to turn the project into a fundraiser.

"We felt we had to acknowledge the fact that many people couldn't even enjoy the sorts of foods we were celebrating from their own country," says Friedman.

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Jesse Friedman (center, foreground) and guests dine outdoors during Cuba night, Aug. 26, 2012. Courtesy of Laura Hadden hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Laura Hadden

Jesse Friedman (center, foreground) and guests dine outdoors during Cuba night, Aug. 26, 2012.

Courtesy of Laura Hadden

Diners contribute a small donation, and over the years the project has raised over $20,000 — first for the U.N.'s world food program, and now for Mercy Corps, an international aid organization based in Friedman's new home of Portland, Ore.

In addition to learning about the culinary holdovers of colonialism, and several dozen very distinct ways to cook rice, the project has been a way for Friedman and Hadden to discover places with surprising foodways — like the African islands of Comoros.

"There's a lot of central African countries that start with the letter c," laughs Hadden, who had grown a bit fatigued of meal after meal of fufu and collard greens. "And so we were like OK, another one of these meals. And then [we] discovered this really great cuisine."

The Salt

Gastrodiplomacy Gives Foreign Chefs A Fresh Take And Taste Of America

Comoros, with its Portuguese, French and Arabic influences, has a rich culinary tradition quite different from its African neighbors. That includes the dish United Noshes featured, a lobster in vanilla crme fraiche sauce, which became an all-time favorite.

Of course, there have been meals that were less successful: the attempted yak butter and chiles of Bhutan, or the sheeps head of Iceland, or the red palm oil fry disaster of Cameroon.

But United Noshes' impact isn't just the money that's being raised. Friedman and Hadden say it's the connections that happen when you share a meal with the world — both at the table, and beyond.

"I had a cab driver in D.C. from Burkina Faso," Remembers Hadden. "And I said, 'Oh, I've had food from Burkina Faso.' And he was like, 'No, you haven't.' And I was like, 'Yes, I have.' And I told him the name of the little doughnuts. And he said, 'Oh, my god! I used to sell them in the market with my mom when I was a kid!' "

Friedman and Hadden should reach the halfway point of their project in a few weeks — with a meal from Libya. They expect to conclude the entire project in about four more years.

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