By MARK KENNEDY, AP Entertainment Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — The first thing viewers of “Beyond the Gates” see is a black Mercedes gliding past manicured lawns and stately estates. The sedan pulls up at an elegant country club and the valets come out. The Emotions’ funky tune “Best of My Love” is playing.

That car and the glamorous woman behind the wheel are driving into TV history on Monday as CBS begins airing the first Black-led daytime soap opera — and the first new network soap since “Passions” premiered in 1999.

“I think that not only will it change daytime, but it’ll also change the landscape of TV,” said Sheila Ducksworth, president of CBS Studios/NAACP Venture and an executive producer. “I think it really will be something that will have far-reaching effects, and I look forward to it.”

Set in an affluent, gated Maryland community, “Beyond the Gates” has drama, joy and heartbreak played by very attractive people with a strong pocket-square vibe. But even the rich can lose it: The first episode ends with a roundhouse punch. A later episode has a golf club raised in anger.

“We want people to be entertained. We want people to have fun with it,” said Ducksworth. “There’s a lot of unpredictable stuff that’s going to be happening, a lot of juicy storylines. We have a lot of scandal and secrets and lies embedded in this world of power and prestige.”

Four generations represented

Actor Daphnée Duplaix, a veteran of “Passions” and “One Life to Live,” is the driver of the Mercedes and therefore won the distinction of being the audience’s first glimpse of life in upscale Fairmont Crest.

“It was pretty awesome when I realized that I am the opening scene into this new world that we’re creating. I was like, ‘Oh, that is fun and exciting,’” she said. “That meant a lot. It really did.”

The premiere episode airs after “The Young and the Restless” and “The Bold and the Beautiful,” capping a three-hour block of CBS soaps. NAACP has partnered with the network, and Procter & Gamble, connected with soaps for decades, is a sponsor. It will stream on Paramount+, giving it a global reach.

The show is centered around four generations of the Dupree family, from a grandfather who is a civil rights icon to grandchildren who are social influencers. Unlike NBC’s “Generations,” the short-lived soap that made history in 1989 for featuring a Black family from the start, the main cast of “Beyond the Gates” is predominantly Black.

“We just wanted something that felt fresh, new, different, really glossy, fun and really epic,” said Ducksworth.

Characters born on index cards

Michele Val Jean, an Emmy-winning veteran daytime writer, is the creator, executive producer and showrunner. She created the characters in her mind on morning walks, jotting down ideas on index cards.

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“By the time I was ready to start writing, I had this big stack of index cards. And once I sorted everything out, the characters were there,” she said. “It’s hard to describe. It’s almost like I’m a stenographer and the stuff just sort of came through me.”

Val Jean wanted to create soap characters viewers hadn’t seen before and describes one pairing — played by Tamara Tunie and Clifton Davis — as if Diana Ross married the late Rep. John Lewis. One of their daughters — played by Karla Cheatham Mosley — has no filter and holds a fearsome grudge against her ex-husband.

“I love the characters that come into your house five days a week and sort of get inside you,” she said. “That’s what I want this show to do. I can think of many times I would have loved to have taken a golf club to somebody’s desk.”

Another thing that differentiates “Beyond the Gates” is the music. Tunie, who has a degree in musical theater from Carnegie Mellon, is one of a few cast members who will sing.

“The writers told me, ‘We’re going to have you singing on the show,’” she said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, OK. Didn’t know that, but OK. Let me let me dust off my cords.’”

Black excellence on screen

“Beyond the Gates” is the long-gestating dream of Ducksworth, who has been watching soap operas since she was 10 but yearned for more representation: “I have to say, for many years it’s been very few and far between having real diversity on soaps.”

The show is grounded in real Black excellence. Ducksworth points out there are pockets of affluent Black families in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

“It’s something right here in our backyard that many people may not be aware of,” she said.

Duplaix said Black wealth is often only portrayed as enjoyed by athletes or entertainers, so to be able to show Black doctors, psychologists and lawyers is important.

“This is normal. It’s not a fluke. It’s not a one-off. Black excellence is everywhere. So I’m so excited for that to be normalized Monday through Friday on television,” she said.

The series is filmed in Georgia on 27 sets over 35,000 square feet with a cast and crew of some 200 people. They’ve been working long hours since the end of October.

Val Jean recalls watching the first episode and gasping at the moment it all became real: A scene when all the Duprees gather as their grandfather tells a story. “My God, there they are — my babies,” she recalled with a laugh.

Inclusivity with intention

Ducksworth points out there’s something for everyone — from people who have money inside the gates to those with less outside, lawyers and entrepreneurs as well as nurses and firemen. All races and sexual orientations are depicted.

“While it is primarily a Black cast, we intentionally wanted to include everybody,” she said. “What was important to me was what I felt was missing in so many of these soaps, which is real inclusivity.”

The cast and crew will be working to create more episodes on Monday, so they won’t be able to tune in and see TV history being made. But there’s a screening party planned at the end of the day for the first two episodes.

“Then we’ll pop some Champagne and have some food and fellowship together and celebrate our accomplishment,” said Tunie. “We need a moment to mark the moment and celebrate what we’re doing.”

Beans are high in protein, fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Important attributes, but there is more to say about their surge in popularity. Beans, especially those contained in cans, are easy to use. Plus, with just a little bit of effort they can be delicious. Throw frugality into the mix, and you have a winning ingredient.

The whoosh-whirl sound of lid parting can announce that dinner is just minutes away. It’s a welcome tune to a frazzled cook’s ears.

Purists might argue that cooked-from-scratch beans are better, insisting that canned beans are saltier and more expensive. True, but dried beans can take an hour or more to cook, eliminating them as a candidate for quick-to-prepare meals. Folks with concerns about salt can plop the beans from the can into a colander. Once rinsed with cold water, they shimmer like tiny pebbles in a shallow stream. As a rule, don’t add much salt to the dish until it is completed; add salt to taste to the finished dish if needed.

Potato and Bacon Hash with Cheesy Beans can be a breakfast-for-dinner treat. (Photo by Cathy Thomas)

Potato and Bacon Hash with Cheesy Beans

This dish happily reminds me of pub meals shared with friends in London. Those meals, especially the breakfasts, always included baked beans. This tasty dish serves cheesy baked beans alongside a potato and bacon hash. It can be a breakfast-for-dinner treat. Top each serving with a fried egg if you like.

Yield: 4 servings

INGREDIENTS

2 medium-large Russet potatoes (baking potatoes), peeled, diced 5/8-inch

2 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided use

4 bacon slices, cut crosswise into strips

Two (14 ounces each) cans baked beans, see cook’s notes

1 small brown onion, diced 1/4-inch

Garlic salt to taste

Freshly ground black pepper

1 cup grated mixed cheeses, such as a mix of Monterey Jack, mozzarella, and cheddar, divided use

2 green onions, roots trimmed and discarded, cut crosswise into narrow pieces

Cook’s notes: Baked beans in the U.S. sometimes use a less sweet tomato sauce that contains a mix of herbs and spices, such as Trader Joe’s Giant Baked Beans in Tomato Sauce. More traditional versions with roots in the United Kingdom contain either maple syrup, molasses, or brown sugar. Either rendition works in this recipe.

DIRECTIONS

1. Place potatoes in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil on high heat. Reduce heat to medium-high and boil for 5 minutes. Drain in a colander and shake off excess water.

2. Meanwhile, heat 1/2 tablespoon oil in a large deep skillet over high heat. Add bacon and cook for 5 minutes or until crisp, turning once or twice. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon.

3. Add remaining vegetable oil to the skillet that still has the bacon renderings. Add potatoes in a single layer and cook for 4 to 5 minutes. Try not to move them around too much, so they brown nicely, but keep an eye on them to ensure that they don’t burn.

4. Meanwhile, while the potatoes are cooking, heat the beans in a saucepan, stirring occasionally.

5. Use a spatula to turn the potatoes over. Shoot the potatoes over a little to make a clear area on the side and add the onions. Cook until onions start to soften for about 3 minutes and then toss everything together. Cook 1 to 2 more minutes for onions to finish cooking. Season to taste with garlic salt and black pepper. Stir 1/2 cup of grated cheese into the hot beans.

6. Divide the potato hash between 4 plates. Spoon the beans on the side and top with the remaining grated cheese. Garnish with more freshly ground black pepper and green onions.

Source: Adapted from “Kitchen Sanctuary Quick and Easy” by Nicky Corbishley (Kyle)

Crispy-Crunchy Roasted Cannellini Beans make a great snack or a topping for salads or roasted vegetables. (Photo by Cathy Thomas)

Crispy-Crunchy Roasted Cannellini Beans

If you have a can of cannellini beans, start your canned bean culinary adventure with these Crispy-Crunchy Roasted Cannellini Beans. They make a delightfully noisy out-of-hand snack, as well as a scrumptious topper for salads or roasted vegetables. A word of caution: They are addictive.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings, recipe can be doubled

INGREDIENTS

One (15-ounce can) cannellini beans

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 to 3 sprigs fresh rosemary

2 large garlic cloves, smashed, peeled

Optional: Small pinch dried red pepper flakes

Coarse salt

Optional: Freshly ground black pepper

DIRECTIONS

1. Place beans in a colander and rinse with cold running water. Shake colander a couple of times to remove excess water and turn out onto a clean dish towel. Bring up corners of towel and gently pat beans dry. Allow to rest and further dry out while oven heats up. Adjust oven rack to middle of oven and turn to 425 degrees.

2. In a large bowl, toss beans with oil, rosemary, garlic, and, if using, dried red pepper flakes (I use a silicone spatula for tossing because it is gentler on the beans). Turn out onto a rimmed baking sheet (don’t worry if some of the beans are cracked). With spatula, spread beans out into single layer so that they aren’t crowded together. Season with coarse salt and if desired, black pepper. Roast 30 minutes, turning after 15 minutes. Beans should be crunchy and golden brown.

Source: Anna Stockwell, epicurious.com

This avocado burger features patties made with black beans and a paste of onions, green bell peppers and garlic. (Photo by Cathy Thomas)

Dakine Black Bean Burgers

In the cookbook “Eating Up the West Coast,” Brigit Binns and the editors at Sunset magazine dub these black bean-based burgers “Dakine,” the Hawaiian pidgin term that describes something that is a good thing, or a cool thing. The patty mixture teams smashed black beans with a paste made of onion, green bell pepper, and garlic. Some Sriracha, cumin, chili powder and Panko breadcrumbs also come to the party. The patties need 2 hours of chilling before grilling. The recipe makes 4 large patties. I prefer smaller servings and generally make 6 instead of 4. My market sells black beans in 15-ounce cans and 29-ounce cans. I use one 29-ounce beauty instead of two 15-ounce tins and generally save over a dollar.  Yes, it is one less ounce of beans, but it works out well.

Of course, the Chipotle Mayonnaise is delicious, but if I’m serving children, I usually just combine mayonnaise and tomato ketchup to make the condiment. Either or both of those toppings can be prepared while the patties are chilling.

Yield: 4 large burgers

INGREDIENTS

2 (15-ounce) cans black beans, drained, rinsed

1 green bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, coarsely chopped

1/2 white onion, coarsely chopped

6 garlic cloves, peeled

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

1 tablespoons Sriracha sauce or Thai chili sauce

2 teaspoons ground cumin

1 teaspoon mild or hot chili powder

Salt and pepper

1 1/2 cups panko breadcrumbs

Vegetable oil for brushing

4 large slices Monterey jack cheese

Optional Chipotle Mayonnaise: 1/3 cup mayonnaise mixed with 1 teaspoon chilies in adobo, with adobo sauce to taste and 1/2 teaspoon lime juice

4 soft rolls or buns, split and toasted

Garnishes: 1 large ripe avocado (pitted, peeled, thickly sliced), 1 large ripe tomato (thickly sliced), 2/3 cup shredded iceberg lettuce, 1 cup caramelized onions or 1 medium onion, sliced and grilled until tender and golden

DIRECTIONS

1. Make the burgers: With a potato masher or a very sturdy fork, mash the beans in a bowl to a thick paste (a few whole or partial beans may stubbornly remain in the mix). In a food processor, pulse the bell pepper, onion, and garlic until very finely chopped, almost pulverized. Add the vegetables to the bowl of mashed beans. Stir to combine. Add the eggs, Sriracha, cumin, chili powder, 1 teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon ground black pepper; stir to combine. Mix in the panko until the mixture is sticky and mixture holds together. Divide the mixture into 4 patties about 1-inch thick and put on a platter or rimmed baking sheet. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours but not more than 4 hours.

2. Prepare a charcoal or gas grill for medium-high heat (about 450 degrees). Clean grill grate; fold a paper towel into a small square and clap with tongs. Dip folded towel in some vegetable oil and wipe down grill grate with the oiled paper towel. Lightly oil both sides of the chilled patties and season with salt and pepper. Grill with the lid closed, until browned in places, 3 to 4 minutes. Turn them over and top with the cheese. Close the grill lid and cook until the cheese has melted for about 3 minutes more.

3. Spread the cut side of the bottom half of each roll with a little chipotle mayonnaise (see introduction). Layer on tomato and lettuce. Top with patty, caramelized or grilled onion, a few slices of avocado, and the top half of the bun.

Source: “Sunset Eating Up the West Coast” by Brigit Binns and the editors of Sunset Magazine

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Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has lost her appeal of her fraud conviction.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit on Monday upheld lower court rulings finding Holmes guilty of felony fraud, sentencing her to more than 11 years in prison and ordering her to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in restitution.

Judge Jacqueline Nguyen’s written opinion reflecting the panel’s decision rejected arguments by Holmes’ lawyers — that the trial judge improperly allowed some testimony and improperly prohibited other testimony, and that a regulator’s report could have misled the jury  — on a point-by-point basis.

Holmes’ lawyers did not immediately respond to questions about whether Holmes planned to appeal, or to seek a pardon from President Donald Trump.

Theranos, the now-defunct Palo Alto, California, blood-testing startup Holmes founded in 2003, falsely claimed its machines could use just a few drops of blood from a finger-prick to perform more than a thousand tests, for everything from diabetes and cancer to pregnancy and HIV infection.

Holmes, 41, is incarcerated at a federal minimum-security prison camp outside Houston. She is scheduled to be released in March 2032.

The ruling caps for now a saga that captivated the nation since the charismatic entrepreneur, known for adopting the black turtleneck of legendary Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, was charged with criminal fraud in 2018. Over the six years, Holmes regularly attended proceedings in U.S. District Court in downtown San Jose, California, that were capped by a four-month trial that led to her 2022 conviction on four felony counts of defrauding investors.

Holmes gave birth to a son in July 2021 while awaiting trial. Between her November 2022 sentencing and her imprisonment the following May, she had a baby daughter with hotel heir Billy Evans, also the father of her son.

On June 11, her appeal was heard in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, with one of her lawyers and a prosecutor facing off before a three-judge panel. Appeals courts can order new trials if they find trial judges made mistakes in applying the law or if proceedings were not fair.

Holmes’s lawyer, Amy Saharia, claimed that Judge Edward Davila, who presided over the trial in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, had improperly allowed former Theranos scientist Dr. Kingshuk Das to give expert testimony before the jury. Appellate court Judge Ryan Nelson said that claim may have represented unfairness toward Holmes, but said her conviction was backed by “pretty overwhelming evidence.”

Saharia argued that the central issue in the case was whether Holmes knowingly misrepresented the capabilities of Theranos’ technology, Saharia said. “She in good faith believed in the accuracy of this technology,” Saharia told the appeals court judges.

Holmes, a Stanford University dropout, was charged in 2018 in connection with $878 million in losses among investors in Theranos, which was once valued at $9 billion. Her trial judge Edward Davila pegged the hit to investors resulting from her criminal conduct at $381 million.

In November 2022, Davila sentenced Holmes to 11 years and three months in prison. Holmes, U.S. Bureau of Prisons inmate No. 24965-111, has slashed more than two years off her term, likely through good behavior and taking programs at her minimum-security prison.

Jurors in Holmes’ trial heard evidence that she doctored internal Theranos documents by adding pilfered pharmaceutical companies’ logos to suggest the firms had validated her technology, and that she and Theranos had falsely suggested to investors that her machines were in battlefield use. The jury also heard that Theranos provided investors with wildly inflated revenue expectations and that it sought to cover up the poor performance of its machines.

Holmes could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but its justices only hear about 100 to 150 appeals per year of the more than 7,000 it is typically asked to review, according to the courts system.

By Naomi Kresge, Bloomberg News

Environmental and lifestyle factors play a far greater role than genetics in determining the likelihood of dying young, according to the largest study yet to untangle the contributions of nature and nurture to healthy aging.

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A range of external factors including exercise and smoking — collectively dubbed the “exposome” — was almost 10 times more likely than genetic risk factors to explain premature mortality, scientists from the University of Oxford and Massachusetts General Hospital said in the Nature Medicine journal.

They analyzed mortality trends in the UK Biobank, which stores medical and genetic data from about 500,000 people.

The study shows how broader social context and environment shapes the likelihood of disease, a crucial factor as governments and payers wrestle with how to deal with rising health-care costs and an aging society. Many of the factors found to be linked to longer life were proxies for wealth and status, such as years of education, gym use and household income.

Understanding the role of environmental factors in aging could have a “profound impact on improving health for all of us,” said Austin Argentieri, a researcher in the analytic and translational genetics unit at Massachusetts General Hospital. “We were surprised at just how stark the difference was, how much more the environment matters.”

Factors from childhood, including whether a mother smoked around the time of her baby’s birth and a person’s being “relatively plumper” at around the age of 10, were also linked to cellular signs of aging as an adult. Being shorter at the age of 10 was associated with a lower mortality risk, however.

“We are not prisoners of our genes,” Aimee Aubeeluck, a professor of health psychology at the University of Surrey, who wasn’t involved in the research, said in a comment reacting to the study distributed by the Science Media Centre. “If we know that where we are born and how we live dictate our chances of aging well — or dying prematurely — why is policy action so slow?”

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