Trade Deficit Increases in April 2008
"The Nation's international deficit in goods and services increased to $60.9 billion in April from $56.5 billion (revised) in March, as imports increased more than exports." (10 June 2008)
FT900: U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services. Current Release: April 2008

Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator (ISP-I-08-23) Feb 2008, Unclassified
"HIV/AIDS has become the world’s most important public health crisis. Approximately 33 million people are infected worldwide; two thirds of those are concentrated in a dozen African countries. The number of new HIV infections each year worldwide is 2.5 million people. The incidence of HIV among adults from 15 to 49 years of age has risen to 15 percent in many countries and is estimated at 30 percent in some southern African countries. Because of the scale of this disease, it threatens the political stability of the affected countries and their neighbors, and undermines their prospects for prosperity."

June 11 is the official state holiday of Hawaii, Kamehameha Day. It's a holiday that's been celebrated since 1871, when the ruler of Hawaii named the holiday in honor of his grandpa, Kamehameha the Great, who established the kingdom of Hawai'i — Kamehameha, a man known as "Napoleon of the Pacific." Today, the festival includes hula dancers and a floral parade and traditions that celebrate ancient Hawaii, because Kamehameha the Great tried to preserve these ancient traditions and not lose them to the influence of Europeans.
June 11 is the day that listeners first heard FM radio, when American inventor Edwin Howard Armstrong gave a demonstration in Alpine, New Jersey, in 1935. FM stands for "frequency modulation," because Armstrong's idea was to create sound by varying the frequency of a radio wave instead of varying its amplitude, which is what happens in AM radio.
The Writer’s Almanac

Aftermath of nature’s wrath
Two days ago we had three Norway maple trees. Because of wind damage we now have two, and a whole new look for our front lawn. Here’s hoping the “open” look won’t invite any more people driving under the influence to treat it as a roadway. (Longtime readers will remember two such instances.)

More wrath
One of the most scenic getaways for Chicagoans is devastated. Weekend rains of biblical proportions dumped so much water into Lake Delton that it literally burst its banks.Tens of thousands of gallons of lake water barreled through the woods, taking with it a roadway, several houses, boats, fish and lake bed. It emptied into the nearby Wisconsin River and was gone in hours.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-061008-lake-delton-flood-,0,1757046.story

Andrew Carnegie saw public libraries as temples of learning and centers of culture. They should be free to all. Many were not. They should be designed with open stacks of books and materials, so visitors could browse them and discover new things. The librarian's counter should be at the center and not blocking the door. Carnegie backed up his library ideas with money, but he faced down a number of problems. Some authors protested that widespread libraries would cut their royalty fees. Others believed open libraries would be magnets for the "disreputables." The steel man ignored the critics. From 1883 to 1929, the Carnegie Corp., his charitable foundation, funded construction of 2,500 libraries in the United States, Britain and Ireland.
http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=415538&Category=8&subCategoryID=

Mildred Dorothy Sommer, a librarian from Cleveland Heights, Ohio, a 1928 graduate of the University of Michigan, will help countless others attend the university she loved.
She died last year at age 100, leaving $5.2 million, the bulk of her fortune, to fund graduate fellowships at U-M's College of Literature, Science and the Arts.
It is the largest single bequest payment to the LSA college during the university's $2.5-billion Michigan Difference fund-raising campaign that began in 2004.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080606/NEWS05/806060434

hubbub (HUB-ub) noun
Excited fuss or tumult of a crowd.
[Perhaps from Irish ubub (an interjection of contempt).]
A.Word.A.Day

The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference.When fish are in schools, they sometimes take debate.A thief who stole a calendar got 12 months.When the smog lifts in Los Angeles, U.C.L.A.