"FoodSafety.gov is the gateway to food safety information provided by government agencies. According to the Key Findings of the Food Safety Working Group -- “The federal government will enhance www.foodsafety.gov to better communicate information to the public and include an improved individual alert system allowing consumers to receive food safety information, such as notification of recalls. Agencies will also use social media to expand public communications.”
See also: State Departments of Public Health - Click a state to go to its health department Web site. Related postings on food safety

Report: Ten Riskiest Foods Regulated by the FDA: "The Center for Science in the Public Interest, which authored the report,[says there is no] need one pass up tomatoes, sprouts, and berries, even though those foods are also on the list. But the nonprofit watchdog group says the presence of so many healthy foods on such a list is exactly why the United States Senate should follow the House and pass legislation that reforms our fossilized food safety laws."

Patriot Act Reauthorization Bill Passed by Senate Committee
The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the USA PATRIOT Act Extension Act of 2009 [October 9, 2009].

Google and Bing Side By Side Search Comparison
"Can't choose default search engine? Want to compare Bing & Google results? Just put your query in the search box and press Enter. You'll see results from both engines side by side.

An ell (from Proto-Indo-European *el- "elbow, forearm"), is a unit of measurement, approximating the length of a man's arm. Several national forms existed, with different lengths, including the Scottish ell (approximately 37 inches or 94 centimetres), the Flemish ell (approx. 27 in or 69 cm) and the Polish ell (approx. 31 in or 79 cm). In England, the ell was usually 45 inches (1.143 m exactly for the international inch). See other units of length, such as shaftment, span, hand, nail, palm and digit at:
http://www.freebase.com/view/en/ell
An ell is also an extension at the end and at right angles to the main building.
http://www.wordswarm.net/dictionary/ell.html

English language roots: prefixes, suffixes and syllables
PrefixSuffix.com has improved its chart-based site, adding features such as a root word search engine which gives you access to over 2,000 root words. http://www.prefixsuffix.com/

A new Leonardo da Vinci portrait may have been discovered after a fingerprint found on it seemed similar to another discovered on his work. The print is "highly comparable" to a print on da Vinci's St Jerome in the Vatican, which was painted early in the artist's career when he was thought not to use assistants. Infrared analysis showed "significant" stylistic parallels with da Vinci's Portrait of a Woman in Profile, which hangs in Windsor Castle. It also said the analysis revealed that the drawing and hatching were made by a left-handed artist, as da Vinci is known to have been. Drawn in ink and chalks, the young woman's costume and hairstyle reflect Milanese fashion of the late 15th Century, while carbon analysis of the artwork is consistent with such a dating. Da Vinci scholar Martin Kemp, Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at Oxford University, believes the teenager, shown in profile, could be Bianca Sforza, daughter of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan (1452-1508) and his mistress Bernardina de Corradis. He suggested this "by a process of elimination". The portrait, which measures 13ins by 9ins, was sold at Christie's in New York in 1998, in an Old Master Drawings sale as a Young Girl in Profile in Renaissance Dress. It was catalogued as "German, early 19th century", with an estimate of $12,000 to 16,000, and went under the hammer for $19,000 (£12,039). It was later sold for a similar sum to a Canadian-born connoisseur, Peter Silverman, in 2007. Mr Silverman believed that there was more to the portrait and began to look into the matter following a discussion last year with Dr Nicholas Turner, formerly Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. The artwork is due to go on display in an exhibition in Sweden next year.
http:// news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8304021.stm

Benito Mussolini was recruited by MI5 during the First World War, long before he turned Italy into a police state. At that time he was working as a journalist for a left-wing Italian newspaper, Il Popolo d’Italia, and the UK wanted an agent of influence. By 1917, with millions of its men committed to the war against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire, Italy was wavering in its commitment to the Allies. Britain paid the future Il Duce 100 pounds a week—equal to about $6,000 today—to write favorable opinion pieces about Italy remaining in the war. The secret deal was engineered by Sir Samuel Hoare, an MP and MI5’s man in Rome, who ran a staff of 100 British intelligence officers in Italy. The fact that Mussolini was working for the British has been known to historians for decades—Hoare revealed the arrangement in his memoirs more than 50 years ago. But only now has the comparatively large sum that the future dictator was paid for turning his hand to pro-British propaganda been revealed.
http://features.csmonitor.com/globalnews/2009/10/14/italys-mussolini-earned-6000-a-week-as-wwi-agent-for-britain/

Portmanteau words, also called blended words or simply portmanteaux, are words that are formed by splicing or merging two other words together. The term portmanteau words comes from Chapter Six of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There, in which the character Humpty Dumpty, in explaining the meaning of the word slithy in the poem "Jabberwocky", says: “Well, slithy means 'lithe and slimy.' Lithe is the same as 'active.' You see it's like a portmanteau — there are two meanings packed up into one word." This is a double joke: first, a portmanteau is a suitcase, in which one would “pack” things, like the multiple meanings within portmanteau words; second, portmanteau is itself a compound word, similar to portmanteau words, in that it is from the French words for "carry" – porter – and "cloak" – manteau.
Examples:
motor + hotel = motel
gigantic + enormous = ginormous
camera + recorder = camcorder
breath + analyzer = breathalyzer
tangerine + pomelo = tangelo
breakfast + lunch = brunch
medical + care = Medicare
South (of) + Houston (Street) = SoHo (area of New York City)
Triangle + Below + Canal (Street) = TriBeCa (area of New York City)
smoke + fog = smog
talk + marathon = talkathon
Channel + Tunnel = Chunnel
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-portmanteau-words.htm

On October 15, 1582, the Gregorian Calendar was implemented, following a papal bull issued by Pope Gregory XIII. Spain, Portugal, Poland, and Italy were the only nations to adopt the calendar on this day, but it spread over the succeeding centuries to become the international standard today. Learn more about the history of the Gregorian calendar and view its dates of adoption throughout the world.
On October 15, 1914, Congress passed the Clayton Antitrust Act to clarify and supplement the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. The Clayton Act outlawed trusts formed by two companies with interlinking boards of directors, price-fixing with businesses offering competing products, making agreements with other businesses to control the supply of a product, and abusing power to gain or maintain a monopoly.
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
On October 15, 1764 Edward Gibbon (books by this author) thought up the idea of writing The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. His six-volume work, published between the years 1776 and 1788, covered more than a thousand years of Roman history, from 180 A.D. to the fall of Constantinople. Gibbon became known as "the first modern historian." He tried to write objectively, and in departure from his predecessors, he relied heavily on primary source documents rather than on secondary sources such as official Church histories. He made extensive—and eccentric—use of footnotes.
The Writer’s Almanac