Fast-food companies are asking U.S. state legislators to remove restaurant marketing from local governments' regulatory menu, in the latest industry bid to stay a step ahead of anti-obesity laws. The lobbying push, which has succeeded in Arizona and gained traction in Florida, aims to stop marketing restrictions before they start. The efforts come as food companies face increasing scrutiny from the U.S. government over how they pitch their products to youngsters as obesity rates rise. Last year San Francisco became the first major city to require that McDonald's Happy Meals and other restaurants' meals for children meet certain nutritional standards before they can be sold with toys. Similar proposals have been floated in places ranging from New York City to Nebraska. The $184 billion fast-food industry fiercely opposes the so-called "Happy Meal" ordinances. Michele Simon, a public health attorney and research and policy director for the Marin Institute in Northern California, says the industry is trying to tie the hands of local officials. "It is taking away the right of local government to act," said Simon, author of "Appetite for Profit", a book that attacks the practices of the U.S. food and restaurant industry. Industry lobbyists acknowledge the importance of marketing for restaurant profits, but they cast the latest debate in broader policy terms. "It's not that we're trying to make kids fat -- clearly we're not; it's about how much government intrusion is really necessary," said Steve Chucri, president of the Arizona Restaurant Association.
http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/Legal/News/2011/05_-_May/Fast-food_lobbies_U_S__states_on__Happy_Meal__laws/

"The Internet you see is not the Internet I see." That is the point of a new book coming out called The Filter Bubble. Google, Facebook and many other sites have instituted algorithms that take into account your interests based on past usage. What this means is your search results can differ markedly from others. An example: Two friends who searched Egypt on Google on the same day. Friend two received results regarding travel while friend one received news about the uprising. (The search was conducted during the Egyptian uprising.) Please keep in mind that when searching on the internet, reading an online news source, looking at your Facebook page or undertaking any other online activity, the web site may be using information it has to filter out content it thinks you do not wish to see. While on the surface this may appear to be a way to avoid information overload, it also can mean you or your patron does not locate the information needed.
http://federatedsearchblog.com/2011/05/05/on-the-dangers-of-personalization/
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9216484/Elgan_How_to_pop_your_Internet_filter_bubble_
Thanks, Julie

When officials at Vienna (Virginia) Presbyterian Church decided to acknowledge the church's failures in handling reports of sexual abuse by a youth ministries director, they thought it might upset some in the congregation. What surprised them was the admonishment from the church's insurance company. And it wasn't the church's lapses in responding to the abuse a half-decade ago that bothered the insurer — it was the church's plan to admit those lapses and apologize to the victims. The insurance company's position was clear: On March 23, a lawyer hired by the company, GuideOne Insurance, sent a warning to church officials:
"Do not make any statements, orally, in writing or in any manner, to acknowledge, admit to or apologize for anything that may be evidence of or interpreted as (a suggestion that) the actions of Vienna Presbyterian Church … caused or contributed to any damages arising from the intentional acts/abuse/misconduct" by the youth director. But in a letter sent to congregants the next day, the church's governing board, known as a Session, took a different course. "This sort of conflict is happening all the time," says Jack McCalmon, a lawyer whose company, the McCalmon Group, is hired by insurers to help churches set up abuse-prevention programs.
"The church is in the business of forgiveness, of being forthright and open and truthful, but that often creates liability in a world that's adversarial, in the judicial world," McCalmon says. Meanwhile, he adds, insurers are in the business of limiting liability. "So, the insurance company has a contract with the church that says, 'If we're going to put our assets on the line, we want you to perform in a way that protects our assets and interests.'"
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2011-05-09-vienna-virginia-church-abuse-case-lawyers-insurers_n.htm?loc=interstitialskip

East Florida was a territory of Great Britain from 1763–1783, of Spain from 1783–1821, and of the United States from 1821-1822 (prior to being merged with the part of West Florida east of the Perdido River to form the organized Florida Territory in 1822). East Florida was established by the British colonial government in 1763; as its name implies it consisted of the eastern part of the region of Florida, with West Florida comprising the western parts. Its capital was St. Augustine, which had been the capital of Spanish Florida. Britain formed East and West Florida out of territory it had received from France and Spain following the Seven Years' War (the French and Indian War). Finding its new acquisitions in the southeast too large to administer as a single unit, the British divided them into two colonies separated by the Apalachicola River. East Florida comprised the bulk of what had previously been the Spanish territory of Florida. Britain ceded both Floridas back to Spain following the American Revolutionary War, and Spain maintained them as separate colonies, though the majority of West Florida was gradually annexed by the United States. Spain sold East Florida and the remainder of West Florida to the U.S. in the Adams-Onís Treaty; the United States organized them as a single unit, the Florida Territory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Florida

Pepita (from Mexican Spanish: pepita de calabaza, "little seed of squash") is a Spanish culinary term for the pumpkin seed, the edible seed of a pumpkin or other cultivar of squash (genus Cucurbita). The seeds are typically rather flat and asymmetrically oval, and light green in color inside a white hull. The word can refer either to the hulled kernel or unhulled whole seed, and most commonly refers to the roasted end product. As an ingredient in mole dishes, they are known in Spanish as pipián. Lightly roasted, salted, unhulled pumpkin seeds are popular in Greece with the descriptive Italian name, passatempo ("pastime"). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepita

Virginia was named after Queen Elizabeth I of England, the virgin queen. In the east it occupies the southern tip of the Delamarva Peninsula and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean. The most important industries are the service and tourist industries. Virginia's industrial output includes textiles, chemicals, cars, and electrical equipment; agricultural products include tobacco, soybeans, peanuts, and apples. Coal is the most important mineral. One of the Thirteen Colonies, the first permanent English settlement was made at Jamestown in 1607, and in 1619 the colonists established the first representative legislature in America. During the American Civil War, Virginia was the northeastern-most state of the Confederacy. Virginia ratified the US Constitution in 1788, becoming the 10th US state. Virginia lies midway on the Atlantic coast of the USA. The ocean advances deep into the mainland at Chesapeake Bay, whose rugged coastline is indented by the wide estuaries of several rivers. To the west, the landscape merges into the undulating Piedmont Plateau, rising gradually into the Blue Ridge Mountains. Further west are the valleys of Virginia, including the beautiful Shenandoah Valley. Virginia can be divided into five main regions: the Appalachian Plateau, the Appalachian Ridge and Valley region, the Piedmont, the Atlantic Coastal Plain, and the Chesapeake Bay area. http://encyclopedia.farlex.com/East+Virginia

1722 Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen is the first European to explore Samoa.
1899 Germany annexes Western Samoa (now called the Independent State of Samoa, or just Samoa), the US takes over eastern Samoa (American Samoa) and Britain withdraws its claim to the islands in accordance with treaty between Germany, Britain and the US.
1914 New Zealand occupies Western Samoa during World War I and continues to administer it after the war by virtue of a League of Nations mandate (and a United Nations mandate after World War II).
1962 Western Samoa becomes independent, the first Pacific island nation to do so.
1997 Western Samoa changes its name to Samoa, a move which causes some tension with American Samoa.
2007 King Malietoa Tanumafili II dies aged 94, after 45 years on the throne. He was appointed king for life at independence in 1962. He was the world's third-longest reigning monarch.
Samoa becomes republic. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/country_profiles/1300819.stm

2011 Samoa plans to leap 24 hours into the future, erasing a day and putting a new kink in the Pacific's jagged international date line so that it can be on the same weekday as Australia, New Zealand and eastern Asia.
This offsets a decision it made 119 years ago to stay behind a day and align itself with U.S. traders based in California. That has meant that when it's dawn Sunday in Samoa, it's already dawn Monday in adjacent Tonga and shortly before dawn Monday in nearby New Zealand, Australia and increasingly prominent eastern Asia trade partners such as China. "In doing business with New Zealand and Australia we're losing out on two working days a week," Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi said in a statement. "While it's Friday here, it's Saturday in New Zealand and when we're at church on Sunday, they're already conducting business in Sydney and Brisbane." Samoa's change will have a cost: The Polynesian nation has long marketed itself as the last place on Earth to see each day's sunset. In 2009, Tuilaepa enacted a law that switched cars to driving on the left side of the road instead of the right, also to bring Samoa in line with Australia and New Zealand.
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/SciTech/20110509/samoa-dateline-110509/