In the News, June 13th, 2008

The tomatoes are getting worse.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that the toll from salmonella-tainted tomatoes jumped to 228 illnesses as the government learned of five dozen previously unknown cases and said it is possible the food poisoning contributed to a cancer patient's death.

The CDC found 61 new cases of Salmonella Saintpaul infection in six new states -- Florida, Georgia, Missouri, New York, Tennessee and Vermont.

Infections have now been found in 23 states since mid-April, the CDC said.
Several restaurants and grocery stores removed tomatoes from their inventories after reports of the Salmonella outbreak surfaced. At least 23 cases required hospitalization, the CDC said.

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Tidbits in the news...

BALTIMORE -- Police continue to investigate after a 2-year-old boy and 3-year-old girl playing in a small swimming pool were injured by stray bullets Monday night in what police believe was an incident between rival gangs.

BELLOWS FALLS, Vt. -- Police arrested a Rockingham man Wednesday after he allegedly attacked another man with an aluminum baseball bat at a local playground while a T-ball game was in progress.

CHICAGO, Il-R&B superstar R. Kelly's fate is in a jury's hands. Deliberations began this afternoon in Kelly's child pornography trial after prosecutors showed the 27-minute sex tape one last time. He and the girl prosecutors say is the victim say they're not in the tape.

McALLEN, Texas -- A justice of the peace can no longer give parents the choice of paying a fine or paddling their children in open court for now, a judge ruled Wednesday. Seems he was sued by three families who say Garza left them with no real option when he told them they must pay a fine for their children's transgressions or paddle them in open court.

And...in case nobody else notices...

WASHINGTON – Texas Rep. Ron Paul announced that he is suspending his bid for the Republican presidential nomination to focus his time on building an organization to help recruit and elect “limited government Republicans.”

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Bad news from the housing front- unless you're looking for a bargain...

Reports in the news indicate that 73,000 homes lost to foreclosure in May up a staggering 158% from the 28,548 households that were dispossessed in May 2007.
Filings for the month jumped by 48%. Nevada, California, and Florida continue to bear the brunt of the crisis.

This is according to the latest release from RealtyTrac, the online marketer of foreclosed properties. Filings increased 7% from April.

Worst-hit

Nevada remained the most troubled default state for the 17th consecutive month. One out of every 118 households there received some kind of foreclosure filing during May, up 24% from the previous month and 72% from a year ago.

California led the nation in the sheer volume of filings, with nearly 72,000 properties in some stage of default, which works out to one out of every 183 households. More than 20,000 Californians lost their homes, more than any other state.

Florida recorded over 37,000 filings and 4,300 bank repossessions. Nine of the top 10 cities with the most foreclosure filings were in either Florida or California.

Stockton, Calif., was the worst-hit city last month, with one filing for every 75 households. Cape Coral, Fla., where one out of every 79 homes received a filing, was second. Other hard-hit places were Merced, Calif., which ranked third, Modesto, Calif., which was fourth and Riverside, Calif., which was fifth.

Las Vegas was the only city outside of California and Florida to crack the top 10. In May it had one filing for every 96 households - about five times the national average - which put it in sixth place.

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The mysteries are solved...

AP Photo: In this photo provided by the Augusta, Ga., Police Dept. Betty Johnson Neumar is shown... For two decades, Al Gentry begged investigators to take another look at the mystery of who killed his brother, Harold, and left his gunshot-ridden body sprawled on the floor of the home he shared with his wife.Arrested was the person Gentry had always suspected: his brother's now 76-year-old former wife, who was charged last month with hiring a hit man to gun him down.

Investigators then found a more chilling discovery about Betty Neumar. After arresting her, authorities realized that five times since the 1950s, she was married, and each union ended with the death of her husband.

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Yahoo! and Google???
I am so confused...

Yahoo!'s efforts to revive takeover talks with Microsoft Corp. have reached a dead end, again. Now Yahoo! has hired Google Inc. to handle some of its advertising sales.

If the Google partnership passes what's likely to be a rigorous review by U.S. antitrust regulators and lawmakers, Yahoo! intends to use its rival's superior search technology to display ads on its own Web site as well as those of its partners' in the United States and Canada.
Yahoo!'s advertising partnership with Google won't start until late September at the earliest because the two companies voluntarily agreed to wait at least 3½ months to allow the government to review a deal involving the two leading players in search advertising.

Google already holds about 75 percent of the $11 billion search advertising market in the United States, with Yahoo! in a distant second at 9 percent, according to the research firm eMarketer Inc.