Reports of hundreds of people sickened in the outbreak have been coming in since April. As of this weekend, the Centers for Disease Control puts the total at 552 people in 32 states and Washington, D.C. with the rare Salmonella Saintpaul strain.

It’s a situation that has proved confusing for consumers, who saw tomatoes removed from grocery produce sections and restaurants earlier this month. The FDA has said all along that the tainted tomatoes are only the red Roma, red plum, and red round varieties, and that cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, those on the vine, and home-grown tomatoes are all safe to eat.

The FDA continues to update a list of states and countries whose tomatoes have been ruled out in the probe, but reminds consumers that some of the suspect tomatoes could still have been trucked into these areas.

Here is the list of areas not linked to the outbreak and safe to eat, as of June 19:

U. S.:

Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida (counties of: Jackson, Gadsden, Leon, Jefferson, Madison, Suwannee, Hamilton, Hillsborough, Polk, Manatee, Hardee, DeSoto, Sarasota, Highlands, Pasco, Sumter, Citrus, Hernando, Charlotte), Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah
Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin

Outside U.S.:

Baja California (Norte) Mexico, Belgium, Canada, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Israel, Netherlands, Puerto Rico

A documentary film titled “Shine A Light” debuts April 4, and promises to show the world Mick, Keith, Charlie and Ron as they’ve never been seen before.

Produced by Academy Award winning filmmaker Martin Scorsese, the footage centers around the band’s Fall 2006 performance at the famed Beacon Theatre in New York City during its “Bigger Bang” tour.

If you can’t wait until the movie’s release, visit the film’s official website:
http://www.shinealightmovie.com

With more than 30% of adult Mississippians said to be obese, such a law would have an obvious economic impact on the state. But would it counteract the $444 million annually obesity is reported to cost the Mississippi Medicare and Medicaid program?

Authored by Rep. W. T. Mayhall, Jr., a former pharmaceutical salesman, the bill is described as:
“An act to prohibit certain food establishments from serving food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the state department of health; to direct the department to prepare written materials that describe and explain the criteria for determining whether a person is obese and to provide those materials to the food establishments; to direct the department to monitor the food establishments for compliance with the provisions of this act; and for related purposes.”

One of the bill’s co-sponsors, Rep. John Read, has also worked in pharmaceutical sales. Read says he’s trying to bring attention to his state’s number one health problem.

While the Coalition of Fat Rights Activists applauds the attempt at promoting health and wellness, the Chicago-based organization maintains it’s the wrong approach. “We as Americans have made substantial progress in race and gender relations. Unfortunately, our progress hasn’t extended to our country’s uneasy relationship with fat people,” said COFRA president Paul McAleer, in a statement.

The bill is currently being examined by the Mississippi Legislature’s Public Health and Human Services Committee.

AT&T calls the concept the Data Global Plan, which is in addition to the domestic voice and data iPhone plan they purchase during iPhone activation. The Data Global Plan enables international voice and data roaming, as well as international long distance dialing from the United States at standard rates.

The plan requires customers to first purchase a domestic voice and data plan for the iPhone and is not available as a stand-alone offer. Normal eligibility requirements for international plans apply. Should customers exceed the 50MB bucket in the 29 countries where the plan applies, they will pay $.005/KB. Outside those countries, consumers will simply pay for their data usage by the kilobyte, at rates starting as low as $.010/KB.

AT&T also offers a 20MB Data Global Plan for iPhone customers for $24.99 a month. The 20MB bucket applies to usage within the same 29 countries, with overage rated at $.005/KB. Outside the 29 designated countries, the data usage rate is $.0195/KB.

AT&T advises international travelers to remember to check their wireless options as a part of their pre-trip planning process.

Travelers can visit http://www.att.com/wirelessinternational to see whether service is available in the countries to which they are going. Travelers can go to http://www.att.com/travelguide to determine whether their wireless device has the frequency and wireless technology needed at their travel destination.

The latest ground beef recall involves the Sam’s Club warehouse chain and a brand produced by Cargill under the name American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties. The product is being blamed for sickening 4 Minnesota children who ate the hamburgers last month. One of them is still hospitalized.

Only last week, the Topps Meat Company expanded its recall of frozen burger patties from 332,000 pounds of product to more than 21 million pounds suspected of being contaminated with E. coli. In that case, the bacteria sickened more than a dozen people in eight states.

On Saturday, Topps officials announced the company could not recover from the massive recall, and that it was going out of business.

Now, a sighting of the rare species in China’s largest river, it’s sole habitat, has launched a campaign to save them. Also called the whitefin dolphin, the baijis are said to have flourished in the Yangtze for millions of years.

According to the World Wildlife Fund, the Chinese media reported that a local businessman in Tongling City in east China’s Anhui Province filmed “a big white animal” with his digital camera on August 19. The footage was later confirmed to be the Baiji by Prof. Wang Ding, a leading scientist in Baiji study at the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The critically endangered Yangtze river dolphin, or baiji, once lived in China’s lower and middle reaches of the Yangtze River, Fuchun River, and in Dongting and Poyang Lakes. Today, it is the world’s most endangered cetacean.
© Chinese Academy of Science

“This sighting presents a last hope that the Baiji may not go the way of the dodo bird,” said Karen Baragona, Yangtze River Basin Program leader at World Wildlife Fund. “Other species have been brought back from the brink of extinction like the southern right whale and white rhinos, but only through the most intensive conservation efforts.”

WWF has been actively involved in the protection of cetaceans and their habitat in the Yangtze River. “WWF calls for immediate joint efforts to provide a living space for this beautiful animal, which is a key species indicating the health of its habitat – the Yangtze River. To be effective, efforts must address agriculture, water resources, transportation, environmental protection and sanitation to reduce human disturbance and protect the cetaceans in the river,” Baragona said.

Heat-related deaths have been reported this week in Kansas City, St. Louis, Little Rock, Memphis, and other locations from the heartland to the southeast.

The heat can be especially hard to bear for the very young and the elderly. Children have been left in hot cars, some rescued, others not, as mother nature reminds us how dangerous she can be when simple precautions are not followed.

Air conditioners are running full blast in many cities, where electric usage is reported at or near record levels, along with high water consumption. Some cities have opened community centers and other air-conditioned buildings to offer the low-income and homeless a place to escape the heat.

In a summer that has seen astronomically high gas prices, this is just another blow to Americans struggling to get by. Now they must be concerned about paying high electric bills in addition to filling their tanks.

The heat wave is expected to taper off in most areas by the weekend.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a combined effort between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

Photo Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Newest reports from the mission say Cassini scientists may have identified the source of one of Saturn’s more mysterious rings known as ring G. The findings show it is likely produced by large, icy particles within a bright arc on its inner edge.

Scientists say those particles are confined within the arc by gravitational effects from Saturn’s moon Mimas. Another fascinating detail, is that micrometeoroids collide with the particles, releasing smaller, dust-sized particles that brighten the arc. Furthermore, the plasma in the planet’s magnetic field sweeps continually through the arc, pulling out the fine particles, which create the G ring.

The finding is evidence of the complex interaction between Saturn’s moons, rings and magnetosphere. The researchers have also concluded that there is a population of larger, as-yet-unseen bodies hiding in the arc, ranging in size from that of peas to small boulders.

The launch had to be postponed 24 hours from its originally scheduled liftoff, to allow the shuttle processing team additional time to complete routine work. The new launch is targeted for Wednesday, August 8, at 6:36 p.m. EDT. The additional day will provide time to complete the processing and allow the countdown to begin at 8 p.m. Sunday.

Image above: The Space Shuttle Endeavour on the launchpad. Credit: NASA

Led by Commander Scott Kelly, the STS-118 flight crew is now at Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility. The seven astronauts will spend the remaining days until launch undergoing final prelaunch preparations, including suit fit checks, briefings, medical exams and landing practice in the shuttle training aircraft.

“I would like to congratulate all the orbiter teams here at the Kennedy Space Center for the really outstanding effort they gave trying to get Endeavour ready to go for a Tuesday launch,” said Commander Scott Kelly upon arriving at the spaceport.

An earlier leak in Endeavour’s crew cabin has been fully resolved. The problem was traced to one of two positive pressure-relief valves that ensure that the cabin does not become over-pressurized. The suspect valve was removed and replaced with a valve from Atlantis. Another round of testing was successfully completed last night, with no leakage detected.

The 22nd flight to the International Space Station, STS-118 will be the first flight for Endeavour since 2002, and the first mission for Mission Specialist Barbara Morgan, the teacher-turned-astronaut whose association with NASA began more than 20 years ago.

The Phoenix Mars Mission is expected to arrive at the Red Planet in May 2008 for a close-up examination of the surface of the northern polar region.

The spacecraft has oriented itself to the sun as it was programmed to do. It will use solar panels to generate electricity during the nine-month coast to Mars. A separate set of solar arrays is attached to the lander itself.

Image above: A Delta II rocket lit up the early morning sky over Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida as it carried the Phoenix spacecraft on the first leg of its journey to Mars. The powerful three-stage rocket with nine solid rocket motors lifted off at 5:26 a.m. EDT. Image Credit: NASA

The Phoenix Mars lander’s assignment is to dig through the Martian soil and ice in the arctic region and use its onboard scientific instruments to analyze the samples it retrieves.

The Phoenix Mars Mission is the first of NASA’s competitively proposed and selected Mars Scout missions, supplementing the agency’s core Mars Exploration Program, whose theme is “follow the water.” The University of Arizona was selected to lead the mission in August 2003 and is the first public university to lead a Mars exploration mission.

Phoenix uses the main body of a lander originally made for a 2001 mission that was cancelled before launch. “During the past year we have run Phoenix through a rigorous testing regimen,” said Ed Sedivy, Phoenix spacecraft program manager for Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, which built the spacecraft.

“The testing approach runs the spacecraft and integrated instruments through actual mission sequences, allowing us to asses the entire system through the life of the mission while here on Earth,” Sedivy added.

Samples of soil and ice collected by the lander’s robotic arm will be analyzed by instruments mounted on the deck. One key instrument will check for water and carbon-containing compounds by heating soil samples in tiny ovens and examining the vapors that are given off.

Another will test soil samples by adding water and analyzing the dissolution products. Cameras and microscopes will provide information on scales spanning 10 powers of 10, from features that could fit by the hundreds into a period at the end of a sentence to an aerial view taken during descent. A weather station will provide information about atmospheric processes in the arctic region.