Hold The Fries

Hoping to combat America's growing obesity, California today became the first state to require that chain restaurants provide calorie counts for their food, along with amounts of sodium, saturated fat and carbohydrates. Still, the brochure's on the counter, yours for perusing or not. Wanna know what's in Chili Cheese Fries? No, you don't.

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Oh, Canada

Happy Canada Day, marking the joining of the British North American colonies into a federation; remarkably, the motherland didn't wholly relinquish political control until 1982, by which time Canadians were some fed up with her. Along with burgers and fireworks, Canadians celebrated by answering surveys about themselves. Among the findings on multiculturalism, seal meat (5% eat it) and hockey (52% play it), 85% "see themselves as fundamentally different from Americans." Only 13 percent "see a future scenario where Canada becomes part of the U.S." "That's about the level of support for a flat Earth or believing Elvis is alive," says Peter Donolo of The Strategic Counsel.

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Free Gaza: "We Are Not the Story"

Despite an outpouring of public support after their ship, supplies and passengers were seized by Israel en route to Gaza, members of Free Gaza stress that, "We are not the story." With over 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners held without due process and an ever-present siege still in place, they call on people to help those suffering. "This Siege is only strengthened when we pay more attention to the injustice done to 21 international solidarity workers than we do to the much greater injustices already being committed against millions of Palestinians." For more on Free Gaza and prisoner information websites, go here

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Moving Mountains with Music

Accompanied by a multimedia website, the album “ Still Moving Mountains: The Journey Home ” includes a map and search engine to see a song's setting or environmental issue, scroll through photographs, videos, and interviews, and learn about local coalfield citizens' groups.

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Coalition of the Unwilling

Citing support by 72 percent of Americans for a public health care option, Vermont's ever-combative Sen. Bernie Sanders is talking of forming A Coalition of the Unwilling – as opposed to legislators' wimpy Coalition of the Willing – to fight against a GOP filibuster and for single-payer coverage. The point here, he notes, is not bipartisanship. "People in the country are not sitting around saying, 'We need a good bipartisan bill!' They're saying we need good, universal coverage for every American, man, woman and child. And it needs to be affordable."

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