- See what you get for trying to be healthy, peanut butter lovers? You get reduced fat PB that may or may not contain dangerous salmonella bacteria, that’s what you get. Skippy Peanut Butter has recalled Skippy Reduced Fat Creamy Peanut Butter Spread and Skippy Reduced Fat Super Chunk Peanut Butter Spread in 16 states because of bacteria found in a routine sampling of the product. Unilever, which produces Skippy brand products, issued an official statement saying that the two varieties of reduced-fat peanut butter are being recalled due to the possible contamination. No illnesses to date have been reported related to the recall, but that hasn’t stopped Unilever from issuing the recall in Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. To find out if you have a contaminated jar in your pantry, here are a few hints: the affected products are packaged in a 16.3 oz plastic jar and have UPCs 048001006812 and 048001006782, along with 'best-if-used-by-dates' MAY1612LR1, MAY1712LR1, MAY1812LR1, MAY1912LR1, MAY2012LR1 and MAY2112LR1. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is also involved in the recall and should you be totally ignorant to what salmonella is or its potential dangers, Unilever’s official statement also spells out just what could happen if you or someone you love ingests the dangerous peanut-based spreads: "Salmonella, an organism that can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Healthy persons infected with Salmonella often experience fever, diarrhea (which may be bloody), nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. In rare circumstances, infection with Salmonella can result in the organism getting into the bloodstream and producing more severe illnesses such as arterial infections (i.e., infected aneurysms), endocarditis and arthritis." Having said all of that, don’t allow this one bump in the road to dissuade you from healthier eating. Just because you gave reduced-fat peanut butter a try and it was tainted with something that could have made you violently ill, don’t be scared away. In fact, had you eaten the tainted peanut butter and become extremely ill, you probably would have lost some weight on account of not being able to eat much for a few days………….
- Ladies may not love an animated character voiced by Johnny Depp quite as much as the like Depp in the flesh on screen, but Depp’s vocal talents were still enough to lead Paramount’s Rango to a win at the box office in its first weekend of release with a solid $38 million haul. Rango headed up a trio of newcomers at the top of the earnings list, beating out Matt Damon’s The Adjustment Bureau, an Inception¬-like mind-bender that had a solid opening of its own with $21 million. That more than doubled up the production of the third-place film, Beastly, which aimed for the teenage girl demographic and achieved mild success with $10.1 million that looks a bit better when put in perspective by its modest $17 million budget. Last week’s top film, Hall Pass, plummeted the way a crappy Owen Wilson comedy should after one week of release, falling the fourth place with $9 million. That raised its two-week total to $27 million and suggests that Warner Bros. might not be so thrilled with the end result for the film, not after it freefalls out of the top 10 next week or the week after. On its heels was last week’s second-place finisher, Gnomeo and Juliet. With a precipitous 48 percent decline, the animated flick made just $6.9 million and has hauled in $83.7 million for four weeks of work. The bottom half of the top 10 was made up of: Unknown (No. 6 with $6.6 and a cumulative total of $53.1 million after three weeks), The King’s Speech (No. 7 and still cruising off its Oscar buzz with $6.5 million - just an 11 percent decline from last weekend - and rising to $123.8 million after 15 weeks of release), Just Go With It (No. 8 and still the prototypical awful Adam Sandler comedy, making $6.4 million for a four-week haul of $88.2 million), I Am Number Four (No. 9 with $5.7 million and a three-week take of $46.4 million) and Justin Bieber: Never Say Never (falling from No. 6 last weekend to No. 10 this time around with $4.3 million and $68.9 million after four weeks). Finshing just outside of the top 10 were über-disappointing newcomer Take Me Home Tonight (A comedy with Jonah Hill and Topher Grace flopped? Color me flabbergasted!) at No. 11 and the bomb-tastic Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son, which dropped from No. 7 last weekend to No. 12 this weekend…………
- From time to time, life drives home the point of just how different various countries are and the cultural differences that separate them. For instance, in Japan a foreign minister accepting an illegal $600 campaign donation three years ago from a foreign national is reason enough for that foreign minister to abruptly resign when it comes to light. After serving as foreign minister for just six months, Seiji Maehara resigned Sunday even though he was widely viewed as a leading candidate to succeed embattled Prime Minister Naoto Kan. Instead, Maehara issued a public apology to the Japanese people Sunday, saying he regretted causing "mistrust" despite what he called "his pledge to seek clean politics." His admission undercuts the prime minister's promise to eliminate "money politics" following a political fundraising scandal by a member of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, Ichiro Ozawa. Having said all of that and while acknowledging that Japanese law prohibits foreign campaign donations to Japanese candidates……..how differently would this situation be viewed and handled here in the United States as opposed to Japan? If a prominent government official was accused of accepting an illegal campaign contribution in the paltry amount of $600, would anyone even care? The $610 donation Maehara accepted in 2008 from an ethnic Korean woman he has known for years who runs a barbecue restaurant in Kyoto not only would not have led to a senator, representative, agency head or cabinet member resigning, but the vast majority of Americans wouldn’t lift their nose from their BlackBerry or Facebook page long enough to notice. Those who did would barely bat an eye at such a small amount, knowing that $610 isn't going to influence anyone or buy any votes anyhow. Maybe Japan could dial the whole honor and character approach back a notch and not get so riled up over a donation barely large enough to make one month’s car payment on a nice luxury ride……….
- I’ll take a five-gallon barrel of pretzels, two pounds of gummy worms, enough Capri Sun pouches to last me for the next four presidential administrations and……..give me a wedding dress too. That scene could soon unfold at a Costco near you. The discount chain is now offering brides a chance at designer dresses, temporarily setting up bridal boutiques right in the middle of its stores. Costco isn't saying how long the dresses will be on sale, but the company is hoping to use the buzz generated by their launch to move the operation online by June and expand it there. In its bridal boutique, Costco will offer six styles from designer Kirstie Kelly ranging from $700-1,400. Assuming you can find a dress in your size, you can buy it and walk out of the store with it in your cart right alongside the half-dozen boxes of generic, 40-oz. boxes of cereal, DVD player and 10 two-gallon jugs of fruit punch you just picked up to finish your weekly grocery shopping. For a bride looking to plan a wedding on a budget, it could be the ideal solution to fitting dress shopping in alongside your other to-do list necessities. Of course, if you’d actually like the experience of going to a dress shop, having someone who knows what they’re doing and can fit the dress to your specific body type, you might want to choose another route. Plus, Costco stores aren’t exactly known for having the best lighting and trying to pick out the most important dress you will ever wear amongst people shopping for discount electronics, groceries in bulk and candy by the pound might not be the most magical wedding dress experience a girl could have…………
- Major League Baseball, have you been feeling left out? The NFL has taken center stage with its never-ending labor drama and the NBA is on deck with its impending labor battle once the current season ends. Baseball’s current labor agreement is up at the end of this year, but Bud Selig and Co. could use a publicity boost right now and the start of the season next month might not be enough to thrust it on most fans’ radars. So what else could MLB come up with? How about a meeting between representatives from the umpires and the Major League Baseball Players Association Sunday in Ft. Myers, Fla., to discuss perceived problems in the relationship between the umpires and players. While tensions between players and umpires typically seem more like an inherent part of the game than a problem in need of a player-umpire summit, baseball’s powers that be clearly felt there were bigger issues that needed addressing. Major League Baseball officials Rob Manfred and Joe Torre also attended the meeting, which was originally scheduled to take place at the Winter Meetings in December, before a family death for one of the principals involved led to the meeting’s postponement. Apparently the idea for the meeting came from the Major League Baseball Players Association after it received an increased number of complaints from players last season about umpires. Several players have spoken publicly about tensions between themselves and umpires, including Oakland Athletics reliever and player union representative Brad Ziegler. “We never know why or when they are fined, or reprimanded or held accountable," Ziegler said last October. "Anytime a player is punished, suspended or sent down to the minors, the public knows about it. It would be a lot easier to communicate with umpires if everyone was held to similar standards. Our statistics as players are a lot more quantifiable than the umpires'." With the slow growth of replay and other technological advances in the game, mistakes by umpires have come under a much harsher spotlight as well. Last season, umpire Jim Joyce blew a call at first base on what would have been the final out of a perfect game for then-Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga and replays immediately showed just how badly Joyce missed the call. Even though Selig and the baseball establishment have stubbornly refuse to expand the use of replay in the game, there is no question that umpires are under much more scrutiny and it’s not difficult to see how that added pressure could create a more tense on-field environment. And oh yeah, baseball gets some extra firepower to push its way into the day-to-day sports discussion landscape alongside juicier issues from the NFL and NBA…………
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