
In Brussels (the Belgian city, not the sprouts), EU officials
have decided to lift the ban on crooked, bent, or twisted perfectly-edible fruit and vegetables. For the past 20 years, 100 pages of regulations have required that produce be uniform in appearance, and sold without any odd curves.
But not all fruit is exempt from standards of beauty — appearance regulations for apples, strawberries, citrus fruit, kiwi, lettuce, pears, peaches, nectarines, sweet peppers, table grapes, and tomatoes will still be on the books, although each country can decide whether they want to enforce them.

According to the World Food Program, North Korea may be facing one of the most serious food crisis in its history. Nearly 2.7 million people who live on the country's west coast are
facing starvation this month unless food does not reach them. 2.7 million.

This story caught my eye this morning because I thought it was the other Hillary — but getting my Clinton confused with my Duff led me to this great charity:
Blessings in a Backpack.
It makes so much sense — there are
16.3 million kids getting free or reduced price lunches through the National School Lunch Program — so who feeds those kids on the weekend? The Blessings program packs backpacks with nonperishable food and passes them out at the end of the week to keep kids going until school rolls around on Monday.

There's no sugar coating this: India has more people suffering from hunger than
any other country in the world. More than 200 million don't get enough to eat, and according to the 2008 Global Hunger Index just released, not one of India's 17 states rank in the low- or moderate-hunger categories — and 12 states have rank "alarming." India is 66th out of 88 countries surveyed (a stat in itself that makes you think of those 22 other countries that are worse.)
Kids bear a lot of the brunt of the hunger crisis — numbers released two years ago showed that even then, more than half of the children in India were malnourished.

Would you run naked down to the dock and jump in for a free "Skinny Dip" sandwich? If that sounds like a fair price for a free lunch, the town council of Greenville, ME, advises you to think again.
The town's Black Frog Restaurant
stopped its promotion offering a sliced prime rib on a baguette for free (regularly $10.95) to diners willing to run naked into Moosehead Lake.