Hump day

Wednesday, affectionately called "hump day" by radio personalities. By the way, who invented the term "hump day" from Wikipedia...

An American English idiom for Wednesday is "hump day" a reference to making it through to the middle of the work week as getting "over the hump."

Gee that was enlightening- sorry I asked. Oh well. My "hump day" includes getting through some coverage from my trip to Costa Rica, including a couple of stories, a column and - always my least favorite task - photo cut lines. Meanwhile, I wanted to echo David Mitchell's thoughts in his column in the Nov. 17 issue of The Packer on the helpfulness of industry sources to our weekly news efforts. Between last night and this morning, I received helpful calls/emails from Kathy Means, Nancy Foster, Craig Regelbrugge, Robert Guenther and Lorelei DiSogra.

This morning, Lorelei DiSogra sent an email about pending approval in Europe of the snack program there and a link to a recent USDA offer sheet for fresh cut apple purchases.

Nancy Foster sent a link to a FAQ page on the E-Verify rule for federal contractors and specifically how the exemption for agriculture is worded.

Other headlines grabbed from the Web:

Fresh & Easy: 100 stores and counting

Aldi's philosophy
Toronto campaign to raise local food for food banks

Specter of stag-deflation looming larger

Asian markets mixed as Japan falls into recession

Food banks feeling the crunch

China's pain hurts us too

Eurozone falls into recession

Irresponsible reporting making the problem worse

Branded credit cards see rising delinquencies

Anti-foreclosure plan essential

Liquidity and leverage will be focus for food and beverage industry in 2009