Late blight occurs intermittently in the northeastern U.S., but this year's outbreak is more serious, as rainy weather has hastened the spores' airborne spread and infected plants have been widely distributed by large retail chains.

Although the disease, the same one responsible for the 1840s Irish Potato Famine, is not harmful to humans, it is highly contagious and likely spread on store shelves to nearby uninfected plants, experts say.

It can also spread after plants reach their final destination, further increasing the risk to other tomato and potato plants in commercial fields and home gardens.

Cornell University professor of plant pathology, Meg McGrath, said late blight was "worse than the Bubonic Plague for plants."

"People need to realize this is probably one of the worst diseases we have in the vegetable world," she told the Associated Press. "It's certain death for a tomato plant."

Fresh Oregon blueberries are replacing artificial ingredients in muffins and baked goods, while the Marshmallow Dream bar will come without high-fructose corn syrup, said Sandy Stark, vice president of the food division. Two salads, an egg-white breakfast sandwich and a strawberry-banana Vivanno smoothie round out the new food options in U.S. stores.

"We really wanted to up the quality of our food," Stark said in a June 26 telephone interview. "We wanted something that we could be as proud of as we are with our coffee, and we knew we had a long ways to go."

The new foods are appearing after more than a year of testing and reworking recipes with a focus on healthy, natural ingredients, Stark said. Last year, the company redesigned its breakfast sandwiches following complaints that the smell overpowered the coffee aroma in stores.

The charismatic participant in the Bravo network cooking show series, Richter said he is planning to take over the Santa Monica, Calif., restaurant L.A. Farm, beginning Aug. 6, sharing ownership with film producer Alex Winitsky, who opened the restaurant in 1989.

The name of the restaurant will change to Stefan's at L.A. Farm, officials said.

Richter said he plans to bring a "cosmopolitan classiness" to the Santa Monica dining scene with a menu that will feature light California cuisine at lunch and tapas at dinner. The bar will feature a range of beverages, from indulgent cocktails to Milwaukee's Best and Pabst Blue Ribbon, officials said.

Instead of grinding coffee only in the morning, baristas will grind beans each time a new pot is brewed. Timers will buzz to signal when it's time to make a new batch, according to internal Starbucks documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The changes are part of the Seattle-based company's effort to reinvigorate the "Starbucks experience" in the face of competition from less-expensive rivals such as McDonald's Corp. and 7-Eleven Inc. With Starbucks' changes, customers will be able to hear the whir of grinders and smell the aroma of fresh coffee all day.

The adjustments will begin to roll out in Starbucks' more than 7,000 company-operated U.S. stores next month, a company spokeswoman said.

A starfish invasion is underway.

Enormous mats of the spiny creatures are infesting pockets of New England waters from Narragansett Bay to Cape Cod Bay this spring, charming beachcombers but tormenting some fishermen who worry they could devour the region's bounty of oysters, scallops, clams, and mussels. Starfish have little economic value - even seagulls gag when eating them - but their colorful skin and iconic shape bring squeals of delight from children and have made them a popular trinket in beachside tourist shops.

"They are multiplying like no one's business," said Peter Melanson, owner and founder of the Sakonnet Oyster Company Inc. in Little Compton. R.I. "They smell all the shellfish . . . it drives them crazy."

Hamburgers are as All-American as it gets. On summer holidays, Americans celebrate by stoking up their backyard barbecues—hopefully with Grade-A meat from local butchers and supermarkets. But you have to go to a restaurant to get the trendy -- and priciest -- burgers that have sprung up in dining emporiums across the country. We don't absolutely guarantee there aren't other more expensive burgers out there -- especially at the lower end of our expense account—but they're the best and priciest we could locate.

It's not just a modern phenomenon. Luxury burgers have been around for years In 2001, famed French chef Daniel Bouloud introduced a hamburger stuffed with short ribs, foie gras and truffles at New York's DB Bistro Moderne that now sells for $32. A few months later, the Olde Homestead Steakhouse debuted a $41 Kobe beef burger; from there, luxury hamburgers became popular in the nation's high-end eateries.

For many diners, luxury hamburgers can show off a kitchen's imagination. In Beverly Hills, Spago's burger is a comparatively modest $22, but it's made with Kobe beef, Vermont farmhouse cheddar and a garlic aioli. Newcomer Taste offers a $21.75 Kobe burger topped with gorgonzola, onion jam, bacon and crimini mushrooms just down the road in West Hollywood. They may not be the most expensive hamburgers in the country, but they're among the best.

Keeping fish in farms farther out in the ocean is a better option, but the technical challenges are immense. Foul weather, stray ships and fish escaping the cages are just a few of the problems.

"It is hard, and I don't want to be here, but I don't see any alternative," says Randy Cates, founder of Hukilau Foods, whose 10-year-old moi fish farm in the ocean off the coast of Oahu in Hawaii is considered the oldest and most successful deep-sea venture so far (investors include AOL founder Steve Case).

"There's no room along the coasts, and the wild-caught sector is flatlining," he says. "Demand for seafood is only going up, and we're the only sector that can grow."

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Asserting that the practice of lobbing fish above the heads of patrons and tourists at the market and other venues is disrespectful to creatures that already have gone through a lot, an animal rights group is protesting plans to stage a flying-fish exhibition at an upcoming national veterinarians conference in Seattle.

Ultimately, they would like to see the practice banned at the fish market too. They argue that tourists would not be nearly so eager to snap photos if dead kittens or gutted lambs were sailing over their heads. "Killing animals so you can toss their bodies around for amusement is just twisted," said Ashley Byrne, senior campaigner for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in Washington, D.C. "And it particularly sends a terrible message to the public when vets call it fun to toss around the corpses of animals. If anyone should be promoting compassion and not callousness toward animals, it should be vets."

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Jeremy Ridgway, one of the managers at the market, said that he has done fish shows for the ministry of manpower in Singapore, for schoolchildren in Oklahoma and at countless other venues. "People get excited about it. They get to hold a fish; they get to touch it. A lot of people have never held a salmon before. In Oklahoma, they don't have wild fish, unless you count catfish," he said. He said fishmongers are bewildered at the notion that their toss -- which they describe as merely the quickest way of getting fish from display cases to the counter -- shows any lack of reverence for a creature that is, after all, their livelihood.

"I mean, the fish are dead," Ridgway said. "The thing is, we're not laughing and making fun of them. . . . It's just Point A to Point B. That's why we do it." "Two crabs!" somebody yells, and the smart ones in the crowd quickly duck.

In a letter to the veterinarian association, PETA Director Sarah King said the flying fish demonstration represents callous disregard for the suffering the creatures undergo before they come to the table. "There is more than enough scientific evidence to prove that fish feel pain and that they do not die well at the hands of the fishing industry," she said, citing numerous studies that show fish have intelligence as well as sophisticated social structures.