That’s the question at the heart of a lawsuit filed recently by the Montgomery, Alabama-based law firm Beasley Allen.

The standard for what constitutes beef as defined by the USDA is pretty straightforward: “flesh of animals.” In the “Food Facts” section of its website, Taco Bell says the following about its beef: “Our taco meat is made from USDA-inspected beef and is subjected to quality check points. It tastes great because it’s simmered in 12 authentic seasonings and spices and is never frozen. Moreover, our taco meat is leaner than what you’ll find in a restaurant-cooked hamburger because of the unique way that we prepare our taco meat and remove fat.” But Beasley Allen contends that the company’s claims are untrue.  (Read  More).

“This story has struck such a rich resonant chord with audiences of all ages, which is very exciting — to have your work honored by your industry peers is even better,” Rush said in a statement.

Get the full list of nominees

Also nominated for best picture Tuesday were the psychosexual thriller “Black Swan“; the boxing drama “The Fighter“; the sci-fi blockbuster “Inception“; the lesbian-family tale “The Kids Are All Right“; the survival story “127 Hours“; the Facebook chronicle “The Social Network“; the animated smash “Toy Story 3“; the Western “True Grit“; and the Ozarks crime thriller “Winter’s Bone.”

“True Grit” ran second with 10 nominations, including acting honors for Jeff Bridges and Hailee Steinfeld.

The Feb. 27 Oscars set up a best-picture showdown between two favorites, “The King’s Speech” and “The Social Network.” “The Social Network” won best drama at the Golden Globes and was picked as the year’s best by key critics groups, while “The King’s Speech” pulled an upset last weekend by winning the Producers Guild of America Awards top prize, whose recipient often goes to claim best picture at the Oscars.

The favorites in the male-acting categories both were nominated, Globe winners Firth as best actor for “The King’s Speech” and Christian Bale as supporting actor for “The Fighter.”  (Read More).

The new policy was announced in a letter to the Pan-Hellenic Federation of People with Diabetes. The Federation disputes the science behind the decision of the Benefits Division. In a statement, the group argues that the decision is contrary to evidence as presented in the international scientific literature.

Greece’s National Healthcare System was created in the early 1980s, during the tenure of Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou. Papandreou, an academic, won election under the slogan, Αλλαγή, which is the Greek word for Change.  (Read More).

“The US has run out of bullets,” Roubini told an economic forum in Italy earlier this month. “Any shock at this point can tip you back into recession.”

But other economists, who have so far stayed out of the media limelight, are also proselytizing nightmarish visions of the future.

Boston University professor Laurence Kotlikoff, who warned as far back as the 1980s of the dangers of a public deficit, lent credence to such dark predictions in an International Monetary Fund publication last week.

He unveiled a doomsday scenario — which many dismiss as pure fantasy — of an economic clash between superpowers the United States and China, which holds more than 843 billion dollars of US Treasury bonds.           (Read More).

Research into so-called ‘extinction events’ for our planet over the past 500 million years  – twice as long as any previous studies  – has proved that they crop up with metronomic regularity.

Scientists from the University of Kansas and the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC are 99 per cent confident that there are extinctions every 27 million years.

In the 1980s scientists believed that Earth’s regular extinctions could be the result of a distant dark twin of the Sun, called Nemesis. (Read More).

These days, he’s pitching solar energy with a new slogan — “Shine, baby, shine,” — soon to air on a television near you.

Hagman is the face of a new ad campaign for SolarWorld, the German company making solar cells in Hillsboro. He admits the slogan is a jab at Sarah Palin’s “Drill, baby, drill,” refrain during the 2008 presidential campaign.

“‘Shine, baby, shine’ is an inexhaustible source of energy,” said Hagman, who plans to address the Intersolar trade show today in San Francisco. “When affordable oil gives out, we’re in real trouble — I mean the collapse of civilization, within 15 to 20 years.” (Read More).

By naming Petraeus, President Barack Obama managed to replace Gen. Stanley McChrystal without derailing the mission at a critical juncture in the war, when casualties are rising and public support in the West is waning.

Still, the jury is out on whether the counterinsurgency strategy that Petraeus used to turn around the Iraq war will show results in Afghanistan by July 2011, when Obama wants to begin withdrawing U.S. troops.  (Read More).

And it looks like one more funky thing can be added to that list: Marijuana.

Photos have surfaced on the Internet of what looks like marijuana growing in a garden in Union Square Park.

Witnesses emailed Gothamist to say there’s one large sapling along with a few smaller sprouts of the smelly, fan-like plant. To confirm, the blog sent the photos to Senior Cultivation Editor at High Times magazine, Danny Danko, for his expert analysis.  (Read More).

Apparently Jacqueline Hammond, “the wealthy ex-wife of a former U.S. ambassador to Spain,” claimed to have information on “sex parties which took place at the Hotel Carlyle in NYC.” The document’s origin is a mystery, though it has appeared in a heavily redacted form before. The Smoking Gun speculates that the memo is but a single page from “a larger bureau report” about an “unknown” subject.  (Read More).

BP have tried everything from hats to golf balls to try and stop the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? Know what they didn’t think of? Kevin Costner. Who may actually save the ocean like a real-life action hero.

Kevin Costner has a machine that turns oil into water. And also probably a really sharp Samurai sword that he has left over from the Bodyguard. But that’s not important right now. Because right now, he is in New Orleans, and the oil/water technology his company has developed is being taken seriously as part of efforts to clean up the Gulf oil spill. He knew that if he built the machine, they would come.  (Read More).