State News-Friday, August 4th

PITTSBURGH (AP) - H-J Heinz Company says it welcomed an investment firm's recommendation to re-elect the food maker's board of directors but rejects an advisory group's call for shareholders to give three seats to dissident investors. Heinz has been locked in a bitter proxy fight with the Trian Group, which owns about five-point-five percent of the company and is seeking five seats on its 12-member board at an August 16th annual shareholder meeting. Heinz hailed an endorsement of its directors by C-T-W InvestmentGroup, the pension investment arm of a federation of seven unions representing six million workers. But it rejected a separate recommendation by the shareholder advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services to elect three of Trian's nominees, saying any attempt to split votes could result in the loss of five of Heinz's board members.

YORK, Pa. (AP) - An attorney says he has been unable, despite more than two dozen attempts, to serve a lawsuit on members of a fundamentalist Kansas church that protests at military funerals across the nation, including several in Nebraska. Attorney Sean Summers represents the family of a Maryland Marine killed in Iraq whose funeral was picketed by members of the Westboro Baptist Church. He is asking permission to post the complaint at the church and mail it to the defendants. The father of Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder of Westminster, Maryland, is suing the church for unspecified damages after Westboro members protested during services held for the Marine at a Westminster church. The church maintains that the military deaths in Iraq are God's punishment for America's tolerance of homosexuality.