Candy

Some zing extra: caffeine Brown & Haley, creator of the famously decadent Almond Roca candy, has taken "minty fresh" to a whole new level. Their Zingos Caffeinated Peppermints come in a sturdy white-and-yellow tin decorated with a cartoon man breathing flames (the company calls its mints "fiercely flavored"). Zingos are dust-free, kosher, and contain no animal products (such as gelatin). They are also sugar-free and sweetened with Sorbitol; six mints have about 10 calories and as much caffeine as a serving of cola.

Police in Massachusetts have arrested a man they say was so desperate for a sugar fix that he smashed the glass front door of a closed convenience store, left a $5 bill on the counter, and made off with a handful of candy bars. Foxborough police responded to the burglar alarm at the store at about 2:20 a.m. Thursday and found the front door smashed. As officers checked the area for a suspect, police were called by security at a nearby shopping center about a suspicious man on the property.

"Candy," Neil Armfield's searing junkie movie, is told in a serenely observational fashion -- the handheld camerawork is as crazy as things get -- which is good news, because somebody involved with this picture has to stay clean. Based on a novel by the Australian writer Luke Davies, the film plunks us down with Dan (Heath Ledger) and his girlfriend, Candy (Abbie Cornish). He's a poet. She's a painter. It's the darnedest thing, though: Neither can really seem to get much art made.

Peter Keller had put bullets in his wife and his daughter, his cat and his dog. He didn't want to be found. But Troy Chaffee knew where to look for him. From photos discovered at Keller's home, King County sheriff's detectives deduced that he probably headed into the Cascade Mountains, to Rattlesnake Ridge, a tall hump of forested rock where he'd spent the past eight years building a remote bunker, an emergency shelter in the event of who knows...

RIVER FOREST, Ill. - Candy company executive Nello Ferrara lived a sweet life. The man who brought the world Lemonheads and Atomic Fire Balls routinely serenaded people in the restaurants where he dined and held mandatory family dinners every Sunday, said his son, Salvatore Ferrara. Nello Ferrara died Friday at home in River Forest surrounded by his family. He was 93. The Ferrara Pan Candy Co. was started in 1908, and Nello Ferrara took it over from his father decades ago. The company, which also makes Red Hots and Boston Baked Beans, produces 1 million pounds of candy a day, Salvatore...

WASHINGTON -- The Food and Drug Administration has proposed a stricter recommended limit on the amount of lead, a highly toxic metal, allowable in certain Mexican-style children's candies, including spicy lollipops sold in many Hispanic neighborhoods. The FDA now recommends that candies likely to be eaten by small children not contain more than one-tenth of a part per million lead, an 80 percent reduction from the previous, decade-old recommended level. The amount of lead represented by the new level does not pose a significant risk to small children, the...

Foxborough police have arrested a man they say was so desperate for a sugar fix that he smashed the glass front door of a closed convenience store, left a $5 bill on the counter, and made off with a handful of candy bars. Police responded to the burglar alarm at the store at about 2:20 a.m. Thursday and found the front door smashed. As officers checked the area for a suspect, police were called by security at nearby Patriot Place about a suspicious man on the property. Police tell The Sun Chronicle ( http://bit.ly/IsBM6f)

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Bitter rivals in the candy aisle may also duke it out in court. The Hershey Co. sued Mars Inc. this week in federal district court, with the maker of Hershey’s and Reese’s chocolate candies accusing the maker of Snickers, M&Ms, and Dove candies of mimicking some of its packaging. Hershey is claiming trademark dilution and infringement, and unfair competition. The lawsuit, filed Monday in Harrisburg, contends that Mars’s packaging of its Dove peanut butter chocolate Promise squares is trying to piggyback on the patented orange, brown, and tan wrappings of...

A 39-year-man Boston man was arrested Wednesday and charged with larceny after allegedly walking out of a grocery store at the South Bay shopping center in Roxbury with a cart loaded with about $1,000 worth of candy, police said. Officers responded to a call on Greenville Street at 3:28 a.m. and found Carlos Reyes pushing the cart from Stop & Shop full of boxes of Twizzlers licorice, Trident chewing gum, and Mentos candy mints, as well as "cold meat products," police said. Officers asked Reyes for a receipt, but he said he did not have one and said that a friend gave him the items...

Serves 6 You may have noticed individual packs of caramel sauce lining produce shelves for dipping apples. It’s easy enough to make your own. You need a candy thermometer and a large saucepan (the steps are simple, but working with sugar is precise). Use caution with children around as caramel reaches extremely hot temperatures and crawls high up the sides of the pot. For added fun, set up a dipping bar with chocolate chips, chopped nuts, and red hot cinnamon candies. Skip the stick.

Police say a Pennsylvania teen's sticky fingers have landed him in jail after a candy bar wrapper with his fingerprints on it was recovered from a stolen car. Bethlehem police say 18-year-old Kyle Deon Dees was arrested Thursday after officials pulled his fingerprints off a Twix candy wrapper left in a car stolen earlier this month. The Express-Times of Easton ( http://bit.ly/I3cnRY) reports the car was swiped April 6 after being left running in an apartment complex parking lot. It was found three days later with the candy inside.

SWEET SHOP 8 WITH TREASURE FINGERS April 7, 9:30 p.m. at Good Life Bar, 28 Kingston St., $10, 21+. www.goodlifebar.com, 617-451-2622. The deal: Sweet Shop 8, the bimonthly house music event — and an official satellite party of the ongoing Together Festival — hopes to play up the party atmosphere just a little more than usual Saturday. "The decorations and the lighting are supposed to replicate candy wrapped in cellophane," said Dan Hogan, cofounder and marketing director at CreateSpace Collab, Sweet Shop's production company.

Only in the fairyland known as Hollywood is age the greatest curse of all, and only in Hollywood would a 44-year-old woman be considered old. In "Mirror Mirror," an overstuffed, undercooked omelet of a "Snow White" revamp, a curiously taut Julia Roberts frets about her nonexistent wrinkles as the evil Queen, cracking wise and trying to make the best of the situation. This is what a youth-obsessed pop culture does when its beauties are no longer young - puts them out on the raft of evil mothers and conniving harpies.

NEW YORK - Mars Inc., the maker of M&M's and Twix, will stop making chocolate products that exceed 250 calories by the end of 2012. King-size chocolate bars will disappear from candy aisles. The privately held company also makes Milky Way, 3Musketeers, Bounty, and Kudos bars. Mars may not have to make radical changes to reach its goal; a standard Snickers bar has 280 calories. A package of Twix clocks in at 250 calories. Mars declined to provide details, noting it has not finalized how it will reach its caloric goals.

Say goodbye to supersize chocolate bars -- at least Snickers and other candy bars made by Mars. The company announced this week that it would stop selling chocolate products with more than 250 calories in them by the end of next year. That means no more 500-calorie, king-size Snickers or Milky Way bars. A spokesperson for the company told Reuters that it was part of Mars' "broad-based commitment to health and nutrition. " (Okay, one could, perhaps, argue that they should consider making their M&M's, Snickers, and Twix disappear altogether.)

RIVER FOREST, Ill. - Candy company executive Nello Ferrara lived a sweet life. The man who brought the world Lemonheads and Atomic Fire Balls routinely serenaded people in the restaurants where he dined and held mandatory family dinners every Sunday, said his son, Salvatore Ferrara. Nello Ferrara died Friday at home in River Forest surrounded by his family. He was 93. The Ferrara Pan Candy Co. was started in 1908, and Nello Ferrara took it over from his father decades ago. The company, which also makes Red Hots and Boston Baked Beans, produces 1 million pounds of candy a day,...

STRATHAM, N.H. - Lindt Bear, the star of the Swiss chocolatier's holiday collection this year, has everything a modern candy animal might need - a premium milk chocolate figure, a fancy gold foil wrapper, a red ribbon necklace, and yes, its own iPhone app. The 166-year-old company, whose US headquarters are just over the border in this southern New Hampshire town, recently kicked off the worldwide launch of the Lindt Bear with high expectations....

Offer apples to trick-or-treaters and risk having your house get egged — maybe even by your own kids. But dentists and dietitians say you can still make Halloween reasonably healthy for little devils and witches without resorting to dracul-onian tactics, like no candy. "This is such a big adventure for them — let them have it, obviously with some caveats," said Dr. Rhea Haugseth, a dentist in Marietta, Ga., who's president of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry There are tricks for keeping Halloween fun without risking cavities and...

By Deirdre Fernandes, Globe Staff There's no love for candy at Newton's Horace Mann Elementary School this Valentine's Day. In an effort to curb the sugar rush on Feb. 14, Principal Mark Nardelli has asked parents to keep the Hershey Kisses and Red Hots at home. In an e-mail to the elementary school parents Monday, Nardelli asked that children share other gifts with their classmates, such as pencils, stamps, bookmarks or a nice note. The treats run counter to the school's no-sharing food policy and the every-day emphasis on healthy eating, Nardelli said.