U.S. Sen. Richard Burr will be spending much of the congressional recess visiting spots in Eastern North Carolina.

Some of the highlights:

Burr, a Winston-Salem Republican, will attend a National Community Health Center Week banquet in Ahoskie this evening.

On Wednesday, Burr will visit the Edenton National Fish Hatchery, attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a FedEx building in Hertford and a ribbon-cutting for a water plant in Currituck.

On Thursday, Burr will attend a luncheon at PCS Phosphate, and visit the Heart Institute at East Carolina University.

On Friday, Burr will visit The Automation Federation and Talecris Biotherapeutics in the Research Triangle Park.

APPLE BITES: This week it was all about Jobs — with a lower-case and upper-case J. The same day that Gov. Beverly Perdue signed into law changes to the state's corporate taxes designed to lure Apple, the company founded by Steve Jobs announced it would build a $1 billion data center. Opponents of corporate incentives, meantime, felt more like the biblical Job, suffering yet again.

BURR'S CRUSADE: U.S. Sen. Richard Burr stood up for tobacco in the Senate. The Winston-Salem Republican spent more than four hours on the floor arguing against a bill to allow the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco. He said it would stifle innovation in nicotine delivery systems and hurt the "gold standard" of food and drug oversight. He and Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan proposed an alternate bill.

EMPTYING HOUSE? Another state representative is leaving. Rep. Bonner Stiller, a Brunswick County Republican, will step down this month to spend more time with his family. He joins four other legislators this term who've stepped down to accept a gubernatorial appointment (Rep. Linda Coleman) or move to the state Senate (now Sen. Dan Blue) or because they died (Sen. Vernon Malone) or were under investigation (Rep. Cary Allred).

IN OTHER NEWS: An East Carolina University professor will discuss his studies of the vice presidency with Joe Biden. ... Elizabeth Edwards is not interested in running for U.S. Senate, but she will open a furniture store in Chapel Hill. ... Former U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole will make her first political appearance since losing in November when she introduces one-time GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee in Charlotte next week. ... Hagan ran into Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor in the ladies' room at the Capitol.

Vice President Joe Biden wants the advice of Jody Baumgartner, an East Carolina University political science professor.

Baumgartner is one of six experts on the vice presidency who have been invited to have dinner with Biden next Tuesday at the vice president's house, Rob Christensen reports.

Baumgartner and the other professors are expected to discuss how past vice presidents have used the post.

He is the author of numerous articles and a book on the vice presidency including "The American Vice Presidency Reconsidered" and "Scoundrel or Uber Lieutenant? The Vice Presidency of Dick Cheney."

U.S. Rep. Walter Jones received 12 earmarks worth $20.3 million last year.

Dome inadvertently reported a much higher amount in a previous post because of a problem with a database created by the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste.

(Long story short: The Farmville Republican's earmarks were lumped in with Ohio Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones.)

The earmarks included money for a dike, dredging, a regional water authority, East Carolina University, two roads and the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras.

The correct figure puts Jones ninth among North Carolina's House members in last year's earmarks, just below U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick of Charlotte.

Dome regrets the error. 

Here are the top five state colleges for earmark requests:

N.C. State University: 23 requests, seven Congressmen, $58.9 million, to study nanotechnology, pig waste, sweet potatoes, aquaculture, biotechnology and textiles, among other things.

N.C. A&T State University: 10 requests, four Congressmen, $23.8 million, to study using cattails for biofuel, retrain workers, research microelectronics and run a math literacy program, among other things.

East Carolina University: Nine requests, two Congressmen, $18.5 million, to study obesity and diabetes, help returning military personnel, research biofuels, pig waste and coastal development, among other things.

UNC-Chapel Hill: Eight requests, five Congressmen, $18 million, to study solar power, research public health trends, develop a technology curriculum, run a cancer center and start a virtual warfare center.

Wake Forest University: Two requests, one Congressman, $15 million, to study regenerative medicine.

In all, 31 colleges requested $184.5 million worth of earmarks through the Congressional delegation this year.

Other requestors included Shaw University, Bennett College for Women, the UNC School of the Arts, Winston-Salem State University, Rockingham Community College and Central Piedmont Community College.

Military procurements make up 97 percent of Rep. G.K. Butterfield's requests.

As noted previously, the Wilson Democrat asked for $7.3 billion in earmarks in this year's federal budget, according to his own Web site.

But $7.1 billion of the requests is for military expenditures that do not directly benefit his Congressional district, an appropriation request that watchdog groups say does not meet their definition of an earmark.

That includes requests for new Virginia-class submarines, aircraft carriers, research on new aircraft and ruggedized avionics for contractors in Virginia, Maryland and California.

Some of the military-related appropriations requests have North Carolina ties, however. Another $31 million in earmarks would go toward research at East Carolina University and N.C. State, a contractor in Elizabeth City and testing in the state, among other things.

Subtracting the national military requests, Butterfield's earmarks total $200 million, putting him more in the middle of the Congressional delegation's requests.

A leadership program for middle- and high-school students could be cut.

Started in 1987, the Legislator's School for Youth Leadership Development meets for three weeks each summer at Western Carolina University and East Carolina University.

The first week is for staff training. Sixty to 75 middle schoolers and high schoolers then each attend for a week.

The residential program has students living in dorms while they study leadership and college admissions, write letters on current issues and do community service projects. They also take field trips to a ropes course or a local museum and play sports.

Kim Elliott, who oversees the Western Carolina school, said that students have gone on to become teachers and police officers. The only criteria is that they cannot be in their schools' gifted and talented programs.

"These are typically your B and C students who are aspiring leaders," she said. 

Gov. Beverly Perdue recently proposed cutting the $500,000 program in order to help balance next year's budget. 

Gov. Beverly Perdue's budget includes a few projects.

A 118-page summary of the governor's proposed $21 billion budget has a number of specific projects it seeks to fund:

* Fund UNC-Chapel Hill Biomedical Research Center: $10 million.

* Support East Carolina University's Brody School of Medicine program for indigent care in Eastern Carolina: $4 million.

* Set up the Office of Economic Recovery, a short-term agency set up to maximize federal stimulus money: $2.3 million.

* Fund Project C.A.R.E., which helps caregivers of people with dementia: $500,000.

* Begin planning for a foundation that would compensate victims of the state's decades-long eugenics sterilization program: $250,000.

Some of the money has also been requested in special appropriations bills: Project C.A.R.E., the UNC expansion and indigent care at ECU, though legislators sought significantly more money for sterilization compensation.

Dr. Jeffery P. Engel has been named state health director.

N.C. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Lanier Cansler announced he was promoting the current state epidemiologist today.

"North Carolina has an ambitious public health agenda before it," Engel said in a statement. "We face tough economic times. It is in times such as these that we must be most vigilant to maintain our successes and find new strategies to make us a healthier state."

Engel replaces State Health Director Leah Devlin, who retired in January but will serve in an interim capacity through March 2.

A graduate of Johns Hopkins University, Engel served on the faculty of East Carolina University from 1988 to 2002, including a stint as director of hospital infection control for Pitt County Memorial Hospital.

He has served as state epidemiologist since 2002.

Update: Engel will make $211,251 a year in the post. 

State legislators have now asked for $577.5 million.

Twenty-four more bills filed since Dome last checked have added another $282.6 million in requested spending, even as the state faces a $2 billion shortfall.

The largest request of the most recent batch is $93.9 million set aside for ABC bonuses to be used instead for teacher salary increases. A second bill does the same thing with more restrictions.

The smallest request is $97,000 to provide medicine to low-income women that would reduce premature births.

Other spending bills would increase technical education at community colleges, build a guest house at a Winston-Salem hospital, hire three workers to lead a behavioral program at state schools, provide scholarships for rural social workers, provide mentoring and tutoring to gang members, open a dentistry school at East Carolina University, fund community theatres, give community economic development grants, buy vans for an after school program in Charlotte, fund various public health programs, provide grants for Boys and Girls Clubs and promote awareness of SIDS.

Nine other bills are companions to bills already filed.

In all, the requests amount to 29 percent of the estimated shortfall.

The requests also add another $49.6 million in spending next year, for a total of $188.8 million in 2010-11 requests.

Ongoing coverage of spending bills is available here.