U.S. Census data released today found that the Mexican population in the United States climbed 37 percent between 2000 and 2006, with Pennsylvania and New Jersey substantially outpacing the national trend.

Advertisers' efforts to reach Hispanic consumers are becoming more targeted, and language is a major factor. Advertisers spent more than $3.3 billion to market products to U.S. Hispanics in 2005, a 6.8 percent increase from 2004.

Texas journalist and professor Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez's role with the U.S. Latino and Latina World War II Oral History Project has put her in the front ranks of the controversy over documentarian Ken Burns' latest epic for PBS, a 14-and-a-half-hour series on WWII that originally omitted the Hispanic contribution to the U.S. war effort.