Girl Scouts

First Lady Nancy Reagan will be honored by the Girl Scouts at a luncheon Wednesday as the group begins an anti-drug abuse campaign for its members, the White House announced Monday. The First Lady is the honorary president of the organization.

Officials notified parents of nearly 1,000 Girl Scouts that their daughters may have been exposed to rabies at a camp after bats were found in some of the sleeping shelters. About 1% of bats are thought to carry rabies.

Cultural barriers combined with a rise in the Latino immigrant population in the eastern San Fernando Valley have prompted a shortage of volunteers to serve as Girl Scout leaders, officials said. The shortage is based on a misunderstanding that many Latino immigrants have about the organization, said Chris Edwards, a field executive with the outreach program of the San Fernando Valley Girl Scout Council. "They're just unaware of what Girl Scouts is about," she said.

The U.S. Postal Service has announced that it will issue two new stamps, one honoring the Girl Scouts and the other featuring a canal boat. The 22-cent Scouting stamp will be issued in Washington next Thursday, the anniversary of the founding of the Girl Scouts. It will feature 14 Girl Scout badges. A 10-cent stamp featuring a canal boat will be issued on April 11. The stamp, part of the transportation series, will be released in Buffalo, N.Y., a terminus of the Erie Canal.

The San Fernando Valley Girl Scout Council will offer six five-day summer camp sessions for 5- to 15-year-old girls. Girls become scouts by participating, if they are not already part of the organization. The camps include: * Folk arts and crafts, outdoor cooking and Girl Scout songs and traditions at the "In the Cool of the Night" camp. July 5-9, 2 to 8 p.m., at Chumash Park in Agoura; $40 for registered Girl Scouts, $46 for non-scouts. * More crafts at the "Summer Magic" camp.

The Tres Condados Girl Scouts Council has appointed a new executive director. Cynder Sinclair takes over the chapter, which serves Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. Sinclair comes to the local chapter from Stockton, where she was the executive director of the San Joaquin County Child Abuse Prevention Council. Sinclair said she sees the Girl Scouts as a way to help prevent abuse.

After fierce bidding that drove the price up to $2.38 million, Orange County's Girl Scouts on Wednesday became the new owners of a 213-acre ranch that was once home to an international marijuana smuggler. Within a few months the land--where tons of marijuana once were bundled and shipped--should be bustling with hundreds of Girl Scouts enjoying a year-round camp. "We're delighted," said Bernice K. Hird, president of the Girl Scout Council of Orange County.

A $4.2-million expansion of the Orange County Girl Scouts' camp in the San Jacinto Mountains is expected to be finished in May, after five years of work. "We like to think of it as the camp that cookies built," said Mona Ware, executive director of the council. Fully $2.7 million of the funds for the camp expansion came from the sale of Girl Scout cookies in Orange County over the past five years, Ware said. The rest came from a two-year fund-raising campaign.

What's in a name? Ask "Ayisha," the girl sprinting across those Girl Scouts U.S.A. "peanut butter sandwich" cookie boxes. Ayisha had always been Blakely Lauren Coe. At least that's who she was when she and members of Troop 487 posed for the 1993 Girl Scout calendar and cookie boxes. But when the cookies arrived, the 14-year-old Pasadenan and her parents were annoyed to see that she'd been given an African name. They see the misnomer as a stereotype.

The Girl Scouts' national organization has settled a religious discrimination lawsuit involving a 6-year-old Calexico girl who refused to recite the word God in the Girl Scout Promise. Under terms of the settlement, the girl may substitute a word or words consistent with her spiritual beliefs for the word God in the promise, Girl Scout officials said Monday. The girl's attorney, James G.