Starbucks profit rises on strength in U.S

(Reuters) - Starbucks Corp reported higher quarterly profit on Thursday, after customers in the United States, its top market, spent more than expected during the winter holiday season, when consumers worried about the budget standoff in Washington.

The world's biggest coffee chain reported net earnings of $432.2 million, or 57 cents per share, for the fiscal first quarter that ended December 30, matching the average analyst estimate compiled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. That was up from $382.1 million, or 50 cents per share, a year earlier.

Overall revenue jumped almost 11 percent to $3.80 billion during the quarter, which is Starbucks' biggest for sales.

Global sales at stores open at least 13 months were up 6 percent - topping the 5.5 percent rise analysts polled by Consensus Metrix had expected. Those sales were helped by a 4 percent increase in traffic and a 2 percent increase in average spending per visit.

Same-store sales rose 7 percent in the U.S.-dominated Americas region, topping analysts' estimate of 5.9 percent. Starbucks' Americas business contributed 75 percent of total revenue for the fiscal year that ended September 30.

Starbucks shares dipped 3 cents to $54.51 in after-hours trading.

(Reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/starbucks-profit-rises-strength-u-215250224--finance.html

scalloped potatoes

Long-time leader of Polish Catholics, Cardinal Glemp, dies

WARSAW (Reuters) - Cardinal Jozef Glemp, who played a central role in Poland's peaceful transition from Communism to democracy as the long-time primate of the country's Roman Catholic Church, has died. He was 83.

During Glemp's 28-year tenure from 1981 to 2009, which largely coincided with the papacy of fellow Pole John Paul II, the Church guided the opposition to authoritarian rule and provided backing to Solidarity, the Communist bloc's first independent trade union.

But the soft-spoken Glemp had often been criticized by some former dissidents for not doing enough as Poland's primate to support underground opposition and for being too accommodating to the Communist authorities.

On the day that Communist leader General Wojciech Jaruzelski implemented martial law in December 1981, public television broadcast Glemp's warnings that open opposition could result in bloodshed.

Church officials later insisted John Paul supported Glemp's stance at the time.

"This was the time of historic events, breakthroughs, the transition to freedom. There was a lot of responsibility on the shoulders of Primate (Glemp) and he fared well," said Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek, who served under Glemp.

"Everybody makes mistakes and even he made some, but he fulfilled his responsibility and departed convinced of this," he told state agency PAP.

Glemp had said that one of his main regrets was not doing enough to save Jerzy Popieluszko, a priest close to Solidarity who was killed by Communist security forces in 1984.

Glemp, wearing make-up to make him look younger, played himself in a 2009 biopic about the dissident priest. He said acting in the drama was a way of setting the record straight about his relationship with Popieluszko.

The Warsaw archdiocese said Glemp died on Wednesday evening in hospital. In March 2012, he had undergone surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his lung.

(Reporting by Chris Borowski; Editing by Alison Williams)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/long-time-leader-polish-catholics-cardinal-glemp-dies-102512680.html

W S B H c mitt romney mark zuckerberg

Court overturns sex offender Facebook ban

16 hrs.

Suzanne Choney , NBC News

An Indiana law barring sex offenders from joining social and online?networks like Facebook,?Twitter and various chat rooms was ruled unconstitutional by a federal appellate court Wednesday.

Judges with the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago said that the law, passed in 2008, violates the First Amendment in that it is too broad a ban.

"Laws that implicate the First Amendment require narrow tailoring," ?the judges said in a written decision. "Subsequent Indiana statutes may well meet this requirement, but the blanket ban on social media in this case regrettably does not."

A Facebook spokesman told NBC News Wednesday that sex offenders already are?barred from using Facebook, and that the social network's internal teams monitor the site for such activity.

The ACLU had challenged the ban, saying that even though the law was meant to protect children from online?sexual predators, social networks and other sites have become so vital to Americans that a total ban would prevent sex offenders from using sites for legitimate reasons, including business and religious activities.

The 7th Circuit's ruling overturned a U.S. District Court ruling in favor of the ban.

Check out Technology, GadgetBox, Digital?Life and InGame on?Facebook,?and on?Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

This?story?was?updated?at?6:20?p.m.?Wednesday.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/appeals-court-overturns-ban-sex-offenders-using-facebook-1C8087396

twisted metal sea lion si swimsuit 2012 westminster dog show abe lincoln vampire hunter xi jinping matt bomer

PFT: Study finds CTE in living former players

Getty Images

Former Raiders quarterback Rich Gannon does not agree with his old teammate Tim Brown about coach Bill Callahan sabotaging the team in their Super Bowl loss to the Buccaneers.

Gannon said on SiriusXM NFL Radio that he believes Callahan coached to win in Super Bowl XXXVII, when the Bucs beat the Raiders 48-21.

?In terms of Bill Callahan, let me just say this: He was a good football coach, he was a good man,? Gannon said. ?We all wanted to win.?

Gannon made clear that he likes and respects Brown, but he doesn?t accept Brown?s version of events, which is that Callahan ?hated the Raiders so much that he would sabotage the Super Bowl.?

So why did the Raiders only run the ball 11 times while throwing 44 passes in that game? Brown says Callahan changed the game plan at the last minute, leaving the Raiders ill-prepared. But Gannon says the pass-heavy play calling happened mostly because the Raiders fell behind early and trailed 20-3 by halftime.

?I think what happened was that we came out and tried to run the football early in that game, we didn?t have a lot of success,? Gannon said. ?We fell behind in the game and at that point we started throwing the ball too much.?

Considering that the Raiders gained only 19 yards on their 11 runs, that theory seems more plausible than Brown?s bizarre belief that Callahan would put in all the work necessary to lead his team to the Super Bowl and then purposely sabotage his team by changing the game plan at the last minute.

?I don?t know that the game plan really changed,? Gannon said.

Where Gannon did acknowledge the Raiders? coaches screwed up was in not changing up the terminology they used for calls at the line of scrimmage. Jon Gruden had coached the Raiders for the four previous seasons before coaching against them in the Super Bowl, and Gannon says Callahan hadn?t changed any of the terminology the Raiders used on offense. As a result, Gruden had taught the Bucs the Raiders? calls, and the Bucs knew what was coming when Gannon barked out his signals at the line of scrimmage.

?So much of our verbiage and terminology was a carryover from what Jon Gruden had installed in terms of our run checks, and so we were calling certain plays and guys like Warren Sapp and Derrick Brooks were calling out the runs,? Gannon said. ?So it kind of took us out of our no-huddle plan at the line of scrimmage.?

Failing to change the terminology so that the opposing coach wouldn?t know it was a huge gaffe by Callahan, and it?s completely reasonable to criticize him for that. But saying he made a stupid mistake in his preparation for the Super Bowl is a long way from saying he actually wanted to lose the Super Bowl.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/01/22/new-imaging-technique-spots-evidence-of-potential-brain-damage-in-living-football-players/related/

British Open 2012 bane Aurora Colorado Rajesh Khanna friday the 13th toy story 4 toy story 4

Forrester Research: Nintendo Provides The Best Customer Service ...

Nintendo has beaten a number of firms to be awarded the accolade of best customer service?for consumer electronics. Research firm Forrester?looked at 150 companies and asked 7,500 U.S. consumers the following questions: How well did they meet your need? How easy were they to do business with? How enjoyable were they to do business with??Nintendo scored an impressive 83 for its customer support for the Wii and the Nintendo DS (and presumably the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS).?The number two company in this consumer electronic category was Apple, with a ranking of 79, followed by Sony at 76.

?

This entry was posted in Nintendo and tagged best customer service, forrester, news, Nintendo on January 22, 2013 by sickr.

Source: http://mynintendonews.com/2013/01/22/forrester-research-nintendo-provides-the-best-customer-service-in-consumer-electronics/

etch a sketch romney sean payton saints bounty program toulouse france ny jets ny jets the situation

Betelgeuse braces for a collision

Jan. 22, 2013 ? Multiple arcs are revealed around Betelgeuse, the nearest red supergiant star to Earth, in a new image from ESA's Herschel space observatory. The star and its arc-shaped shields could collide with an intriguing dusty 'wall' in 5000 years.

Betelgeuse rides on the shoulder of the constellation Orion the Hunter. It can easily be seen with the naked eye in the northern hemisphere winter night sky as the orange-red star above and to the left of Orion's famous three-star belt.

Roughly 1000 times the diameter of our Sun and shining 100 000 times more brightly, Betelgeuse's impressive statistics come with a cost. For this star is likely on its way to a spectacular supernova explosion, having already swelled into a red supergiant and shed a significant fraction of its outer layers.

The new far-infrared view from Herschel shows how the star's winds are crashing against the surrounding interstellar medium, creating a bow shock as the star moves through space at speeds of around 30 km/s.

A series of broken, dusty arcs ahead of the star's direction of motion testify to a turbulent history of mass loss.

Closer to the star itself, an inner envelope of material shows a pronounced asymmetric structure. Large convective cells in the star's outer atmosphere have likely resulted in localised, clumpy ejections of dusty debris at different stages in the past.

An intriguing linear structure is also seen further away from the star, beyond the dusty arcs. While some earlier theories proposed that this bar was a result of material ejected during a previous stage of stellar evolution, analysis of the new image suggests that it is either a linear filament linked to the Galaxy's magnetic field, or the edge of a nearby interstellar cloud that is being illuminated by Betelgeuse.

If the bar is a completely separate object, then taking into account the motion of Betelgeuse and its arcs and the separation between them and the bar, the outermost arc will collide with the bar in just 5000 years, with the red supergiant star itself hitting the bar roughly 12 500 years later.

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by European Space Agency.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Journal Reference:

1. L. Decin, N. L. J. Cox, P. Royer, A. J. Van Marle, B. Vandenbussche, D. Ladjal, F. Kerschbaum, R. Ottensamer, M. J. Barlow, J. A. D. L. Blommaert, H. L. Gomez, M. A. T. Groenewegen, T. Lim, B. M. Swinyard, C. Waelkens, A. G. G. M. Tielens. The enigmatic nature of the circumstellar envelope and bow shock surrounding Betelgeuse as revealed byHerschel. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2012; 548: A113 DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201219792

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130122105615.htm

mario manningham williams syndrome hoya casa de mi padre corned beef and cabbage diners drive ins and dives jeff who lives at home

PFT: Bill Belichick isn't going anywhere

Getty Images

When 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh decided to bench quarterback Alex Smith after he recovered from a concussion and to elevate Colin Kaepernick to the starting job, many proclaimed that anything less than a Super Bowl berth would be evidence that Harbaugh made the wrong decision.

Under that standard, Harbaugh knocked it out of the park.

It was a decision made both for the present and the future.? Indeed, the future of the position was secured when Harbaugh and G.M. Trent Baalke made Kaepernick a second-round pick during the lockout, before Harbaugh was even able to meet with his veteran players.

The fact that Harbaugh is such a good coach delayed Kaepernick?s debut, because Harbaugh lifted Smith to new heights as a quarterback.? The first pick in the 2005 draft, who amazingly was still with the team seven seasons later, played better than ever, leading the 49ers to a 13-3 record, a thrilling win over the Saints, and very nearly to the Super Bowl.

Harbaugh flipped the switch knowing that he would be exposed to short-term criticism if the 49ers didn?t at least match what they had done a year ago.? But Harbaugh never wavered.

?After the [Bears] game, Jim and I sat down [in his office] and I asked him, ?What?s your gut??? owner Jed York told Mike Silver of Yahoo! Sports after Sunday?s win.? ?He said, ?Kaep. You OK [with that]??? I said, ?It?s your team.? You?ve got to go after it.? Whatever you think works.? I can defend either decision, and I understand either decision.?

?I trust Jim.? You either trust your coach or you don?t.? Obviously time will tell.? I think it proved to be a good move.? You see the evidence.? He?s playing well.? Jim made a gutsy, gutsy call.? And I don?t know that there?s any other coach in the league that would have made that call.?

There?s at least one ? John Harbaugh would have done it.

Others may have, too.? Because the head coach and his staff have the unique perspective of knowing how a quarterback performs in practice, how he works in the meeting room, how much time he spends watching film, and whether he?s just spinning his wheels or whether he?s learning and growing.? That?s the biggest point I made when defending the move:? Jim Harbaugh knows his guys, and he realizes which quarterback is more likely to succeed, now and in the future.

Of course, Harbaugh didn?t feel so strongly about Kaepernick in March to refrain from ?evaluating? Peyton Manning.? And every 49ers fan should now be happy that the ?evaluation? didn?t become an acquisition.

Kaepernick is only 25, more than a decade younger than Manning.? And Kaepernick is four months younger than Joe Montana was when he led the team to the first of four Super Bowl wins.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/01/21/bill-belichick-isnt-going-anywhere/related/

jason varitek andrew breitbart dead sheriff joe arpaio limbaugh aaron smith wilt chamberlain joe arpaio