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Source: www.newadvent.org — Thursday, January 26, 2012
As the Sabbath evening approached on Jan. 13, Ehud Barak paced the wide living-room floor of his home high above a street in north Tel Aviv, its walls lined with thousands of books on subjects ranging from philosophy and poetry to military strategy. Barak, the Israeli defense minister, is the most decorated soldier in the country?s history and one of its most experienced and controversial politicians. He has served as chief of the general staff for the Israel Defense Forces, interior minister, foreign minister and prime minister. He now faces, along with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and 12 other members of Israel?s inner security cabinet, the most important decision of his life ? whether to launch a pre-emptive attack against Iran. We met in the late afternoon, and our conversation ? the first of several over the next week ? lasted for two and a half hours, long past nightfall. ?This is not about some abstract concept,? Barak said as he gazed out at the lights of Tel Aviv, ?but a genuine concern. The Iranians are, after all, a nation whose leaders have set themselves a strategic goal of wiping Israel off the map.? …

Source: http://feeds.newadvent.org/~r/bestoftheweb/~3/4-SJGthbevw/will-israel-attack-iran.html

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(Reuters) ? Starbucks Corp reported a quarterly profit that topped Wall Street’s view, but its shares fell as investors in the world’s biggest coffee chain focused on softness in Europe rather than strength in the United States.

The company’s shares, up roughly 45 percent from a year ago and hovering near all-time highs, were off 2.2 percent at $47.26 in extended trading after closing at $48.34.

Starbucks and other top-performing restaurant chains like McDonald’s Corp have been on a tear and their stocks often sell off on anything but absolutely pristine results.

Sales from cafes open at least 13 months were up just 2 percent for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, versus the 9 percent gain for the much larger America unit, chiefly from the United States.

Chief Financial Officer Troy Alstead said on a webcast that Starbucks has been underperforming internal targets in Europe — where debt worries and high unemployment weigh heavily on consumers — and that the company has taken steps to improve results there.

Operating margin for the EMEA unit was 6.5 percent in the first quarter, down from 9.7 percent a year earlier.

Starbucks said the margin contraction was primarily due to higher distribution costs related to moving to a consolidated distribution center in its UK market.

Britain’s recovery from the 2008/2009 recession – the deepest since the depression-hit 1930s – has been sluggish.

Edward Jones analyst Jack Russo said results from Europe were weaker than expected, but that they needed to be seen in context.

“A 2 percent comp is still pretty good considering what’s going on over there,” Russo said, referring to Europe’s sales at established restaurants.

Based on its better-than-expected fiscal first-quarter results, the company raised the low end of its full-year profit forecast to a range of $1.78 to $1.82 per share from $1.75 to$1.82.

“They’re being conservative. It’s so early in the year,” Lazard Capital Markets analyst Matthew DiFrisco said when asked about the company’s revised fiscal 2012 forecast.

When asked if the company has noticed any evidence of softening consumer demand due to the still volatile economic conditions around the world, CFO Alstead said: “We haven’t seen it.”

Global sales at established Starbucks cafes jumped 9 percent, helped by an increase in customer visits and spending per transaction. That beat the 7.7 percent gain analysts, on average, expected, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Net income was $382.1 million, or 50 cents per share, for the quarter ended January 1. That was up from $346.6 million, or 45 cents, in the year earlier period.

Analysts, on average, were looking for a profit of 49 cents per share in the latest quarter, according to Thomson Reuters

I/B/E/S.

Total revenue rose 16 percent to $3.4 billion.

The Seattle-based company has been raising prices on some drinks to help offset higher costs for commodities like coffee and milk.

Starbucks expects new products to build sales as the year progresses.

In November it started selling its coffee and Tazo tea for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc’s popular Keurig machines, which control about 80 percent of the fast-growing North American single-serve brewing segment.

It then expanded its coffee lineup in January with “Blonde,” the company’s lightest roast to date. That new coffee is widely seen as an answer to McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts, which each brew lighter roasts than Starbucks. Those chains also have gone after Starbucks’ core business by introducing drinks such as lattes and frappes.

Starbucks, Chipotle Mexican Grill and Panera Bread Co cater to relatively upscale consumers and have been outperforming the broader restaurant industry, whose overall sales are expected to lag population growth this decade.

(Reporting By Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; editing by Andre Grenon, Phil Berlowitz)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/economy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120126/bs_nm/us_starbucks

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Big changes hit the nation’s airlines today, with new rules going into effect including how they advertise ticket prices. More from Travel and Leisure editor Mark Orwoll.

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Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/46152913/

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AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) ? A tornado hit Austin, Texas, and thunderstorms pounded San Antonio, Dallas and Houston on Wednesday, bringing the parched Lone Star State drenching rains and destructive winds that knocked out power, flooded streets and kept emergency workers busy rescuing drivers stranded in high water.

The tornado touched down early Wednesday in northeast Austin, tearing across U.S. 290 and into a subdivision, damaging homes along a road called Happy Trail, according to the National Weather Service.

Springlike moisture from the Gulf of Mexico dropped the heaviest rainfall – 6-8 inches – on an area east of Austin and San Antonio and extending south into Houston, it added.

“That’s very unusual for this time of year,” NWS meteorologist Mark Wiley said. “It was just so much rain in such a short period of time. In so many areas, the ground is still fairly dry, but it was just so fast that it didn’t have anywhere to go, especially in the urban areas.”

There were no reports of injuries.

By Wednesday afternoon, the storms were pushing into Louisiana and were expected to head into Mississippi and Alabama on Thursday, the NWS said.

In Bastrop, an area east of Austin heavily damaged by Labor Day weekend wildfires, schools canceled classes on Wednesday. In Pflugerville, north of Austin, school buses were delayed Wednesday morning because the school district’s bus barn was damaged overnight, the district website said. And the Houston Independent School District canceled after-school activities.

Wind toppled an 18-wheeler in on IH-45 in Madison County, between Dallas and Houston, officials said. More than 30 flights were canceled at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on Wednesday morning.

In San Antonio, lightning hit an apartment complex on the city’s north side as storms blew through, sparking a fire that forced people into the driving rain and destroyed four apartments, officials said.

Between Austin and Houston, in Brenham, high winds twisted trees and tore the roofs off a couple of buildings in the downtown area, said Ricky Boeker, fire chief and emergency management coordinator.

“It sounded like the world was coming apart — I’m not going to lie,” Boeker told Reuters.

The severe weather in Texas follows damaging storms and tornadoes that swept through Arkansas and Alabama earlier in the week.

In Texas, “while most of the region is still in the grips of a severe drought and very much needs the rain, too much rain too quickly can do more harm than good,” AccuWeather.com meteorologist Mark Miller said in a Wednesday report. “Still, the rain will go a long way in helping to reduce the severity of the drought in exceptionally dry locations.”

Last year was the driest year on record in Texas and the second-hottest, according to the NWS.

CPS Energy, the South Texas electric utility, reported more than 30,000 customers without power as wind snapped electric power lines and knocked out traffic signals during the morning rush hour in San Antonio. In Austin, some 5,000 customers of Austin Energy lost power, the company said. As many as 5,000 homes and businesses in the Dallas area also lost power, according to Oncor Delivery.

As San Antonio resident Johnny Grant surveyed damage to homes in his northwest San Antonio neighborhood on Wednesday, he said of the storm: “It sounded like a freight train to me. It was something terrible.”

(Additional reporting by Jim Forsyth, Lauren Keiper, Deborah Quinn Hensel and Marice Richter. Editing by Paul Thomasch)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/weather/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120125/us_nm/us_weather

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MOBERLY, Mo. ? After 19 years running state unemployment offices across northern Missouri, Steve Moore can rattle off the names of shuttered factories in this old railroad town with ease.

There’s Matcor Automotive, a parts manufacturer that at its peak employed 300 workers but closed in June 2010 in response to declining production by General Motors. Textbook publisher Scholastic Inc. is closing its Moberly packaging center, costing the town another 100 jobs.

Then there’s the biggest blow of all: the failed promises of Mamtek U.S. Inc., a Chinese-owned artificial sweetener factory backed by $7.6 million in state tax incentives and $39 million of local bonds that went belly up in 2011 when the company’s bond payments dried up. More than 600 promised jobs went up in smoke, with the deal now facing scrutiny by Missouri lawmakers and a pair of investigations by the state’s attorney general and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

“There was a lot of anticipation, and then a lot of disappointment,” Moore said. “Let’s be honest. Everybody had hoped that something was going to come out of it.”

As President Barack Obama again pledged to repair the American economy in his annual State of the Union address Tuesday night, some Moberly residents chalked up his pronouncements as just more rosy rhetoric by a politician ? not unlike the July 2010 day when Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon and former Gov. Bob Holden came to the town of nearly 14,000 and hailed the Mamtek project’s potential.

Others blamed an intractable Congress for not working more closely with the president to lift the country’s economy. Still more held out hope that manufacturing companies lured by the region’s low cost-of-living and central location would once again seek out Moberly, a 136-year-old railroad hub that became known as the Magic City in the late 19th century for its seemingly overnight emergence on once-empty prairie.

“We got a promise that he didn’t keep,” said business owner Diane Harlan. “He promised our economy was going to be better, and it’s not. In this small community, we were under the false hope that everything was going to be OK, and it’s not.”

Harlan spent seven years as executive director of Main Street Moberly, which represents downtown business owners, before opening the Darn It Yarn store seven months ago after the business group cut her full-time job to 20 hours a week. She voted for John McCain in 2008 but hasn’t yet made up her mind about the 2012 election.

While vacant storefronts dot downtown Moberly, Harlan said her business has succeeded beyond expectations, allowing her to drop that part-time job starting next week. A handful of similar small businesses have sprouted nearby, from a sewing shop to a secondhand furniture store.

“People are finally figuring out, we can’t depend on our leader to get us out of something that we’ve created,” she said. “We’ve got to go back to the grassroots. More self-sufficiency, doing things on our own, teaching our children, instead of depending on a man sitting in a white castle to take care of us and make things right.”

David Gaines, a vice president with the Moberly Area Economic Development Commission, is among the local officials who helped court Mamtek in a deal given the code name “Project Sugar” before it was publicly disclosed. Count him among those looking for more leadership from those in the audience at Tuesday night’s speech.

“It’s not so much what he says but what they do,” Gaines said, referring to Congress. “They need to quit talking and do something.

“That’s what is holding consumer confidence down, is the inability of Congress on both sides of the aisle to do what the people elected them to do,” he added.

After the speech, Gaines said he was heartened to hear the president urge lawmakers to work together, not against one another.

“I do like the fact that he said it’s time to stop the divisiveness between the two parties,” Gaines said. “If they set the right tone, everyone will follow along. If they don’t, the nation will just drift.”

Political affiliation aside, Moberly residents interviewed Tuesday tended to agree that improving the economy and creating more local jobs are the most important issues facing their community and the country. Look no further than a commuter parking lot along U.S. 63 packed with cars while their owners work 35 miles south in the college town of Columbia. Moberly, in turn, attracts workers from dozens of surrounding rural towns.

“Folks are regularly commuting 40 or 50 or 60 miles to go to work every day,” Gaines said. “When we share that with the folks we talk to in Atlanta and Chicago and LA, they are quite amazed that people are willing to commute that far for a good job. But they have to.”

Elsewhere in Moberly, Obama’s speech was met with disinterest, if not outright scorn. At Nelly’s Someplace Else restaurant, dozens of Republicans filed past a pair of televisions showing the president’s address as the monthly meeting of the Randolph Area Pachyderms Club. Few stopped to listen, though some jeered as they walked past.

___

Follow Alan Scher Zagier at http://twitter.com/azagier

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120125/ap_on_re_us/us_state_of_the_union_reaction

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Tablets, e-readers in 1 of every 4 hands now

Get an iPad, Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet over the holidays? You’re not alone: Tablet and e-reader ownership increased by nearly double over the holidays, and more than 1 out of every 4 Americans now has one of the devices, according to a new study.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/46107135#46107135

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While iPhone users have had quick access to Airbnb?s convenient room booking service for a while now, Android users can finally get in on the fun now that the Airbnb app has come to the Android Market.

Airbnb is a free app that serves as a hub for people to find and list their own homes for other strangers to stay in. The launch of the Android app brings with it some new features to the Airbnb model, including the ability for the guest and the owner to instant message quickly back and forth with one another should any problems arise. If you?re looking for something a little different in travel accommodations, Airbnb is a pretty cool place to start.

But there are plenty of other app options for Android users if they?re not sold on the Airbnb experience, too. On the opposite side of the spectrum from Airbnb, there is the more conventional Orbitz (free). With Orbitz you can book flights, hotels and rental cars in just a few quick taps. The Android app also includes a feature called Orbitz Mobile Steals that offers additional mobile-only discounts on room rentals.

If you find you?d like to look at vacation rentals while also keeping an eye on the apartment rental market, HotPads Rentals & Real Estate (free) does a good job providing a little bit of everything under the sun. The app offers listings based on location with listings shown either in list or map form. Potential renters can see detailed pictures, floor plans and price comparisons.

Those that want to keep their eye firmly focused on the vacation end of things can check out the free HomeAway app. HomeAway offers vacation rentals with full kitchens and all the convenience of an actual home while you?re still on vacation. The app boasts over 260,000 properties and you can use the app?s calendar to search by date of availability or by assorted other rental criteria like number of rooms and price.

For the serious comparison shopper, there?s RENTalo Vacation Lodgings (free). RENTalo lets users compare prices on various hotel and vacation rental deals. The app has photos and information on each of its listing and helps ensure that users aren?t being up-charged by one website over another when they go to book their stay.

Whichever app you eventually end up choosing, it seems like a safe bet that you should be able to find a reasonable and comfortable place to stay. Just remember not to bring your phone into the hotel pool with you.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/applecomputer/*http%3A//us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/external/appolicious_rss/rss_appolicious_tc/http___www_androidapps_com_articles10842_these_android_hotel_apps_will_help_you_find_a_roof_above_your_head/44283713/SIG=13jufqs06/*http%3A//www.androidapps.com/tech/articles/10842-these-android-hotel-apps-will-help-you-find-a-roof-above-your-head

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BANI WALID, Libya (Reuters) ? Libya’s ramshackle government lost control of a former stronghold of Muammar Gaddafi on Tuesday after local people staged an armed uprising, posing the gravest challenge yet to the country’s new rulers.

Elders in Bani Walid, where militias loyal to the ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) were driven out in a gunbattle a day earlier, said they were appointing their own local government and rejected any interference from the authorities in the capital Tripoli.

The town’s revolt will heighten doubts in the West about the NTC government’s ability to instill law and order crucial to rebuilding oil exports, to disarm tribal militias and guard Libyan borders in a region where al Qaeda is active.

Local elders denied reports that they were loyal to Gaddafi, who was captured and killed in October after weeks on the run, and Reuters reporters in Bani Walid saw no signs of the Gaddafi-era green flags which witnesses earlier said had been hoisted over the town.

But the collapse of NTC authority in the town, one of the most die-hard bastions of pro-Gaddafi sentiment during Libya’s nine-month civil war last year, will compound the problems besetting a government that in the past week has been staggering from one crisis to another.

The uprising in Bani Walid could not come at a worse time for the National Transitional Council government. In the past week its chief has had his office overrun by protesters angry at the slow pace of reform and the second most senior official has quit, citing what he described as an “atmosphere of hatred.”

Reuters reporters who entered Bani Walid on Tuesday morning saw a few of the black, green and red flags of last year’s anti-Gaddafi rebellion but there was no sign of any central government presence.

About 200 elders who gathered in a mosque decided to abolish an NTC-appointed military council for the town and appoint their own local council, in direct defiance of the authority of the government in Tripoli.

“If (NTC chief Mustafa) Abdel Jalil is going to force anyone on us, we won’t accept that by any means,” one of the elders, Ali Zargoun, told Reuters at the mosque.

“BROTHERS IN REVOLUTION”

Accounts from Bani Walid, a town about 200 km (120 miles) from Tripoli, late on Monday described armed Gaddafi supporters attacking the barracks of the pro-government militia in the town and then forcing them to retreat.

A fighter with the routed pro-government militia told Reuters the loyalists were flying “brand new green flags” from the centre of town. The flags were symbols of Gaddafi’s maverick, 42-year dictatorship.

But elders on Tuesday disputed that account.

“In the Libyan revolution, we have all become brothers. We will not be an obstacle to progress,” said another elder, Miftah Jubarra. “Regarding allegations of pro-Gaddafi elements in Bani Walid, this is not true. This is the media. You will go around the city and find no green flags or pictures of Gaddafi.”

Bani Walid, base of the powerful Warfallah tribe, was one of the last towns to surrender to the anti-Gaddafi rebellion last year.

A Libyan air official said war planes were being mobilized to fly to Bani Walid. But it was not immediately clear what the government in Tripoli could do. It has yet to demonstrate that it has an effective fighting force under its command and Bani Walid, protected behind a deep valley, is difficult to attack.

EMBATTLED GOVERNMENT

During Libya’s nine-month war, anti-Gaddafi NTC rebels tried to take Bani Walid but did not progress much beyond the outskirts of the town. It later emerged that Saif al-Islam, one of Muammar Gaddafi’s sons who was captured in the Sahara desert in November, had been using Bani Walid as a base.

Soon before the end of the conflict, with Gaddafi’s defeat unavoidable, local tribal elders negotiated an agreement under which forces loyal to the NTC were able to enter the town without a fight.

Relations have been uneasy since then and there have been occasional flare-ups of violence.

A local resident, who did not want to be identified, said Monday’s violence began when members of the May 28 militia, affiliated to the NTC, arrested some former Gaddafi loyalists. That prompted other supporters of the former leader to attack the militia’s garrison. “They massacred men at the doors of the militia headquarters,” said the resident.

FRAGILE GRIP ON POWER

The NTC still has the backing of the NATO powers who, with their diplomatic pressure and bombing campaign, helped push out Gaddafi and install the new government.

NTC authorities pledged to unify the tribally-divided country, reconstruct its once mighty oil industry that made Libya a major exporter in OPEC, and hold democratic elections.

But questions are now being raised inside some Western governments about the NTC’s ability to govern Libya effectively and secure its frontiers against al Qaeda, arms traffickers and illegal migrants trying to get into Europe.

The NTC tumbled into its worst crisis since the end of the civil war at the weekend when a crowd of protesters in the eastern city of Benghazi stormed the council’s local headquarters when NTC chief Mustafa Abdel Jalil was inside.

The protesters, who supported the revolt against Gaddafi, were angry that more progress had not been made to restore basic public services. They also said many of the NTC’s members were tarnished by having served in Gaddafi’s administration.

Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, deputy head of the NTC and target of some of the protests, said he was resigning. Abdel Jalil warned that the protests could drag the country into a “bottomless pit.”

(Additional reporting by Ali Shuaib; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Mark Heinrich; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/africa/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120124/wl_nm/us_libya

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SHELBYVILLE, Tenn. ? A March trial has been scheduled in a child support lawsuit against an American woman who sent her adopted son back to Russia alone on a plane with a note saying she didn’t want to be his mother anymore.

The adoptive mother, Torry Hansen, is being sued by her adoption agency, World Association for Children and Parents, for child support. Hansen was living in Shelbyville in April 2010 when she sent the boy, then 7, back to Moscow with a note stating he had psychological problems.

Trial is scheduled March 27 in Shelbyville’s circuit court, Judge F. Lee Russell’s office said.

Hansen has not been criminally charged. The incident drew international attention and prompted new adoption agreements between the U.S. and Russia.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120124/ap_on_re_us/us_russian_adopted_boy_trial

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TORONTO (AP) ? BlackBerry maker Research in Motion’co-CEOs, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, announced Sunday they are stepping down from the once-iconic company that has struggled to compete in recent years.

The pair who founded RIM will be replaced by Thorsten Heins, a chief operating officer who joined RIM four years ago from Siemens AG, RIM said.

Balsillie and Lazaridis have headed Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM together for the past two decades.

“There comes a time in the growth of every successful company when the founders recognize the need to pass the baton to new leadership. Jim and I went to the board and told them that we thought that time was now,” Lazaridis said in a statement.

The Canadian company has suffered a series of setbacks and has lost tens of billions in market value. A company that was worth more than $70 billion a few years ago now has a market value of $8.9 billion.

RIM said last month that new phones deemed critical to the company’s future will be delayed until late 2012. And its PlayBook tablet, RIM’s answer to the Apple iPad, failed to gain consumer support, forcing the company to give it deep discounts to move the devices off store shelves.

A widespread outage also frustrated tens of millions of BlackBerry users in October.

Lazaridis will take on a new role as vice chairman of RIM’s board and chairman of the board’s new innovation committee. Balsillie remains a member of the board.

“I agree this is the right time to pass the baton to new leadership, and I have complete confidence in Thorsten, the management team and the company,” Balsillie said in the statement. “I remain a significant shareholder and a director and, of course, they will have my full support.”

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2012-01-22-CN-RIM-CEOs-Resign/id-ddfa6d992b2c4d938749c67831106287

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