- Starbucks already owns most of the world, coffee-wise,
so why not aim to take hold of the cream of the coffee-drinking crop? The house
that Howard Schultz built has exported coffee beans from Colombia for more than four decades and
the company now plans to open its first café in the Andean country in 2014 and
serve only locally-grown coffee. Over the course of the next five years,
Starbucks hopes to open at least 50 coffee shops in cities across Colombia,
starting in the capital, Bogota. Coincidentally, the announcement took place at
the same time as h protests by local coffee growers who are demanding the
government provide more aid to counter low global prices and cheap imports
hitting the world's largest producer of washed arabica beans. "We've had
great success in Latin American and it's well overdue for us to open up in
Colombia," Schultz said. The current plan is for six stores in the first
year as Starbucks cashes in on a military crackdown on drug-funded insurgent
groups that has made Colombia more attractive to foreign firms. Starbucks’
efforts will pour $3 million into
a plan to help 25,000 farmers in conflict-hit areas of Colombia increase coffee
yields. Its new coffee shops will be run by a joint venture between Mexican
restaurant firm Alsea, which operates more than 500 Starbucks stores in Latin
America, and Colcafe, a subsidiary of Grupo Nutresa, the fourth-largest
Colombian food company. Colcafe is best-known for helping Starbucks develop
Via, its instant coffee product, launched in 2008. It remains Starbucks' only
roasting facility in Colombia and will be expanded to roast espresso blends and
packaged coffee for sale in the country. "We want to sell Colombian coffee
in Colombia," said Craig Russell, Starbucks' senior vice president of
global coffee. According to the Starbucks corporate machine, its efforts will
also seek to reduce "extreme poverty, which is still a reality for almost
all of these small-scale coffee growers that have barely one hectare (2.5
acres) of land.” Schultz also insisted the company’s high prices won't be a
deterrent for Colombians, although he declined to reveal those prices………
- Look at the NCAA, dropping its judicial hammer on the
most-famous player in college football. Well, as long as suspending him for two
quarters of a non-conference game against and overmatched opponent his Texas
A&M Aggies will hammer with or with out him counts as dropping the hammer,
that is. If you believe that, then Johnny Manziel was absolutely pilloried by
the frauds who run the NCAA for (allegedly) taking money to sign thousands of
autographs in hotel rooms following his freshman season. After a thorough
investigation, the governing body has decided to suspend Manziel for exactly
one half of the Aggies’ season
opener against the Rice Owls. Suspending a player for a half or a quarter is
typically the type of bullsh*t move a coach pulls when one of his star
receivers is busted for underage drinking and he has to discipline him even
though he doesn’t want to, but the NCAA decided Manziel almost certainly
violating its fraudulent rules on amateurism was no big deal because there was
(allegedly) no evidence that he received payment for signing autographs. The
30-minute suspension for violating NCAA bylaw 12.5.2.1, which says
student-athletes cannot permit their names or likenesses to be used for
commercial purposes, including to advertise, recommend or promote sales of
commercial products, or accept payment for the use of their names or likenesses,
shows just how serious the NCAA can get. "If additional information comes
to light, the NCAA will review and consider if further action is appropriate,"
the NCAA said in a joint statement with Texas A&M, presumably with its head
firmly up its collective ass. "NCAA rules are clear that student-athletes
may not accept money for items they sign, and based on information provided by
Manziel, that did not happen in this case." Oh, and Manziel will also speak
to his teammates about lessons learned from the situation, which involved him
(allegedly) accepting payments to sign more than 4,000 items, including
footballs and photographs at an event in Connecticut in late January. He’s
definitely learned from this one, namely that rich and famous people get away
with most anything they want in America………
- The hits (and bites) just keep on coming for the D. Already
America's
biggest bankrupt city -- currently more than $18 billion in debt and home to
70,000-plus vacant structures -- Detroit is dealing with a different sort of
problem amongst those who do want to be there, specifically thousands of stray
dogs who don’t mind inhabiting the Motor City. With many human residents
struggling to get by, canines have been abandoned at an alarming rate and left
to scavenge for food wherever they can find it. The dog problem has built for
several decades, but it has grown worse in recent years as the economy has
bottomed out. "They're over-breeding. They're running the streets,"
says Kristen Huston from All About Animals Rescue. "A lot of people have
lost their homes, lost their jobs and they just don't have the funds," she
says. "They love their animals but it's very hard to feed their own kids
and family." Huston and her organization work to help strays and dogs that
may soon become strays as part of the Pet for Life program, which provides free
spay and neuter surgeries through a $50,000 grant from the Humane Society of the
United States. Making matters worse - and more dangerous - for residents who
have little choice but to remain in the city is the fact that 90 percent of the
strays are pit bulls or pit mixes according to Harry Ward, who runs Detroit
Animal Control. Ward and his team are charged with the task of responding to an
overwhelming amount of calls about strays. Like the rest of the city, his
department has been hit hard by Detroit’s collapse and his staff of 15 as of
four years ago is now a staff of four. Even though the department has a $1.6
million annual budget, much of its money is tangled up in red tape. Oh, and the
metal letters that read "DETROIT ANIMAL CONTROL" on the front of
Ward's headquarters were stolen to be sold as scrap metal. All of that goes a long
way toward explaining why Detroit ranks sixth on the 2012 U.S. Postal Service
list of cities with the most dog attacks on mail carriers. All in all, the city
is beginning to look more and more like the sort of post-apocalyptic hellscape
that really does need RoboCop to come save it………
- Berating an audience is rarely a good idea for anyone
other than a talented stand-up comedian. Marginal rapper Plan B doesn’t
subscribe to that theory and it helps explain why he cut short his support slot
before Eminem's massive Irish gig at Slane Castle in Ireland earlier this month.
Plan B was the opening act for Eminem on Aug. 17 and went through most of his
set with minimal response from the audience, leading him to attempt to cajole
the crowd into life with cries of "Slane, are you with me?" and
"Come on you c*nts!" When that didn’t work, he asked concert
organizers how long he had to go on. He didn’t like what they told him. "10
minutes? 10 minutes... Well, we're only gonna play one more song cause we don't
really wanna be here,” he told the crowd. Now, two weeks after the fact, he has
explained why he was in such a foul mood. "The guys there were tired.
They’d been there all day. They’d been there from when Chance The Rapper was on
early,” he said of the crowd. “They’d been drinking, they were tired and they
wanted to see the main event. When you’re main support and you’re just before
the main event, I think it gets to that point in the day when people just want
to see Eminem. My way of picking up the crowd sometimes is being a bit abusive.
I’m like: ‘Come on, you cunts’, you know what I mean? That’s pretty much what
it was. A crowd can be a tough crowd because they’re not interested, or it can
be that they’re tired. For me, it was more that they were tired." He went
on to say that he loves being the center of attention and consequently acts out
when he doesn’t get his way. The festival netted more than 50 arrests during
the course of the day, which included sets by EarlWolf, Chance The Rapper,
Slaughterhouse and Yelawolf……..
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