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Monday, June 24, 2013
Hostess: Twinkies to return to shelves July 15
This undated image provided by Hostess Brands LLC shows a box of Twinkies. Twinkies will be back on shelves by July 15, 2013, after its predecessor company went bankrupt after an acrimonious fight with unions last year. The brands have since been purchased y Metropoulos & Co. and Apollo Global Management. (AP Photo/Hostess Brands)
This undated image provided by Hostess Brands LLC shows a box of Twinkies. Twinkies will be back on shelves by July 15, 2013, after its predecessor company went bankrupt after an acrimonious fight with unions last year. The brands have since been purchased y Metropoulos & Co. and Apollo Global Management. (AP Photo/Hostess Brands)
NEW YORK (AP) ? Hostess is betting on a sweet comeback for Twinkies when they return to shelves next month.
The company that went bankrupt after an acrimonious fight with its unionized workers last year is back up and running under new owners and a leaner structure. It says it plans to have Twinkies and other snack cakes back on shelves starting July 15.
Based on the outpouring of nostalgia sparked by its demise, Hostess is expecting a blockbuster return next month for Twinkies and other sugary treats, such as CupCakes and Donettes. The company says the cakes will taste the same but that the boxes will now bear the tag line "The Sweetest Comeback In The History Of Ever."
"A lot of impostor products have come to the market while Hostess has been off the shelves," says Daren Metropoulos, a principal of the investment firm Metropoulos & Co., which teamed up with Apollo Global Management to buy a variety of Hostess snacks.
Hostess Brands Inc. was struggling for years before it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in early 2012. Workers blamed the troubles on years of mismanagement, as well as a failure of executives to invest in brands to keep up with changing tastes. The company said it was weighed down by higher pension and medical costs than its competitors, whose employees weren't unionized.
To steer it through its bankruptcy reorganization, Hostess hired restructuring expert Greg Rayburn as its CEO. But Rayburn ultimately failed to reach a contract agreement with its second largest union. In November, he blamed striking workers for crippling the company's ability to maintain normal production and announced that Hostess would liquidate.
The shuttering triggered a rush on Hostess snack cakes, with stores selling out of the most popular brands within hours.
About 15,000 unionized workers lost their jobs in the aftermath.
In unwinding its business, Hostess sold off its brands in chunks to different buyers. Its major bread brands including Wonder were sold to Flowers Foods, which makes Tastykakes. McKee Foods, which makes Little Debbie snack cakes, snapped up Drake's Cake, which includes Devil Dogs and Yodels.
Metropoulos & Co. and Apollo bought Twinkies and other Hostess cakes for $410 million.
Apollo Global Management, founded by Leon Black, is known for buying troubled brands then selling them for a profit; its investments include fast-food chains Carl's Jr. and Hardee's. Metropoulos & Co., which has revamped then sold off brands including Chef Boyardee and Bumble Bee, also owns Pabst Brewing Co.
That could mean some cross-promotional marketing is in store.
"There is certainly a natural association with the two," Metropoulos said. "There could be some opportunities for them to seen together."
The trimmed-down Hostess Brands LLC has a far less costly operating structure than the predecessor company. Some of the previous workers were hired back, but they're no longer unionized.
Hostess will also now deliver to warehouses that supply retailers, rather than delivering directly to stores, said Rich Seban, the president of Hostess who previously served as chief operating officer. That will greatly expand its reach, letting it deliver to dollar stores and nearly all convenience stores in the U.S.
Previously, he said Hostess was only able to reach about a third of the country's 150,000 convenience stores.
Production was also consolidated, from 11 bakery plants to four ? one each in Georgia, Kansas, Illinois and Indiana. The headquarters were moved from Texas to Kansas City, Mo., where Hostess was previously based and still had some accounting offices.
In the months since they vanished from shelves, the cakes have been getting a few touchups as well. For the CupCakes, the company is now using dark cocoa instead of milk chocolate to give them a richer, darker appearance.
Seban stressed that the changes were to improve the cakes, not to cut costs. Prices for the cakes will remain the same; a box of 10 Twinkies will cost $3.99.
Looking ahead, Seban sees Hostess expanding its product lineup. He noted that Hostess cakes are known for three basic textures: the spongy cake, the creamy filling and the thicker icing. But he said different textures ? such as crunchy ? could be introduced, as well as different flavors.
"We can have some fun with that mixture," he said.
He also said there are many trendy health attributes the company could tap into, such as gluten-free, added fiber, low sugar and low sodium.
During bankruptcy proceedings, Hostess had said that its overall sales had been declining, although the company didn't give a breakout on the performance of individual brands. But Seban is confident Twinkies will have staying power beyond its re-launch.
As for the literal shelf-life, Seban is quick to refute the snack cake's fabled indestructibility.
"Forty-five days ? that's it," he said. "They don't last forever."
___
Follow Candice Choi at www.twitter.com/candicehoi
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Sunday, June 23, 2013
Cat Health Problems Pet Owners Often Overlook (PHOTOS)
From Vetstreet's Dr. Marty Becker:
Cats have a reputation as low-maintenance pets, perfect for people who don?t have the time to care for an animal. That?s not true, of course, but it can be difficult to convince some people otherwise. "Cats take care of themselves," is something I hear a lot, and it makes me wince every time.
What?s largely happening is not that our cats are fending for themselves ? as so many people assume ? but rather that because they?re so good at hiding signs of illness, we don?t realize how sick they are until they?re very sick indeed. And sometimes when I do see cats as a practicing veterinarian, I see not only what people brought them in for ? an abscess, perhaps, or a limp or a chronic cough ? but life-threatening issues the cats' owners hadn't even noticed.
These are serious problems that seem painted in the boldest hues to my eye, yet appear to be invisible to many cat owners. And it happens all the time.
Are You Missing the Big Picture?
Sometimes, even when I point out these problems, cat owners don?t think they?re as important as I do. They may accept my diagnosis, for example, but not follow up or follow through on treatment plans. It really saddens me to think of the misery these cats are in. Don't be guilty of neglecting your cat's health; check out these five feline health problems people don?t worry about as much as they should ? and talk to your veterinarian about any that sound familiar.
(Story continues below slideshow)
"Chronic" Doesn?t Mean "Untreatable"
Ongoing problems with your cat?s health sometimes start slowly and get worse over time. In other words, these issues can creep up on us, so we may not pay much attention to them, or we might overlook them entirely. That?s why I want you to step back right now and look at your cat. Be brutally honest: Are you ignoring chronic health issues that are making your cat miserable? Are you sure you aren?t?
If your cat hasn?t seen a veterinarian in a while, it?s time to schedule that comprehensive exam. And take heart: For every one of these often chronic conditions there are things that can be done to stop, treat or even reverse the damage. All you need to do is recognize the problem and work with your veterinarian for your cat?s better health.
Also on Vetstreet:
5 Health Problems Dog Owners Ignore
How Old Is My Pet in People Years?
Looking for a Cuddly Cat? Here Is a Breed You'll Like
Why Does My Cat? Meow at Me?
5 Reasons Cats Are Given Up for Adoption ? and How to Avoid These Problems
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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/22/cat-health-problems_n_3478807.html
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Analysis: After the Fed shock, markets set for more turmoil
By Steven C. Johnson
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Fasten your seatbelts. And expect lots of turbulence.
If that was the message Ben Bernanke was trying to deliver when he said the Federal Reserve could soon start scaling back its massive stimulus program for the U.S. economy, it's safe to say investors received it loud and clear.
In fact, the sell-off in stocks, bonds and commodities that rippled around the globe after Bernanke's remarks looks to some like the dawn of a new period of volatile, disorderly trade - a stark change from the calm that prevailed since the Fed began its most recent bond-buying program last autumn.
"When market regimes shift, they rarely do so in an orderly fashion - look at equity prices collapsing at the end of the dot-com bubble or the height of the financial crisis," said Stephen Sachs, head of capital markets at exchange-traded fund issuer ProShares in Bethesda, Maryland. "It usually gets violent. We're going to face that in interest rates now."
Indeed, the bond market is at the epicenter of the financial market earthquake that Bernanke unleashed. Benchmark yields, which Fed easing had driven to record lows, surged to near two-year highs and are expected to keep climbing as traders come to grips with the prospect of the Fed ending bond purchases by mid-2014.
The aftershocks have rattled markets from Tokyo to Sao Paulo, and assets that had been top performers plunged. U.S. credit markets were hammered, with the gap between junk bond yields and Treasuries hitting their widest so far this year, while global equity markets lost $1 trillion on Thursday alone.
The brute force of the decline caught some by surprise, since Bernanke warned in late May that the Fed could slow its bond buying later this year. Even so, watching long-term interest rates rise 0.4 percentage points for the week - the biggest move in more than 10 years - after trading for months near record lows was a wake-up call.
"People live in denial all the time," said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at investment management firm Fort Pitt Capital in Pittsburgh. "The thinking part of people's brains understood that rates would have to go up sometime. But they weren't ready to be told that reality starts now."
That goes for companies who now face higher funding costs and investors who had borrowed money cheaply to trade.
Investors had been funding trades in riskier markets by borrowing in the stable, low-interest-rate U.S. debt market. But the cost to borrow rises with higher rates and with increased volatility - both of which appear to be here to stay, at least for now.
Dan Fuss, vice chairman of investment management firm Loomis Sayles & Co, which manages $191 billion in funds, said: "Leverage is coming out of the market. These market moves reflect that, but when you get sharp moves like this a lot of people get nervous. That can contribute to more selling."
Bond investors hoping to play "follow the Fed" forever face an even more frightening reality. As Zane Brown, a fixed income strategist at asset manager Lord Abbett & Co noted, a return to a more normal level of interest rates would result in a zero total return over the next five years for investors benchmarked to the popular Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Index.
Investors pulled $15.1 billion out of taxable bond funds in the first three weeks of June, according to Lipper, a Thomson Reuters service. That is the biggest three-week outflow from the funds since October 2008, at the height of the financial crisis.
"HYPER-SENSITIVE"
All of this has left traders and investors scrambling to protect themselves in anticipation of a volatile summer.
Trading in interest-rate futures contracts spiked to a record in late May when Bernanke first broached the subject of winding down stimulus. It soared again this week, when some 12.8 million contracts changed hands on Thursday, according to CME Group, well above May's daily average of 7.9 million.
Volume in S&P 500 index options rose to 2.3 million contracts on Thursday, a new one-day record, while overall options volume of 33.3 million contracts made it the busiest day since August 9, 2011, four days after Standard & Poor's stripped the United States of its top credit rating.
Since Bernanke has insisted that winding down bond purchases depends on continued economic improvement, traders now have to assume nearly every economic data release will have the potential to whipsaw financial markets.
"Across the board, we have seen people paying up for insurance in the options market," said J.J. Kinahan, chief strategist at online brokerage firm TD Ameritrade. "The market is going to be hyper-sensitive to anything that the Fed says, and the three major reports on employment, retail sales and housing will continue to dominate the eyes of the market."
The CBOE Volatility Index, a gauge of anxiety on Wall Street, jumped 23 percent on Thursday to 20.49, the first time this year it has exceeded 20, an often-used dividing line between calm and stressed markets. It closed at 18.90 on Friday.
Signs of concern about high-flying assets like emerging markets can be seen in the options market, where more than 1.35 million contracts in the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets exchange-traded fund traded on Thursday - 82 percent of which were put options, generally used to protect against losses.
The Merrill Lynch MOVE Index, a measure of expected volatility in the U.S. Treasury market, rose to 103.7 on Friday; that index sat at 50 in early May, a multi-year low.
The uncertainty the Fed has sowed by telling markets they are on their own means the days of almost uninterrupted gains that have prevailed since late last year are over. And that brings problems of its own for investors and the market.
For one thing, violent price swings make investors more vulnerable to big losses, prompting them to sell assets simply to reduce their value-at-risk (VaR) levels, a statistical method for quantifying portfolio risk over a given period of time.
Rack up enough of these forced liquidations and it is not hard to see how a sell-off in one market can spread quickly to other assets and other parts of the world.
Bob Lynch, head of G10 FX strategy at HSBC, said this was a factor driving the bond and equity sell-off in late May "and could be an important input driving financial assets lower in the current environment."
"It is too early to tell if the market reaction to the Fed is just noise or the beginning of a greater sell-off in U.S. equities," said Mike Tosaw, portfolio manager at RCM Wealth Advisors, an investment advisory firm in Chicago.
"Over the course of the last month, we have been taking money off the table in the stock market and keeping the cash for the time being. Early next week, we plan to evaluate if this is a buying opportunity in stocks or if we need to run for the hills."
(Additional reporting by Doris Frankel in Chicago and Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss, Jonathan Spicer and Herbert Lash in New York; Editing by Martin Howell and Tim Dobbyn)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-fed-shock-markets-set-more-turmoil-120416046.html
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Saturday, June 22, 2013
U.S. files espionage charges against Snowden over leaks
By Tabassum Zakaria and Mark Hosenball
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has filed espionage charges against Edward Snowden, a former U.S. National Security Agency contractor who admitted revealing secret surveillance programs to media outlets, according to a court document made public on Friday.
Snowden, who is believed to be in hiding in Hong Kong, was charged with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person, said the criminal complaint, which was dated June 14.
The latter two offenses fall under the U.S. Espionage Act and carry penalties of fines and up to 10 years in prison.
A single page of the complaint was unsealed on Friday. An accompanying affidavit remained under seal.
The charges are the government's first step in what could be a long legal battle to return Snowden from Hong Kong and try him in a U.S. court.
Two U.S. sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States was preparing to seek Snowden's extradition from Hong Kong, which is part of China but has wide-ranging autonomy, including an independent judiciary.
The Washington Post, which first reported the criminal complaint earlier on Friday, said the United States had asked Hong Kong to detain Snowden on a provisional arrest warrant.
There was no immediate response to requests for comment from Hong Kong's security bureau.
Snowden earlier this month admitted leaking secrets about classified U.S. surveillance programs, creating a public uproar. Supporters say he is a whistleblower, while critics call him a criminal and perhaps even a traitor.
He disclosed documents detailing U.S. telephone and Internet surveillance efforts to the Washington Post and Britain's Guardian newspaper.
The criminal complaint was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, where Snowden's former employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, is located.
That judicial district has seen a number of high-profile prosecutions, including the spy case against former FBI agent Robert Hanssen and the case of al Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui. Both were convicted.
'ACTIVE EXTRADITION RELATIONSHIP'
Documents leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA has access to vast amounts of Internet data such as emails, chat rooms and video from large companies such as Facebook and Google, under a government program known as Prism.
They also showed that the government had worked through the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to gather so-called metadata - such as the time, duration and telephone numbers called - on all calls carried by service providers such as Verizon.
President Barack Obama and his intelligence chiefs have vigorously defended the programs, saying they are regulated by law and that Congress was notified. They say the programs have been used to thwart militant plots and do not target Americans' personal lives, they say.
U.S. federal prosecutors, by filing a criminal complaint, lay claim to a legal basis to make an extradition request of the authorities in Hong Kong, the Post reported. The prosecutors now have 60 days to file an indictment and can then take steps to secure Snowden's extradition from Hong Kong for a criminal trial in the United States, the newspaper reported.
The United States and Hong Kong have "excellent cooperation" and as a result of agreements, "there is an active extradition relationship between Hong Kong and the United States," a U.S. law enforcement official told Reuters.
An Icelandic businessman linked to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said on Thursday he had readied a private plane in China to fly Snowden to Iceland if Iceland's government would grant asylum.
Iceland refused on Friday to say whether it would grant asylum to Snowden.
(Editing by Warren Strobel and Peter Cooney)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-files-espionage-charges-against-snowden-over-leaks-015108216.html
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Play the Slate News Quiz
Losing the great James Gandolfini this week was hard enough, but there were other casualties in the news as well: Arizona's voter ID law (struck down by the Supreme Court), pilgrimages to Lourdes (canceled due to flooding), and the Czech government (toppled by a juicy spying scandal). Even in the face of all this loss, it's not too late to eke out a win at the Slate News Quiz. You can do it. Don't stop believin'.
Question 1 of 12
"I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now," asserted what newsmaker in a confusing reply on Monday?
Snowden was denying that he was a Chinese spy, as Dick Cheney and others had suggested after he fled to Hong Kong.
Question 2 of 12
Last Friday, noting that a "red line" specified in August 2012 has been crossed, President Obama authorized what?
The decision to supplement the current nonlethal and humanitarian aid is the result of evidence that Bashar al-Assad's regime has used chemical weapons.
Question 3 of 12
A class-action suit filed by documentarian Jennifer Nelson threatens the estimated $2 million earned by Warner Music every year from people doing what?
The Warner Music Group allegedly earns $5,000 a day from commercial uses of "Happy Birthday," which Nelson's suit contends has been in the public domain since 1963 at the latest.
Question 4 of 12
A DNA paternity test given in Scotland last week resolved a brewing controversy: Socks is not the father of Scamp. Who is Socks?
Socks, who moonwalked into fame in a British mobile phone commercial, had been spotted by his owner swimming 175 yards across a loch to romance a mare named Nugget.
Question 5 of 12
A national legislature approved Chinese tycoon Wang Jing's ambitious $40 billion plan last week to build a new competitor to what?
The Nicaraguan national assembly approved a plan to explore a new oceanic mega-canal through the nation that would dwarf Panama's.
Question 6 of 12
During a speech at a Carnegie Hall gala last week, Russian president Vladimir Putin was accused of stealing what unusual item?
Putin denies the story, saying the ring was "a gift." Patriots owner Robert Kraft agrees that this was the story the Bush White House encouraged him to tell, for diplomatic reasons.
Question 7 of 12
Neighbors in Michael Karkoc's Minneapolis neighborhood described the 94-year-old as "jovial and stuff." Karkoc is alleged to have done what?
Question 8 of 12
What odd fad, sparked by a music video, has led to an outbreak of conjunctivitis among Japanese teens?
Doctors warn that oculolinctus (sexualized eye-licking) can cause corneal damage and even blindness.
Question 9 of 12
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously last week in the landmark case of AMP v. Myriad that what cannot be patented?
The court disallowed Myriad Genetics' patent on genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer.
Question 10 of 12
The FBI spent two days digging up an overgrown farm field in Oakland Township, Mich., this week, in hopes of finding what?
This was the umpteenth in a series of tips on the missing Teamster leader's whereabouts that the bureau has received over the decades.
Question 11 of 12
The U.S. Navy has dropped a century-old rule requiring what in all internal communication?
"Lower-case messages are here to stay," said the Navy, discovering the annoyingness of all-caps messages just 20 years after the Internet did.
Question 12 of 12
Small demonstrations over rising bus fares have ballooned into huge rallies numbering more than 200,000 protesters in what nation?
Worries over rising inflation and crime rates have led to massive marches in Brazil's major cities.
You got 8 out of 12 answers correct in 20 minutes 30 seconds.
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Video: Watch: Wambach ties Hamm? |? Breaks record
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