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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The owner of a small coffee company sued Starbucks Corp. (SBUX.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on Monday, claiming the coffee shop's anti-competitive business practices put her store out of business. The suit, which seeks class action status, was filed in Seattle federal court by Penny Stafford, the owner of Belvi Coffee and Tea Exchange Inc. According to court papers, Starbucks violated federal antitrust laws by leasing prime commercial real estate at above-market prices in return for the exclusive right to sell espresso drinks or specialty coffee in those locations. A Starbucks spokeswoman said the Seattle-based company was...

When Christine Drake worked as a Starbucks barista, the Seattle woman with psychiatric disabilities said it was the first time in her life that she "felt a sense of accomplishment." But after two years on the job, a new manager at the Starbucks store at 425 Queen Anne Ave. N. in Seattle allegedly discriminated against Drake, decreased her hours and berated her in front of customers, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Lisa Cox, an EEOC lawyer, said the world's largest coffee retailer ignored Drake's requests for help and violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by not accommodating...

The kids aren’t alright. An epidemic is sweeping the nation as teenagers down the addictive brew by the pint. Underage alcohol consumption? No, coffee. As anti-food industry advocacy groups like Center for Science in the Public Interest sharpen their legal knives against Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX), the media are brewing up alarmist reports on teenage caffeine consumption. CBS’s “Early Show” followed ABC’s lead from two days ago. That network’s June 19 edition of “Good Morning America” presented Starbucks like a drug pusher preying on young addicts. “Coffee has always been considered an adult drink, but today coffee drinkers are much, much...

Sometimes two vices are better than one. Drinking large amounts of coffee protects the livers of people who drink large amounts of alcohol, a new study shows. The results partly explain why so many heavy alcohol drinkers escape cirrhosis of the liver, say the authors. The idea that coffee drinking might benefit alcohol users arose more than a decade ago, when cardiologist Arthur Klatsky and colleagues at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program in Oakland, California, noticed that fewer heavy drinkers were dying of cirrhosis--scarring that hardens the liver--than expected. A study at the time suggested coffee drinking might be...

LOWER BURRELL, Pa. -- A Lower Burrell school student is facing a three-day suspension for sharing gum with a classmate. Jolt chewing gum has caffeine and ginseng. The Lower Burrell school superintendent said consuming and passing out the gum violates the school's drug awareness policy. That's because caffeine is considered a stimulant. Parents told Channel 11 they did not understand the suspension. Resident Elizabeth Grombacher said, "I think it's stupid. Everything's getting too politically correct it's so wrong." "It's probably just like Mountain Dew or something like that. If it's got a lot of caffeine in it and they probably...

While it might seem strange scientists would think to develop dipsticks to measure caffeine, how they're making them is even weirder. How about three llamas and two camels. The animals, both called camelids by scientists, are among the few whose immune systems produce antibodies that are not destroyed by hot coffee. We did not look into who figured that out or why. Anyway, the researchers injected proteins linked to caffeine into the five beasts to elicit an immune response. The animals produced antibodies in their blood that were reactive to caffeine. Then in the lab, these antibodies were found to...

If you want to bring someone around to your way of thinking you should make sure they've got a cup of coffee in their hand, according to research showing that caffeine makes us more open to persuasion. The Australian researchers say a caffeine hit improves our ability to process information and increases the extent to which we listen to and take on board a persuasive message. They tested this by quizzing people about their attitudes to voluntary euthanasia and abortion before and after either the equivalent of about two cups of coffee or a placebo. They were also given a...

Warren Buffett once called the cigarette the perfect product: "It costs a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It's addictive." Much the same could be said about coffee today. Even a costly coffee drink -- Starbucks sells its lattes for about $3.50, depending on the location -- consists of little more than a cup of water, a splash of milk, a spoonful of coffee grinds and 30 seconds of labor. Starbucks has managed to turn its customers' craving for caffeine into a $6.4 billion a year business. It already has about 6,000 company-owned coffeehouses and claims to open...

Faith Sullivan of Minneapolis was having a really hard time getting a good night's sleep. For years, she had slept about seven hours a night. Then, in her late 50's, something changed. After going to bed at 10 or 11 p.m., she would wake up around 3 a.m., unable to fall back to sleep. No, neither depression nor hot flashes were disrupting her night's rest. It was caffeine. She never drank caffeinated coffee in the evening, but she often had it as a midafternoon pick-me-up. Though she found it hard to believe that coffee at 4 p.m. could disturb her...

How are coffee, tea and colas decaffeinated? Caffeine occurs naturally in more than 60 plants, including: -the arabica plant, which produces coffee beans-the Theobroma cacao tree, which produces the beans that are the primary ingredient in chocolate. -kola nuts, which many cola drink products are made with -the Thea sinensis plant, whose leaves are used for teasWhen separated from its sources, caffeine is a white, bitter-tasting powder. Several methods are used to remove caffeine from its natural sources: --Methylene chloride processing --Ethyl acetate processing --Carbon dioxide processing --Water processing Methylene chloride is a chemical used as a solvent to extract...

AP MEDICAL WRITER CHICAGO -- Here's a real caffeine jolt - heart attacks might be a risk for coffee drinkers with a common genetic trait that makes caffeine linger in their bodies, a study suggests. Research on more than 4,000 people in Costa Rica found that about half had the trait and were considered "slow caffeine metabolizers." The other half had the opposite trait, which caused their bodies to rapidly break down or metabolize caffeine, and coffee-drinking in this group appeared to reduce heart attack risks. Among slow-metabolizers, those who drank two or more cups of coffee daily were at...

Is the War on Drugs taking aim at that morning cup of java? As crazy as it might sound, some activists would hope so - and they have enlisted the help of various Californian mayors to support their cause. But first, to be more precise, critics aren't specifically after coffee, but rather after caffeine - a "drug" that is included in such products as energy and soft drinks, and some chocolates. It is said that the Chinese Emperor Shen Nung was once boiling some drinking water when leaves from a small bush fell into his pot - to create the...

Following a health trend that appears to be brewing up all over the nation, Mayor Judith Rawson has signed a proclamation for the City of Shaker Heights that addresses the issues regarding caffeine intoxication and dependency. In the proclamation the Mayor is "calling upon all Shaker Heights citizens, public and private institutions, business and schools to increase awareness and understanding of the consequences of caffeine consumption." The proclamation also spells out many dangers of caffeine abuse such as heart disease, pancreas and bladder cancer, hypoglycemia, and central nervous system disorders. By getting the word out about the serious dangers of...

Drivers have been warned about caffeine excess after a man was jailed for leading police on a 50-mile car chase after drinking 20 cans of Red Bull. Peter Edwards, 48, from King's Lynn, was jailed for four months on Friday after Norwich Crown Court heard he was pursued across Cambs and Norfolk. His car was seen "swerving from side to side" across the A10, the court heard. The AA motoring group said too much caffeine can affect the way you drive. 'Stay awake' Andrew Howard, head of road safety for the AA Motoring Trust, said: "The message is that if...

FORT DETRICK, Md. (Army News Service, Jan. 17, 2006) – The Army recently finished testing “Stay Alert” caffeine gum as a countermeasure for fatigue and the new product is now available through military supply channels. The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, known as WRAIR, tested the new gum in its Silver Spring, Md., facilities. “We wanted to show that the gum is a quick and safe method of maintaining or improving alertness and physical and mental performance, and our tests did that,” said Dr. Gary Kamimori of the Department of Behavioral Biology at WRAIR. Gum 5 times faster than...

Brazil's coffee industry has brewed up a plan to serve up to 1 million schoolchildren a free breakfast -- complete with a cup of java. Brazil's Coffee Industry Association (Abic) is seeking the support of 50 roasters to launch a pilot "Adopt-a-School" program to feed breakfast to 1 million Brazilian school children aged 6 to 18. Under the plan, a coffee roaster would adopt a school of at least 500 children and provide them with a free breakfast of coffee, milk and bread. The annual cost of the program for each school is estimated at 33,500 reais ($15,000). "Kids have...

Decaffeinated coffee may be harmful to heart 15:00 16 November 2005 NewScientist.com news service Gaia Vince Decaffeinated coffee may have a harmful effect on the heart by increasing the levels of a specific cholesterol in the blood, researchers say. Their explanation is that caffeine-free coffee is often made from a type of bean with a higher fat content. Robert Superko, at the Piedmont-Mercer Center for Health and Learning in Atlanta, Georgia, US, and colleagues looked at the effects of coffee on 187 people. The group was split into three similar-sized groups for the three-month study: one group drank three to...

A frightening scene involving the Longview Hands on a Hardbody contest early Thursday morning. Police say a contestant killed himself in front of them at a local store. He was contestant number 4. Quiet, soft spoken and well liked. But shortly before the 6:00 a.m. break, 24-year-old Richard Vega of Tyler took his hands off the hardbody truck and began walking across the street to K-mart. "When I talked to Ricky this morning, he seemed fine. I said, 'How you doing?' He said, 'I had too much caffeine.' Next thing you know , three minutes before the horn blows he's...

PROVO - There is a new coffee shop in town, but it's no Starbucks. The entry is framed with little white Christmas lights, there are half-a-dozen couches to go along with a few tables, and the walls are yellow, red, green and purple. Opposite a faux-brick wall there is a wall dedicated to nonsense. "Girls are like ladders," one customer wrote. Another scribbled: "I love yellow people." It's all the same to owner Christin Johnson. She's just happy the people who jotted down the messages wanted to stick around in her Vermillion Skies De-cafe and Lounge long enough to pen...

04/27/05 -- Zeroing in on the core cellular mechanisms of sleep, researchers at University of Wisconsin Medical School have identified for the first time a single gene mutation that has a powerful effect on the amount of time fruit flies sleep.In its normal state, the Drosophila (fruit fly) gene, called Shaker, produces an ion channel that controls the flow of potassium into cells, a process that critically affects, among other things, electrical activity in neurons. A handful of recent studies suggest that potassium channels are also involved in the generation of sleep in humans. Reported in the April 28 issue...