Seattle, WA, United States (AHN) – There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but there will be free coffee for a few days.

From Thursday through Saturday, Starbucks will offer free taste tests of its new Blonde Roast blend.

Starbucks, known for its signature dark roasts, has been working on perfecting a lighter roast to fulfill the needs of some of the 54 million java drinkers in the United States who say they prefer a more subtle blend.

Starbucks worked for eight months perfecting the new blend, testing more than 80 recipes and roast iterations before they obtained what they deem the perfect flavor customers told the coffee giant they were craving.

To help customers determine the coffee taste and intensity they prefer, Starbucks is hosting “Find the Roast You Love Most” tasting events across the United States at participating stores.

As well as a free sample of the Starbucks Blonde Roast, customers will receive a free sample of the new light blend to brew at home, or a $1 off coupon for the blend of their choice.

Starting Tuesday, Starbucks Blonde Roasts were available as brewed options in its cafes, as well as whole bean and ground coffee in Starbucks stores and groceries that sell Starbucks products.

In early afternoon trading Wednesday, shares of Starbucks were trading up 18 cents at $47 per share, just shy of its 52-week high of $47.28.

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Boston, MA, United States (AHN) – Ocean Spray today announced it has taken the precautionary measure of voluntarily recalling certain production lots of its Original Flavor Craisins® Dried Cranberries product in 5-ounce, 10-ounce and 48-ounce packages as well as bulk sweetened dried cranberries in 10-pound packages due to the possible presence of very small hair-like metal fragments that are unlikely to cause consumer injury.

To date, the company has not received any reports of consumer complaints relating to this recall. No injuries or adverse effects have been reported regarding these products to date.

Ocean Spray issued the voluntary recall out of an abundance of caution to ensure the safety of our consumers.

No other Ocean Spray brand products are affected.

The following Ocean Spray Original Flavor Craisins® Dried Cranberries are part of this recall:

5 oz Craisins® UPC: 00293-000

Best By Dates (ONLY THESE DATES FOLLOWED BY THE LETTER “M” ARE AFFECTED):

Oct 27 2012 M

10 oz Craisins® UPC: 29456-000 and 29464-000

Best By Dates (ONLY THESE DATES FOLLOWED BY THE LETTER “M” ARE AFFECTED):

Oct 27 2012 M

Oct 28 2012 M

Oct 29 2012 M

48 oz Craisins® UPC: 00678-318

Best By Dates (ONLY THESE DATES FOLLOWED BY THE LETTER “M” ARE AFFECTED):

Oct 27 2012 M

Oct 28 2012 M

Nov 3 2012 M

Nov 4 2012 M

Nov 5 2012 M

Nov 6 2012 M

Nov 7 2012 M

Nov 10 2012 M

Nov 11 2012 M

10 lb bulk ingredient & foodservice UPC: 03477-000

Best By Dates (ONLY THESE DATES FOLLOWED BY THE LETTER “M” ARE AFFECTED):

30 Oct 2013 M

31 Oct 2013 M

1 Nov 2013 M

5 Nov 2013 M

Consumers who have purchased the recalled products are urged to destroy the product, save the UPC label and best by date and contact the Ocean Spray Consumer Hotline at 1-800-662-3263 for a coupon replacement.

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United States (KaiserHealth) – Drugstore and supermarket pharmacies across the country have launched a marketing blitz to attract flu shot customers, touting the convenience of stopping at a local drugstore and often offering drop-in vaccinations anytime the pharmacy is open — sometimes even 24 hours a day.

“If you decided at 4 o’clock in the morning you wanted to go out and had nothing better to do than get a flu shot, you could walk right in and you could get a flu shot,” says Scott Gershman, pharmacy manager at a Walgreens drugstore in Springfield, VA. The wall outside his store is plastered with a giant sign reading “Walgreens flu shots. Walk in anytime.”

Just after the weather turned cold in late September, Shelley Troff and her 13-year-old son dropped by Gershman’s pharmacy one afternoon to get their annual shots. Troff says she didn’t even consider going to her doctor’s office. “To be frankly honest, Walgreens is easier,” she explains. “Since this is one mile from my house and the clinic is 20 minutes from my house, this is where I come.”

Pharmacies usually charge between $25 and $32, while a shot at the doctor’s office usually costs at least $48, according to Matthew Davis, a pediatrician and associate professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. But for most people with insurance, cost is not the issue—convenience is. That’s because the shots are generally paid for by insurance.

For the Troffs, there was no out-of-pocket expense. The pharmacy billed their insurance. That is true for many consumers because under the Affordable Care Act enacted in 2010, most insurers can no longer charge copays for preventive care, including flu shots. Some plans are exempt from that because they were grandfathered under the law.

The majority of Americans still get their flu shot at the doctor’s office, but an increasing number, like the Troffs, are going to their local pharmacy instead. In 2010, 18.4 percent of adults who were immunized received the flu vaccine at a supermarket or drugstore, just edging out workplace vaccinations for the second most popular venue, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The H1N1 epidemic in 2009, which showcased a particularly deadly strain of flu, helped propel the trend; the panic sent customers running to drugstores, which often had vaccines available after physicians’ offices had run out. “It became clear to the government and Americans that pharmacies can provide easy access to vaccines,” says Edith Rosato, senior vice president of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores.

But while more people are going to the pharmacy, the number of Americans who get the flu vaccine each year has remained fairly constant at about 40 percent of all adults.

Drugstores and supermarket pharmacies are eager to stake out a bigger piece of that market. Gershman spent his first seven years at the Walgreens behind the pharmacy counter, filling prescriptions and dispensing advice. Three years ago, he entered a training program on delivering vaccines. Now, he spends a good part of his fall and winter workdays vaccinating customers. He says “being able to step out behind the counter and talk one-on-one with patients” is among the most rewarding parts of his job.

Nationwide, the number of pharmacists trained to deliver vaccines has nearly quadrupled since 2007, from 40,000 to 150,000.

The stores hope to market their growing vaccine business, even offering incentives to customers. At Safeway, the flu shot brings a 10 percent discount on groceries. CVS offers a $5 gift card. Rite Aid gives away a coupon book worth $100 in potential savings.

Nonetheless, it is not clear how profitable the flu shot is to pharmacies, and experts’ views differ. Revenue figures are proprietary, but Katherine Harris, a senior economist at the Rand Group who studies the vaccine market, says flu shots are not usually a big money-maker. They often involve taking time away from other duties to educate patients and bill insurers, she explains. Other analysts believe drugstores earn profits of 30 to 50 percent on the procedures, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Rosato explains that flu shots are an important public service as well as an effective way to gain customer business. “Everyone is trying to drive customers into the store to get their flu vaccine and then hopefully build customer loyalty” so they will buy other products as well, she says.

Vaccine campaigns are part of a broader effort to expand the role of pharmacists in health care delivery, says Rosato. “With the shortage of primary care and other professionals in the future,” she explains, pharmacists see an opportunity to work closely with doctors and nurses to advise patients with chronic illnesses, offering blood pressure and diabetes screenings and medication management. “Immunization is just one piece of it.”

Thus far, doctors have not pushed back against the efforts. Vince Hartzell, who with his father owns a pharmacy in Catasauqua, PA, says 10 of the local physician practices actually refer their patients to his pharmacy, grateful to give up a service that is not particularly lucrative.

But some experts warn that getting the flu vaccine at a pharmacy is not right for everyone, particularly patients with chronic illnesses or those who are uninsured.

“If you’re uninsured, go shopping,” says Davis. He says the uninsured can often find a cheaper option at their local health department, where the vaccine may even be free.

Davis recommends that anyone with a chronic illness stick with their primary care doctor for the flu vaccine as part of an effort to “track vaccinations and manage effort to vaccinate high risk population in more efficient way.”

He adds that while it’s good for private retailers to join the vaccination army, he also worries that some patients might skip the annual doctor’s visit altogether. “The main concern about pharmacy-based vaccination is that it might somehow discourage patients from otherwise following up with their doctors.”

– Provided by Kaiser Health News.

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Rochester, NY, United States (AHN) – Confirmation by Eastman Kodak (EK.N) that it has retained the law firm Jones Day, well-known for handling bankruptcy protection cases, led to speculation that the company is planning on filing for bankruptcy protection.

News of Eastman Kodak’s hiring of Jones Day sent shares of the company plummeting 54 percent on Friday. Because of the shift of photography buffs to digital cameras, Kodak has not made a profit since 2007 and there are fears about the future of the 131-year-old company.

Eastman Kodak insisted it is exploring all its options as the company transforms itself to adapt to the digital age. Last week it announced plans to borrow $160 million for general corporate purposes.

Talks of a possible bankruptcy were fueled by concerns raised by possible buyers of the company’s patent portfolio.

Eastman Kodak spokesman Gerard Meuchner doused on Sunday speculations that it would file for bankruptcy protection and monetizing its intellectual property. As proof of company’s financial status, Meuchner said Kodak will make a $14 million coupon payment due Monday. He said Kodak is focused on the fourth quarter and to make the company a profitable, sustainable digital company.

Reports said that a number of interested buyers of Eastman Kodak digital imaging patents, such as Google, have signed confidentiality agreements to examine the camera firm’s assets. If the sale was deemed fraudulent, creditors may sue Kodak for more money. Experts said a bankruptcy filing would pave the way for a patent sale, expected to raise about $3 billion.

Kodak shares was down 91 cents to 78 cents on Sunday in New York. It was the biggest drop since 1974.

The company’s debt is rated by Standard & Poor’s CCC and by Moody’s Investors Service as Caa2, which are eight levels below investment grade. The company’s market value is placed at $210 million.

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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Hopes of an initial public offering from Facebook in 2011 have been shelved according to reports from the Financial Times. The social networking giant now plans its IPO for sometime in late 2012.

Facebook, valued anywhere between $50 to $100 billion, more than Google, is expected to be one of the world’s largest IPOs. Private shares have been valued at $66.5 billion.

The reason for the delay is that founder Mark Zuckerberg wants to postpone the IPO until September 2012 or beyond “in order to keep employees focused on product developments rather than a pay-out.”

Meanwhile, Groupon’s IPO is back on. The New York Times reports that the online coupon giant is expected to go public sometime in October or November of this year. The IPO had been delayed as the company waited to ride out shaky markets worldwide.

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Bethlehem, PA, United States (KaiserHealth) – Trumpeting a landmark study released recently, hospitals around the country have started offering deeply discounted CT scans for smokers worried about lung cancer. But some experts question whether the strategy is a marketing ploy that could bring more harm than good.

St. Luke’s Hospital in Bethlehem, Pa., put out a single-page flyer with a headline that a “10-second scan could be life-saving” and a clip-out coupon for a $49 procedure. University Hospitals in Cleveland has a slick video on its website promoting its $99 scan, noting that some experts say this could be the “new hope needed to help save lives.”

The hospitals – including the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Swedish Medical Center in Denver, Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, Rhode Island Hospital in Providence and Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center in California – say they are responding to the study by the National Cancer Institute. It found annual low-dose CT – or computerized tomography – screening of asymptomatic current or former smokers could cut the death rate from lung cancer by 20 percent by identifying the disease earlier than X-rays. The results were so striking that federal officials last November ended the study early to announce their findings.

The nearly decade-long study of more than 50,000 current and heavy smokers showed 354 lung cancer deaths had occurred among those with CT screening compared to 442 deaths among those who were screened only with an X-ray.

“The data is pretty compelling,” said Dr. Christopher Faber, medical director of the University of Pittsburgh Comprehensive Lung Center.

Most lung cancers are detected when they cause symptoms such as shortness of breath, by which time the disease is more likely to be advanced and less curable.

William Burfeind, a cardiothoracic surgeon at St. Luke’s, said the goal of offering the low-cost scans is to identify patients with earlier stages of lung cancer who have better chance of being cured by treatment. “The vast majority of my patients show up with stage 3 or 4 which is treatable, but rarely curable,” he said. “Once we learned the results of the national study, we felt compelled to offer this to our patients.”

Hospitals have marked down the CT scan – which typically costs as much as $1,000 -to help cash-paying customers. The test is not covered by Medicare or private insurers. Neither the American Cancer Society nor the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of medical experts that examines the effectiveness of preventive tests, has recommended the screening, although both groups are studying the issue.

“You have to ask the question whose interests are being served here,” Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, a Dartmouth researcher who studies cancer screening, said of hospitals’ sales pitches. “Screening tests are a great way to recruit new patients that produce revenues with follow up biopsies and procedures.”

Welch and other experts worry that hospitals pushing the low-cost CT scans will focus on promoting the benefits of the lung cancer study to patients rather than warn about its costs and complications.

The biggest risk of the test is the possibility of false positives – a scan that finds an abnormality in the lung that turns out not to be cancer. Nearly one in four people in the national study had a false positive from the CT scans, which often can lead to a biopsy or other invasive procedures that carry their own health risks. Another concern is added radiation exposure from scans.

In addition, there are economic considerations: The results of the study suggest that more than 300 heavy smokers will need to be screened to prevent just one death from lung cancer over a five-year period.

Dr. Peter Bach, a researcher at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York who evaluates testing for the cancer society, said the hospitals offering the low-cost CT scans may be unfairly inducing patient to have a test they don’t need.

“It is troubling behavior,” he said. While some hospitals see a public health benefit to the testing, others may see it as a profit strategy. He notes the scans won’t make anyone better. “It’s not like they are giving away a flu shot or a nicotine patch,” he said.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States, with more than 94 million current or former smokers at elevated risk of the disease. Each year more than 222,000 people nationwide will be diagnosed with lung cancer and approximately 157,000 will die from the disease.

Leslie Greissing, 64, of Brunswick, Ohio, who had the test last month at University Hospital in Cleveland, said she was attracted by the $99 price and the chance to catch a cancer before an X-ray. She said her doctor told her about the problem with false negatives, but she decided to have the test anyway.

“As a heavy smoker on and off since I was 16, and my father died of lung cancer, I figured I was playing with a loaded deck,” she said. Her test was negative and she plans to have another scan next year.

This is not the first time the health industry has pushed screening tests before major medical groups endorsed their use. In the 1990s, hospitals promoted PSA blood tests as a screen for prostate cancer. But because of concern over false positives that could lead to high risk surgery, neither the cancer society nor the Preventive Services Task Force recommends the test.

A low dose CT scan of the entire chest takes about 10 seconds. The technology uses a coordinated series of X-rays taken from many different angles to create a three-dimensional image allowing physicians to see smaller details than those that show up on a traditional X-ray. “This screening scan could make a real difference for people considered high-risk for developing lung cancer,” says Dr. Andrew Halpern, a St. Luke’s radiologist.

At St. Luke’s, 72 patients have taken advantage of the offer since early July. Fourteen of the patients have been recommended for follow-up screening in less than a year to check on abnormalities. Patients can only get the test with their doctor’s permission and they have to meet the same requirements as those in the national study: Current or former smokers age 55 to 74 who had an average of a pack a day habit.

Dr. David Midthun, a pulmonologist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, said the national lung cancer screening study proves that on an individual basis the CT is a good idea. “We now have the evidence that the test is effective in mortality reduction,” he said.

But what’s not known is whether considering the cost of the test, it makes sense to recommend for millions of people. “We’re at the intersection now of what’s good public policy and individual patient decision making,” he said.

– Provided by Kaiser Health News.

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Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – The maker of Tylenol announced a recall this week of more than 60,000 bottles of its Extra Strength tablets sold in the United States.

McNeil Consumer Healthcare announced that the recall was issued because of possible trace amounts of a chemical known as 2,4,6-tribromoanisole, or TBA.

The chemical is not associated with serious health problems, but it has been linked with temporary gastrointestinal symptoms.

The recall is for 225-count bottles of the pain reliever.

McNeill said through a Food and Drug Administration statement that some customers have complained about smelling musty and moldy odors when opening the bottles.

The recalled bottles have the lot number ABA619 and the UPC code 300450444271.

People who bought these pills should not take them and can contact McNeil at either www.tylenol.com or by calling 1-888-222-6036 for instructions about receiving a refund or product coupon.

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Los Angeles, CA, United States (AHN) – Google has taken aim at Groupon and LivingSocial by launching a test of its own daily deal coupon program, starting in several techtrendy spots in the United States. Nicknamed Google Offers, it takes aim at one of the hottest social trends online; daily deals delivered directly to an eager inbox.

The roll-out was launched in Oakland and San Francisco, California; Downtown, Midtown, and Uptown in New York City; and Portland, Oregon.

“Offers is part of an ongoing effort at Google to make new services that give consumers great deals while helping connect businesses with customers in new ways,” the company said in an e-mail to the technology magazine Wired.

While Google is now putting itself in combat against other deal sites, the search engine giant (which is also becoming a strong web-TV and mobile phone OS player as well) made the move after failing to acquire Groupon, the current industry-leader. Google reportedly offered $6 billion to the Chicago-based Groupon, which turned down the offer citing its quirky and independent corporate culture.

Now, the question is whether or not the market has room for several sites. Chris Crum at WebProNews asks out loud, “Will Google Offers annihilate the competition?” While PCWorld muses; “If You Can’t Buy Groupon, Beat ‘Em.”

Meanwhile, others like network engineer Frank Diaz wondered via Twitter why there aren’t any deals in the Windy City. “Google has a Groupon Clone,” Diaz tweets. “But seriously, there’s no offers for the Chicago area? Really Google?” Diaz signed his tweet with a stinging set of hashtags; #Fail #Google #Offers #Buzz

Only time will tell if Offers will sit among Google’s legendary search, mail and maps, or if it will be tossed asside like Buzz and other “not ready for prime-time” projects.

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Los Angeles, CA, United States (AHN) – Google has taken aim at Groupon and LivingSocial by launching a test of its own daily deal coupon program, starting in several techtrendy spots in the United States. Nicknamed Google Offers, it takes aim at one of the hottest social trends online; daily deals delivered directly to an eager inbox.

The roll-out was launched in Oakland and San Francisco, California; Downtown, Midtown, and Uptown in New York City; and Portland, Oregon.

“Offers is part of an ongoing effort at Google to make new services that give consumers great deals while helping connect businesses with customers in new ways,” the company said in an e-mail to the technology magazine Wired.

While Google is now putting itself in combat against other deal sites, the search engine giant (which is also becoming a strong web-TV and mobile phone OS player as well) made the move after failing to acquire Groupon, the current industry-leader. Google reportedly offered $6 billion to the Chicago-based Groupon, which turned down the offer citing its quirky and independent corporate culture.

Now, the question is whether or not the market has room for several sites. Chris Crum at WebProNews asks out loud, “Will Google Offers annihilate the competition?” While PCWorld muses; “If You Can’t Buy Groupon, Beat ‘Em.”

Meanwhile, others like network engineer Frank Diaz wondered via Twitter why there aren’t any deals in the Windy City. “Google has a Groupon Clone,” Diaz tweets. “But seriously, there’s no offers for the Chicago area? Really Google?” Diaz signed his tweet with a stinging set of hashtags; #Fail #Google #Offers #Buzz

Only time will tell if Offers will sit among Google’s legendary search, mail and maps, or if it will be tossed asside like Buzz and other “not ready for prime-time” projects.

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