Website helps Dutch Catholics "de-baptize" over gay marriage

 Thousands of Dutch Catholics are researching how they can leave the church in protest at its opposition to gay marriage, according to the creator of a website aimed at helping them find the information.
Tom Roes, whose website allows people to download the documents needed to leave the church, said traffic on ontdopen.nl - "de-baptise.nl" - had soared from about 10 visits a day to more than 10,000 after Pope Benedict's latest denunciation of gay marriage this month.
"Of course it's not possible to be 'de-baptized' because a baptism is an event, but this way people can unsubscribe or de-register themselves as Catholics," Roes told Reuters.
He said he did not know how many visitors to the site actually go ahead and leave the church.
About 28 percent of the population in the Netherlands is Catholic and 18 percent is Protestant, while a much larger proportion - roughly 44 percent - is not religious, according to official statistics.
The country is famous for its liberal attitudes, for example to drugs and prostitution, and in April 2001 it was the first in the world to legalize same-sex marriages.
In a Christmas address to Vatican officials, the pope signaled the he was ready to forge alliances with other religions against gay marriage, saying the family was threatened "to its foundations" by attempts to change its "true structure".
Roes, a television director, said he left the church and set up his website partly because he was angry about the way the church downplayed or covered-up sexual abuse in Catholic orphanages, boarding schools and seminaries.
A report by an independent commission published a year ago said there had been tens of thousands of victims of child sexual abuse in the Netherlands since 1945 and criticized the church's culture of silence.

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Apple still said to account for 87% of North American tablet traffic as Kindle Fire, Nexus 7 gain

Apple’s (AAPL) share of the global tablet market is in decline now that low-cost Android slates are proliferating, but the iPad still appears to be the most used tablet by a huge margin. Ad firm Chitika regularly monitors tablet traffic in the United States and Canada and in its latest report, Apple’s iPad was responsible for almost 90% of all tablet traffic across the company’s massive network.
[More from BGR: Samsung looks to address its biggest weakness in 2013]
Using a sample of tens of millions of impressions served to tablets between December 8th and December 14th this year, Chitika determined that various iPad models collectively accounted for 87% of tablet traffic in North America. That figure is down a point from the prior month but still represents a commanding lead in the space.
[More from BGR: New purported BlackBerry Z10 specs emerge: 1.5GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 8MP camera]
The next closest device line, Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle Fire tablet family, had a 4.25% share of tablet traffic during that period, up from 3.57% in November. Samsung’s (005930) Galaxy tablets made up 2.65% of traffic, up from 2.36%, and Google’s (GOOG) Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets combined to account for 1.06% of tablet traffic in early December.
“Despite these gains by some of the bigger players in the tablet marketplace, there has been a negligible impact to Apple’s dominant usage share,” Chitika wrote in a post on its blog.

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Apple CEO gets modest 2012 pay after big 2011

 Apple CEO Tim Cook got $4.2 million in pay for the latest fiscal year, a modest sum compared with last year, when the company's board set him up with stock now worth $510 million for taking the reins in 2011.
Cook's pay for fiscal 2012, which ended in September, consisted of $1.4 million in salary, a bonus of $2.8 million, and $17,000 in company contributions to his 401(k) account and life insurance premiums, according to a filing.
Apple Inc.'s board saw no need to give Cook additional shares in 2012 after the sign-on grant of 1 million shares in 2011. Half of those shares vest in 2016 and the other half in 2021. A lot could happen to the value of the shares before Cook can cash them out, but the sign-on grant made him —at least on paper— the highest-paid U.S. CEO in 2011.
Cook did vest into shares worth $140 million in 2012. Those shares were granted earlier, when he was chief operating officer. He had been acting CEO for a while before the death of company co-founder Steve Jobs in October of 2011.
Apple tends to grant shares to executives every other year. Cook's closest cohorts got big grants in 2012, including top hardware engineer Robert Mansfield, who got shares worth $83 million. Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer and general counsel Bruce Sewell both got stock grants worth just over $66 million, more than double the value of the grants they got two years ago, reflecting the zooming value of Apple's stock.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based company's compensation policies are relatively simple. Missing are many of the perks that other CEOs command, like country club fees and private use of company aircraft.

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Toshiba’s new Lytro-like mobile image sensor could revolutionize smartphone photography

Cramming more megapixels into a smartphone with the thickness of a pencil is not the future of mobile picture-taking. Smartphones have hit a threshold where 8-megapixels is more than enough for taking crisp still shots and 1080p HD video. Many smartphones even perform decent under low-light conditions. But according to the Asahi Shimbun, Toshiba (TOSBF) has a new camera module that could change the way we take photos on smartphones anda tablets, forever.
[More from BGR: Samsung looks to address its biggest weakness in 2013]
Toshiba is reportedly shopping around an image sensor with Lytro-like capabilities, where the point of focus can be adjusted after the picture has been taken. To boil it down: the camera takes 500,000 small images, each with a different area in focus, and then combines them into a large photo where the focus can be changed later. The module is also capable of doing the same for videos.
[More from BGR: Google names 12 best Android apps of 2012]
The company is reportedly planning to sell the camera module “by the end of fiscal 2013″ and is looking to gather interest from other mobile device makers to implement it into smartphones and tablets.

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Discover Financial Services 4Q net income rises

 Discover Financial Services on Thursday reported higher earnings for its fiscal fourth quarter, as users of its namesake credit card stepped up purchases and the company wrote off fewer unpaid balances.
Even so, the Riverwoods, Ill.-based company's results fell short of Wall Street expectations, and investors sent its shares down over 3 percent Thursday.
Discover, the nation's sixth-largest credit card issuer, said total loans, credit card loans and Discover card sales volume increased 6 percent in the quarter, which coincided with the tail end of the back-to-school shopping season and the ramp up to the December holidays — key periods when consumers traditionally spend more.
Discover card sales volume increased to $26.5 billion, while credit card loans at the end of the quarter totaled $49.6 billion. Private student loans rose 6 percent, while personal loans climbed 24 percent, the company said.
"Our strong receivables and sales growth results demonstrate the effectiveness of our marketing programs, consumers' preference for cash rewards and our acceptance and awareness initiatives," Chairman and CEO David Nelms said during a conference call with analysts.
While Discover's customers racked up more debt, more of them paid off credit card balances on time. The delinquency rate on credit-card loans over 30 days past due was 1.86 percent, an improvement of 53 basis points from a year earlier. The rate of charge-offs, when the company writes off unpaid credit card balances, dropped to a historic low of 2.29 percent.
"While the continued improvement in credit appears to be nearing an end, we don't believe we are at a point where charge-offs are poised to rise significantly," Nelms said.
Nationwide the rate of credit card payments at least 90 days overdue edged up in the third quarter to 0.75 percent, according to credit reporting agency TransUnion. The rate is coming off historically low levels, however.
Discover has traditionally had one of the lowest rates for default and delinquency in the credit card industry, the result of tighter lending standards and close monitoring of problem accounts.
The company has reported improvement in its customers' default and late-payment rates since the Great Recession, as cardholders moved to pay down debt and boost savings.
Late-payment rates tend to creep higher in the fall, particularly as cardholders spend more money on holiday shopping, travel and other expenses. The company said that seasonal factor led to a slight increase in its credit card loan delinquency rate between the third and fourth quarter.
While Discover's rates for late payments and defaults remain low, the company has been making more loans. As a result, it has been setting aside more funds to cover potential loan losses.
In the September-to-November quarter, Discover increased its provision for loan losses by 6 percent to $338 million, noting that was somewhat offset by a drop in the number of unpaid credit card balances that had to be written off.
Meanwhile Discover's payment-services business, which competes with Visa and MasterCard, saw dollar volume increase 13 percent in the latest quarter.
In a client note Thursday, RBC Capital Markets analyst Jason Arnold said Discover is benefiting from increased acceptance of its cards and favorable credit trends.
"We remain very enthused by Discover's fundamental position and believe the company remains well positioned for loan and (earnings per share) growth," wrote Arnold, who has a $50 price target on the stock.
For the period ended Nov. 30, Discover earned $541 million, or $1.07 per share. That compares with $513 million, or 95 cents per share, a year earlier.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet expected earnings of $1.12 per share.
Revenue climbed 11 percent to $2 billion, after interest expense. Wall Street forecast $1.96 billion.
Also on Thursday, Discover declared a dividend of 14 cents per share. It will be paid on Jan. 17 to shareholders of record on Jan. 3.
Discover shares fell $1.36, or 3.4 percent, to close at $38.41 Thursday. The stock is up 60 percent this year.

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RIM shares fall at the open after earnings

 Research In Motion Ltd fell in early trading on Friday following the BlackBerry maker's Thursday earnings announcement, when the company outlined plans to change the way it charges for services.
RIM, pushing to revive its fortunes with the launch of its new BlackBerry 10 devices next month, surprised investors when it said it plans to alter its service revenue model, a move that could put the high-margin business under pressure.
Shares fell 16.0 percent to $11.86 in early trading on the Nasdaq. Toronto-listed shares fell 15.8 percent to C$11.74.

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Walgreen fiscal 1Q profit sinks nearly 26 pct

fiscal first-quarter earnings sank nearly 26 percent as costs tied to a couple big deals and Superstorm Sandy helped put a bigger-than-expected dent in the drugstore chain's performance.
CEO Greg Wasson told analysts he saw the quarter as a "turning point" for the Deerfield, Ill., company, which has been working to recapture customers it lost during a contract dispute with Express Scripts Holding Co. But investors didn't buy that message at least initially, as the stock fell deeper than broader market declines in Friday trading.
Walgreen Co. spent $4 billion in cash earlier this year to buy a stake in Alliance Boots, a Swiss company that runs the largest drugstore chain in the United Kingdom. It also spent $438 million on a drugstore chain focused on the mid-South under the USA Drug, Super D Drug and Med-X names.
Costs tied to those deals totaled $23 million in the quarter, and Walgreen said it only counted a small portion of the gains it received from Alliance Boots. It is reporting those gains a quarter after they occur to address audit and regulatory requirements.
The storm system that swept up the East Coast in late October also cost $24 million in the quarter, as it forced Walgreen to temporarily close hundreds of stores.
Overall, Walgreen earned $413 million, or 43 cents per share, in the three months that ended Nov. 30. That compares with net income of $554 million, or 63 cents per share, a year ago. Walgreen said earlier this month revenue fell nearly 5 percent to $17.34 billion.
Excluding one-time costs, adjusted earnings were 58 cents per share.
Analysts forecast, on average, earnings of 70 cents per share, according to FactSet.
Shares dropped 3.3 percent, or $1.24, to close at $36.31 Friday, while the Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 1 percent.
Walgreen runs more than 8,000 drugstores in all 50 states as the nation's largest drugstore chain. The company's revenue has slumped through 2012 after it started the year stuck in a contract squabble with Express Scripts, for which it fills prescriptions.
The companies had let a contract between them expire last December, and their new agreement didn't start until September. The split meant many Express Scripts customers migrated to new drugstores for their prescriptions.
Walgreen is trying to bring those customers back, but competitors like CVS Caremark Corp. and Rite Aid Corp. are pushing aggressively to keep them.
Walgreen said prescriptions filled at stores open at least a year fell nearly 5 percent in the quarter, a smaller decrease than the 8 percent drop it reported in the previous quarter. The drugstore chain saw that improvement as a sign that customers are returning.
"We think we can redeem significant portion of these customers over time," Wasson said.
Walgreen said prescription revenue from stores open at least a year fell 11.3 percent, while revenue from the front end, or rest of the store, dropped 2 percent. Revenue from stores open at least a year is considered a key indicator of retailer health because it excludes stores that recently opened or closed.
Generic drugs have squeezed revenue for Walgreen and other drugstores this year because they are cheaper than brand-name drugs. But they help profitability because they come with a wider margin between the cost for the pharmacy to purchase the drugs and the reimbursement it receives.
Walgreen launched a customer loyalty program called Balance Rewards during the quarter. It allows shoppers to gain points at both Walgreen and Duane Reade stores and for online purchases that translate into cash rewards they can then use at the stores.
Walgreen executives said the program will encourage customers to visit their stores more frequently and to buy more.

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