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NEW YORK (AP) — Starbucks is giving its baristas a shot at an online college degree, an unusual benefit in an industry where higher education is often out of reach for workers.

The coffee chain is partnering with Arizona State University to make an online undergraduate degree available at a steep discount to any of its 135,000 U.S. employees who work at least 20 hours a week.

The program underscores the predicament of many workers who earn low wages, don't have much job security and often hold down more than one job. It also highlights the stark disparities in advancement opportunities between the rich and poor, and how a traditional college education remains a near impossibility for so many.

At an event in New York City on Monday, CEO Howard Schultz told an audience of about 340 Starbucks workers and their guests that the issue was personal because he was the first in his family to attend college.

"I could care less about marketing. This is not about PR," he said of the cynicism he's already encountered about the program.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan also appeared on stage to tell the crowd that education has become increasingly crucial to succeed, given the disappearance of blue-collar jobs that pay well. Duncan urged workers to show other companies why they should follow in Starbucks' footsteps.

"Think of the example you can set for the rest of the nation," Duncan said. "If you guys can do this well ... you're going to change the trajectory of the entire country."

Tuition and room and board has climbed over the years, reaching an average of $18,400 last year for local students at public schools, or $40,900 for private universities, according to the College Board. With prices rising, student loan debt has tripled since 2003 and is now the highest form of household debt after mortgages, according to the Federal Reserve Board of New York.

Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University, said college has moved in a direction "where it's all about exclusion" and that public universities need a new approach to making education accessible. He shot down the notion that an online education is an easy way out.

Starbucks Corp., based in Seattle, said it doesn't know how many workers will apply for its prokgram or how much it will cost over time.

One Starbucks employee from Los Angeles, Michael Bojorquez Echeverria, said he works up to 75 hours a week, including at another job, and attends community college at no cost. But he plans to apply for the Starbucks program because he thinks it will offer greater financial security.

He said he will miss is the socializing that comes with attending school in person. "But hey, if they're going to be paying my fees, I can manage," he said.

Zee Lemke, a Starbucks worker and union organizer in Madison, Wisconsin, said she thought the program could benefit some workers. But she also noted the limitations of the program, since the only option is to earn a degree from a single university's online program.

"Actual in-class experience matters," Lemke said.

Starbucks said workers will have the freedom to pick from 40 educational programs. And they won't be required to stay with the company in exchange for their education.

As with most matters involving financial aid, the terms of the Starbucks program are complicated and would vary depending on the worker's situation. For the freshman and sophomore years, students would pay a greatly reduced tuition after factoring in a scholarship from Starbucks and ASU and financial aid, such as Pell grants.

It would work in much the same way for the junior and senior years, except that Starbucks would reimburse any money that workers pay out of pocket.

That means employees who already have two years of college under their belts would be able to finish school at no cost.

Online tuition at ASU can vary but is about $10,000 a year. Most Starbucks workers would likely qualify for a Pell grant, which can be as high as $5,730 a year. Starbucks did not say how much money it is contributing to the scholarship it's providing with ASU.

Arizona State University's online program, which already has an enrollment of more than 10,000, stands to benefit from the students Starbucks will send its way.

There have been other efforts at offering low-wage workers education benefits. In 2010, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. started offering partial tuition grants for workers at American Public University, a for-profit, online school.

Starbucks also already has program that reimburses workers for up to $1,000 a year at City University of Seattle or at Strayer University. The company said that will be phased out by 2015 in favor of the new program.

Workers would have to meet the same admission standards as other ASU students. Only workers at Starbucks' 8,200 company-operated stores would be eligible. Another 4,500 Starbucks locations are operated by franchisees.

The program is also available to Starbucks' other chains, including Teavana tea shops and Seattle's Best.

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Follow Candice Choi at www.twitter.com/candicechoi

WASHINGTON (AP) — Judges around the country are grappling with the ripple effects of a 2-year-old Supreme Court ruling on GPS tracking, reaching conflicting conclusions on the case's meaning and tackling unresolved questions that flare in a world where privacy and technology increasingly collide.

The January 2012 opinion in United States v. Jones set constitutional boundaries for law enforcement's use of GPS devices to track the whereabouts of criminal suspects. But the different legal rationales offered by the justices have left a muddled legal landscape for police and lower-court judges, who have struggled in the last two years with how and when to apply the decision — especially at a time when new technologies are developed at a faster rate than judicial opinions are issued.

The result is that courts in different jurisdictions have reached different conclusions on similar issues, providing little uniformity for law enforcement and judges on core constitutional questions. Technological advancements are forcing the issue more and more, a development magnified by a heightened national debate over privacy versus surveillance and the disclosure of the National Security Agency's bulk collection of Americans' telephone records.

"Courts are all over the place on all of these issues," said Hanni Fakhoury, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy group.

Among the questions being confronted: Should GPS evidence gathered before the 2012 decision be admissible in court? What are the rights of a passenger in a car being tracked by GPS? And how might the ruling affect other types of technology, such as pole-camera surveillance and "Stingray" devices that capture cellphone data?

That ambiguity was on display just last week, when an Atlanta-based federal appeals court ruled in the case of a man imprisoned for armed robberies that investigators need a warrant to get cellphone tower tracking data, evidence authorities use to place suspects in the vicinity of a crime. Yet an appeals court in New Orleans last year authorized warrantless cell site tracking in a case that presented similar legal issues. A related federal case in Michigan is now on appeal, too.

The questions form a broader debate about how police should confront "circumstances of legal ambiguity," said former federal prosecutor Caleb Mason, who has written on the Jones case.

"Do we want them pushing the envelope as long as no legal authority, no appellate court, has expressly told them no?" he asked.

The Supreme Court ruling in Jones invoked compelling legal questions of privacy and trespass, set against the backdrop of a high-tech world.

The justices unanimously held that police erred when, without a valid warrant, they attached a GPS tracking device to the Jeep of a Washington, D.C., nightclub owner. The surveillance continued for a month, leading authorities to a stash house for drugs and helping secure an indictment against the suspect, Antoine Jones.,

The high court unanimously agreed that using the device constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment, which bars unreasonable searches and seizures. But the justices stopped short of saying a warrant is always required — an important point since not all searches require warrants — and issued three separate opinions offering different legal rationales for their views. Five of the nine justices mused at the time that the issues probably would resurface.

One, Samuel Alito, wrote that technological change can alter the public's expectation of privacy and that lawmakers may be better suited than judges to account for the changes. Justice Sonia Sotomayor also discussed privacy concerns in the digital age in her separate opinion.

The Justice Department, too, has wrestled with the case's outcome.

A department memo dated February 2012 advises federal agents when in doubt to get a warrant for GPS evidence given the "substantial uncertainty" surrounding the decision. In investigations where warrantless GPS evidence was obtained before the case was decided, the memo says, prosecutors may reasonably argue to admit the evidence provided that the officers were acting in good faith based on their understanding of the law at the time.

Spokesman Peter Carr said last week that it was department policy to obtain a search warrant to use any technology in locations where there's a reasonable privacy expectation.

Some courts have agreed that warrantless GPS tracking prior to the Jones case was acceptable, though that idea isn't universally accepted.

In throwing out evidence against three brothers charged in a wave of pharmacy burglaries, a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that police were required to get a warrant before using a GPS device in 2010, rejecting prosecutors' "good faith" argument. The entire court reheard the case May 28.

Courts have been similarly divided on whether car passengers, or nonowners, have legal authority to challenge GPS evidence against them.

The Jones decision has also been invoked in court disputes over the NSA's telephone records collection. A federal judge in Washington cited the opinions of Alito and Sotomayor in the Jones case to find that telephone users have a reasonable expectation of privacy and to declare the NSA program likely unconstitutional. A federal judge in New York rejected a plea from civil libertarians to invoke those same opinions and instead upheld the NSA program.

Police and judges also are wrestling with the privacy implications of other modern forms of surveillance. In Washington state, for example, privacy advocates are arguing that the Jones case requires a court to throw out warrantless video surveillance captured by a pole camera left by police for a month outside a defendant's house in a drugs and weapons case.

In one way or another, the questions will likely come before the Supreme Court again, said Brian Hauss, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer. Police should have clear rules that apply across multiple forms of technology, he said. "Right now, they're operating in an area of total confusion without significant judicial checks on their authority."

MANAUS, Brazil (AP) — Light plays off the Solimoes River, duplicating the verdant canopy of the Amazon rainforest on the water's surface.

The landscape that glides by the Almirante Barbosa is breathtaking, but almost no one aboard the boat pays attention. Nearly all the passengers doze in dozens of hammocks strung from the boat's rafters, lulled to sleep by the rocking motion, the motor's chugging, and the tropical swelter.

Boats like the Almirante Barbosa are the lifeline of Brazil's Amazon region, carrying passengers and staple goods ranging from rice to diapers to remote riverside villages inaccessible any other way.

They're also a great way for World Cup fans in the remote Amazon city of Manaus to make a quick jungle escape between matches.

The lumbering wooden vessels are slow going — the Almirante Barbosa chugs at some 20 kilometers (12 miles) an hour — and trips can stretch out for days or even weeks.

While most tourists opt for speedboats for their jungle journeys, a riverboat day trip can give even World Cup visitors on a tight schedule a taste of authentic Amazonian life.

Carved out of the heart of the world's largest forest where the onyx waters of the Rio Negro and milky tea-hued Solimoes meet to form the immense Amazon, Manaus is host to four matches, including the game between Cameroon and Croatia on Wednesday.

Dozens of boats set sail from Manaus daily for destinations such as Belem, about 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) to the east, or to Sao Gabriel da Cachoiera, 860 kilometers (530 miles) to the west, along the Rio Negro's headwaters near Brazil's border with Colombia.

Around the port, hustlers with loudspeakers announce their vessels' destinations and the various stops they will make along the way. Laborers wearing hats that look like Turkish fezzes jostle up and down the docks with giant loads atop their heads, the hats' flat surfaces helping balance impressive loads — sacks of beans and sugar, giant bunches of bananas, six-packs of beer.

Manacapuru, about 79 kilometers (49 miles) up the Solimoes from Manaus, is among the best destinations for an easy day trip — and a ticket that's just $11. There's not much to see in the town itself, but the six-hour voyage is stunning. Plus, Manacapuru is among a few destinations easily accessible by car, and a $65 cab ride gets day-trippers back to the city in an hour.

Potential travelers would be wise to board well ahead of the scheduled departure and bring a hammock. Stalls in Manaus' Adolpho Lisboa market in front of the port, and a row of shops behind the market, have hammocks for every budget, from $5 to $100-plus.

Travelers without hammocks will have a hard time finding a place to sit on the boat, and competition for on-board real estate can be fierce. On the often-overcrowded vessels, hammocks are hung from the overhead wooden beams and stacked two- or even three-high bunk bed-style, with adults on the lower levels and kids above.

Food is included in the ticket price, but gastronomical variety is not: Every day, there's bread and coffee for breakfast, followed by chicken, rice and white noodles for lunch and dinner. The only other food available is fare like cookies and chips at the boat's snack bar.

As dusk falls, the collective midday stupor lifts and the passengers gather at the railings to watch the sunset play on the water and the floating houses, bars and general stores of the riverside communities slip past. The men sip on cold beers as the women gossip and chase after toddlers. Fussing babies are breast-fed and rocked back to sleep by the gentle back and forth of the ship.

"I've been making this trip every two months for three years, and I have the choice: take a speedboat that gets me to where I'm going in four hours, or spend 18 hours on a riverboat," said Marina Vieira, a 28-year-old biologist conducting field research in a remote community up the Solimoes. "I always, always take the riverboat."

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Jenny Barchfield on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jennybarchfield

Between Rick Perry, Ted Cruz and Wendy Davis, Texas politicians in recent years have lived up to their state's reputation for producing larger-than-life characters.

That makes the Texas political scene a natural for the Hollywood treatment.

HBO has given God Save Texas, a drama about the state's often raucous political culture, the green light for development. It's set to unfold at the Texas statehouse, a perennial flashpoint for national debates about issues ranging from abortion to gun rights to the size and role of government.

According to an early description first reported by Deadline.com, the show will follow an "idealistic cowboy" who, after election to the state legislature, "becomes the target of the powerful energy lobby and learns how to survive in the crazy, brutal world of Texas politics."

It's being developed from Sonny's Last Shot, a 2005 play by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Lawrence Wright, who will also write and co-produce the project.

State government isn't typical fodder for premium cable, but Texas politics have lately gripped the nation's imagination, pushing the state's colorful perspectives and personalities into the fore. "The thing about Texas is that it's a little larger than life," executive producer Lauren Shuler Donner said. "You can't make up characters like this."

Indeed, the show's creators have a deep bench of Texas pols from which to draw dramatic inspiration. It includes veterans of public scrutiny and caricature, including Perry, the long-serving governor and former presidential candidate, and comparatively fresh, yet polarizing personalities such as gubernatorial hopefuls Greg Abbott and Wendy Davis — whose rivalry has caught fire on the national stage.

Even if they don't appear by name, those familiar voices will likely be heard on the show in one form or another. "Larry did a lot of research," Shuler Donner said. "He met with a lot of characters in Austin."

The show can also be expected to tap into ongoing debates about guns, gay rights, and immigration. But the season one story arc will center on another issue painfully familiar to Texans: the state's recent patterns of extreme drought. Shuler Donner suggested efforts toward drought relief would run afoul with special interest groups in Austin.

Shuler Donner says the pilot for God Save Texas is set to enter production soon.