Don’t Call 9-1-1 Repeatedly Just Because Your Wife Threw Your Beer Away

(kevindean)

Some nights, I dream of a time when there won’t be any ridiculous calls to 9-1-1 reporting all the various non-emergencies we’ve reported on in the past. It’s a good thing I’m an optimistic person who loves to sleep a lot, because I might be dreaming for a while. I’m talking to you, guy who allegedly called 9-1-1 repeatedly because his wife threw his beer out.

After a Florida man called 9-1-1, police arrived on the scene to find that the reason for his calls was that his wife had “thrown out his beer,” reports WPBF.com.

According the arrest report, the man appeared intoxicated (not that we haven’t heard of perfectly sober people being just as ninnymugged as drunk people) and police informed him that the loss of his booze wasn’t a reason to call 9-1-1.

That didn’t appear to sway him whatsoever, as he reportedly called 9-1-1 again and was uncooperative with the operator, allegedly refusing to say what his emergency was. He called back again and started yelling that a woman outside had broken into two of his beers.

Where I come from, we call that “cracking into a cold one.”

When he’d called 9-1-1 seven times over four hours, police arrested him and charged the man with misuse of the 9-1-1 emergency system for making a false alarm or complaint or reporting false information.

Man called 911 on wife for ‘throwing out his beer,’ police say [WPBF.com]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Feds Say Bogus Debt-Relief Operation Just Left Consumers Deeper In Debt

(Frankieleon)

Being elbows-deep in debt is a scary thing, so when a service tells you that you can “become debt free and enjoy financial independence” and that it can reduce how much you owe by “70 to 80 percent on average including all fees,” it might be tempting to give it a shot. But don’t be shocked when you end up scammed out of whatever money you have.

The Federal Trade Commission has charged California-based DebtPro 123 with deceiving customers in paying upwards of $10,000 for debt-relief services that promised to provide legal advice, settle debts, and repair credit, but mostly just left debtors in even worse financial shape than when they started.

According to the FTC’s complaint [PDF], the defendants would require that customers who signed on to the program give them access to directly debit their bank accounts. The company would then take out its fee of up to 20% of a customer’s total debt owed.

“Defendants collected their fees as a portion of the monthly payments, front-loading the fees,” reads the complaint. “For many consumers, more than half of their monthly payment went towards Defendants’ fees. For consumers who were in the program longer than eighteen months, Defendants also charged a $49 monthly

‘maintenance fee.’”

The FTC also alleges that the defendants told consumers to stop paying and communicating with their creditors. Making matters worse, the company often didn’t start any sort of negotiation with creditors until after the customer had received letters from creditors warning of an impending lawsuit for failure to make payments on their debts.

And when the defendants did do any negotiating, the FTC claims they “rarely, if ever, negotiated settlements with all of a consumer’s creditors.”

So even though customers paid substantial fees to the company to get out of debt, the FTC says this debt often increased, “causing them to lose their homes, have their wages garnished, lose their retirement savings, or file for bankruptcy.”

When upset customers demanded refunds, the complaint states that “Defendants then created multiple obstacles to prevent and/or delay consumers’ refund requests,” requiring the filing of complicated forms, some of which had to be notarized.

“Even after consumers submitted all of these forms, and Defendants told them in e-mails and over the phone that a refund was forthcoming, in numerous instances, consumers received no refunds,” alleges the complaint, which charges the defendants with violating the Federal Trade Commission Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, and the Credit Repair Organizations Act.

“These defendants said they would get consumers out of debt, but instead they bilked them out of thousands of dollars, often leaving them worse off than they were before,” said Jessica Rich, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

French Priest Offering Up Blessings To Extend The Life Of Parishioners’ Smartphones

(afagen)

Having a phone that’s always running out of juice is an irksome experience. So one French Catholic priest is offering a help line in the form of a blessing for his parishioners’ smartphones, to extend their battery life. “We must remember that the blessing of communication devices is written into the tradition of the Church just like with boats, carts and all instruments of labor and animals,” he explains. [via UPI.com]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Pilgrim’s Pride Raises Its Bid To More Than $6.7B For Hillshire Brands After Tyson’s Offer

(Tracy O)

When Pilgrim’s Pride first started its pursuit of Hillshire Brands, the company behind Jimmy Dean breakfast sausages, a $6.4 billion offer seemed like a good place to start. But now that Tyson Foods is on the scene, flinging about a $6.8 billion bid of its own, Pilgrim’s Pride is feeling the heat of competition and has come back with a raised offer of more than $6.7 billion.

Pilgrim’s Pride says it’s now valuing the meats and desserts company at $55 a share instead of the $45 a share offer it started with, sources familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal, which comes out to more than $6.7 billion. That’s more than the $50-per-share offer from Tyson foods.

Tyson and Pilgrim’s Pride (which has Brazilian meat giant JBS as its parent company) have been competing hotly for the affections of Hillshire, all to get their hands on things like Sara Lee desserts and Ball Park hot dogs.

Experts are calling the successful courtship of Hillshire a “once in a lifetime opportunity,” as the company’s recognizable and well-loved brands translates into dollar signs in the supermarket aisles, said analysts at Bernstein Research.

Again, neither Pilgrim’s nor Tyson wants Hillshire to go ahead with its plan to buy Pinnacle Foods for $4.3 billion, so whoever wins in this case will likely require the company to scuttle that deal.

Pilgrim’s Pride Boosts Hillshire Offer to $55 a Share [Wall Street Journal]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Franchisees Will Go To Court To Stop Seattle’s $15/Hr Minimum Wage

(camknows)

Yesterday, the Seattle City Council unanimously approved a plan that will raise the minimum wage for workers to $15/hour over the next three-to-seven years. But business-owners who run franchise operations in the city say they are being unfairly targeted, and it looks like this issue may end up in a courtroom.

See, the new Seattle ordinance provides different wage-hike schedules depending on the size of the business. “Schedule 1″ employers are those with more than 500 employees (not just in Seattle, but anywhere in the U.S.). These businesses have until 2017 to raise their base pay to $15/hour (or until 2018 if they also contribute to employee’s health benefits).

“Schedule 2″ employers are those with 500 or fewer workers. These smaller operations have a seven-year ramp up to the $15/hour wages.

But the catch for franchisees is that even if they have fewer than 500 employees, they will be considered Schedule 1 employers if they are part of a franchise network with more than 500 workers.

“The Seattle City Council and Mayor Murray’s plan would force the 600 franchisees in Seattle, which own 1,700 franchise locations employing 19,000 workers, to adopt the full $15 minimum wage in 3 years, while most other small business owners would have seven years to adopt the $15 wage,” said Steve Caldeira, President of the International Franchise Association. “These hundreds of franchise small business owners are being punished simply because they chose to operate as franchisees. Decades of legal precedent have held that franchise businesses are independently owned businesses and are not operated by the brand’s corporate headquarters.”

Caldeira says his organization will be filing a legal challenge against Seattle to “overturn the unfair and discriminatory minimum wage plan.”

Last year, city lawmaker in Washington, D.C., attempted to raise the minimum wage in the nation’s capital to $12.50/hour, but only at larger retailers; a move that many saw as an effort to keep Walmart from expanding into the city (or at least make it pay a toll for doing so). D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray vetoed the wage hike, saying that the bill, “while well-intentioned, is flawed and will fail to achieve its intended goals.”

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Latter-Day Saints Church Says Dating Site Can’t Match Mormons Because “Mormon” Is Their Trademark

(Eric Arnold)

A businessman wants to launch a new website. Like a Christian Mingle or a JDate, its purpose is to let members of a particular religion find love with one another. In this case, the target is members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, better known as Mormons. But he’s running into a snag with the name. When is a Mormon not a Mormon? When he’s a “Mormon®.”

Ars Technica points to the story, a somewhat unusual intellectual property fight. The site founder is perfectly within his rights to try starting a business to help religious singles meet heavenly mates. He wants to call it Mormon Match, which seems pretty straightforward, and he tried to trademark the site’s name. But the church filed a motion to block his claim.

“Mormon,” as it turns out, is a trademarked term. Intellectual Reserve Inc., the holding company that is the church’s parent organization, holds trademarks on the word “Mormon” as well as on the relevant organizations and publications that use the name, like The Book of Mormon and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. It’s not a generic descriptor like “Christian” would be, according to the IRI.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is now coming to the man’s rescue, legally speaking. In an amicus filing, they called on the court to “help deter future trademark ‘bullies’” and find in favor of the site owner. The comparison they drew was from the world of fast food, saying that the IRI can’t block him “from using the word “Mormon” to describe his Mormon matching service as ‘Mormon Match,’ any more than Burger King® could prevent In-n-Out Burger® from including the term ‘burger’ in its name.”

“Trademarks are supposed to be used to protect from unfair competition, not to stifle a small business or to control language,” said the EFF’s IP director.

The site has not yet formally launched, and a hearing date has been set for August 8. Until then, at least, it seems Mormons will have to keep matching elsewhere.

Latter-day Saints claims IP rights to block “Mormon” dating site [Ars Technica]

by Kate Cox via Consumerist

Report: 74 Deaths May Be Tied To GM Ignition Defect

The detent plunger in the ignition switch is believed to be the source of the defect.

While General Motors has admitted that an ignition switch defect in Chevy Cobalts, Saturn Ions and other vehicles has been tied to 13 deaths, others have indicated that the number could be significantly higher than that. A new report from Reuters claims to have found at least 74 fatalities that may be related to the defective switches.

The recalled GM vehicles have ignition switches that can easily be turned into the “off” position because the switch is bumped by the driver’s knee or because the key is attached to a heavy keychain. When this happens, the vehicle’s engine stops and there is no power steering or power brakes. Most importantly, the airbags will not function, so if the car crashes after a stall-out, the airbags will not deploy.

Using this information as the basis of their search, the folks at Reuters sifted through the national Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) database that pulls together crash information from local law-enforcement agencies. They were looking for single-car frontal collisions where the front air bags deployed and the driver or front-seat passenger was killed.

Between 2003 and 2012, Reuters identified 45 front-seat fatalities in the Cobalt and 29 in the Ion, for a total of 74 deaths it believes may be attributable to the faulty switch.

Reuters also looked at the number of these fatal incidents for vehicles in the GM recall compared to the rates for other vehicles from Ford, Honda and Toyota.

Both the Ion and the Cobalt had higher rates for these types of accidents than the other vehicles.

According to Reuters, there were 5.9 fatal Ion crashes where the airbags didn’t deploy for every 100,000 of the vehicles sold. The Cobalt had 4.1 such crashes per 100,000 vehicles.

The highest level from any of the cars used for comparison was the Ford Focus with 2.9 per 100,000 cars, followed by the Honda Civic with 1.6, and then the Toyota Corolla with 1.0.

Since the position of the ignition switch is not reported in all FARS data, it’s impossible to say that all of the instances in which an airbag didn’t deploy were because the switched had turned off, but it does seem to indicate a higher rate of airbag failure in these GM cars.

The chief research officer for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (better known as the place where they smash cars into walls for science) says the Reuters analysis suggests “that Cobalt and Ion are less crashworthy than the other models for which you’ve computed similar statistics,” but cautions that “it cannot be said definitively that the ignition switch problem” caused 74 deaths.

For example in accidents where a car crashes slides under the trailer of a truck during a collision, it’s possible that people in the front seat may be killed while the airbags would not have deployed.

Reuters also points out that its analysis may undercount the total fatalities for a number of reasons: It did not include two deaths of backseat passengers; the available data only goes through 2012, and it only looked at single-car accidents.

NHTSA’s Acting Administrator David Friedman has already stated that he believes there are more than the 47 known crashes acknowledged to be linked to the ignition defect, and now he tells Reuters that “The final death toll associated with this safety defect is not known to NHTSA, but we believe it’s likely that more than 13 lives were lost.”

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Air India Flight Forced To Turn Around After All Four Toilets Become Clogged

(John Kittelsrud)

You know those signs in airplane lavatories that ask you to kindly not flush anything down the drain except toilet paper? Passengers on Air India planes may or may not be adhering to those polite instructions, after a plane was forced to turn around when all four of its toilets clogged.

A more than eight-hour flight to Frankfurt returned to the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi after three hours in the air, simply because none of the toilets were working, reports the Times of India.

“The flushes were unserviceable so the plane had to return to Delhi,” an Air India official confirmed. “The passengers could not board another aircraft since night curfew in Frankfurt would have kicked in by the time the alternate plane would have reached there.”

So whose fault is it? It’s unclear what caused the mass clogging on this particular flight, but airline officials said they’ve faced similar scenarios in the past — and they’re blaming passengers who toss whatever they get for free down the toilet.

An officials explained that a New York to Delhi flight faced the same exact problem, and crew ended up having to ration the use of one working toilet for passengers. When the plane was serviced afterward, the culprit was discovered in its bowels.

“Everything made available to passengers for free was found flushed down the toilet,” another official said. “Dozens of small blankets and pillows, items in overnight pouches such as socks, slippers and towels were flushed down.”

This makes no sense to me, as everything I’ve ever gotten for free is sitting in a corner of my apartment gathering dust, just so I can remember that one time I got free shampoo at that nice hotel in Detroit. I might need it someday.

Clogged loos force Air India Frankfurt flight to return [Times of India]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

There’s Only So Much One Can Do To Sexy Up Google Glass

In addition to the steep price tag, one of the things keeping some folks from checking out Google Glass is that the existing frames for the device are just too… well, let’s politely call them bland. In an attempt to add some level of style to the headgear, Google has teamed up with the folks at Diane von Furstenberg for some frames that may appeal to a wider audience, but really aren’t that different from what’s available.

When it officially launches tomorrow, the DVF | Made for Glass collection will add a total of five new frames and eight new shades to the currently limited options for Glass.

But if you’re expecting seamless integration of the Glass hardware into sleek frames, don’t look here. The DVF frames are not that wildly different from the ones Google began offering earlier this year. There are new colors and slight variations, but Glass wearers still basically have only a handful of options — the bare-bones frames with add-on shades, a few horn-rimmed frames, and ones that look like sunglasses you could get at any drugstore.

The elephant in the room is still the sizable piece of computer attached to the Glass frames. No matter what Glass frames or shades look like, the Glass itself still looks bulky and out of place.

“There’s only so much Google can do to dress up (or hide) the chunky metal object protruding off of a Glass wearer’s face,” writes Fast Company’s Rebecca Greenfield, who says that the DVF designs don’t “push the needle too much further” beyond the options Glass users already have.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Programa de Inmersión Lingüística Otoño 2014

En varias ocasiones nos hemos hecho eco en este espacio de la importancia y los beneficios de fomentar el bilingüismo y el desarrollo de competencias comunicativas y lingüísticas en el alumnado.

El aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras en la educación básica constituye, sin duda ninguna, un objetivo educativo de interés general e indispensable para la mejora del sistema educativo. La Ley Orgánica 8/2013, de 8 de diciembre, para la mejora de la calidad educativa, apoya decididamente el plurilingüismo, fomentando medidas para conseguir que los estudiantes se desenvuelvan con fluidez al menos en una primera lengua extranjera.

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