uNew York Tells DraftKings & FanDuel To Cease Operations In The Stater

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• Almost a month after Nevada declared that daily fantasy sports sites like DraftKings and FanDuel are unlicensed gambling operations and barred them from operating in the state, New York appears to have come to a similar conclusion.

  As first reported by ESPN, NY state attorney general Eric Schneiderman — who began looking into these sites after news reports raised serious concerns about their business practices — has sent letters to both DraftKings and FanDuel telling them to cease and desist selling their fantasy sports betting services in the state.

  That means that if you live in New York City — home to more than a few former Wall Streeters-turned-fantasy sports bigshots — or anywhere else in the state, you wouldn’t be allowed to enter any tournaments on these sites. It’s possible the sites could convince a court to stay the AG’s decision pending a legal review.

  Schneiderman’s office reviewed the business operations of these companies and concluded that they “constitute illegal gambling under New York law.”

  As we’ve explained before, fantasy sports betting was exempted from a 2006 law barring financial institutions from transferring money to these sites. The argument at the time was that fantasy sports are games of skill, rather than gambling.

  But critics of the industry — which recently received huge investments from venture capitalists, and have signed high-profile marketing deals with sports leagues and major broadcast networks — say that fantasy sports are just as much a game of chance as poker, or betting at the racetrack.

  Which seems to be the conclusion reached by Schneiderman.

  “[U]nlike traditional fantasy sports, daily fantasy sports companies are engaged in illegal gambling under New York law,” reads a statement from the AG to ESPN, “causing the same kinds of social and economic harms as other forms of illegal gambling, and misleading New York consumers.”

  Schneiderman dismisses the argument that no one is hurt by fantasy sports sites.

  “Daily fantasy sports is neither victimless nor harmless, and it is clear that DraftKings and FanDuel are the leaders of a massive, multi-billion-dollar scheme intended to evade the law and fleece sports fans across the country,” explains the AG. “Today we have sent a clear message: not in New York, and not on my watch.”

  In a statement to Consumerist, a rep for DraftKings says the site is “very disappointed” by today’s “hasty” decision from Schneiderman, claiming that the AG “did not take any time to understand our business or why daily fantasy sports are clearly a game of skill.”

  DraftKings says it “will examine and vigorously pursue all legal options available to ensure our over half a million customers in New York State can continue to play the fantasy sports games they love.”

  Meanwhile, FanDuel accuses Schneiderman of grandstanding.

  “This is a politician telling hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers they are not allowed to play a game they love and share with friends, family, coworkers and players across the country,” reads the FanDuel statement. “The game has been played — legally — in New York for years and years, but after the Attorney General realized he could now get himself some press coverage, he decided a game that has been around for a long, long time is suddenly now not legal.”

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uPlease Stop Sharing This Photo Of A Nordstrom Anti-Christmas Creep Posterr

uLawmakers Continue Crusade To Rein In For-Profit Colleges Targeting Servicemembersr

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  In recent months federal regulators and government agencies have increased scrutiny of for-profit colleges and their interactions with servicemembers, veterans and their families. Today, lawmakers furthered that mission by introducing legislation that would restore previous limits on how much money these educational institutions can receive from the federal government via military benefits and other programs. 

  The Protecting Our Students and Taxpayers (POST) Act aims to put an end to the for-profit industry’s allegedly predatory marketing campaigns and aggressive recruitment of military members and their families by closing loopholes in federal funding equations.

  The bill, introduced by Senators Dick Durbin, of Illinois, Jack Reed, of Rhode Island, Richard Blumenthal, of Connecticut, and Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, would prohibit for-profit colleges and universities from receiving more than 85% of their revenue from the federal government and change the calculation of federal revenue to include all federal funds.

  “Too many servicemembers and veterans have been targeted by predatory for-profit colleges, and our men and women in uniform deserve better,” Warren said in a statement. “The POST Act will tighten the rules and help protect veterans by closing the loophole that permits for-profit schools to prey on our servicemembers.”

  The current federal provision – known as the 90/10 rule and used to cap for-profit colleges’ federal funding – bars for-profit colleges and universities from deriving more than 90% of their revenue from the U.S. Department of Education’s federal student aid programs. The other 10% needs to come from sources other than the federal government.

  Currently, tuition assistance such as the GI Bill for servicemembers and MyCAA for their spouses are not included in the 90/10 calculation. That essentially allows for-profit colleges to count federal funds for 100% of their funding, legislators say.

  The POST Act would restore the federal funding rule to 85/15, which was changed to the present 90/10 division in 1998.

  The bill would also change the definition of what counts as federal revenue so that it includes all federal funds, essentially eliminating the incentive for for-profit schools to aggressively recruit servicemembers and veterans.

  “Reinstating the 85/15 rule will help hold for-profit colleges accountable and prevent them from preying on veterans and servicemembers,” Reed said in a statement. “Too much federal funding has poured into these for profit-college companies without adequate results for veterans or taxpayers. We need to ensure veterans and taxpayers alike are getting better value for their investment and we can start by closing the 90/10 loophole.”

  In addition to closing the funding loopholes legislators say for-profit colleges exploit, the POST Act would hold institutions accountable if they don’t abide by the proposed 85/15 division.

  Under the legislation, for-profit colleges would lose eligibility to participate in federal student aid programs after one year of noncompliance with the new rule. Current law requires the schools to be noncompliant for two years before losing eligibility.

  It would also prohibit schools from issuing their own private student loans to borrowers and counting those fund toward outside revenue.

  Legislators and regulators have recently taken a tougher stance when it comes to for-profit colleges and veterans and servicemembers.

  In October, the Department of Defense put University of Phoenix on probation, meaning the school is barred from recruiting on U.S. military installations, and its participation in the DoD Tuition Assistance Program for active duty military personnel is on hold.

  According to an earlier report from Reveal, the University of Phoenix received $20 million in military tuition assistance from the Pentagon last year and $1.2 billion in GI Bill benefits since 2009.

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uClosed Northwestern Chipotle Restaurants Will Start Opening On Wednesdayr

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  If you live near in Seattle or Portland and have been pining for a Chipotle burrito since all local restaurants shut down on Halloween due to an E. coli outbreak of undetermined origin, your week and a half of patience has been rewarded. The restaurants are reopening this week.

  The company hasn’t specified when each location will open, but they will begin on Wednesday, November 11. Give your favorite location a call if you live in the area and are thinking about heading over. The threat of E. coli illness appears to have passed: all batches of ingredients that were still in the restaurants were tested, as were employees.

  If, for example, the illness came from a specific batch of steak or cilantro, the batch may have been used up long before any customers even reported symptoms of illness. E. coli usually incubates in your gut for two to eight days (and sometimes longer) before causing abdominal cramps, bloody diarrhea, and kidney failure in some very young or very old people who become infected.

  Seattle-based attorney (and publisher of the excellent site Food Safety News) Bill Marler, who handles food safety cases across the country, has filed two lawsuits so far, and says that he is representing many more customers. “I think [Chipotle’s] corporate leadership needs to step back [and] look at their food safety culture,” Marler told Buzzfeed News last week.

  That’s what Chipotle has promised to do in the future: their business depends on it going forward. The company says that it plans to test batches of ingredients proactively in the future, as well as improving their food safety procedures and performing food safety audits nationwide.

  PACIFIC NORTHWEST RESTAURANT CLOSURE UPDATE [Chipotle]
  Multistate Outbreak of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli O26 Infections Linked to Chipotle Mexican Grill in Washington and Oregon [CDC]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uT-Mobile Unveils Free Video Streaming For Two Dozen Services, Doubles Data Plansr

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  T-Mobile CEO John Legere today, at the company’s tenth “Uncarrier” announcement event, confirmed earlier reports that the big pink phone carrier will shortly stop charging streaming video against customers’ data plans.

  Speaking to an audience of seemingly enthusiastic T-Mobile employees, Legere promised “to fix a stupid, broken, arrogant industry” while repeatedly slamming the competition his company faces from “Dumb and Dumber” businesses AT&T and Verizon. And what will fix the industry this time, according to Legere? Doubled data packs and free video.

  Legere spoke out at length against family plans, overage fees, and every other pricing mechanism common to the wireless industry. He called family plans “the greatest ill in this industry,” and explained that they lead to “overages and overbuying.” Consumers will pay $2.4 billion in overage fees and pay $45 billion to expand data plans in the hopes of avoiding overage plans this year, said Legere, adding, “I don’t want this to sound like a super villain movie, but it is… Customers are living in fear or in shock of their bill. This is a big deal, and I’m pissed.”

  The solution? Doubling data. As of this Sunday, all of T-Mobile’s Simple Choice plans — personal and business — will have double the data they currently do.

  Legere’s data theme also carried through to the other half of the presentation, BingeOn.

  Video is increasingly a huge driver of data use, Legere explained. The average user has gone from using 1.6 GB of data per month to using 3.4 GB and rising, while video consumption has grown over 250%.

  Under the tagline “Start watching your shows, stop watching your data,” Legere introduced the program, the video equivalent of T-Mobile’s Music Freedom zero-rating program for audio.

  “You can stream video without using any of your data bucket,” Legere confirmed. The service is launching with 24 participating partners, including Netflix, HBO Now, HBO Go, Hulu, Sling, ESPN, Showtime, Starz, Encore, Fox Sports, NBC Sports, Crackle, UStream, and others.

  BingeOn is “open to any service that wants to come, anyone that can meet the technical specs,” said Legere. He added, “Before you ask, this is not a net neutrality problem. This is similar to music freedom. It’s free. The providers don’t pay, the customers don’t pay, and most important, what I’m going to tell you about is, you can shut it off. It’s complete customer choice.”

  New customers will be eligible for BingeOn on November 15; existing customers can access it beginning November 19.

  
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by Kate Cox via Consumerist

uApple Launches Apple Music For Androidr

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• Apple fulfilled a promise to bring its subscription music service to the other side today, launching Apple Music for Android users. Most of the functionality for the new app is the same as its iOS counterpart, minus Siri integration. The Android-based app also offers a free, three-month trial of the service to new users. After that, the service costs $9.99/month for a single user or $14.99 for a family plan, so don’t forget to cancel your subscription if you don’t want to foot the bill after 90 days. [via ArsTechnica]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uLawmaker Wants FDA To Look Into Safety Of Caffeinated Peanut Butterr

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  It was only a matter of time: as regulators keep an eye keenly focused on how powders, boozy energy drinks and other products that contain caffeine are marketed, one lawmaker is pushing the Food and Drug Administration to look closely at a newcomer, caffeinated peanut butter.

  Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York is calling for the FDA to investigate the safety of a peanut butter spread sold by a company called Steem that promises to deliver the same dose of caffeine in two tablespoons that two cups of coffee would provide.

  Caffeine is a powerful stimulant that can cause adverse symptoms like increased heart rate and blood pressure, Schumer says, adding that an overdose can be fatal.

  “Parents across the country shouldn’t have to worry about a scenario in which their child might unknowingly bite into a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that contains more caffeine than two cups of coffee,” Schumer a press release. “The thought of super caffeinated peanut butter should give everyone the jitters because of the potential health threat it poses, especially in the hands of children and teenagers. The FDA should take immediate action and investigate whether this caffeinated food product should be pulled from shelves.”

  Steem said in a statement (via Quartz) that it welcomes federal oversight, and that it has “complied with any and every obligation we were required to before putting our product out on shelves.”

  It also added that the peanut butter is safe when “used as directed,” which includes keeping it away from pets.

  If the FDA takes action, it wouldn’t be the first time the agency has stepped in to keep caffeinated products off the shelves: in 2013, Wrigley pulled its caffeinated gum “Alert Energy” from store shelves after the FDA voiced concerns.

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist