uNorth Carolina Town Still Stuck With Stench Of Burned Sweet Potatoes Weeks After Thanksgivingr

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  It’s been two weeks since Thanksgiving, and yet residents of one North Carolina are still smelling burned sweet potatoes in the air. Was it an extremely serious baking mishap? Not exactly — but heat is definitely involved.

  A silo full of dehydrated sweet potatoes has been smoldering in Farmville, N.C. since at least Nov. 27, when the fire was first noticed, the town’s manager told the Associated Press.

  As a result, citizens have been complaining about the smoke (though the smell might be pretty nice, one might imagine), while firefighters and other town workers have been at the scene around the clock trying to put the fire out for good.

  Thus far at least 25 million gallons of water have been directed at the silo, but there’s still word on when the fire is expected to finally be tamed.

  Officials say there’s no health threat to the town of almost 5,000 people, and that the company that owns the silo is expected to pay firefighting costs.

  No one knows exactly when the fire started, but it could’ve been sparked when the company tried drilling holes to dislodge a hardened mass of sweet potatoes that got wet over the summer, then dried and solidified.

  “It’s been described as harder than concrete,” the town manager said. Firefighters have switched from using a machine to continuously douse the silo to periodic bursts of 10,000 gallons of water into the top of the silo.

  “What they’re trying to do is allow the silo to burn itself out,” he said.

  Long Past Thanksgiving, Burnt Sweet Potatoes Vex Small Town [Associated Press]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

u1.5M Bottles Of Sweet Leaf Tea Recalled Over Glass Fragmentsr

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• Some days you just don’t want water or a soda to go with your lunch, so instead you pick up a bottle of something a little sweeter. But if that something else happens to be Sweet Leaf Tea, it might contain an extra ingredient: glass fragments. 

  Sweet Leaf Tea Company, a subsidiary of Nestlé Waters North America, announced today that it would recall 1.5 million bottles of tea after pieces of glass were found floating in the drinks.

  The recall covers certain 16-ounce glass bottles of original, raspberry, peach, half-and-half lemonade, mint-and-honey, and green tea with citrus teas distributed nationwide between Feb. 27 and Dec. 6.

  According to the company, which has received four complaints of glass in the product but no injuries, the issue is the result of glass breakage during the bottle filling process.

  The following Sweet Leaf Tea products are covered by the recall:

  

   

  Consumers can check to see if their tea is affected by looking at the manufacturing date and best by date on the shoulder of the bottle.

  Sweet Leaf says that all recalled bottles are being removed from store shelves. Customers who have bottles at home are urged not to drink them and to contact the company or return the item to the place of purchase for a refund.

  [via The Wall Street Journal]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uFacebook Adds Offline News Feed To Mobile App So You’ll Never Miss Another Baby Photo, Gym Status Againr

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  You’re trapped on the subway, and the panic sets in: what is that high school acquaintance doing today? Is he/she going to the gym and THEN the grocery store or vice versa? Does your friend in Nevada’s baby like eating avocado upon first try or not? These questions will all be answered, now that Facebook is enabling an offline mode on its mobile app that allows users to browse their News Feeds even when their connection is slow or nonexistent.

  Facebook announced today that users will be able to not only like and share posts while offline in the mobile app, which is something they can do currently, but they’ll also see new posts in their News Feed even when their service is shoddy.

  Any comments users write while they’re offline will post once they’ve reconnected, the company wrote in a blog post. Because you cannot forget to tell that girl you went to camp with in 1999 how happy you are to know that she’s checked in at the Cheesecake Factory after her usual gym, tanning and laundry routine.

  “These changes will help anyone who is on a poor internet connection — even those whose network connectivity is generally good but who have intermittent connections in places like subways and tunnels, or at large events,” the company wrote.

  Here’s how it’ll work, according to Facebook: instead of offline users seeing a spinning icon when they’ve reached the end of their available feed, the update that’s being tested would look at all the previously downloaded stories on your phone and rank them based on their relevance. Then it’ll factor in whether the images are available, and then show you relevant stories you haven’t seen yet.

  Once you’re back online and Facebook receives new stories, it’ll load and rank those stories normally.

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uChipotle CEO Apologizes For Making People Sick: “We Are Going To Be The Safest Place To Eat”r

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  After Chipotle customers all over the country have fallen ill from eating at the chain’s restaurants, co-CEO Steve Ells says he’s sorry the restaurant has caused so many to become sick, and promised to implement new food safety guidelines to help prevent such outbreaks from happening in the future.

  “It’s a really tough time,” Ells said during an interview on the Today show (warning: link contains video that autoplays). “I have to say I’m sorry for the people that got sick. They’re having a tough time. I feel terrible about that, and we’re doing a lot to rectify this and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  To that end, Ells says the company is dedicated to cleaning things up.

  “The procedures we’re putting in place today are so above industry norms that we are going to be the safest place to eat,” Ells promised during the segment.

  Chipotle is busy with its latest food-related illness issues, after 120 Boston College students fell ill with norovirus after eating at a campus location.

  This, on the heels of the nine-state E. Coli outbreak linked to Chipotle that’s sickened more than 50 people in California, New York, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Minnesota

  Though the E. Coli outbreak caused the company’s stock price to drop 10%, shares were up 5% this morning after Ells’ TV appearance and apology, CNBC notes (warning: link contains video that autoplays).

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uIs Shopping On Christmas Day The Next Big Thing In Retail?r

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  For better or worse, we’ve come to a point where shopping on Thanksgiving day is no longer a fringe case. But what about Dec. 25? With the exception of some vital retailers — drugstores, the occasional supermarket, gas stations, and, most importantly, movie theaters — most stores don’t even mess with the idea of opening on Christmas. But a new survey says that a not insignificant number of shoppers would be willing to buy stuff after they clean up all the wrapping paper.

  This is according to research from LoyaltyOne Consulting, which surveyed nearly 1,300 shoppers from across the country and found that, overall, 18% of them said that if stores opened after 6 p.m. on Christmas day, they would be there, ready to do some shopping.

  The eagerness to ditch their families in favor of the mall was particularly strong among those in the 18-24 age group. Nearly 1/3 (30%) said they would shop on Christmas. The numbers didn’t dip much for the next oldest age bracket, 25-to-34-year-olds, with 27% willing to skip the Christmas ham for potential post-Christmas savings.

  But before the malls start ordering all their retailers to open up on Christmas or else (like they do on Thanksgiving), a larger number of people are pretty opposed to the idea of shopping on Dec. 25.

  According to the survey, 24% of all respondents said they not only wouldn’t shop on Christmas, but that they would also be less likely to shop in the future at a store that does open on Christmas. More than half of the people (58%) simply said they have no intention of ever shopping on Christmas. While that percentage was smaller for the 18-24 (53%) and 25-34 (52%) age brackets, it still seems to indicate that a majority of consumers just want the day off from shopping.

  Of course, online retailers don’t shut down their websites for the holiday, so consumers are more free than ever to make purchases at whatever hour — on whichever day — they choose.

  We’d predict that — rather than risk the ire of shoppers who oppose opening on Christmas (and dealing with the extra cost of paying for employees who come in to work on Dec. 25) — retailers may simply start offering Christmas day deals online for those who want to test out their new phone by buying something on it with the gift card they got from the uncle who never visits.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uGM Paid Out $594.5M For 399 Ignition Switch Death And Injury Claimsr

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  Four months after General Motors said it had approved 124 death claims – 10 times the number the carmaker originally acknowledged – related to the massive ignition switch defect it failed to address in more than 2.59 million vehicles, lawyers for the company have calculated a final bill for paid-out claims: $594.5 million. 

  In all, the company provided compensation for 399 eligible claims – 124 for deaths and 275 for injuries – representing about 90% of all approved claims, the Associated Press reports.

  While that might seem like a high number, GM previously disclosed that nine-out-of-10 ignition switch compensation claims submitted to the fund were declined. The fund, which ceased accepting claims after Jan. 31, ultimately rejected 3,944 of the 4,343 applications it received.

  Camille Biros, deputy director for the fund, told the AP on Thursday that the claims that were rejected “couldn’t support any connection to the ignition switch” defect that affected more than two million GM vehicles, most notably the Chevy Cobalt and Saturn Ion.

  The defective switch in these vehicles could be inadvertently turned off while the car was in use, resulting in a loss of power to the airbags.

  “We faced the ignition switch issue with integrity, dignity and a clear determination to do the right thing both in the short and long term,” a spokesperson for the company said in a statement.

  Of the claims paid out, 128 were for crashes that happened before GM emerged from bankruptcy in July of 2009, according to the fund.

  Those payouts are a bit surprising, as the company wasn’t required to provide compensation. A bankruptcy judge previously ruled that the “new” company was shielded from such claims.

  Some at GM knew about the defect as early as 2001, before the affected vehicles even went into production. The design flaw was quietly fixed several years later but without issuing a recall to fix vehicles on the road. Additionally, the part number was not changed, meaning there was no easy way to differentiate between the defective switches and the improved parts.

  The company claims that upper management at GM did not learn of the problem until shortly before issuing a recall in 2014, a decade after people began dying in accidents related to the ignition issue. Even though documents turned up during a federal investigation showed that at least one current GM VP was made aware of the defect in 2005, the carmaker has denied any sort of cover-up and instead blames a “culture of incompetence.”

  GM agreed in September to pay $900 million to the Justice Department to settle criminal charges tied to the long-delayed ignition recall.

  The final compensation fund report only closes the door on a portion of GM’s issues related to the ignition switch debacle. The AP reports that the company still faces 217 wrongful death and injury lawsuits in the U.S. and Canada.

  Additionally, it must still face 122 lawsuits related to reduced value of affected vehicles.

  GM ignition switch fund pays out $594.5M on 399 claims [The Associated Press]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uFederal Judge Rules That California Uber Drivers Can Sue For Vehicle And Phone Expensesr

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  There’s a fairly low barrier to entry if you want to work as a driver for Uber or similar ride-hailing apps: you need to be over 21, have a safe driving record, and have a car that meets the company’s criteria. Then the company sends you work through their app, an arrangement that a current class action lawsuit says makes drivers employees of the service, entitled to reimbursement of their car and phone expenses. Now a federal district judge in California has ruled that the workers are entitled to have Uber cover their vehicle and smartphone expenses.

  Judge Edward Chen certified the plaintiffs in this case as a class action, and now he’s ruled that members of the class are allowed to sue Uber for what the judge deems the biggest expenses that drivers have: fuel and maintenance for their cars, and their smartphone bills.

  Uber’s attorneys tried to argue that if drivers sued for vehicle and phone expenses, they would be giving up their right to sue for other, potentially lucrative expenses that the company didn’t name.

  The judge didn’t find this argument persuasive, writing that “the Court finds that it is sufficient where, as here, it seems self-evident that vehicle-related and phone expenses will likely comprise the majority of any recoverable expenses from performing a transportation service and Uber has presented no persuasive evidence to the contrary.”

  For its part, Uber stands by their explanation that their drivers are better off as contractors than as employees, saying in a statement:

  Nearly 90 percent of drivers say the main reason they use Uber is because they love being their own boss. Drivers use Uber on their own terms; they control their use of the app along with where and when they drive. As employees, drivers would lose the personal flexibility they value most – they would have set shifts, earn a fixed hourly wage, and be unable to use other ridesharing apps.

  Uber Drivers Win a Round in Expense Fight [Courthouse News]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist