uCDC Investigators Link Current Blue Bell Listeria Outbreak To Illness From 2010r

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  (Sarah Braun)

  For the past two months, Blue Bell Creameries has grappled with an outbreak of listeria that has been linked to three deaths and at least 10 illness in four states. While the source of the contamination has yet to be determined, federal investigators now believe the issue has been ongoing for at least five years.

  NBC News reports that genetic tests performed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention link the Listeria bacteria from two Blue Bell factories to at least six cases of listeriosis that took place as far back as 2010.

  Prior to linking the six older cases, the CDC said the outbreak had sickened five people – three of whom later died – in Kansas, three in Texas and one each in Arizona and Oklahoma.

  The CDC says that the outbreak involves two distinct strains of bacteria that have been making consumers sick across the nation.

  “This is a complex and ongoing multistate outbreak investigation of listeriosis illnesses occurring over several years,” CDC said in a statement. “Several strains of Listeria monocytogenes are involved in this outbreak. Information indicates that various Blue Bell brand products are the source of this outbreak.”

  CDC experts say testing of recently made Blue Bell products has provided a link to six cases of listeria that occurred in Texas, Oklahoma and Arizona starting in 2010.

  Dr. Robert Tauxe, an expert on food borne disease with the CDC, says that detectives first discovered the relationship between the past listeriosis cases when further investigating the recent deaths in Kansas.

  Investigators had taken samples from a freezer at a Kansas hospital where the three patients died. While some of the ice cream products matched the bacteria found in those patients, one sample did not. However, Tauxe tells NBC News that the genetic sequence of that sample matched the six old cases of listeria.

  The discovery led the CDC to determine that there were two strains of Listeria from two Blue Bell factories, one in Texas and another in Oklahoma.

  An outbreak of this length is unusual, Tauxe says, but it’s possible that few people were actually sickened by the bacteria.

  “It is not the biggest outbreak, not by any means,” he said. “But it is probably the longest outbreak of listeria.”

  As a response to the new findings, Blue Bell recalled all of its products from retailers and shut down all four of its operating factories on Monday.

  The massive voluntary recall was initiated after two chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream samples tested positive for the potentially deadly bacteria.

  The final recall includes frozen yogurt, sherbet and frozen snacks distributed in 23 states as well as internationally, because those items “have the potential to be contaminated,” the company said.

  On Tuesday, the company announced it would step up efforts to track down the source of the listeria contamination by hiring microbiologists to work with CDC investigators and by expanding current cleaning and sanitation systems.

  “As each day passes, we are getting closer and closer to figuring out how this listeria was introduced into our facilities. … It’s a matter of doing the work and not making excuses,” a representative for Blue Bell said.

  Blue Bell Listeria Outbreak Has Been Going on For Five Years, CDC Says [NBC News]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uTop Cable Lobbyist Just Doesn’t See Why You Hate Your Cable Company When Google, Facebook Are Big Toor

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  (Spevman)

  The NCTA is big cable’s big lobbying group. Right now, they’re trying their hardest to make sure the FCC can’t protect consumers and businesses from the largest ISPs with a lawsuit trying to block the FCC’s net neutrality rule. At the organization’s head head is former FCC chairman Michael Powell, who loves terrible internet speeds and data caps for all.

  The folks over at Fierce Cable got to sit down with Powell and ask him specifically about NCTA member companies’ opposition to net neutrality and the current state of the industry. Powell’s answers, while mostly full of exactly the vapid, vague pablum one expects from a top lobbyist, were illuminating in one specific way: they show that the industry really is as far removed from understanding what ordinary consumers want as consumers feel like it is.

  Predictably, Powell does not have kind words for the new Open Internet rule. As a mouthpiece for the cable industry, he reiterates the talking points that the ISPs have been making all along: that changing the rules of regulation now will somehow completely prevent anyone from continuing to invest in or innovate with their networks. (Despite reality proving otherwise.)

  “This country, 20 years ago at the birth of the commercial Internet, made a very concerted national commitment to have policy where innovators, entrepreneurs and engineers could operate in the free market,” Powell told Fierce Cable, conveniently ignoring the fact that regulation — and specifically, Title II of the Telecommunications Act — made it possible for AOL and other early dial-up internet players to gain access to customers through copper phone lines, and thrive.

  And if the current setup, in which cable companies are making money hand over fist being monopoly providers to broadband subscribers who need the internet to do basically every single thing in their lives, is so bad… how did we get here, anyway?

  “There’s probably a book we could write on this,” Powell told Fierce Cable, which is hands down the most indisputably 100% true thing in the interview. But he and we would probably write very different books. To hear Powell tell the tale, the entire drive for net neutrality was invented from whole cloth by pro-consumer advocates (he specifically calls out Free Press). Powell then dismisses the entire drive as anti-corporate sentiment for its own inexplicable sake, saying, “This is nothing but big-company bashing — the idea that cable is full of these evil corporate entities who are thinking of ways to screw you over. I think that got a lot of public traction, and I think it became partisan.”

  To Powell, Washington’s current game of hyper-partisan politics, and not the fact that the nation’s largest ISPs are in fact constantly screwing customers over, is the core issue. Consumers, however, may feel otherwise — and Fierce Cable asked Powell why he thinks that is.

  “The cable industry is made up of a lot of mid-sized and smaller companies, many of them with good customer relations,” Powell hedged, in order to avoid mentioning that the two biggest companies in the cable industry have the worst customer satisfaction ratings in the entire nation. Instead, he turns to an indisputably successful and generally well-regarded tech company, Google.

  Powell ignores the fact that Google, through Google Fiber, is in fact a direct competitor to cable companies and instead focuses on their software businesses: “Unlike Google, we have to send you a bill–a bill to pay for the broadband infrastructure that Google and others profit handsomely from, but don’t support directly,” Powell says. “Yes, they have ways they support the network, too, but they don’t have to directly bill their customer for tripling and quadrupling speeds.”

  Powell does correctly identify that with Google and Facebook, users don’t pay because users are the product, and advertisers pay for access. “A lot of those fantastic companies that don’t have to bill you may be selling your identity up, down and sideways, which we may come to regret,” he told Fierce Cable. “But Google has an 80 percent approval rating.”

  While data brokering and privacy are indeed major issues for the modern consumer, they have basically nothing to do with the fact that you can’t get someone to answer your question about your broadband bill without recording the call and spending a day working on it.

  Consumers like Google (and Amazon and Facebook, about which Powell also complains) because, despite the real issues, Google’s products usually work. And Google might control 90% of the search market, as Powell claims in the interview, but they don’t use monopolistic, strong-arm tactics on every single consumer to make it happen. Thanks to net neutrality, you can use your Comcast connection to go to Google, Yahoo, Bing, or any other site that suits your whims — but you still have to funnel them all through Comcast.

  When consumers have no choice but to work with the people who actively seem contemptuous of them and their time, well, those customers get unhappy. That doesn’t seem like rocket science, but the industry won’t be any better regarded until they figure it out.

  NCTA chief Powell on ‘unnecessary’ net neutrality regs, and Google’s unearned popularity [Fierce Cable]

  
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by Kate Cox via Consumerist

uSkyWest Officials: Flight Made Emergency Landing After Passenger Lost Consciousnessr

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  (zonaphoto)

  A SkyWest Airlines flight from Chicago heading toward Hartford, CT reportedly made an emergency landing in Buffalo today because of a sick passenger, the airline said.

  The plane was coming from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport and flying to Bradley International Airport outside Hartford, Connecticut when it instead landed at Buffalo Niagara International Airport when a passenger became ill and lost consciousness, the airline said, according to the Buffalo News.

  “The flight landed safely in Buffalo, where the passenger received medical attention before being released. We are working to accommodate the 75 passengers to Hartford,” an official reportedly said.

  The regional jet operating as United Express Flight 5622 under SkyWest was carrying 75 passengers and four crew at the time, according to Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority and Skywest Airlines officials.

  “I know that everyone has been checked out and cleared by EMTs, and nobody has been transported to the hospital,” a SkyWest spokesman told the Buffalo News.

  Other reports had blamed the landing on reports of a door opening in mid-air, while NBC News reported earlier that the government had indicated a loss of cabin pressure as the reason for the emergency landing, and that several passengers lost consciousness.

  A Skywest flight, #UA5622 diverted to Buffalo after a cabin door opened mid-flight. http://t.co/CaQoRRKFd5 http://ift.tt/1yQHjmX

  — Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) April 22, 2015

  Regional jet diverted to Buffalo airport after passenger loses consciousness [Buffalo News]
  SkyWest Flight Makes Emergency Landing in Buffalo [NBC News]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uConsumer Reports Rates Brinkmann Patio Grill ‘Don’t Buy’ For Nowr

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• Here in the Northeast, there are now mere weeks until grilling season begins. Safety is very important when you’re lighting an actual fire a short distance from your house, and our fire-roasted colleagues down the hall at Consumer Reports test the gas grills that they review for their cooking power and their safety. One grill this season failed one of the safety tests, and for now they’ve given the Brinkmann Patio 810-6230-S a “Don’t Buy” rating.

  The test in question is called the “drop-lid” test, which involves, well, dropping the grill’s lid from 6 inches above the flames. Slamming the grill that way can extinguish the flames with the burst of air, which can also happen when you open the lid too quickly. The flames go out, but the gas remains on, letting flammable gas build up under the grill lid.

  This model of the Brinkmann Patio performed fine on the drop test at the “high” setting, but sometimes failed at the “low” heat setting. CR purchased two grills to test, and both had the problem.

  Brinkmann found that the flame could “occasionally be extinguished” during their own runs of the drop-lid test, but it passed industry standard tests. Brinkmann says that they have made a change to the grill and resolved this problem going forward. Most of the grills that will be sold in 2015 have already been manufactured, but if you do happen to have bought this model, you can contact Brinkmann for a replacement of the affected part, the crossover channel, that they have improved. Call Brinkman at 800-527-0717.

  Brinkmann grill fails Consumer Reports’ safety test [Consumer Reports]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uFirst Amazon Customer Spent $27.95 And Got A Building Named After Himr

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  Not the first customer, but a satisfied one, nonetheless. (tehchix0r)

  Being the first to try something new cost one guy just $27.95 and got him not only the book he ordered but his name on a building. The first non-company Amazon.com customer spent less than $30 on April 3, 1995 on Fluid Concepts And Creative Analogies: Computer Models Of The Fundamental Mechanisms Of Thought by Douglas Hofstadter, and now his moniker is splashed on the edifice of one of the company’s buildings in Seattle.

  MarketWatch has an extensive interview with John Wainwright, an Australian software engineer based in Sunnyvale, CA, who made the first purchase on the site that wasn’t placed by one of the company employees.

  As it turns out, he was friends with the founding engineers of Amazon, who’d left his day job to work on this “crazy idea” of an online bookstore.

  “He sent me an email and said, ‘Create an account and order some books.’ I thought I was going to get some free books out of it,” he told MarketWatch, saying he used a T1 link at his office to order it. “But they took my credit card and charged it!”

  He says he still has the book — “a work on artificial intelligence and human cognition modeling” — on his bookshelf, and is waiting for Jeff Bezos to offer him “a large amount of money for it.”

  Big payout or no, not everyone can say they’ve got building with their name on it. Not too shabby for that price, not too shabby at all.

  Meet Amazon’s first customer [MarketWatch]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uGoogle’s “Project Fi” Wireless Smartphone Service Offers Data At $10/GB, Will Credit You For Unused Datar

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• As expected, Google has finally announced the details of its wireless smartphone service that will, at least at first, piggyback on the networks of Sprint and T-Mobile. It’s called Project Fi and plans with unlimited talk/text, unlimited international texting, and WiFi tethering will start at $30/month, with each gigabyte of data you use costing an additional $10. And if you don’t use your full allotment, your account gets credited accordingly.

  Google has details of the plans available here.

  In terms of pricing, there is currently only one base tier for phone/text, and that’s $20/month. Each gigabyte of data costs $10/month. So the lowest cost plan is $30/month (phone/texting + 1GB of data). A 2GB/month plan would cost you $40, and so on in increments of $10. But if you don’t use the full amount of data for a month, your account gets credited.

  “Let’s say you go with 3GB for $30 and only use 1.4GB one month,” writes Google. “You’ll get $16 back, so you only pay for what you use.”

  While Google is using existing wireless networks from Sprint and T-Mobile for Fi, it says the system will constantly be searching for the optimal connection, which may sometimes be a WiFi hotspot. So the idea is that Fi will switch between the two to minimize the amount of data being used over the cellular networks and to provide you the fastest available connection at any given time.

  “As you go about your day, Project Fi automatically connects you to more than a million free, open Wi-Fi hotspots we’ve verified as fast and reliable,” writes the company. “Once you’re connected, we help secure your data through encryption. When you’re not on Wi-Fi, we move you between whichever of our partner networks is delivering the fastest speed, so you get 4G LTE in more places. Learn more about our network of networks.”

  Of course, until we see it in action, we have no idea how seamlessly these transitions will work or if the use of WiFi will result in significant changes to wireless data use.

  Right now, Fi is an invite-only service and you’ll need to have a Google Nexus 6 device. To request an invite, first go to this site to see if your area is covered, and then go here to actually request the invite.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uMany Consumers Still In The Dark About Overdraft Fees & Other Bank Practicesr

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• While millions of consumers contribute to the $32 billion in overdraft fees collected each year, a new video shows that many checking account holders don’t fully understand the way overdrafts work or how much they spend on the fees each year.

  Today, Pew Charitable Trusts unveiled the above video that sheds a bit of light on just how little the average consumer knows about their financial product of choice.

  While previous reports and surveys have shown that overdraft fees and unfair practices are of great concern to consumer advocates, Pew officials hope the video propels the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to take action regarding overdraft policies.

  The video begins by offering viewers a few facts about checking accounts – nine out of 10 households use the financial product – and their associated overdraft fees – banks often charge excessive fees to cover small transactions.

  From there, the video take a man-on-the-street approach to interviewing consumers about their knowledge of overdraft practices.

  Of the consumers who were asked how much the typical bank charges for an overdraft fee, only one was able to answer correctly. According to Pew’s research, the average fee is $35, but most consumers interviewed believed the fee was $25.

  When it came to bank’s overdraft protection programs, many of the chosen consumers said they were covered by the plans. However, their understanding of how such programs work was a bit skewed.

  One consumers said she was automatically enrolled in the plan, but, Pew Trusts reports that consumers must specifically opt-in to the program.

  The video goes on to address concerns many advocates have raised about banks’ overdraft practices, including charging consumers high fees for transactions of less than $50 and the tendency to rearrange transactions in a way that makes consumers incur additional overdraft fees.

  “I think it’s ridiculous based on the amount of the overdraft,” one man says. “If it’s that minimal the fee should be a percentage of what the transaction is.”

  As for rearranged transactions, all of the consumers questioned about the practice said they were unaware of its use.

  “That’s upsetting,” one woman says. “I’ll have to pay more attention, I guess.”

  If given the option to improve overdraft practices, many consumers told Pew Trusts that they would prefer to have a transaction declined rather than be hit with an expensive fee.

  In conclusion of the video, most consumers voiced their opinion that banks should face more oversight when it comes to overdraft practices. Pew says those feelings are in line with a 2014 Pew survey that found three out of four consumers believe that overdrafts should be more closely regulated.

  “The video shows people could use more information and feel overdraft fees should be more in line with banks’ actual costs,” Susan Weinstock, director of Pew’s consumer banking project, tells Consumerist. “Both conclusions are consistent with our research. We hope the CFPB will watch and take note.”

  Have You Ever Overdrafted? [Pew Charitable Trusts]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist