Mom Gives Birth To Baby In Walmart Parking Lot While Dad’s Inside Shopping

(Northwest Dad)

Either more exciting, crazy things happen in Florida every day or we just get to hear about them more often because it’s Florida: This week a baby was born in a car parked in the lot at Walmart while the father stepped inside to grab a few things.

One minute he’s just shopping for a few items and the next minute, he’s a new dad, reports MyNews13.com.

Police officers and firefighters showed up to find that the woman had given birth in the car with her three daughters sitting with her to witness. The dad told cops he’d only been inside for a few minutes and came outside to find his children frantically yelling at him to get back to the car.

By the time he reached the vehicle, the little bundle of joy had arrived.

“I would be floored and astounded,” said another shopper, who we will just call Captain Obvious.

The report says both mother and baby are doing fine, and for some reason the family decided not to get interviewed by the news team. Probably because everyone had already had enough excitement for one day.

Walmart says it’ll give gift cards to the family as well as some baby items by way of congratulations. Hey, a free baby shower!

While dad shopped, mom gave birth in Walmart parking lot [MyNews13.com]

via Consumerist http://consumerist.com/2014/01/03/mom-gives-birth-to-baby-in-walmart-parking-lot-while-dads-inside-shopping/

FTC Approves Formation Of Bereavement Voltron: SCI Can Acquire Rival

(Corey Templeton)

If you don’t want anyone to pay attention to a piece of news, be sure to put out your press release just before the biggest holiday of the year. On December 23, the Federal Trade Commission released the news that it has given its blessing for the largest company in America’s “death care” industry, Service Corporation International, to go ahead and acquire the second-largest company in the same business, Stewart Enterprises, Inc.

You may not have heard of either company, but one of them probably runs a death-care business somewhere near you. More likely SCI, which owns around 1,450 funeral homes, 374 cemeteries (including 213 combination funeral homes/cemeteries) and 100 crematories. They’re the parent company of Neptune Society. That was one of the hurdles for this merger, in fact: the FTC identified 59 markets where the union of the two companies would eliminate competition and be generally bad for consumers. All of the funeral homes in town might have different names, but if they have the same parent company, that means they can charge higher prices. A merger between two competitors might “substantially increase the risk of collusion between SCI and the few remaining competitors,” warns the FTC.

In the affected markets, the FTC will require the two companies to sell 53 funeral homes and 38 cemeteries sometime in the next six months before they get hitched, in order to maintain healthy competition in the funeral business in that area.

If you’ve forgotten the major plotlines of HBO’s “Six Feet Under,” you can read up on SCI’s business model and the major complaints about the company in this great Businessweek piece from October.

FTC Puts Conditions on Service Corporation International’s Proposed $1.4 Billion Acquisition of Rival Funeral and Cemetery Services Provider [FTC]

How a Funeral Giant Overcame Antitrust Concerns and Gobbled Up Its Rival [Businessweek]

FURTHER READING:

Is Funeral Home Chain SCI’s Growth Coming at the Expense of Mourners? [Businessweek]

via Consumerist http://consumerist.com/2014/01/02/ftc-approves-formation-of-bereavement-voltron-sci-can-acquire-rival/

Imagine How Upsetting It’d Be If Donkey Meat You Bought At Walmart Was Actually Fox

(improbcat)

If I had a nickel for every time my donkey meat snack turned out to be fox meat instead, I’d have no nickels. But there would be plenty of coins coming in for customers at some Walmart stores in China after tests showed that what was labeled as “Five Spice” donkey meat was tainted with the meat of other animals.

Walmart is now pulling the item from shelves and refunding customers who bought the meat while it tries to figure out how the mixup happened, reports Reuters.

It’s bad timing for Walmart’s reputation in China as the company is planning on opening 110 new stores in the country over the next few years. But shoppers could be put off by such an incident because as we all know, what the label says is what you should get.

While it’s not like everyone in China is chowing down on donkeys, it’s a popular snack in some areas. In 2011 China slaughtered 2.4 million donkeys for consumption, so ostensibly someone is buying the stuff and wouldn’t be pleased to have it be any other kind of meat.

“We are deeply sorry for this whole affair,” said Wal-Mart’s China president and CEO, Greg Foran. “It is a deep lesson (for us) that we need to continue to increase investment in supplier management.”

Wal-Mart recalls donkey product in China after fox meat scandal [Reuters]

via Consumerist http://consumerist.com/2014/01/02/imagine-how-upsetting-itd-be-if-donkey-meat-you-bought-at-walmart-was-actually-fox/

Musician: U.S. Customs Destroyed 13 Of My Flutes

United Airlines only broke one of Dave Carroll’s guitars and got heaps of bad publicity for it. It couldn’t get worse than wrecking an expensive instrument belonging to a working musician, could it? How about destroying thirteen hand-carved instruments belonging to a professional musician? That’s what U.S. Customs allegedly did by mistake a few weeks ago to Boujemaa Razgui, a musician who plays two different types of Middle Eastern reed flute.

Yes, by “reed flutes” we mean “flutes made from dried reeds.” The confusion came from rules that ban fresh agricultural products in order to stop the spread of plant diseases. The musician apparently was carrying new reeds home to Boston to make new flutes, and had checked them with his finished flutes in his baggage. His baggage was missing when he came home to Boston on December 22nd, but all air travelers know that happens sometimes. It was when the airline delivered his bags to his house the next day, bereft of flutes, that he knew something was wrong.

He eventually learned that the instruments and reeds that he was bringing home from a trip to the Middle East via Spain had been seized by U.S. Customs at John F. Kennedy airport in New York.

To replace the flutes, Razgui says that he’ll have to gather more reeds: they only grow in a few countries, including Syria, Lebanon, Spain, and his native Morocco. He claims that the reeds he was carrying in his checked baggage were already dried. Also, he says that the flutes aren’t made from bamboo.

Customs disagrees with his account, claiming that what it destroyed were “fresh green bamboo canes.” Not flutes. Not reeds. Speaking to Gothamist, a spokesperson insisted, “There were no instruments destroyed according to our people.” Destroying the non-approved “bamboo” was necessary in order to keep “exotic plant pathogens” out of the country.

U.S. Customs seizes, destroys musician’s flutes over agricultural concerns [NY Daily News]

via Consumerist http://consumerist.com/2014/01/02/musician-u-s-customs-destroyed-13-of-my-flutes/

Report: 4.6 Million Snapchat Phone Numbers And Usernames Leaked Online

Snapchat is leaking

While many Snapchat users are used to nudity, many of them only thought they were exposed for the 10 or so seconds that late-night selfie was on their recipient’s screen. But a new report says the phone numbers and usernames associated with more than 4.6 million Snapchatters in North America were leaked and posted online.

A site run by a mysterious, anonymous group or person called SnapchatDB posted the information on its site with the details of the app’s users next to their locations. Though the last two digits of each phone number have been obscured “to minimize spam and abuse,” but SnapchatDB says it’ll reveal the info to anyone who contacts it asking for the full number, reports The Verge.

Using that information could allow snoopers to try to “find phone number information associated with Facebook and Twitter accounts, or simply to figure out the phone numbers of people you wish to get in touch with.”

So that’s creepy, but at least the site has been taken down by now.

Last week Snapchat discussed concerns Gibson Security had with the app, after it claimed it had found a major security hole in app’s “find friends with phone numbers” function. Snapchat responded to that claim on Dec. 27 saying in theory, if someone uploaded a bunch of phone numbers — “like every number in an area code, or every possible number in the US” — they could ostensibly match those with usernames.

But it added that it had also “implemented various safeguards to make it more difficult” to pull that off in the last year.

Despite those measures taken by Snapchat, SnapchatDB claimed that the leak was possibly “through the recently patched Snapchat exploit.”

If you’re worried that your phone number has been leaked, you can use a tool from Gibson Security to look it up. Then you might want to delete your Snapchat account and tighten up your security settings on any other social media accounts to prevent creepers from contacting you. Unfortunately as Gibson points out, this won’t erase your number from the leaked database.

4.6 million Snapchat phone numbers and usernames leaked [The Verge]

via Consumerist http://consumerist.com/2014/01/02/report-4-6-million-snapchat-phone-numbers-and-usernames-leaked-online/

Does $100 Moto G Shake Notion That Unsubsidized Smartphones Must Be Expensive?

The general line of thought in the wireless market is that prepaid customers are offered older and cheaper smartphones because most prepaid customers don’t also want to splash out the $500-800 for an unlocked, top-of-the-line device. Meanwhile, contract phone customers are pitched those pricier phones but at discounted rates (or monthly installment plans) that make the phones more affordable (and lock the customer into months or years of service). But does a good smartphone need to cost so much? Do phones for the prepaid market need to be so bad? Maybe not.

The Motorola Moto G — the less-frilly version of its Moto X — came out around Thanksgiving at a retail price of $179, unlocked, meaning AT&T and T-Mobile customers could take it on either network and didn’t need to sign a contract.

While it looks like our cohorts at Consumer Reports have yet to test the device, it does have some rather positive reviews, ranging from a 7.0 to a perfect 10 on Engadget’s round-up of ratings. It’s by no means a top-line device — it doesn’t have LTE capability, its screen is smaller than some more expensive competitors (though it has better resolution than some), and its camera has fewer megapixels — but many of the reviews say that the Moto G is about as good as you could hope for a $179 phone.

Then came reports earlier this week that the Verizon-compatible version of the device was selling for only $99.99 at Best Buy. For an unlocked, new phone, that’s virtually unheard-of. Best Buy has confirmed it’s been selling the Verizon version at that price since shortly before New Year’s and Verizon confirmed today that it will be adding the Moto G to its currently slim prepaid device pickings on Jan. 9 for the $99.99 price.

Sprint’s Boost Mobile says it will also be offering the phone, but at $129.99.

With its brightly colored options and the low price point, the Moto G is obviously looking at the iPhone 5C as competition. However, the iPhone’s $99 price tag is the subsidized version that requires a two-year commitment to a wireless provider. The unlocked 5C will actually cost you $549.

Granted, the 5C has more features than the Moto G (LTE service and a better camera chief among them), but do those improved specs really merit a $449 price difference?

Even the full-price AT&T/T-Mobile version of the Moto G is $370 less than the unlocked iPhone 5C. It’s also significantly cheaper than most of the options that T-Mobile sells directly to customers through installment plans. For example an iPhone 4 from T-Mobile will eventually cost the buyer $408 (24 installments of $17), and that phone came out in 2010.

As I mentioned last week, if phone companies are going to shed their practice of selling subsidized phones — a practice that, in my opinion, is an antiquated holdover from the transitional period between landlines and wireless — something will need to be done about the sticker prices of phones. While things like installment plans help delay the huge retail price of high-end smartphones, they are really just a substitute for the contracts we all hate.

If we want true mobility in the wireless market, manufacturers need to make affordable, unlocked phones that will give consumers the freedom to choose their wireless providers without having to pay an exorbitant price for that freedom.

via Consumerist http://consumerist.com/2014/01/02/does-100-moto-g-shake-notion-that-unsubsidized-smartphones-must-be-expensive/

What Purchases Should You Make And Avoid In January?

(the justified sinner)

Are you in the market for a new television, some furniture, a gaming console, or new winter clothes? It might seem like the post-holiday sales frenzy is the perfect time to shop for all of these items, but that isn’t necessarily the case.

Over at DealNews, they outline some items that, according to their research, you may or may not find the best deals on during the month of January. What should you avoid shopping for?

• Shiny new game consoles. The Xbox One and Playstation 4 are still hot items right now. We probably won’t see discounts on them until spring at the earliest.


• Televisions. Unless you need a new one right now, wait until February: prices will fall a little more. Start shopping in January: if you find the right deal for you, nab it, but prices might continue to fall.

Ah, but there are also some items that Dealnews says that you should consider buying in January, because the best deals around are going on now or about to start soon. What are those things?

• Christmas stuff. That one’s obvious, and it may even be too late. For those retailers that have some holiday items on the shelves and haven’t cleared them all out in favor of Easter candy yet, you can get some nice deals. Some items that aren’t explicitly Christmassy like winter-themed mugs or major-brand candies in red and green wrappers might still be on shelves, too.


• Furniture. New collections come out in February: get great deals on the old ones now.


• Winter clothing. Need a new coat or boots? Better get them now, while they’re on clearance. Some retailers already have winter clothes priced at up to 80% off.


• 
  

  Tax software. Wait, what? We don’t even have our W-2s yet. That’s why you can get nice deals on copies of tax software early on, as low as 40%. Make sure that the one you choose includes state filing if you live in a state that requires a tax return: some programs charge extra.

  
  

The Best and Worst Things to Buy in January [Dealnews]

via Consumerist http://consumerist.com/2014/01/02/what-purchases-should-you-make-and-avoid-in-january/