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The Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group that continuously rails against junk food, mislabeling and misleading food advertising, says Quaker Oats has decided to change its labels on Quaker Oats so they no longer boast of exaggerated health benefits.
The CPSI said the company decided to slightly alter its label after being threatened with a lawsuit.
Here’s the CPSI’s version of the facts.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission is recalling three items marketed for kids — pajamas that don’t meet flammability standards, sweatshirts with drawstrings that can choke children, and more jewelry with high lead content.
The products are Disney Baby Einstein Pajamas, Life is Good hooded sweatshirts and children’s bracelets and necklaces sold from vending machines.
The government has approved a vaccine to combat the bird flu if the disease ever ruffles feathers here. Don’t look for it as a prescription or over-the-counter preventative at this point, though. It only will be used to help prevent a pandemic.
Here’s the official word on the vaccine from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Consumers constantly are being warned about “phishing” scams that involve fraudsters trying to extract personal data from unsuspecting victims so they then can commit bank or retailing fraud.
Here’s an interesting story from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources that involves a real fishing scam that might cause anglers to take a second look at their fishing licenses:
A Ludington area license agent has entered a plea agreement with the Mason County Prosecutor’s Office on a count of larceny by conversion between $200 and $1,000 for his part in a license sales scam.
Vaughn Flewelling, owner of the Hamlin Grocery, was arraigned in 79th District Court in Mason County last week and entered a plea on Monday. Judge Peter Wadel sentenced Flewelling to pay $23,000 in restitution to the State of Michigan. Flewelling paid $18,793.03 on Monday, and has 180 days to pay the remaining $4,206.97. He was also ordered to pay $440 in fines and costs, ordered to serve 40 hours of community service, and given 90 days in jail but suspended lieu of satisfying the ordered judgment.
Working on a tip received by a conservation officer from a woman who bought a restricted fishing license from Flewelling, the Special Investigative Unit of the Department of Natural Resources launched an investigation in the fall of 2006, with undercover officers visiting the Hamlin Grocery to gather evidence. The woman had purchased her license from the store in early 2006, and later that year visited a local Wal Mart store to purchase her “all-species” upgrade because she was going salmon fishing. Upon attempting to purchase the upgrade, the Wal Mart store told her they were not able to sell her one because there was no record that she had purchased the required restricted license. She ended up purchasing another restricted license, and later told the conservation officer she encountered in the field about the incident.
The large-scale investigation by the Special Investigative Unit showed that Hamlin Grocery had voided nearly 40 percent of their license sales, while the average retail license agent only voids 1 to 2 percent. The investigation showed that over a two-year period, Hamlin Grocery had stolen almost $25,000 from the State of Michigan through voided out license sales. The license sales terminal at the grocery store has been removed.
“This scam defrauded the State of Michigan out of nearly $25,000 that would normally have gone into our Game and Fish Protection Fund to help pay for the day-to-day fish and wildlife activities of the DNR,” said DNR Law Enforcement Chief Alan Marble. “We are grateful to the hunters and anglers out there who offer us information and tips to help our investigations.”
The U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) was informed Monday that Natural Balance Pet Foods has received consumer complaints regarding the Venison & Brown Rice Dry Dog Food, and Venison & Green Pea Dry Cat Foods. The company does not know the cause of the problems, but has received reports of animals vomiting and experiencing kidney problems. Although the company is stating that the problems seem to be focused on one particular lot, as a precautionary measure, the company is pulling all dates of Venison & Brown Rice Dry Dog Food and Venison & Green Pea Dry Cat Food from the shelves.
The company is advising consumers to discontinue feeding their pets all Venison and Brown Rice Dry Dog Food, and Venison and Green Pea Dry Cat Food.
The FDA is investigating this problem. There is no indication at this time whether this is related to the ongoing pet food recalls. For more information, please see: http://www.naturalbalanceinc.com/
Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land is advising consumers who sell vehicles and those who buy them to visit the local Secretary of State branch together, if possible, to avoid future legal problems.
Here’s her advice.
The IRS is warning of a new Internet tax scam meant to redirect refunds owed to those who use the Free File Alliance electronic tax filing system.
As detailed in the Monroe Sunday News, Web sites masquerading as Free File Alliance members accept tax information from taxpayers, change the taxpayers’ bank account numbers to their own and then file the return through a legitimate Free File partner. The returns are then sent to the scammers.
Taxpayers can avoid this problem by using the official Free File site on IRS.gov.
“The final days of the tax season always bring tax scams,” said IRS Commissioner Mark W. Everson. “Make sure you’re really dealing with the IRS. Taxpayers can feel safe using Free File, but the only way to do it is through the secure IRS.gov Web site.”
To qualify for Free File, taxpayers need to have an adjusted gross income of $52,000 or less. Ninety-five million out of the 136 million taxpayers meet this qualification.
The only way to access this program is through the IRS’s Web site, IRS.gov. Click “2007 Free File” on the home page. Then, click “Start Now.” Taxpayers can use the “Guide Me to a Company!” wizard to help decide which software to choose using criteria such as the state they live in, their estimated AGI and their age.
Taxpayers have through Tuesday to file their tax returns this year.
Friends at F-Secure pass along this alert about what some of the latest computer viruses and worms look like.
I’ve already been the recipient of the robot message noted below:
Earlier today, several e-mails with love themed subjects were seen in the wild. While some of the subjects are a rehash of previously used subjects such as Sending You My Love, The Dance of Love, and When I’m With You, others are new:
A Dream is a Wish
A Is For Attitude
Eternal Love
Eternity of Your Love
Falling In Love with You
Hugging My Pillow
Inside My Heart
Kisses Through E-mail
Our Journey
Sent with Love
When Love Comes Knocking
You’re In My Thoughts
You’re the One
The e-mail messages themselves have no text, instead, they have attached executables with romantic sounding filenames. These include:
Love Card.exe
Love Postcard.exe
Greeting Card.exe
Postcard.exe
All files are detected as Email-Worm.Win32.Zhelatin.ct.
A second run occurred after a few hours. This time, the subjects were security related.
Subjects include:
ATTN!
Spyware Alert!
Virus Alert!
Worm Alert!
Worm Detected!
Furthermore, the message body is an image file which advises the receiver to patch their systems. Also included within the image is a password in order to extract the attachment.
Something new to the Zhelatin family is the use of a password protected Zip archive as an attachment. The filenames vary but they have the following format:
patch-[4 to 5 random numerical characters].zip
hotfix-[4 to 5 random numerical characters].zip
The executable contained within the Zip archive has the same name as that of the archive but with an EXE extension.
Executables are also detected as Email-Worm.Win32.Zhelatin.ct while the Zip archives are detected as
Password-protected-EXE. Latest detections are included in update 2007-04-13_01.
It’s a scam that’s used year-round, but is particularly effective at this time of year.
Phony e-mails purporting to be from the IRS start showing up on the computers of unsuspecting taxpayers, urging them to input specific personal information.
There’s a variety of such phishing scams making the rounds and most use the IRS name or logos.
Here’s the IRS bulletin related to such ruses.
If it looks like you’re not going to make the April 17 income tax filing deadline, don’t panic.
The usual April 15 deadline is stretched two days because the 15th falls on a Sunday and Monday is Emancipation Day in Washington, DC, and that holiday is being applied to the tax-filing deadline.
But if the extra days aren’t enough additional time, there are other options and some can be triggered online.
Here’s the IRS’ rundown of the options.
Now’s the time when a lot of parents are pondering summer camp opportunities for their kids.
Sometimes the brochures and advertising can be a little less than honest and a little more than deceiving.
Here are some common sense tips from the Better Business Bureau to help parents do their homework before sending their offspring off to summer camp.
Certain olives sold wholesale to restaurants and other food outlets could be contaminated by botulism.
They’re marketed under the Charlie Brown name but with different brand names. Here’s the FDA bulletin.
The Federal Trade Commission is accusing Merchant Processing, a Beaverton, Ore. company that sold credit and debit card processing services to small businesses across the country, with deceptive sales tactics.
It’s known that the company had been contacting businesses in Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan.
Learn the details of the Feds case here.
The nationwide pet food recall has expanded to include more lines of cat food and the Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers that despite the recall, some of the tainted food still might be on store shelves, based on a federal survey of a sampling of stores.
Here’s the latest.
Some flat-panel TV brackets sold by Circuit City under its house brand called “Verge” might unexpectedly tilt and fall.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has information about the recall.
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