WASHINGTON — Here’s the thing about kittens. Sure, they’re really, really cute. “Then they turn out to be a total terrorist cat,” veterinarian Dr. Katy Nelson tells WTOP.

“You just never know what you’re going to get when you have a younger animal,” Nelson says.

That’s where the beauty of an older pet comes in. They don’t come with surprises.

“What you see is what you get,” Nelson says.

November happens to be Adopt a Senior Pet Month. Nelson, who’s known as Dr. Pawz, offered up plenty of reasons to adopt an older pet.

She says wisdom comes with age — even when you’re dealing with a four-legged friend.

“When you are a 30-, or 40-, or 50-year-old person, you’ve kind of found yourself. You kind of know who you are. It’s registered with you,” Nelson says. “It’s the same thing for our middle-aged, to older pets.”

Middle-aged pets, she says, have gone through their wild streaks. They’re a little less destructive. They may even have some manners.

“Once you walk in and see them, you know that’s who they are and that’s how they’re going to be for the rest of their days,” Nelson says.

But what about that saying about not being able to teach an old dog new tricks? It’s simply not true, Nelson says.

“You absolutely can,” Nelson says.

The post The beauty of adopting older pets appeared first on WTOP.

Prince William County community calendar, Nov. 5-11, 2015 Washington Post Side-by-Side concert Students from Godwin, Parkside, Lake Ridge and Woodbridge middle schools perform with the Old Bridge Chamber Orchestra. 7 p.m. C.D. Hylton High School, 14051 Spriggs Rd, Woodbridge. 703-730-5874. www.obco.org. Free. and more »

While Chipotle continues to deep-clean its restaurants in the Seattle and Portland metropolitan areas after an E. coli outbreak that has now sickened 39 people, the company and public health authorities are still working to find a common link between what all of the infected people ate. They may never find the exact cause: some foodborne illness outbreaks remain unsolved.

So far, they think that the pathogen got into the food and into customers through a vegetable, but they haven’t been able to connect that vegetable to all of the diners yet.

I learned last year while attempting to report food poisoning from a restaurant that there isn’t much that your local authorities can do if you didn’t visit a doctor’s office or hospital during your illness so they could take samples. (Yes, we mean blood and feces.) If you’ve eaten at one of the affected restaurants and come down with symptoms up to 10 days later, check with your doctor and make sure that you mention this specific outbreak.

It’s hard to get away for a trip to the doctor when bloody diarrhea is keeping you busy, since that’s a basic symptom of E. coli infection. The actual number of illnesses is probably much higher, but people who weren’t sick enough to go see a doctor most likely won’t be counted in the official figures.

The youngest victim identified so far has been five years old, but the strain in this outbreak is a different one from the strain that affected Jack in the Box restaurants decades ago, causing kidney problems in small children that were sometimes deadly. That can be a result of E. coli infections in general, but this strain hasn’t made any kids sick. Yet.

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Chipotle’s E. coli outbreak threatens sales, emboldens critics [Reuters]
PACIFIC NORTHWEST RESTAURANT CLOSURE UPDATE [Chipotle]
Oregon cases of E. coli linked to Chipotle now at 12

Although we don’t like how often we report on scuffles, brawls and other fights at fast food restaurants, we like to think that each example gives us the opportunity to learn something. In the case of a McDonald’s customer who ended up in a tie-grabbing, right-hook flying kerfuffle with a worker in Minneapolis, the lesson to be learned may be: exhibit patience when waiting for your change.

Though the stories vary between the McDonald’s employee working a Minneapolis drive-thru and his customer over who started the fight, a video shot by a fellow customer shows exactly how heated things got.

A store manager is seen grappling for more than a minute through the window of the drive-thru with the customer, who is clutching the worker’s tie in his hand while receiving blows to the head.

The manager’s family told KMSP.com (warning: video contains link that autoplays) that the customer got upset because it was taking too long for the cashier who’d been working the window to make change for a $100 bill, and that some of the cash then fell on the ground during the handover.

“The guy just got irate and spit on my son’s face,” the store manager’s father told the station. “Then he went to grab at him and he grabbed at my son’s tie. My son was trying to grab back at him and he had to put the quarter pounders on him to get him off him.”

The customer tells a different story, claiming that the manager got very angry and he was “kinda knocked out” by the punches.

“I tried to hold onto his tie just for self-defense I guess,” he told the news station.

The men continued to fight in the parking lot before police arrived to bust up the brawl and take the customer to the hospital to treat minor injuries. It’s unclear if any charges have been filed.

VIDEO: McDonald’s drive-thru customer chokes worker [KMSP.com]

When you head into the emergency room, you might assume that the doctors you see are hospital employees who accept the same insurance plans as their employer. But nearly two-thirds of hospitals now staff their ERs with freelance physicians who might not accept your insurance plan, meaning you’ll be on the hook for whatever your insurer doesn’t pay. In addition to the potential added financial burden, some patients now have to drive far out of their way to find an ER that won’t hit them with a surprise medical bill.

Melanie*, who lives in California, is one of these patients. After a series of surprise bills from out-of-network ER doctors at otherwise in-network hospitals, she realized the only way to avoid the unexpected sticker shock was to look outside her area for emergency care.

“I know that our local hospital doctors do not contract with my insurance,” Melanie tells Consumerist. “I was having chest pain for several days, and chose to not go to the local hospital but to go to one farther away because I had run into issues at the local hospital with balance-billing.”

As we’ve discussed before, “balance-billing” is the practice by which out-of-network doctors will bill patients for the balance that remains after the insurance companies pays out its contractually obligated amount to the hospital.

“Something we fear constantly is getting hurt locally and having to be transported… to the closest ER.”

In California, your protection against balance-billing depends on which type of plan you have and who regulates your insurer. Consumers covered by HMOs and PPO insurance plans licensed by the California Department of Managed Health Care are protected from balance-billing for ER visits.

But if the PPO or any other insurance plan is regulated by the California Department of Insurance, state law does not protect an ER patient from balance-billing.

This inconsistency in California law leads to some patients erroneously being billed for balances that their HMO should be negotiating. But if you’re like Melanie and your plan is not exempt from balance-billing, it’s up to you to either pay up or try to work out a deal with the doctor.

And in Melanie’s experience that drawn-out, tedious task has led to significant changes for her family and their medical care.

“It’s really changed what we do in emergencies,” she says. “Something we fear constantly is getting hurt locally and having to be transported via ambulance when you do not have control of where they take you. They will go to the closest ER. And that ER for us at home does not have contracted doctors.”

In the cases where Melanie and her family do have a choice, they now bypass their local hospital – which is about 10 minutes away – for one that’s about 30 minutes away. While that might not seem too far out-of-the-way for a doctor’s visit, any additional drive time — which can vary greatly due to finicky California traffic conditions — is a cause for concern in a medical emergency.

“One of the biggest problems besides time is that to get to the further ER, you need to go on the freeway that is very congested and full of accidents,” she says. “It’s not a safe route. The closer ER is in town and on surface streets.”

When the family was on a trip last fall, Melanie suffered a concussion. Because of her previous balance-billing experience she knew to call the closest hospital to see if doctors were in-network. They weren’t.

Melanie and her family ended up driving two hours to a smaller healthcare provider with in-network physicians.

While Melanie has been lucky to have the time to check in advance to find out if her insurance will be accepted, many medical emergencies are time-sensitive, leaving little room for patients to call around and inquire about coverage.

Our colleagues at Consumers Union have already heard from more than 1,600 individuals with personal stories related to unexpected, out-of-network ER charges. Most of these cases occurred during emergencies where time was of the essence.

But whether the end result was a quick stitch-up or a complicated surgery that required weeks in a hospital bed, these stories nearly always ended the same: with a hefty and unexpected bill.

• Lillian, from South Carolina, was taken to the hospital in September after suffering a seizure at work. At the local ER, which was in-network, she was given a battery of tests and seen by several doctors, one of which was out-of-network.

But because she was taken to the hospital during an emergency, she had no way to know that one of her doctors wasn’t covered by her insurance and no one informed her before being seen by the particular physician.

Shortly after the visit, Lillian received a nearly $800 bill for the doctor who she says was only in her room for a short time.

“I talked to the doctor maybe three minutes while I was there, which seems ridiculous,” Lillian tells Consumerist. “As far as I know, everyone else was in-network. I had a CT scan, 33 blood tests, chest X-rays, and hip and leg scans. But that’s the only bill I received.”

As with other patients who receive out-of-network bill from ER physicians, Lillian is responsible to cover the costs.

“I was shocked,” she says. “It’s not my fault the doctor wasn’t in-network. They said that I could call the insurance company and try to get them to pay for part of the bill.”

• Peter, from Orlando, says he received a $735 bill for an out-of-network physician after a recent visit to the ER for severe chest pain.

Unlike Lillian, who was only in the hospital for a short period of time, Peter’s stay lasted six days and included surgery.

While all his other costs were covered as he’d expected, daily visits from one out-of-network doctor resulted in Peter’s surprise bill.

“All the other doctors at the hospital were in-network,” he recalls. “The office said I had no choice, I had to go with the doctor who was there at the time. It’s a good thing the surgeon and others were in-network, or I might have to pay thousands of dollars.”

• Across the country in Texas, Pamela says she specifically asked the ER if her plan would cover everything before her husband was seen. While the hospital assured her they were considered in-network through her insurance, she later received a $1,000 surprise bill from an out-of-network physician who treated her husband.

“This is such a ripoff because the hospital knew its providers were not all in-network,” she says.

Although the bill was far more than Pamela was expecting to pay, she says the experience taught her to do her own research.

“When I recently was scheduled for surgery, I knew to ask questions ahead of time, but the hospital did not make it easy,” she says. “I had to dig to find out the name of the anesthesia provider they used and call that provider separately to verify network coverage for my insurance.”

The likely cause for Melanie, Lillian, Peter, Pamela and thousands of others’ hefty out-of-network ER bills comes down to the changing medical landscape and the contracts that come along with it.

According to the New York Times, nearly 65% of hospitals contract out ER physicians — often through physician networks.

Because these doctors are brought on as independent contractors, it’s often up to them — or the physicians group through which they are contracted — whether or not they choose to accept the same insurance plans as the hospitals in which they work.

Chi Chi Wu, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center, says this is an issue that advocates have seen more of in recent years, with physicians at times deliberately refusing to negotiate plans and then driving up consumer costs.

One medical billing expert tells Consumerist that negotiations often, but not always, work when insurance companies propose a contract that will include payment rates in response to a provider’s request to become or stay-in network with them.

The provider can then accept or reject the contract, or keep negotiating. When they aren’t able to keep working on a deal, the doctor is not covered by that provider and patients under that plan are then subject to the out-of-network costs.

These sorts of negotiations aren’t just happening with ER physicians, they also occur in a number of other medical specialties. But unlike other types of physicians, who sometimes schedule patients out months in advance, ER doctors are in a particular position of having a captive audience that often hasn’t had the time to research whether an individual doctor will or won’t accept their insurance plan.

“If a patient is shopping around for a dermatologist to get a mole removed, it’s unlikely they’re going to ‘accidentally’ wind up at an out-of-network dermatologist since they’ll look for one that’s in network,” the billing expert explains to Consumerist. “But if you’re calling 9-1-1, you aren’t going to be able to shop around for an ER or ambulance company who’s in network.”

According to a 2014 Center for Public Policy Priorities report [PDF] on balance-billing in Texas, researchers found that ER physicians accounted for the highest share of out-of-network billing at in-network hospitals.

Nearly half of Texas hospitals that accepted United Healthcare insurance had no in-network physicians working in their emergency rooms, according to the report. More than two-thirds of the ER billing at these hospitals was for out-of-network doctors.

More evidence of surprise emergency room bills surfaced earlier this year in Hawaii, where several patients shared stories with Hawaii News Now of receiving hundreds — sometimes thousands — of dollars in bills after one particular physicians network, Emergency Medicine Physicians [EMP], and their insurance provider, Hawaii Medical Assurance Association [HMAA], failed to agree on contract terms.

In response to the public outcry and media reports, the two entities eventually came to an agreement and announced HMAA would re-process all claims with EMP for patients affected by the initial contract termination.

While it might be easy to place the blame for failed negotiations on insurance companies’ and physicians’ greed, Mark Reiter, president of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine, tells Consumerist that this simply isn’t the case.

“In my experience, the groups do anything in their power to remain in-network,” he says. “The last thing they want to do is go out-of-network because they understand how burdensome that is for patients.”

Reiter contends that a vast majority of freelance ER physicians currently in hospitals are in-network and only view going out-of-network as a last resort.

But he does acknowledge that these out-of-network docs do exist, likening the negations to a David versus Goliath matchup.

“What you have are health insurers, these huge companies, and then you have a physicians group that has 15 to 20 doctors that need to negotiate,” Reiter explains. “Sometimes the insurer will offer a deal that’s take-it-or-leave-it. That contract can be fair or it’s not fair at all. So if the group thinks it’s not fair, they will try to negotiate in good faith. Unfortunately, it becomes something they can’t agree on and the group has no other recourse than to be out-of-network.”

Making matters worse, Reiter says, some of the physicians groups often deal with five, 10 or 15 insurance companies at a particular time, making it difficult to simply settle on less favorable terms.

“Physician groups are heavily motivated. They want to be in-network,” Reiter says.

The positive resolution of the cases in Hawaii is not typical. More often, patients are left with few options other than pleading with the doctor and insurance company to reach a deal.

As Melanie told us earlier, she has had some luck finding out in advance about a doctor’s in-network status, but it often just comes down to the luck of the draw.

Finding out that the doctors are in-network before heading to the ER can be difficult for two reasons.

First off, in most cases the need to visit an emergency room is, well, an emergency and patients may not exactly have the time to call around while they are bleeding, feverish, concussed, or otherwise impaired.

When Melanie dislocated her shoulder while in Southern California, an ambulance was called.

“I didn’t know where I was going,” she said. “That doctor happened to be in-network. But again, like any time this sort of thing happens, you hold you breath.”

Other times she’s tried to find out the status of coverage before being seen in an ER and was shot down. She attributes hospitals’ potential liability for their general reluctance to be transparent.

“I’ve asked what physicians contract with them and they won’t reveal that information,” she explains. “Hospitals have policies in line not to give that information because if it’s truly an emergency they would be liable if you left the hospital.”

And even if an insurer or a hospital is able to provide information before heading to the ER, it’s not always foolproof.

That was the case for Melanie when she was on a business trip a few years ago.

“I was traveling during Christmas and had a high fever and flu symptoms,” she says. “I called my insurance to find out if there were urgent care options in the area.”

The provider told her to go to a certain hospital. Unfortunately, the physician she saw wasn’t covered and the visit ended with another hefty bill for Melanie.

Another option for consumers is to determine whether or not their situation really constitutes an emergency. The difference could mean thousands of dollars in medical bills.

Some insurance plans make special accommodations for emergency visits — they’ll cover the costs no matter the hospital or doctor’s in-network status, but if the insurer believes that an ER visit wasn’t really a medical emergency, it’s not as likely to be so generous.

Under the Affordable Care Act’s “Prudent Layperson” Standard, a medical emergency is defined as a condition with acute symptoms of sufficient severity that a person who possesses an average knowledge of health and medicine could reasonably expect the absence of immediate medical attention to result in: placing the health of the individual, or their unborn child, in serious jeopardy; serious impairment of bodily functions; or serious dysfunction of any bodily organ or part.

Unfortunately, insurance plans may not see each visit to the emergency room as meeting this standard. When that happens, most health plans will only pay the amount listed for out-of-network providers, with the balance of the doctor’s fee becoming the obligation of the patient — and another surprise medical bill is born.

Melanie has successfully negotiated down some of the bills from out-of-network ER doctors, but only after a “long, drawn-out, stressful fight.”

In one case, she spent a significant amount of time just trying to reach the physicians group. According to Melanie, they only accepted calls a few hours out of the day, “And the line was constantly busy. It got really frustrating. You feel like you’ve been wronged.”

Eventually, her insurance company went through the lengthy appeals process; letters were exchanged and the issue was put to rest, although she still ended up paying nearly $100 in extra costs.

“It’s infuriating,” she says. “In one letter, they told us we should go to in-network doctors.”

In all of Melanie’s experiences, she’s learned a few things she thinks other patients might find helpful.

“You have to demand and stand up for yourself,” she says. “You have to not be nice a lot, and that’s not typically in personality.”

Additionally, while fighting the bills can be “very complicated and tiresome,” it’s sometimes the only recourse.

“I would say, for sure, get on the phone with your insurance company, file appeals, tell them that you are not getting the Department of Insurance invoked,” she says. “I think you can get pretty far in by fighting and appealing.”

*Per her request, we have not used Melanie’s actual name.

When you log into your bank account online, you might see an image of a birdhouse, or a teapot, or some other object you selected when you signed up. Those pictures are supposed to help keep a customer’s account safe, by assuring them that the web page they’re viewing is, in fact, the bank’s website and not a scammy fake. But as cybercriminals are catching on, banks are choosing to ditch the images in favor of other security measures.

Fraudsters have been learning new tricks to get around security images, like scraping information from a screen and later replicating the photo on a malicious website, reports MarketWatch, rendering the images ineffective.

To that end, a study from Carnegie Mellon University found that though security images are designed to protect users from phishing attacks — entering their credentials on spoofed sites designed to trick users into thinking they’re legitimate — 75% of the 482 participants entered their passwords on a website lacking a security image.

“I would call [security images] worse than useless,” Avivah Litan, vice president of information security and privacy at the Stamford, Conn.-based research company Gartner Inc., told MarketWatch “That bad guy is just sitting on your machine waiting for you to log in and look at the image, and then they’re in.”

Bank of America got rid of what it calls SiteKeys this summer, noting that they are “no longer as relevant given changes in the landscape,” according to a bank spokesman. BofA switched to a two-factor authentication system that sends customers a one-time passcode by email or text that has to be entered along their username and password.

Barclaycard is doing away with security images as well, pledging that signing in will soon become “quicker and easier without sacrificing account security.” The bank will also use the two-factor authentication method and offer to email, text or call customers with a passcode when they log in from a new device.

There are those holding fast to the security images, however, including U.S. Bank, which says it uses them along with other security features.

“Many of our customers appreciate the added layer of protection that the security images provide,” a spokeswoman said.

Banks find online ‘security images’ offer little protection [MarketWatch]

Using payroll cards to pay employees is an increasingly popular replacement for traditional checks. In fact, 19 states now use these cards to pay state workers who don’t use direct deposit. And while some of these cards provide employees with easy and affordable access to their funds, most are merely adequate, and some exorbitant fees that can eat into users’ finances.

This is according to a survey [PDF] of the different state payroll cards by the National Consumer Law Center.

Unlike some employers who force employees to accept their pay on payroll cards, none of the states currently require that workers receive their pay in this method. In fact, the large majority of state employees are paid through direct deposit to their bank accounts. At the same time, employees who do use payroll cards are often among the lowest-paid workers who are most vulnerable to hefty fees.

The good news is that all of the cards used by these states can — if used wisely — be used for free without incurring fees. They all allow cardholders to withdraw their entire wages at least once per pay period at a bank teller window, give the worker at least one free ATM withdrawal per deposit, charge no fees for purchases, and permits some free customer service calls.

And a number of states have cards that go beyond these minimal standards for acceptable payroll cards. The NCLC report rated cards from three states — Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Oregon — the highest for using cards that charge virtually no fees for cash access, purchases, account information or penalties.
Each of these cards also included at least one free out-of-network ATM withdrawal.

Two additional states, Kentucky and Washington, also earned higher than average marks but fell short of the top rating because they charged fees ($1.25 and $1.75, respectively) for out-of-network ATM access.

A majority of cards fall into a neutral category for offering payroll cards that provided the general benefits of easy access to funds, but with some fees that make them hard to recommend.

Like the Alabama card from Wells Fargo. It offers one free in-network ATM withdrawal and one free call to a live customer service rep per deposit period, but after that you’re going to pay $1.50 and $2.00, respectively, for these. Or the Bank of America payroll cards used by New Jersey, New Hampshire, and Arizona. These cards are relatively fee-free, until the cardholder gets hit with a wage-garnishment order. In which case, BofA charges a $100 “legal process” fee to the employee for something that most of the other card issuers charge nothing.

Which leads us to the bottom of the payroll card barrel — the NetSpend cards issued by Kansas and Missouri, and Virginia’s Comerica payroll card.

For workers who opt in to the NetSpend overdraft protection plan, they face $25 fees for each overdraft, up to $125 a month, and $450 per year.

“Overdraft fees are completely unacceptable on payroll cards,” reads the NCLC report, “and Kansas and Missouri should both be ashamed of paying employee wages on a card that promotes this predatory feature.”

Even though both Kansas and Missouri cards are from the same issuer, the Kansas payroll card hits the user with more fees, like $1.50 charges for every in-network ATM withdrawal after the first one, and $1.00 for every balance inquiry at an ATM (in- or out-of-network).

Virginia earned its thumbs-down from the NCLC for having a wide variety of fees that most cards don’t, like the $50 legal process fee, and $2.50 for bank teller visits (after two free).

Meet Sonny, a 3-year-old yellow lab who is looking for a new home. Here is what his foster family and the people at Lab Rescue of LRCP in Fairfax have to say about him:

Sonny is a 3.5-year-old neutered yellow male. He is a handsome, young active dog who likes to get outside to stretch his legs and play. He is very friendly and enjoys being petted. He likes to retrieve and brings it back but sometimes takes the long way.

He needs a home with a fenced yard and an active family that will play with him every day. He is good with other dogs but no cat history. He pulls a bit on lead at first but is better with an Easy Walk Harness.

He loves to play outside but then he can’t wait to come inside and play with the soft toys. He likes to hoard them in his crate. He has no problems going in to the crate and taking a nap. He likes the attention of people! He enjoys being rubbed behind the ears and on his chest. And of course, like most labs, he is very food-driven. He eats fast and takes treats very well.

Are you and Sonny a match? If so, let us know and our sponsor, Becky’s Pet Care, will send you a sample of dog treats and $100 in Becky’s Bucks.

Want your pet to be considered for the Reston Pet of the Week?

Email news@Restonnow.com with a 2-3 paragraph bio and at least 3-4 horizontally-oriented photos of your pet.

Each week’s winner receives a sample of dog or cat treats from our sponsor, Becky’s Pet Care, along with $100 in Becky’s Bucks.

Becky’s Pet Care, the winner of three Angie’s List Super Service Awards and the National Association of Professional Pet Sitters’ 2013 Business of the Year, provides professional dog walking and pet sitting services in Reston and Northern Virginia.

The post Reston Pet of the Week: Sonny appeared first on WTOP.

This week’s Pet of the Week is Mulligan, a maltese poodle who is happy to be the result of someone’s second chance at picking out the right birthday present.

Mulligan who loves to play games and meet friendly neighbors in Arlington. Here’s what Mulligan’s owner had to say about the friendly pup:

Hi, my name is Mulligan. I am a 8-year-old maltese poodle.

My name has a double meaning. Yes, my mommy is a golfer, but I have also been told my daddy got mommy earrings one year for her birthday even after she left hints of wanting a dog. Daddy decided to return the earrings and took mommy the next day to pick me out. I was a do over gift and I so glad daddy returned those earrings.

I may be small, but I have a big personality. I love playing fetch, especially with tennis balls. I have a younger sister Bailey and two baby brothers. Bailey is my best friend. She may be younger and have 30 pounds on me, but don’t worry, I show her who is boss every day!

I love people, so living in Arlington allows me lots of playtime. The neighbors come by the fence every day to give me a rub. If you ever see me please stop and say hi!

Love, Mully

Want your pet to be considered for the Arlington Pet of the Week? Email arlingtonnews@gmail.com with a 2-3 paragraph bio and at least 3-4 horizontally-oriented photos of your pet.

Each week’s winner receives a sample of dog or cat treats from our sponsor, Becky’s Pet Care, along with $100 in Becky’s Bucks. Becky’s Pet Care, the winner of three Angie’s List Super Service Awards and the National Association of Professional Pet Sitters’ 2013 Business of the Year, provides professional dog walking and pet sitting services in Arlington and Northern Virginia.

The post Arlington Pet of the Week: Mulligan appeared first on WTOP.

BUCKINGHAM, Va. (AP) — A minor earthquake rattled homes in central Virginia on Tuesday.

The U.S. Geological Survey says the magnitude-2.6 earthquake occurred at 6 a.m. The epicenter was 7 miles east of Buckingham and 53 miles west of Richmond.

Residents told Richmond television stations that they felt their homes shaking.

There were no reports of damage or injuries.

The post Minor earthquake rattles homes Virginia appeared first on WTOP.

Washington Post

Washington doesn't work. This new book tells us why. Washington Post The political scientists Marc Hetherington and Thomas Rudolph have a new book: “Why Washington Won't Work: Polarization, Political Trust, and the Governing Crisis.” One reviewer, David Maraniss, calls it “a compelling and smoothly accessible work that ... and more »

Target has gradually added more food to their store inventory over the last decade or so, and that’s an area where they want to grow. The problem is that as their food selections have grown, they’ve created a patchwork supply chain to get food items into stores. That’s inefficient, and has left some Target stores with empty shelves. The company’s solution may be to hire someone else to help.

That’s how they’re handling another facet of their grocery business, after all, partnering with Instacart for delivery service and Curbside for curbside pickup. That will mean more grocery business if both services expand nationwide and let Target sell more groceries online, but in order to do that, they need to able to keep items in stock.

Reuters reports today that Target is considering hiring a wholesaler or even another retail company to help them with these problems. Target wouldn’t name any candidates or even specify when they might bring on partners in the future, but analysts have some possible candidates: competitor SuperValu in Minneapolis has a wholesale grocery business, and other companies whose names you wouldn’t recognize since they aren’t consumer-facing could also get the job.

Exclusive: Target considers outside help for fresh food business [Reuters]

A few years ago, when frogs and pieces of frogs began turning up in frozen vegetables all over the country, we came to refer to any unwanted animal or animal part found in one’s food as “free frogs.” The term literally came true in Wales last week. A 10-year-old girl says that she took a great big bite of frog in her wrap over the weekend, but McDonald’s claims that it’s “unlikely” that the frog was put in there along with the vegetables.

McDonald’s UK is one of the chain’s current successes, winning over customers by serving fresher food and cutting back on ingredients, the same formula that the chain is hoping will work over on this side of the Atlantic. McDonald’s even imported their UK CEO, Steve Easterbrook, to run the entire company earlier this year.

McDonald’s wraps consist of chicken and sauce with a generous helping of lettuce and other vegetables. The family says that their daughter took a big bite of her wrap that included the frog, spat out what seemed like a gristly piece of chicken, and then freaked out when she saw a frog.

The family didn’t bring the wrap back to the restaurant because they were traveling, and instead contacted customer service later. They offered a refund, but not an apology, which bothered the girl’s dad. Also, McDonald’s wanted the wrap and the frog to investigate.

Little crunchy raw unboned real dead frogs don’t often appear in salads in the UK, apparently, and a McDonald’s spokesperson told The Sun that the frog most likely didn’t get wrapped in the wrap at the restaurant. “Our wraps are freshly prepared when ordered and it is extremely unlikely this originated from our restaurant and there is no evidence to suggest otherwise at this stage,” they explained.

The girl rather understandably doesn’t want to go to McDonald’s anymore. Neither does the rest of the family. They’re holding on to the wrap instead of surrendering it to McDonald’s, which is kind of a problem. “It’s all wrapped up in an outside fridge at the moment,” the girl’s mother explained. “It’s starting to smell but we need to preserve it.”

Dead frog ‘found in McDonald’s chicken wrap’ by horrified 10-year-old girl [Mirror]

It’s one thing to know that your car has been recalled, which is happening right now to a record number of Americans, but it’s even worse when you know that your car has been recalled and can’t get the manufacturer to service it at a dealership. When you’re told that there are no parts or no technicians to fix your car, what do you do?

CBS Sacramento interviewed two local motorists who are driving cars that have been recalled for safety issues. One is driving a Mazda R-X 8 with a Takata airbag, and the other has a Ford Fiesta with a potentially dangerous door latch problem. What they have in common is that neither can get her car repaired.

“I have the stress of wondering if somebody’s going to hit me and blow this airbag in my face,” the owner of the Mazda told consumer reporter Kurtis Ming. She could disable the airbag, but that would be removing an important safety feature that might or might not spray metal shards in her face when it inflates.

Rosemary Shahan of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety says that the options for car manufacturers should be very simple: they shouldn’t let owners drive around fearing for their lives on a daily basis. “Either fix the car, provide a loaner, or buy the car back,” she told the station. If the manufacturer won’t do any of these things, escalate your complaint, and remember that your issue is with the manufacturer, not with the local dealer.

Of course, as we learned yesterday, actually getting that warranty repair doesn’t mean that your car is safe, which is why you should periodically check the bulletins for your own vehicle on your own.

Call Kurtis Investigates: I Can’t Get My Recalled Car Repair Fixed, What Do I Do? [CBS Sacramento]

There are some things we don’t need scientists to tell us — like the fact that cheese is delicious and was created by the dairy gods to please us — but there are other questions we need answered by the professionals in order to live our best lives. Like what the ideal kind of cheese is for a perfectly gooey, melty grilled cheese. Here comes the science!

A three-minute video from the series Reactions, hosted by the American Chemical Society, delves into the science of how cheese melts: it all comes down to how casein proteins clump together into spheres called micelles, which are held together by calcium and are full of fat. The surface of a micelle is negatively charged, so usually the little balls would bounce away from each other.

But when lactic acid gets involved, the micelles smack into each other and create chains that trap water and turn into a mess of cheesy goo. Cheeses that age longer contain more lactic acid, lowering its PH. That means sharper cheeses have a lower pH than their counterparts, which don’t age as long.

According to the American Chemical Society’s video, what this all means is that the ideal pH level for a cheese used to make grilled cheese is perfectly balanced between 5.3 to 5.5 (here’s a list [PDF] of PH levels in food). Any lower and cheese will release all its oil when heated, leaving curdled, clumpy clusters.

So what should you choose? Try gouda, gruyére or manchego. If you’re choosing between mild and sharp cheddar, go with mild — it has the texture you want, and won’t break down like its sharp counterpart.

If you want suggestions on how to cook that grilled cheese once you’ve selected which variety you want, check out our somewhat scientific We Tried It investigation.

For more science and cheese and cheese science, check out the video below:

If you’re a parent, you probably face bedtime with a grim determination to stick to your guns, stay firm and get that kid tucked in and the lights out when you say so. Not as easy as it sounds, as many of you likely know: kids are wily adversaries, armed with a seemingly endless arsenal of excuses and a knack for bargaining. Netflix wants to help parents compromise with their tiny foes, launching a collection of five-minute bedtime videos.

To give parents a bargaining tool, Netflix is offering a new series of five-minute videos called Dinotrux 5 Minute Favorites. The idea here, it seems, is that agreeing to “just one more!” episode of your kids’ favorite show will only push bedtime back by five minutes, instead of the 20 or so minutes of a traditional TV show.

Netflix trots out some figures from a recent survey of 7,000 parents from seven different countries to support the idea that kids are skilled manipulators at bedtime: 61% of parents experience kids who try to stall bedtime. Of those, 79% of parents are willing to compromise, spending up to 20 minutes a night trying to make a deal with their offspring. American kids turned out to be the most likely to try to delay bedtime through creative tactics. Shocking.

Of course, there will always be those kids who then just demand to watch the same five-minute videos over and over again, which is nothing new in the YouTube era. “Just one more cat video, Mom! PLEASE.”

While many businesses would be vigilant in cleaning chewed gum off the walls, Pike Place Market in Seattle has been lax on that front for 20 years… on purpose: the “gum wall” below the market has become a beloved character as visitors have passed by through the years. It’s time for a fresh start, however, as the Market says it’ll be scraping off gobs of hardened gum next week.

It’s the first time the wall in Post Alley will get a scrub down, a cleaning session that the Market says was required because of sugar in the gum breaking down the bricks in the wall, reports KING 5 News.

The steam cleaning is scheduled for Nov. 10 and is expected to take a few days to complete, because of the amount of gum stuck to the wall: the Market estimates there are about one million gum wads on the wall, covering a height of eight feet and a width of 54 feet. That’s approximately 150 pieces of gum per brick.

The Gum Wall got its start in 1995, when people waiting in line for a late-night improv show apparently got bored and stuck their gum to the bricks. The rest is sticky history.

Before the wall gets its spa day, Pike Place Market is urging fans to submit their best pics with it for a contest, with the winner getting the chance to have their name or a message engraved on a galvanized steel Market Charm, which will hang from the railing of the new MarketFront.

Seattle’s Gum Wall getting a scrub down [KING 5 News]

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WASHINGTON — A 5-year-old yellow lab was rushed to the emergency room Monday after a piece of a reinforcing bar went right through him.

When Dr. Julia Hawthorne, a staff surgeon with Veterinary Surgical Centers in Vienna, Virginia, arrived to perform emergency surgery at Hope Advanced Veterinary Center, she describes being shocked at what she saw.

“He had 3 feet in the back end, and 3 feet in front of him, so it really got embedded,” Hawthorne says.

Much like a human emergency room, vets have no clue what is coming in next, she says. But seeing Espen impaled by more than 6 feet of metal rebar was a first, she says.

They had to cut more than 2 yards of quarter-inch thick metal and risk destabilizing the dog before operating, so they could lay him on the table for surgery.

“He had damage to the lung,” Hawthorne says. “It went through the thorax, but missed the heart; that was fortunate.”

Espen isn’t out of the woods, though. The dog’s owners are asking for help in paying his $10,000 surgery bill online, through the Veterinary Care Foundation.

Exactly how the accident happened is not known. The dog was in the care of a sitter at the time.

The post Dog recovering after impaling himself on metal bar appeared first on WTOP.

WASHINGTON — A 27-year-old man died early Sunday while in the custody of special police officers in Southeast D.C., according to the Metropolitan Police Department.

D.C. police say around 4 a.m., officers were called to the area of Good Hope Road Southeast, near 23rd Street Southeast, to investigate a report of an assault at a residential building. When they arrived, D.C. police say Alonzo Smith, of Southeast Washington, was handcuffed and in the custody of special police officers.

Smith was unconscious and not breathing, according to police. Officers began lifesaving efforts, and Smith was taken to a hospital, where he later died.

An investigation into Smith’s death is ongoing. At this time, no additional information has been released.

The post Handcuffed D.C. man dies in custody of special police officers appeared first on WTOP.

Sunday was the final day for Herndon’s Woody’s Golf Range.

The driving range and the Perils of the Lost Jungle miniature golf course had been a recreational fixture in the area since 1980.

Owner Woody FitzHugh, a former PGA Tour player, announced last spring that he would close Nov. 1.

Woody’s had this to say on its Facebook page Sunday:

Final morning opening the range for our wonderful customers. It has been a pleasure and a blessing to serve you and your families for the past 35 years. Thank you all for coming and hitting balls, sharing stories and allowing us to be and share a small part of your lives.

Thank you for helping us to create a community of fellowship that was never just about golf but about people. We have many precious memories because of you. Please continue to check this page for our upcoming endeavors. Thank you, and may God richly bless you and your families.

FitzHugh told the Fairfax Times in April that traffic and construction near the entrance to Woody’s on Route 7 had an impact on business the last few years.

The 30 acres that housed Woody’s has been sold to a residential developer, who plans single-family homes on the site. Look for construction to begin early next year.

FitzHugh says the money from that deal will now enable him to build a new miniature golf course, location to be named later. He will likely save his collection of animatronic animals and other theatrical set pieces from Woody’s to use at the new location.

Photo: Perils of the Lost Jungle at Woody’s Golf Range/Woody’s Golf Range via Facebook

The post Nearby: Woody’s Golf Range Closes After 35 Years appeared first on WTOP.

Did you feel like paying more to Comcast next month to keep using the amount of data you’ve been using for years already? No? Well, if you’re in one of several markets in the southeast, tough cookies: Comcast’s data caps, and their fees, are coming to a cable modem near you this December.

DSL Reports has noted that starting December 1, the list of Comcast cities subject to usage-based data pricing is going to get even longer. Several cities in Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Virginia are going to be added to the list, according to Comcast’s official FAQ.

Markets newly added to the unfortunate shortlist will face the same base 300 GB per month cap as the other cities in the trial program, with charges of another $10 for each 50 GB over the threshold used.

For those who don’t want to pay piecemeal overage fees, Comcast started testing a flat $30 fee for unlimited overages in Florida in October, and a few weeks later launched the same option at a higher $35 price point in Atlanta. According to Comcast’s website, this unlimited data option is also available in the newly data-capped areas as well.

Usually, Comcast’s pricing schemes are a matter of “we do what we want because we can,” due to a complete dearth of competition in almost every market. However, this particular pricing change also includes Chattanooga, TN, which famously boasts a comparatively inexpensive, robust, publicly-owned gigabit fiber network that Comcast finally has deigned to compete against.

The expansion of usage-based pricing across the nation is, alas, not a surprise. Comcast executive mouthpiece David Cohen said in 2014 that he expected the company to implement broadband data caps nationwide within five years.

About 12% of Comcast users are already subject to some variety of Comcast’s data cap thresholds, the Associated Press recently reported. The more Comcast expands the trials, the more likely they are to attract some FCC scrutiny over the matter.

Charter, meanwhile, is using its absence of a data cap plan as a selling point to convince regulators that its plan to buy Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks is in the public interest.

Comcast is contacting affected customers to let them know they are going to be subject to usage caps going forward. However, if you are concerned or don’t want to wait, you can also check your account number or ZIP code against Comcast’s list of usage-based billing trial areas here.

Comcast Dramatically Expanding Usage Cap Areas December 1 [DSL Reports]

Washington Post

Penthouse designed by Library of Congress architect on the market Washington Post A Kalorama penthouse apartment is a posh piece of D.C. real estate. A Kalorama penthouse designed by one of D.C.'s most renowned architects is more attractive still. The two-bedroom condo at 2201 Mass. Ave, NW, part of a larger mansion called the ...

WASHINGTON– Nessus, a female North Island brown kiwi, died at the National Zoo on Oct. 30. She was 19 years old.

Nessus arrived at the zoo in 2005 from the Brookfield Zoo in Illinois. She was part of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ species survival plan for brown kiwi. The program is meant to determine which animals will be best for breeding, based on a number of qualifications.

Nessus and her mate, a 31-year-old kiwi named Maori, produced six chicks together. The chicks were brought to both national and international zoos for breeding and research.

The National Zoo has a history with Kiwis. The zoo was the first to hatch a kiwi outside of New Zealand, in 1975. Smithsonian scientists are studying kiwi reproduction, and according to zoo officials, they are hoping to learn how to produce kiwi eggs through artificial insemination.

Brown kiwis are considered an endangered species. Only 16 females and 34 male kiwis live in zoos outside of New Zealand. The National Zoo has eight kiwis– three at the zoo and five at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia.

Visitors to the National Zoo can see three kiwis at the Bird House exhibit. There are two adult males, Maori and Toru, and one 3-year-old male named Pip. If you’d like to get up close and personal with them, check out the zoo’s “Meet a Kiwi” program, the only one of its kind in the nation. For more information, visit the zoo’s website.

The post National Zoo’s female Kiwi has died appeared first on WTOP.

For years, Netflix has been showering networks and TV production studios with gobs of cash to run their shows online. Not even two years ago, one executive said the money was so good that it was like “pure heroin” for content producers. But the best drugs often have the worst side effects, and now some TV folks are reportedly looking to break their addiction to Netflix.

While Netflix money is still good money, some have questioned if the networks are giving up too much in the long run by handing their old episodes off to the streaming service.

On the one hand, Netflix helped newcomers catch up to heavily serialized shows like Breaking Bad, Lost, and Mad Men, leading to a snowball effect each time a new season aired.

But what’s the point of AMC running a Breaking Bad or Mad Men marathon when those shows can be binge-watched on Netflix, on just about any device, without commercials or setting your DVR.

Additionally, those shows don’t even include any branding for the network, meaning anyone coming to Mad Men for the first time may not associate it with AMC.

Contrast that to how things are run on Hulu — a joint venture of ABC, CBS, and FOX — where library episodes of currently running shows will include pre-roll information about where to watch new shows.

As re/code notes, everyone from Fox CEO James Murdoch, to Time Warner (not Time Warner Cable) CEO Jeff Bewkes, to Discovery’s David Zaslav have indicated their position that networks and studios got high on Netflix revenue while Netflix reaped the benefits in new users and brand awareness.

That’s why some analysts are predicting that the networks will soon be going through withdrawal pains as they cut back on the content they sell to Netflix.

Of course, Netflix has seen this coming for quite some time — along with increased competition from Hulu and Amazon Prime — which is one of the reasons that it has invested so much money in original content and slapping the Netflix name on imported TV shows.

The networks may not be successful in cutting back fully on their Netflix fix. After all, many TV shows are not produced — or only co-produced — by the networks that air them, meaning they will have to convince the studios behind these shows that there is merit in just saying no to Netflix.

Can the TV Guys Put the Netflix Genie Back in the Bottle? [re/code]

It must be tough out there sometimes for a vegan or a vegetarian — your meat-eating friends can’t talk about anything but bacon, and waiters never know if there’s cream in the soup or if the potatoes are fried in lard, etc. — so when it’s time to relax with an alcoholic beverage, it’s got to be nice to have options. Guinness is giving vegans one more option, with a tweak to its 256-year-old beer recipe.

In order to make Guinness full of goodness for those who eschew consuming animals or their byproducts, the Irish brewer is swapping out isinglass — a gelatin made from fish bladders used to filter yeast in the finished beer — with an animal-free method in late 2016.

Though Guinness’ main ingredients include barley, hops, yeast and water, tiny bits of fish bladder can make their way into the finished product.

“Isinglass has been used widely within the brewing industry as a means of filtration for decades,” the company said in a statement (via CNNMoney). “However, because of its use we could not label Guinness as suitable for vegetarians and have been looking for an alternative solution for some time.”

Guinness hasn’t disclosed details about how it will replace isinglass, but had said in the past that it’s looking for a method that’s “as effective or as environmentally friendly… whilst maintaining the quality of the liquid.”

It’s not all great news for everyone in the world, however: though the company brews in 49 countries, only Guinnness’ flagship brewery in Dublin will be using the vegetarian-friendly method. That covers Ireland, the United Kingdom and North America (as Consumerist reader Scott helpfully pointed out), but everyone else is stuck with possible fish bladders particles.

Any decent web browser has some sort of incognito browsing mode that adds at least the appearance of a more private user experience. Now the folks behind the Firefox browser say their latest update includes an enhanced Private Browsing mode that limits tracking to the point of actually blocking some ads.

In a new blog post and the above video, Firefox VP Nick Nguyen explains the basics of the updated Private Browsing mode, which is available in version 42 of the browser — available for Windows, Mac, Android, and Linux.

The mode doesn’t block all ads, just ones that the browser determines are tracking the user’s online behavior. Nguyen acknowledges this may have the result of making some sites appear broken, which is why users have the ability to disable Tracking Protection for individual sites. It can also be turned on/off universally when you launch a Private Browsing window.

We tried Private Browsing on a couple of different popular sites and in both cases saw that significant ad units were blocked from showing up.

Here’s the People.com homepage without Private Browsing. Notice the large magenta “PC Does” campaign ads in the superheader and to the right of the People cover:

Here’s the same page viewed through Private Browsing. Notice those two ad units are simply gone:

A more obvious example can be seen on this story page from Bleacher Report, where the before image shows a large ad skin and ad module for Bud Light:

Those ads are completely gone when you open the same page in Private Browsing:

Ad blocking is a huge bone of contention in the war of words between advertisers (who pay for their ads to be seen), content companies (who need ad revenue to pay their bills), and privacy-minded consumers (who don’t like to be followed everywhere they go).

Estimates say that ad-blocking tech caused websites to miss out on $22 billion in ad revenue in 2014 alone. To some, viewing a free, ad-supported site without letting the ads load is tantamount to thievery. Others counter that people would not be blocking ads if they weren’t so invasive and didn’t result in slow load times.

Recently, the Interactive Advertising Bureau — a trade group representing the companies behind most of the online ads seen in the U.S. — admitted that the industry “messed up” by going too far with too many ads that did too much tracking of user behavior.

The IAB then introduced a new “LEAN” standard for ads that don’t cripple web pages and at least stop tracking people after they’ve made a purchase through an ad.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a Privacy Badger plugin that tries to identify and prevent trackers from ads. The plugin does not require the user to be in incognito or private mode, but like the Firefox update, it can result in broken pages, requiring users to whitelist pages or individual trackers.

Keep your pooch away from your gum stash: experts are pointing the finger at xylitol, an ingredient used in sugarless gum, as the culprit behind a recent uptick in accidental dog poisonings.

While the sugar substitute is completely safe for humans to ingest, experts say xylitol is extremely harmful to dogs — about 100 times as toxic as milk chocolate, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal.

Xylitol causes a sudden release of insulin in dogs, which causes low blood sugar and could lead to seizures, brain damage and liver failure.

Animal poison-control centers have been handling a lot more xylitol cases these days, some that end in death for beloved pets.

“We’ve seen a dramatic increase” in xylitol calls, Dr. Ahna Brutlag, senior veterinary toxicologist at the Pet Poison Helpline told the WSJ. In 2009 her center fielded just 300 calls about xylitol ingestion (whether confirmed or suspected). This year, they’ve had 2,800 sweetener-related calls.

Pet owners simply aren’t aware of the dangers of xylitol, she says, or that something humans chew on every day could be toxic to pets, she adds. There’s no comprehensive data on the number of xylitol-related pet deaths, however, nor any solid evidence that it’s toxic for cats and other species.

To call attention to the issue, some pet owners are urging for warning labels on products that contain xylitol, but others find that approach unrealistic. Instead, they suggest educating dog owners so they can take matters into their own hands and keep gum — and some mints, gummy vitamins, toothpaste, various specialty peanut butters and other products — away from their pets. If you’re batch-baking with xylitol, don’t let Rover near it, either.

The good news is, if you can get your dog to the vet quickly after they’ve ingested the sweetener, they “tend to do quite well,” Dr. Tina Wismer, medical director of the Animal Poison Control Center at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals told the WSJ.

Sweetener in Gum Is Causing Surge in Accidental Dog Poisonings [Wall Street Journal]

On Halloween, Chipotle closed 43 of their restaurants in Washington state and Oregon, “out of an abundance of caution” after people who had dined at six different Chipotle restaurants showed symptoms of E. coli infection. The restaurants remain closed while Chipotle and public health authorities figure out where the illness came from. Their preliminary declaration is that the bacteria hitched a ride on some vegetables.

Verifying who has a foodborne illness and who doesn’t is complex, since it requires matching samples from patients to the pathogen known to cause the outbreak. Authorities have three confirmed E. coli cases so far from people who have eaten at Chipotle in the last few weeks, and are testing more. They expect that the wide publicity that the outbreak is receiving will cause more people to come forward.

A spokesperson for the Oregon Public Health division says that they have no definitive ruling yet, but based on the information that the have, the outbreak most likely comes from contaminated produce.

Analyzing accounts from people who have become sick (verified or not) researchers found some food items in common. While most items sold at Chipotle have a meat base, the culprit appears to be a produce item, maybe a vegetables, and not contaminated and insufficiently cooked beef or chicken.

For older children and adults, E. coli is a miserable few das of diarrhea and abdominal pain. For children under 5 and adults who are elderly or already ill, complications from the illness can shut down the kidneys just a patient appears to be getting better.

Oregon official: Chipotle E. coli likely due to contaminated produce [USA Today]

When you leave home for an extended period, you probably lock the doors up tight, maybe turn on an alarm, and expect that the house will still be standing upon your return. Which is why one Long Island homeowner was shocked, to say the least, when he returned after eight months away to find his home had disappeared entirely.

The 69-year-old man was in Florida for several months to recover from knee surgery, and discovered that while he’d been gone, the town had demolished his 1,570-foot house valued at around $423,072, reports CBS New York.

He’s suing, after spending two months in a motel, claiming all his furniture, jewelry and other possessions had vanished along with the house.

“How can somebody do this?” he said to the New York Daily News. “If you are going to take down someone’s house, have the decency to get in touch with them, call them.”

Town officials said they considered the seemingly abandoned home dangerous, and that tearing it down was their way of keeping “zombie” homes from hanging around. Besides, officials said, they made every attempt to contact the homeowner about its impending doom, following “all proper procedures” and notifying him with repeated registered letters dating back to last October. The house was torn down in May.

But he wasn’t getting his mail from New York in Florida, the man says, and besides, there are other methods of communication.

“Somebody could have called me, somebody could have notified me and said ‘hey listen here is whats going on,’” he told CBS New York. “But the town, they took everything, it’s just gone.”

His lawyer says there was no indication the home was zombiefied, either, despite his prolonged absence.

“They went too far – this house should not have been demolished, and they went too fast,” his attorney said. “They had all the signs to know that someone was living here.”

LI Home Thought To Be Abandoned Demolished, Owner Sues After Losing Everything [CBS New York]
Long Island man returns from Florida to find the town destroyed his home [New York Daily News]