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Everyone knows you should prepare for bad weather with supplies in your car and an eagle eye on the weather reports. But what should you do if you get caught in your car unexpectedly? Here are ten do's and don'ts to keep you calm and safe.

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We've discussed the best ways to care for your cast iron, but if you have non-stick cookware, it deserves love too. Luckily, the best way to give your non-stick pots and pans a good healing, rejuvenating scrub comes down to two trusty ingredients: baking soda and water.

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Readers offer their best tips for finding completed reminders in Evernote, buying emergency supplies at Costco, and making your own steering wheel wrap.

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Gas is already expensive, but it's made even worse by the fact that prices tend to fluctuate depending on the day of week. So, gas price tracking site GasBuddy crunched the numbers to see which day of the week prices tend to be lowest, and it depends on which state you're in.

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While we'd all like to believe that every financial company we deal with has our best interests at heart, we've learned from experience that's not the case. Yet it can still be surprising when we encounter practices that make it harder for people to take control of their finances.

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Did that recipe say white or red onion? Will it matter if you just buy the sweet onions that are on sale? The answer should come as no surprise. Different types of onions are good for different types of foods. Here's a quick look at how to choose.

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- As a New York City firefighter, Sarinya Srisakul didn't work with another woman for five years, and when she did, she took pictures because it was so rare.

- A California schoolteacher was arrested Wednesday after hundreds of living and dead pythons in plastic bins were found stacked floor to ceiling inside his stench-filled home in suburban Orange County.

The just-launched SocialRadar app, developed by a DC-based company, is a real-time way to identifies people nearby and remember how you know them.

Pizza Hut keeps pushing the envelope (or is it pushing the large flat cardboard box?) when it comes to crusts, introducing a 3-cheese crust here in the United States, and inflicting sunflower-shaped bacon cheeseburger-pizza hybrids on overseas markets. Yet no matter how much we make fun of them, The Hut continues to innovate. Like the seven-cheese stuffed-crust pizza now available in Hong Kong.

It’s called the Cheesy 7 Sensation Pizza, because you will feel the cheesy sensation of indigestion when you eat it. In addition to a mind-boggling array of cheeses, the pizzas feature fancy toppings arranged decoratively. there are two versions of the pizza: the Pineapple & Pastrami Pork version has pepperoni, pastrami, pineapple, olives, and tomato sauce.

The Crayfish & Scallop version has crayfish, baby scallops, cucumbers, peaches, olives, and lobster sauce. That sounds like a discarded shopping list that you’d find wadded up at the bottom of your basket at the grocery store, not the topping content of one pizza.

What are those seven cheeses on the pizza? Mozzarella, parmesan, provolone, Monterey Jack, Romano, cheddar, and cream cheese.

Around the World: Pizza Hut Hong Kong – New Flower-Shaped Pizza for Chinese New Year [Brand Eating]

It seems it must be somewhat irresistible to use fast food as a fast way to deliver drugs to customers. In yet another tale of heroin at McDonald’s, a worker in Pennsylvania was arrested and accused of selling heroin in Happy Meals. Customers simply had to say, “I’d like to order a toy.”

Which is silly, because all Happy Meals come with toys and you don’t have to order them special. So there’s the first clue.

WPXI.com reports that the 26-year-old worker was busted after police said undercover agents were able to buy heroin from her while she was at work at McDonald’s.

Authorities say they’d gotten a tip that someone was peddling the drug and set up a controlled buy at the restaurant this week to check it out.

Drive-thru customers would simply pull up and announce their intent to buy a “toy,” and upon arriving at the first window would hand over $82 and receive a Happy meal box with the heroin inside. The second window was simply skipped.

Cops say they recovered 10 stamp bags of heroin inside one Happy Meal box and another 50 bags from the suspect.

DA’s office: Woman accused of selling heroin out of McDonald’s Happy Meals [WPXI.com]

It’s hard to believe some higher education institutions deceptively target veterans and servicemembers, but it does happen. To better ensure veterans’ and servicemembers’ input is being heard the federal government has launched a new reporting system to streamline consumer complaint investigations.

Several federal agencies launched a new online complaint system for veterans, servicemembers, and their families, who use Post 9/11 GI Bill and other military education benefits, to report on issues with higher education institutions, including for-profit colleges.

The Federal Trade Commission, along with the Defense Department, Veterans Affairs, Department of Justice, Department of Education, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created the customize online reporting form to gather input on abuse by higher education institutions regarding attendance, marketing, graduation rates, program quality, employment prospects and course credit. The complaints can be made directly with the DoD or VA.

The complaints, which will be forwarded to the VA, DoD and DoE beginning next month, will help the government identify and address fraudulent and deceptive practices targeted toward service members.

“Veterans should get truthful information when they choose how and where to use their military education benefits. Unfortunately, that may not always be the case,” Jessica Rich, director, FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in the announcement.

For-profit colleges have a shady reputation for lying to students and using funds for non-educational purposes.

Last October, the California Attorney General filed suit against Corinthian Colleges, Inc. and it subsidiaries for lying to students about prospects of job-placement and the alleged illegal use of military seals in advertisements.

In early 2013, several attorneys general supported legislation that would have limited the amount of federal money, including the GI Bill, that for-profit schools could spend on advertising. The legislation came after studies showed that for-profit colleges, which received more than $32 billion dollars in Federal Aid, spent inordinate amounts of money on things other than education.

The new complaint system, and newly announced tips to help servicemembers, veterans, and their families choose higher education institutions to reach their goals, are part of the Improving Transparency of Education Opportunities for Veterans Act of 2012.

Federal Government Launches New System to Gather Complaints From Military Veterans and Servicemembers Regarding Higher Education Institutions [Federal Trade Commission]

The Kansas state legislature is currently considering a bill that would prohibit municipalities in that state from building out their own municipal broadband networks. Completely coincidentally of course we’re sure, Kansas City is home to the country’s first Google Fiber municipal network.

The bill, called the “municipal communications network and private telecommunications investment safeguards act,” has as its stated goals to:

• Ensure that video, telecommunications and broadband services are provided through fair competition … in order to provide the widest possible diversity of sources of information, news and entertainment to the general public
• Encourage the development and widespread use of technological advances in providing video, telecommunications and broadband services at competitive rates
• Ensure that video, telecommunications and broadband services are each provided within a consistent, comprehensive and nondiscriminatory federal, state and local government framework

To that supposed end of increased competition and innovation in the broadband marketplace, the bill (PDF) specifies:

Except with regard to unserved areas, a municipality may not, directly or indirectly:

(1) Offer to provide to one or more subscribers, video, telecommunications or broadband service; or

(2) purchase, lease, construct, maintain or operate any facility for the purpose of enabling a private business or entity to offer, provide, carry, or deliver video, telecommunications or broadband service to one or more subscribers.

The exemption for “unserved areas” isn’t much of an exemption. Rather than being for underserved areas, where competition and increased speeds would still be very welcomed, the exemption for unserved areas has a very specific and limited definition. An unserved area is “one or more contiguous census blocks within the legal boundaries of a municipality” where 9 out of 10 households don’t have access to fixed broadband, mobile broadband, or satellite broadband at the “minimum transmission speed” defined by the FCC–currently a download speed of 3 Mbps.

The proposed law would not apply retroactively to existing networks, meaning that Kansas City would be allowed to keep its Google Fiber, but that no other city in the state would be able to make the same leap.

Kansas City laid out significant incentives for Google to come hook up their city to a speedy, reliable network. Existing broadband providers like Time Warner Cable did not particularly appreciate Google’s receiving those incentives. Cable companies in general are not exactly fans of municipal networks. And yet the added competition among broadband carriers, or even the specter of it, works out well for consumers.

A law that claims to protect competition by prohibiting competitors from entering the field? That’s an interesting trick. In its very limited expansion so far, municipal fiber doesn’t seem to end competition as much as it seems to increase it.

Other states have attempted similar legislation in recent years; a bill barring municipal broadband in Georgia failed to pass in 2013.

Kansas Legislature Introduces Bill to Limit Internet Investment [Community Broadband Networks via GigaOm]

Gone are the days of simple radio traffic reports and plotting out your travel route before hitting the road. Today, commuters use a variety of smartphone apps designed to show real-time traffic and travel times. But is banking on an app to give you the fastest route really effective?

Navigation apps, such as Google Maps or Waze, highlight the fastest routes and provide a quick glimpse of your upcoming commute. The shiny, convenient apps offer a great resource to commuters, but they don’t have all the answers to your commute problems.

From a map showing just how long a traffic jam extends to alternate routes available, the apps are a useful tool for drivers looking to shave time off their commutes. But still, the apps, which are mostly based on users’ GPS coordinates and rely heavily on commuter reports, aren’t always the most reliable way to get around.

For one, they can’t predict the future.

Officials with the Minnesota Travel Observatory tell the Star Tribune that the apps can tell you an estimated travel time, but that’s only accurate assuming nothing out of the ordinary occurs – like an unexpected snowstorm.

Additionally, more populated areas tend to have more accurate traffic apps.

For instance, the Star Tribune reports, the Twin Cities has approximately 200,000 Waze users. Officials with Waze say that’s enough to create up-to-date maps. While officials don’t say less populated cities have less accurate apps, the utilization of user data and input would suggest that if less people use the app in an area, the traffic patterns wouldn’t be updated as frequently. And in the past inaccurate maps have cause problems for commuters – remember the Google Maps debacle back in 2012?

Sometimes traffic apps only add to commuter problems. If an incident, such as a traffic jam occurs, an app will give commuters the suggestion of an alternative route. When too many users take that suggestion it can create yet another jam.

While traffic apps are convenient and provide great interactive elements, sometimes the experience of well-established traffic monitors trumps the new technology.

State departments of transportation, like the Minnesota Department of Transportation, have been tracking traffic patters for decades using a combination of construction updates, road conditions and hazards reported by the State Patrol. That information is readily available to commuters by calling 511.

Traffic reporters often use information provided by local DOTs and other information, such as weather reports, to offer a more comprehensive travel plan for commuters.

So while traffic apps are a convenient option, sometimes nothing beats hearing your traffic report from an actual person.

There you are, making sure every single store coupon you can possibly use is going to cut down on that grocery bill. But while the prices are slimming down with the discounts offered by supermarkets, the foods with the most discounts could be expanding your waistline.

In a new study published this month in the journal Preventing Chronic Disease (PDF here), researchers found that most of the coupons grocery stores offer (which excludes manufacturer coupons) online or via loyalty reward programs rack up discounts on high-calorie foods like crackers, chips, desserts, processed prepared meals and sugary drinks.

On the other hand, there are barely any price cuts on healthier items like lean meats, low-fat dairy products or fresh fruits and veggies.

This could contribute to our nation’s obesity epidemic, researchers say, as people are often shopping on a budget and rely on those coupons to be able to buy enough food to live on.

“We know from other studies that when you lower the price of foods, people buy more of them,” study author Dr. Hilary Seligman tells Philly.com. “When junk foods are the foods stores are lowering the prices of, we shouldn’t be surprised that more of them are purchased.”

The study took into account 1,056 online store coupons that were offered over a 4-week study period in April (when there wouldn’t be any added holiday discounts offered) and found: The biggest piece of the coupon pie went to the 25% for processed snack foods, candies, and desserts and that about 12% of coupons were for beverages, more than half of which were for sodas, juices, and sports/energy drinks.

Then there were the coupons for fruits (less than 1% of the total) and vegetables (only 3%). That could be attributed to the fact that retailers make more money from processed items and could possibly lose money on discounted produce, since they already end up throwing away plenty of unsold products.

Because many use coupons to stretch their food budgets along with aid from the Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP), you better believe customers are going to take whatever discounts they can, whether healthy or unhealthy for them. SNAP usually provides about $4.50 to feed one person for a day.

“The bottom line is that people are spending $4.50 on what they are eating,” study author Seligman says. “The only way to do that well or without feeling hungry often is to take advantage of the specials that grocery stores are offering. When all the specials are for candy, sweets and processed foods, it doesn’t give the low-income consumer many choices.”

But researchers think that if grocery stores incentivized more healthy food items, it could help the public eat healthier.

“Recent work emphasizes the importance of the food environment and other external forces on the quality and quantity of food consumed,” the study explains. “Grocery retailers may be uniquely positioned to positively influence Americans’ dietary patterns.”

Online Grocery Store Coupons and Unhealthy Foods, United States [CDC.gov]
Most Supermarket Coupons Promote Junk Food, Sugary Drinks: Study [Philly.com]

Oh Yelp, thou art a ceaseless font of stories about restaurant customers overreacting to bad meals and service and the chefs who make headlines by flipping the f&@! out on social media about a review that most people would probably have ignored to begin with.

The latest tale of Yelps gone wild comes to us from Eater Boston, which reports that the chef at a Medfield, MA, wine bar has issued a public apology after countering a 1-star Yelp review by calling the customer a “mentally ill raging alcoholic.”

It all began over a 1-star review posted on Yelp by a customer who that after dinner she and her fellow diner wanted to try some scotch when, “All of a sudden, the manager came to our table and told us to leave because he thought we had too much to drink. He insisted that he could not serve use any thing [sic] more including coffee and to just leave,” according to the review.

“We paid the hefty check of $180 with cash and left totally embarrassed,” continues the write-up. “He even threatened to call the police when I protested that we each had no more than 3 drinks and maybe we should have coffee before driving… Needless to say it was a very unpleasant and disturbing experience.”

It’s certainly a negative review, but it could also have gone ignored as the business already has dozens of reviews on Yelp with a 4-star average.

But rather than respond with a calm explanation of its side of the case, the restaurant’s chef wigged out and took to ranting online, writing on Facebook that the Yelper in question “neglects to mention that our restaurant had to get a RESTRAINING order against her because she is clearly a mentally ill raging alcoholic that causes a major scene every time she comes near our restaurant. She doesn’t mention that the police were on scene either.”

He also writes the commonly stated complaint by restaurants that the review wasn’t being filtered out by Yelp because the restaurant doesn’t pay to advertise with the site.

The chef has subsequently pulled his statements and issued an apology via Eater.

“I sincerely apologize for expressing my frustration with a guest’s review on social media,” saying that such a vitriolic response is not the way his restaurant “responds to guest feedback and my words do not reflect the hospitality-first philosophy of the team here.”

The chef was within his rights to defend his business against the negative review, and if the statements about the police being called and restraining orders being issued are true, then these are relevant facts to be used to discredit the 1-star write-up. All that said, this information didn’t need to be presented in a way that makes the chef look as reactionary as the customer.

Some memories are best forgotten: A Pizza Hut manager, who was arrested for drunk-driving in 2013 after knowingly letting an intoxicated person drive her car, happened to recognize a customer at her restaurant — the officer who’d busted her — and allegedly retaliated with an extra topping of saliva on his order.

According to the Smoking Gun, the manager was arrested for disorderly conduct in Tennessee after the off-duty cop claimed he saw her spit on the pizza he’d ordered for his family last week. She’d apparently recognized him from her arrest back in April of last year.

The deputy arrived to pick up his dinner order but said that the suspect didn’t have to ask his name, and instead just rang up the order. So he sat down on a bench to wait for his food.

“As the defendant removed the pizza from the oven I observed her cut her eyes and look at me. The defendant then leaned over the pizza that she had began to slice and I observed her spit on the pizza which had been purchased by me,” he wrote in the police report.

When he confronted her and asked if she knew him, she replied yes, and said his name. He’d cited her last April, but had just appeared in court for it a week earlier. She’d pleaded guilty in the DUI case and was fined $350, sentenced to two days in jail, and placed on probation for one year.

According to the sheriff, the conviction was fresh on the suspect’s mind when she allegedly hocked a loogie on the pizza, an action the police called “just a retaliation.”

She’s been charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct and was reportedly fired from her job at Pizza Hut.

Cops: Pizza Hut Manager Spit On Officer’s Dinner [The Smoking Gun]

If you have a GE dehumidifier in your home, time to check the serial number: Gree Electric Appliances has recalled 350,000 dehumidifiers sold between April 2008 and December 2011 because they could potentially overheat and cause a fire. If this recall sounds familiar, it should: Gree already recalled 2.2 million dehumidifiers sold under brand names that you might recognize like De’Longhi, Frigidaire, and Kenmore. Customers have complained to Consumerist that this recall has been slow and crappy.

The biggest complaint that readers have about the recall is that the checks are very, very slow. They complain that their checks still aren’t here four months after sending in their information, and at least one reader’s submission has disappeared entirely.

Once the checks arrive, they’re small and insufficient. Large dehumidifers aren’t cheap–the recalled Gree models cost between $180 and $270, so customers. Checks generally don’t cover the entire amount that consumers paid for their appliances, and in many municipalities, consumers have to pay a recycling fee for appliances of this size.

Anyway, check the list of recalled GE models if you have one in your home. If you have any dehumidifiers at all that you’ve bought in the last six years or so, you should probably check the recall list just in case.

Did someone mention bacon? Oh that’s right, I did, three times in the headline. I had to, because the Jack in the Box chain has apparently left its finger on the bacon button and refused to let up. Its new “Bacon Insider” burger not only has bacon+beef patty, but layers six slices of bacon on top and adds a bacon mayo.

Our friends over at BurgerBusiness.com point out that this is the first beef/bacon frankenpatty blend for a national burger chain.

And then there are the bacon trimmings on the tree. Err, burger. Eating a tree would be weird: Above and below the patty are half strips of hickory-smoked bacon for a total of six, as well as the generous daubs of bacon mayo sauce on both sides of the brioche bun.

The lettuce, American cheese and tomato just seem to be there to see what all the fuss is about. “Hey, you can eat us too, but we’re sorry we’re not part of the baconpalooza.”

“It’s a triple-threat bacon burger,” Jamie Vanderwal, Jack in the Box Category Leader told BurgerBusiness.com in an interview. “Really this goes above and beyond any bacon burger we’ve done before.”

All that bacon doesn’t come cheap — it’s $4.99 as a stand-alone item or $6.59 for a combo of fires and drink. It’s on sale for a limited time — or as long as bacon supplies last, perhaps?

Jack in the Box Intros Beef/Bacon Burger Patty [BurgerBusiness.com]

Over the last 15 years, a huge number of consumers have abandoned standard fixed-line telephone in favor of wireless phones or VoIP phone services from their cable/Internet providers. Between this shift and numerous natural disasters that have resulted in costly damage to existing landline networks, companies like AT&T and Verizon have been pushing to replace those old copper lines with their own VoIP services.

Today, the FCC is scheduled to vote on whether or not to allow regional trials that, if successful, would be the first step toward the end of the road for the copper landlines.

According to the Wall Street Journal, participation in any regional trials would be voluntary for consumers, meaning you wouldn’t be forced off your existing phone line and onto a VoIP service during the 3-6 month duration of the trial unless you ask to be switched.

However, an FCC official tells the Journal that the participating telecoms could choose to offer only VoIP service to new customers during these trials.

Since landline companies like AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink are considered common carriers by the FCC, any VoIP service they provide in lieu of standard landline phone service would be held to a higher standard of reliability than existing providers like Vonage or Skype.

Some consumers, especially those in rural areas that have been under-served by wireless and fixed broadband service, have expressed concern in recent years about telecoms’ lack of maintenance or investment in existing copper networks. They fear that merely flipping the switch from landline to VoIP could be fraught with problems.

“We do not have any organized data on whether call quality goes down, what breaks and what doesn’t when you switch over to IP,” explains Harold Feld of advocacy group Public Knowledge, which says that proper trials are necessary to see that millions of Americans aren’t stuck with substandard, glitchy service.

Of particular concern is whether the VoIP services will work with necessary business hardware like faxes, credit card readers, ATMs, and alarm services. When Verizon recently deployed its wireless Voice Link landline replacement service in storm-ravaged Fire Island, NY, none of these important connections could be made. In the end, Verizon chose to scrap Voice Link and run a new fiberoptic network to the island.

“This isn’t just about voice,” says Feld. “The phone system is a platform. It’s been an open platform for 40 years, which is why everything hooks into it.”

The unnamed FCC official is cautious about jumping to conclusions about these tests before they’ve happened.

“These will be end user impact trials. Let’s not talk theoretically; let’s look at what actually happens,” the official tells WSJ. “Let’s learn.”

Your pantry is full of stuff, some of which you might even have looked at in the last year. What you may not know is that many of the simplest pantry staples have multiple uses around the house. Beyond cleaning with baking soda and cleaning your face with olive oil, there are some more unexpected uses for these items.

You’ll have to click through to Lifehacker to see the full list, but here we’ll feature what we think are the most unexpected uses for each pantry staple.

Olive oil: You can use olive oil to remove heat stains from wooden furniture. You know, that awful mark that showed up when you set a bowl of soup on the coffee table.

Baking soda: The combination of vinegar and baking soda isn’t just for awesome explosions: it can also revive the absorbency of your bath towels.

Cooking spray: Have gum stuck in your kid’s (or your) hair? Cooking spray can help loosen gum for smaller tangles. You can also spray the rubber seals of your car doors in order to prevent them from freezing shut.

Flour: Put an unripe avocado in a bag of flour, and it will become edible much faster. You can also sprinkle flour inside jar lids to keep them easier to open.

Cornstarch: It can help you loosen stubborn knots and clean the surface of well-loved stuffed animals.

Uncommon Uses for Common Pantry Items [Lifehacker]

You know how sometimes you’ll make a debit or credit card purchase and it doesn’t show up on your statement right away? Some businesses process their transactions in batches, so it’s just a matter of time until it pops up. But what about when there is a six-month delay on those transactions being processed?

Consumerist reader A. says he was looking at his bank statement the other day and noticed that there had been six consecutive small-dollar (under $25 each) transactions all attributed to something called “AZARB LLC.”

Since such purchases are generally an indicator that someone has stolen your ID and is enjoying a buying spree of some sort, A. contacted his bank to have a new card issued.

The mystery deepened when A. spoke to his wife and found she also had mystery charges from the same company — on two different cards.

Something was going on. An ID thief having access to one account is normal, but to three different accounts from two different people?

The picture got clearer when the AZARB name on their statements eventually changed to indicate a local Arby’s in Glendale.

But there was still a worrisome question — sure, A. and his wife had been to Arby’s but not nine or ten times in the last day.

So A. called the Arby’s in question where he was told that the store’s “computer” had apparently held on to six months’ worth of charges and then suddenly decided to finally process all those transactions in one night.

The person he spoke to apologized for the inconvenience, but A. is concerned that this glitch (or oversight or whatever it was) could affect an awful lot of people.

“I asked myself, how many hundreds of customers attend an Arby’s and pay with a credit card over six months?” writes A. “What about frequent customers, who might eat there almost every day? I only got hit for a couple hundred dollars, but some people might get hit with far more. It seemed a rather appalling business practice. I can imagine people finding cards maxed, or their checking accounts mysteriously drained, probably like me assuming some kind of fraud.”

We reached out to Arby’s Restaurant Group with the details of A.’s story and received the following statement in response:

We are currently investigating the situation and will take corrective action based on our findings. Based on preliminary information, this appears to be a processing issue isolated to one franchised restaurant in Glendale, Arizona. At this point, we are not aware of any breach of data security at this location.

Interestingly enough, though we didn’t share A’s name or contact info with Arby’s HQ, he tells us that after we contacted the company, he received a follow-up call from someone at the fast food chain.

“He told me to bring my account statements to the Arby’s and they would reimburse my expense related to this incident,” A. tells Consumerist. “I was both surprised and pleased.

A. says that when he shared his belief with this company rep that this glitch/oversight/goof may have affected many customers, the Arby’s rep told him, “Yes, quite a few.”

“I find it rare that a fast food franchise respond so swiftly and decisively to a consumer difficulty,” writes A.

We’re just curious how a fast food franchise doesn’t realize that it hasn’t processed credit and debit card payments for a week, let alone several months.

We label all sorts of products with country names — Italian ice, French dressing, Swedish meatballs — regardless of where they were made, or even if they have any actual ties to the country being name-checked. But a court in the UK has ruled that Chobani can’t label its product as “Greek Yogurt” because it is made in the U.S.

The ruling comes as a result of a lawsuit filed by Athens-based yogurt company Fage against Chobani, which is headquartered in New York.

The AP reports that Fage had long dominated the Greek yogurt market in the UK with its TOTAL brand, but that it began to lose customers to Chobani when it launched its product in Britain in 2012.

Last year, a UK court ruled that Chobani’s use of the phrase “Greek Yogurt” on its label was misleading to consumers who may then believe that it’s a product of Greece instead of Chenango County, NY. At the time, the judge issued an injunction prohibiting Chobani from using that descriptor on its products.

Chobani appealed that ruling, but earlier today an appeals court once again ruled against the U.S. yogurt company, upholding the lower court injunction against the use of the term “Greek Yogurt” to describe something made not in Greece.

Never to be daunted, especially when they have friends like hunky John Stamos, Chobani says it plans to take its case further up the UK appeals ladder.

“We remain of the view that the population of the U.K. know and understand Greek yogurt to be a product description regardless of where it is made,” said Chobani in a statement. “We remain committed to the U.K. market and to breaking the monopoly on the use of the term Greek yogurt enjoyed by Fage.”

It seems unlikely to us that this specific issue will end up being raised stateside, mostly because “Greek yogurt” is a relatively new item to many American consumers. As mentioned above, American shoppers are used to the idea of country names being used as adjectives to describe a style of food that may not necessarily be the source of that food product. After all, Philadelphia cream cheese was not created in Philadelphia nor is it made here.

Meanwhile, it hasn’t been a banner year for Chobani. Last fall, the company issued a recall of some of its products after complaints of moldy and exploding yogurt containers. At the time, the FDA said it knew of 89 illnesses believed to be related to the recalled yogurt.

Then in December came reports that high-priced grocery haven Whole Foods was going to phase out Chobani over concerns about possible genetically modified content in the yogurt.

Every time you wipe in the bathroom, you’re basically flushing money down the toilet, not to mention creating well, waste with your waste. But is there any way you could ever do away with the whole thing and not use toilet paper?

We know what you’re thinking — it sounds crazy, even laughable. It’s not like most American bathrooms come with a bidet or any other kind of splashy alternative for keeping clean.

But three anti-TP users who spoke on HuffPo Live this week say it’s really no big deal — they just use cut up sheets of old fabric and keep it in a box in the bathroom. Once you use it, it goes into a bucket with a lid and gets tossed in the laundry once a week.

While one woman admits during the program that she and her husband are 80/20 on it — meaning they’ll use regular toilet paper about 20% of the time if they’re out and about — for the most part it seems to be a pretty normal part of their hygiene routines.

HuffPo host Caitlyn Becker seems a bit skeptical about the whole thing, as admittedly many people would be. And if you don’t have a washer/dryer in your home, doing the “bathroom laundry” once a week might be a bit tougher.

So we want to know:

Take Our Poll

Yes, There Are People Who Don’t Use Toilet Paper [HuffPo Live]

In one of the most literal expressions of the phrase “meal ticket” that you’ll probably ever hear, a man in China was able to parlay his single first-class ticket on Eastern China Airlines into a full year of free meals.

Sure, it’s expensive to fly first-class, but from the sound of this report in the Kwong Wah Yit Poh newspaper (via MyFoxDC.com because I do not speak the language there) it paid off for this crafty consumer. Not that we condone scamming anything free out of anyone, of course.

All he had to do was flash his ticket to the lounge staff on the day he was scheduled to fly. Once inside, he did what anyone in an airport lounge loves to do (besides lounge, of course) — he snacked on tasty food, ate his fill and enjoyed the amenities.

But then instead of getting on his flight, he’d simply change the departure to the next day… when he’d repeat the process all over again with a newly issued ticket.

Somehow he was able to get away with this for months upon months, until staff members finally caught on that the itinerary for the man had been postponed over 300 times in the year.

As soon as the airline got a whiff of his shenanigans, the man canceled his ticket before it expired and snagged a full refund, to boot. A spokeswoman for Eastern China Airlines said simply that the company had no way to stop such a “rare act.”

Man uses one first-class ticket to get free airline lounge meals for a year [MyFoxDC.com]

Prince William County crime report Washington Post Prince William County. These were among incidents reported by Prince William County police. For information, call 703-792-7245. Filipino-Chinese people perform a dragon dance during the Chinese New Year celebration in Manila's ... and more »

Prince William County community calendar, Jan. 30 to Feb. 5, 2014 Washington Post Thursday, Jan. 30. Ceramic sculpture exhibit, works by Manassas resident Jessica Gardner. 8 a.m.-9 p.m. Thursday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday, Northern Virginia Community College, 6901 Sudley Rd., Manassas. Free. 703-257-6657. Spanish chat, bring lunch and ... and more »

Fairfax County adopt a pet Washington Post 3CeeCee, a 9-year-old cat who loves to be held, is available from the Fairfax County Animal Shelter. Confetti, a spayed 1-year-old beagle mix, is gentle and loving; she's available from the Humane Society of Fairfax County. Bluey, a friendly, playful ... and more »