pileofcrapola

Kotaku McDonald’s Cosplay Stunt Backfires in Taiwan | Deadspin High School Basketball Coach Chest Bumps Ref To The Ground (UPDATE) | Jezebel Dammit: Here’s the Rocky Horror Remake’s New Brad and Janet | Gizmodo The Technics 1200 Turntable Is Back |

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If you have a recipe that calls for melted butter and a greased baking dish, you can kill two tasty birds in one oven by melting your butter in the preheating oven.

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Hopefully your kids are getting a great education in science, technology, engineering, and math at school, but chances are those classes aren’t enough to instill a lifelong interest in these fields for most kids. As parents, however, there are a lot of easy ways we foster a greater love of learning and exploration in STEM subjects in our children.

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Pork labels can be pretty confusing. There’s blade steak and shoulder blade steak, country style ribs and back ribs. This graphic shows which cut to buy based on your cooking method and your budget.

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Most of us have things we have to do every week that are necessary but don’t have a great impact on your professional or personal progress. Fast Company advises taking all those tasks and doing them on a day set aside for them.

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Nominations for your favorite kitchen trash can went about as you’d expect, with various Simplehuman’s stainless steel models rising to the top of the garbage heap. There are several different shapes and sizes you can choose from, all of them as beautiful (and expensive) as they are functional.

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Hot chocolate is always tasty, but for the best cup possible should you use powdered or solid chocolate? What about the amount of cocoa in your chocolate? An expert chocolatier reveals all.

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(NEW YORK) — The Powerball jackpot has now reached $500 million and that has many Americans practicing their Scrooge McDuck money dive.

Before you perfect your cartoon dive, however, there are several tips that experts suggest you take into account to make the most of the big payday.

Sign the Back of the Ticket

Imagine having the winning ticket but someone else claiming the money as their own. That’s what could happen if a stranger gets a hold of an unsigned ticket and turns it in as their own.

Tracey Cohen, the interim executive director of the D.C. Lottery, confirmed to ABC News that a signed ticket with two forms of matching identification is what is required to get the payout.

Stay Anonymous, If You Can

States differ about whether or not winners are able to remain anonymous or if their name is legally required to be made public once they claim their ticket.

If anonymity is possible, Alexa von Tobel, the founder and CEO of financial planning site LearnVest.com, recommends taking that option.

“It creates a ton of problems for lottery winners. We’ve seen everything from robberies to even murders of people who have won lotteries,” von Tobel told ABC News.

“A lot of your social dynamics around you change if people are aware of your status,” she noted.

Even in states where you are not allowed to remain anonymous, there are ways to try to keep your winnings private.

Cohen told ABC News that people can create LLCs or non-profit entities that can protect their identities. The organization then claims the jackpot without revealing the name of the actual winner.

Assemble a Money Management Team

State-run lottery organizations do not give tax or financial advice to winners and they urge people to seek outside counsel.

Von Tobel notes that in addition to just calling up the first financial planner from an Internet search, be sure to do thorough background checks on the individuals that you hire to help you navigate the win.

She suggested hiring an estate planner, a certified financial planner and an accountant before claiming the ticket. In addition to completing background checks, von Tobel also noted the importance of confirming their respective fees before signing on any dotted lines.

Once You Win, Don’t Spend

Many experts, including von Tobel, suggest that any winners wait at least six months — if not a year — before making any purchases.

“We often find that a lot of people end up blowing through millions,” von Tobel told ABC.

According a 2015 study by the Camelot Group, 44 percent of winners spend their entire winnings within five years.

How Much Can You Win?

The total jackpot is bound to go up by Wednesday, Cohen said, since more people are expected to buy tickets in the coming days.

Even at the current $500 million, the payout marks the sixth-highest Powerball jackpot in the game’s history, a D.C. Lottery spokesperson confirmed.

As of now, the cash payout is $306 million, though the winner will end up with far less than that. The final take home amount depends on the individual’s tax rate and the state and local taxes in their state, but Cohen noted that winners can generally expect to end up with about a third of the total cash jackpot.

Copyright © 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.

The post What you should do if you win the Powerball jackpot appeared first on WTOP.

HEMPSTEAD, Texas (AP) — A Texas state trooper who arrested Sandra Bland after a contentious traffic stop last summer was fired Wednesday after being charged with perjury for allegedly lying about his confrontation with the black woman who died three days later in jail.

Trooper Brian Encinia claimed in an affidavit that Bland was “combative and uncooperative” after he pulled her over and ordered her out of her car. The grand jury identified that affidavit in charging Encinia with perjury, special prosecutor Shawn McDonald said Wednesday night.

Hours after the indictment, the Texas Department of Public Safety said it would “begin termination proceedings” against Encinia, who has been on paid desk duty since Bland was found dead in her cell.

Bland’s arrest and death — which authorities ruled a suicide — provoked national outrage and drew the attention of the Black Lives Matter movement. Protesters linked Bland to other black suspects who were killed in confrontations with police or died in police custody, including Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Freddie Gray in Baltimore.

Video of the stop shows Encinia drawing his stun gun and telling Bland, “I will light you up!” She can later be heard off-camera screaming that he’s about to break her wrists and complaining that he knocked her head into the ground.

Encinia’s affidavit stated he “removed her from her vehicle to further conduct a safer traffic investigation,” but grand jurors “found that statement to be false,” said McDonald, one of five special prosecutors appointed to investigate.

She was taken to the Waller County jail in Hempstead, about 50 miles northwest of Houston. Three days later, she was found hanging from a jail cell partition with a plastic garbage bag around her neck. The grand jury has already declined to charge any sheriff’s officials or jailers in her death.

The perjury charge is a misdemeanor that carries a maximum of one year in jail and a $4,000 fine. Encinia was not immediately taken into custody, and an arraignment date has not yet been announced. Encinia could not immediately be reached for comment; a cellphone number for him was no longer working.

Bland’s sister, Sharon Cooper, told The Associated Press that Encinia’s indictment was “bittersweet.” Encinia also faces a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Bland’s family.

“We have always felt from the onset, from our viewing of the dashcam video, is what happened to Sandy was largely impacted by the fatal encounter that she had with Officer Encinia,” Cooper said.

Cannon Lambert, an attorney for the family, said Encinia should have also been indicted for assault, battery or abuse of his official power.

“The public deserves accountability,” Lambert said. “If you don’t have public accountability, you don’t have public trust. I want the public to be able to trust the police.”

About two dozen protesters attended Wednesday’s news conference where the indictment was announced. One protester’s sign read, “Legalize black skin.”

Speaking afterward, one protester, Jinaki Muhammad, called the misdemeanor charge “a slap in the face to the Bland family.”

Encinia pulled Bland over on July 10 for making an improper lane change near Prairie View A&M University, her alma mater, where she had just interviewed and accepted a job. Dashcam video from Encinia’s patrol car shows that the traffic stop quickly became confrontational.

The video shows the trooper drawing his stun gun after Bland refuses to get out of her car. Bland eventually steps out of the vehicle, and Encinia orders her to the side of the road. The confrontation continues off-camera but is still audible.

Encinia wrote in his affidavit that he had Bland exit the vehicle and handcuffed her after she became combative, and that she swung her elbows at him and kicked him in his right shin. Encinia said he then used force “to subdue Bland to the ground,” and she continued to fight back. He arrested her for assault on a public servant.

Another of Bland’s sisters, Shante Needham, has said Bland called her from jail the day after her arrest, saying she’d been arrested but didn’t know why, and that an officer had placed his knee in her back and injured her arm.

Her family has said they were working to get money for her bail when they learned of her death.

Cooper, her sister, said Wednesday that the family still has unanswered questions about what happened in the days before her death.

“Our family’s grieving process is at a standstill,” she said.

___

Associated Press writer Nomaan Merchant in Dallas contributed to this report.

The post Trooper in Sandra Bland traffic stop indicted, fired appeared first on WTOP.

McLEAN, Va. (AP) — An Arizona congresswoman filed legislation Wednesday to ensure that a group of female World War II pilots can have their ashes laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.

The pilots known as Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, flew military aircraft in noncombat roles during wartime to free up male pilots for combat. The women were considered civilians until Congress retroactively granted them veteran status in 1977.

Since then, the women have been permitted to have their ashes placed at Arlington, the cemetery in northern Virginia overlooking the nation’s capital. And since 2002 they have been eligible for placement with military honors.

But last year, then-Secretary of the Army John McHugh rescinded their eligibility. In a memo, he said lawyers had determined they should never have been allowed in Arlington in the first place.

Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., said the Army’s exclusion of WASPs is wrong and filed legislation to reverse McHugh’s decision.

The family of WASP Elaine Harmon, who died last year at 95, has been waging a campaign to restore the rules granting WASPs the right to be placed at Arlington. An Associated Press article last week about the family’s campaign prompted widespread criticism of the Army for excluding WASPs. A petition on change.org sponsored by the Harmon family has now received more than 31,000 signatures.

In the meantime, the family has been keeping Harmon’s ashes in a closet while they press for inclusion at Arlington.

Eligibility for in-ground burial at Arlington, which has severe space limitations, is extremely tight, and not even all World War II veterans are eligible for burial there. But eligibility for placement of ashes, or inurnment, is not quite as strict. Arlington’s rules state that “any former member of the Armed Forces who served on active duty (other than for training) and whose last service terminated honorably” is eligible to have their ashes placed at Arlington.

Harmon’s family says the WASPs or their relatives aren’t asking for special treatment, only the same rights that would have been afforded to them if they had been recognized as a military unit from the beginning.

But Army officials say WASPs still don’t qualify, despite their retroactive status as veterans.

McSally said the Army’s response is insufficient.

“We thought this was settled in 1977,” said McSally, herself a retired Air Force pilot. “The Army can give some bureaucratic answer, but they’re on the wrong side of this.”

Renea Yates, deputy superintendent for cemetery administration at Arlington, said Wednesday in a phone interview that the cemetery faces extreme pressure on its capacity, and extending eligibility to WASPs inevitably means that the cemetery will fill up even faster.

“As stewards here, we have to make tough decisions today that will affect the life of the cemetery 20 to 30 years from now,” Yates said.

There were just over 1,000 WASPs who served in the program, and it’s estimated that only 100 are still alive. And not everyone who is eligible for Arlington chooses to be cremated and placed there. But Yates said there could be a domino effect that would occur by letting WASPs in. Merchant Marines who served in World War II, for example, also had veteran status granted to them retroactively under the 1977 law, and Yates said allowing them in would place a far greater strain on Arlington’s capacity than the WASPs.

Kate Landdeck, a history professor at Texas Woman’s university who has researched the WASPs and advocated for their inclusion at Arlington, said she is sympathetic to Arlington’s concerns about space. But she said that the WASP pilots’ history is distinct. WASPs, she said, were created with the intent for them to serve as a full-fledged military unit, but their admission into the armed forces was derailed strictly because of gender discrimination.

“I just think they’ve picked the wrong group to exclude,” she said.

The post Move to let female pilots ashes rest at Arlington Cemetery appeared first on WTOP.

MIAMI (AP) — Officials at Zoo Miami say a young giraffe has been euthanized after suffering an apparent spinal injury.

Zoo spokesman Ron Magill told The Miami Herald (http://goo.gl/TXSCKj ) that the 9-month-old giraffe, Wesley, poked his head between two posts Tuesday to look into an area where another giraffe was being examined by keepers.

Officials say the young giraffe panicked when he couldn’t get his head back out and began to thrash around. Magill said staff members were able to free Wesley after a few minutes, but he had already done significant damage to his spine.

The zoo’s veterinary team worked on the giraffe for several hours before deciding to euthanize him.

Magill said this is the first accident of its kind at the zoo. Workers were closing gaps in the area to prevent similar injuries.

The post Young giraffe euthanized at Zoo Miami after spinal injury appeared first on WTOP.

NEW YORK (AP) — A U.S. citizen already accused of going to Pakistan to train with al-Qaida was charged Wednesday with helping build explosives for a 2009 suicide attack on an American military base in Afghanistan.

A revised indictment charges Muhanad Mahmoud Al Farekh with conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals, conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and other crimes. He is to appear Thursday in federal court in Brooklyn; there was no immediate comment by his lawyer.

The charges stem from an attack on Jan. 19, 2009, involving two vehicles driven by unidentified suicide bombers that were rigged with explosives, the new indictment says. Only one of the bombs detonated. Al Farekh’s fingerprints were later found on packing tape used on the second explosive, the indictment says.

The court papers didn’t identify the base or detail the damage. News accounts from the same 2009 date cited in court papers described a dual-car bomb attack at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost City, near the border with Pakistan, which killed one Afghan and wounded several others, but harmed no Americans.

The 30-year-old Al Farekh, who was born in Texas, “allegedly turned his back on our country and tried to kill U.S. soldiers in the course of executing their sworn duty to keep us safe,” Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Robert Capers said in a statement.

Al Farekh was brought from Pakistan to the United States in April to face initial charges of providing material support to terrorists. Federal authorities alleged he and two other students at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, started watching al-Qaida propaganda and hatching a plan to become martyrs abroad.

The three flew to Karachi, Pakistan, on round-trip tickets in March 2007 after selling their belongings, disconnecting their phones and buying mountain boots commonly worn by al-Qaida fighters in Pakistan and Afghanistan, authorities said.

Prosecutors said one of Al Farekh’s co-conspirators trained three men on how to use AK-47s and other weapons at an al-Qaida training camp in 2008, the complaint says. The three — Najibullah Zazi, Zarein Ahmedzay and Adis Medunjanin — were later convicted of plotting to bomb New York City’s subway system and are cooperating with federal authorities.

The post American charged in bombing attack on US base in Afghanistan appeared first on WTOP.

Hasbro recently explained that the reason it didn’t include the main character from Star Wars: The Force Awakens in its new Star Wars-themed Monopoly game wasn’t because she was a female, but because it didn’t want to spoil info about her character that was already quite obvious from the trailers. But now that everyone and their goldfish has done their mandatory 135-minute duty and watched the movie, Hasbro is going to add a woman to the Monopoly mix.

“We love the passion fans have for Rey, and are happy to announce that we will be making a running change to include her in the Monopoly: Star Wars game available later this year,” a rep for Hasbro tells EW.

Now that this is settled, perhaps Hasbro can do something about moving Des Moines back to Iowa?

Plenty of famous people post Tweets, Facebook updates, and Instagram photos where they mention a product or company name that they truly enjoy. But if those celebs are getting paid to slap their name on these messages, they need to be transparent about it. A pair of sportscasters at ESPN apparently missed that memo when they recently name-dropped Domino’s Pizza on Twitter.

In the lead-up to New Year’s, during which ESPN aired a seemingly endless string of college football bowl games, both Adam Schefter and Chris Mortensen appeared to have a hunger for the same brand of mega-chain pizza:

What are the odds of both sportscasters feeling so overwhelmed by a need for Domino’s that they needed to mention it on Twitter within 24 hours of each other? Pretty slim, thought the folks at Deadspin, who checked with ESPN.

Lo and behold, the network confirmed that these Tweets were indeed bought and paid for by Domino’s — they just happened to forget to mark the Tweets as advertisements, as required by the FTC Act.

Celebrities are learning that if they get paid to shill a product on their social media channels, they are going to be held to the same standards as traditional ads.

Earlier this year, Kim Kardashian was caught by the FDA blabbing about a prescription morning sickness medication without (A) revealing that it was a paid endorsement, and (B) providing any of the required disclosures about the drug’s effects. She ultimately had to post a lengthy mea culpa on Instagram with the information she’d omitted.

While it’s normal for travelers to undergo additional screening procedures from the Transportation Security Administration when there could be something amiss, the father of a 10-year-old girl says she was made uncomfortable by a two-minute pat-down after she left a juice pouch in her carry-on.

The San Diego man says his daughter was thoroughly patted down by a female TSA agent for almost two minutes at Raleigh-Durham International Airport, an experience he said clearly made her feel uncomfortable.

“She just had a completely blank stare on her face,” he told the Today show. “I could tell it was very uncomfortable for her.”

Agents swabbed her bag after discovering the juice — which exceeds TSA limits for how much liquid can be brough on a plane — and got a false-positive reading for explosives on the bag. The pat-down followed.

“What was going through my mind is, ‘This is annoying, I don’t like this, I want to run out of the door,'” the daughter told the show.

According to TSA protocol, “Modified screening procedures are in place to reduce the likelihood of a pat-down.”

“TSA screening procedures allow for the pat-down of a child under certain circumstances,” the agency said in a statement. “The process by which the child was patted down followed approved procedures.”

In this particular situation, TSA said the process was observed by her parent, and that a cell phone alarm sounding in her bag required additional checks.

But her dad says the rules should be changed when it comes to young children. He’s contacted his congressman and will file a formal complaint against the agency, he says.

“Maybe they need retraining. Maybe they did everything by the book. I don’t really know, but it was an uncomfortable situation,” he said.

Father Outraged By ‘Uncomfortable’ TSA Pat-Down on 10-Year-Old Daughter [Today]

About 2.4 million teens smoked e-cigarettes last year, and that number is poised to rise, thanks in part to the tens of millions of dollars device manufactures have poured into advertisements for the products, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

The agency’s Vital Signs report found that more than 18 million young people see e-cigarette advertising in stores, online, in newspapers and magazines, or on television and in movies, increasing the likelihood they’ll eventually pick up one of the devices.

In fact, the report, which is based on a 2014 survey of 22,000 children and teens, found a correlation between increased ad spending and the number of teens who are using e-cigarettes.

The industry has rapidly increased marketing spending from $6.4 million in 2011 to $115 million in 2014, according to the CDC report.

During that same time period, e-cigarette use in the past 30 days increased from less than 1% to almost 4% among middle school students and from less than 2% to 13% among high school students.

“Exposure to e-cigarette advertisements may be contributing to increases in e-cigarette use among youth,” the CDC hypothesizes.

According to the CDC, the continued uptick in advertising of e-cigarettes threatens to undo decades of campaigns that focused on keeping teens away from tobacco products.

That’s because e-cigarette ads use many of the same themes – independence, rebellion, and sex – used to sell cigarettes and other conventional tobacco products.

“The same advertising tactics the tobacco industry used years ago to get kids addicted to nicotine are now being used to entice a new generation of young people to use e-cigarettes,” CDC Director Tom Frieden, said in a statement. “Kids should not be using e-cigarettes and yet two-thirds of kids in this country are seeing e-cigarette ads.”

In all, the CDC report found that 68.9% of middle and high school students see ads from one or more media sources.

Most see e-cigarette ads in retail stores – about 54.8% – while about 39.8% view ads online. Similarly, nearly 36.5% of teens see the products on TV or in movies, and 30.4% reported viewing ads in newspapers and magazines in the last year.

The CDC and health advocates warn that if advertising, and other aspects of the e-cigarette industry aren’t regulated soon, more and more young people will be drawn to the devices.

“The irresponsible and indiscriminate marketing by the e-cigarette industry, coupled with a complete lack of government oversight, is putting the health of our nation’s kids at risk,” Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, tells NBC News. “It shouldn’t be a surprise that youth use of e-cigarettes has skyrocketed when kids are being inundated with marketing for these products.”

E-cigarettes have become increasingly popular in recent years, while the Food & Drug Administration has been slow to implement federal regulations.

While we wait for a final verdict on the FDA’s proposed regulations over e-cigarettes, the CDC suggests states and communities can do more to protect their youngest residents from the devices and the advertisements that go along with them. Those strategies include:

• Limiting tobacco product sales to facilities that never admit youth,
• Restricting the number of stores that sell tobacco and how close they can be to schools,
• Requiring that e-cigarettes be sold only through face-to-face transactions, not on the Internet, and
• Requiring age verification to enter e-cigarette vendor’s websites, make purchases, and accept deliveries of e-cigarettes.

“States and communities can also help reduce youth tobacco use by funding tobacco prevention and control programs that address the diversity of tobacco products available on the market, including e-cigarettes,” Corinne Graffunder, director of CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, said in a statement. “We know what works to effectively reduce youth tobacco use. If we were to fully invest in these proven strategies, we could significantly reduce the staggering toll that tobacco takes on our families and communities.”

In the world of customer service, there are usually a few, easily predictable responses from companies that we encounter: either an issue gets resolved to the satisfaction of the customer, whether quickly or with a bit of effort, or it doesn’t. But one Amazon customer found himself in wholly unfamiliar territory after providing negative feedback, when, he claims, an employee of the e-commerce giant put an unrequested 10-inch dildo in his shopping basket.

Ars Technica UK’s Sebastian Anthony has been in touch with a customer named Pedro, who lives in Ireland. Back in October, he’d ordered a specialized textbook he needed for an art class on Amazon.de, but was disappointed when it arrived to find that although the listing had been for the current edition, he’d received the previous edition.

After he got in touch with customer service, he was told that Amazon couldn’t find the right version of the textbook and that he should instead return the book for a full refund. He was frustrated at that point, as he’d spent time looking for the right book and then more time waiting for Amazon to locate it in its warehouse, so he provided negative feedback on a customer satisfaction survey. End of story, or so he thought.

He says that the next time he opened up Amazon.de — surprise! He found a giant dildo in his shopping basket. Because he hadn’t put “The Hulk 10.25-inch Huge Dong Black” to his cart, he immediately suspected an Amazon customer service rep had taken the negative feedback to heart and had retaliated with a sex toy.

He took a screenshot and emailed Amazon to find out why he had an unsolicited dildo in his shopping basket. After a few emails from several customer service representatives, he spoke with a member of the Executive Customer Relations team at Amazon.de. Pedro says the rep was very sympathetic and apologized profusely, assuring him that he’d been in touch with HR to make sure that such an incident wasn’t repeated.

As a gesture of apology, the rep told Pedro he’d receive a €100 voucher on his Amazon.de account, which he then received.

Ars UK’s Anthony wanted to figure out whether or not Pedro’s story was true, and spent a few months trying to nail down the details, using correspondence Pedro forwarded from Amazon’s customer service team. Ars believes the situation is authentic.

Amazon, for its part, at first said it couldn’t comment on the case due to its privacy policy. Once Pedro gave his permission for the company to speak with Ars on his behalf, Anthony reached out repeatedly for either confirmation or a denial, and didn’t get any response. He also contacted the company and said he intended to write about the incident, and asked if Amazon wanted to provide a statement. Again, nothing.

So why is it possible for Amazon associates to have access to your shopping cart? One big reason: if you’re not very Internet savvy and need help adding or removing things, a customer might ask for help from customer service while shopping.

In any case, Pedro adds in the comments, he’s not a fan of Amazon.de after this experience. And he wouldn’t trust their sex toy descriptions, to boot.

“Anyway, the entry for ‘The Hulk’ is completely misleading,” he writes. “I would expect something called ‘The Hulk’ to be green. It’s picture is pink and the description says it is black. My whole issue with Amazon.de started because of incorrect description of items — and this entry does not help their case.”

Amazon Won’t Say If Employee Added Unrequested Dildo To Customer’s Cart [Ars Technica UK]

In a pre-online era, when we made most purchases in person, getting a warranty replacement on a broken product often required taking the defective item back to where you bought it. But now that we’re all buying things online, a number of retailers are willing to ship you a replacement on the understanding that you’ll immediately return the original item. ID thieves are taking advantage of this goodwill, hijacking customers’ accounts and convincing companies to send them free replacements for items they never bought.

Cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs recently looked into a spate of warranty fraud attempts involving Fitbit products.

Toward the end of 2015, large amounts of Fitbit customer data was being posted online — the kind of data you’d need to make a warranty claim on a broken device.

But this information apparently didn’t come from some sort of data breach at the fitness accessory company. Instead, it was gleaned from various sources — password-stealing malware, careless Fitbit customers who use common passwords or the same email/password combination across multiple accounts.

Once an ID thief accesses a customer’s account, they can change its associated email address so that the customer isn’t alerted to future communications.

“[A]t that point they are the customer,” explains Fitbit’s head of security, telling Krebs that the fraudster will then call up Fitbit to file a warranty complaint and get a replacement.

“They’re mainly interested in the premium devices,” like the $250 Fitbit Surge, he says.

Since ill-gotten electronics are often sold for significantly less than their retail price, it makes sense that scammers would go after the most expensive items.

The Fitbit exec says that the company has put new systems in place and re-trained its warranty folks in an effort to end the hemorrhaging.

“If we see an account that was used in a suspicious way, or a large number of login requests for accounts coming from a small group of Internet addresses, we’ll lock the account and have the customer reconfirm specific information,” he tells Krebs.

Fitbit says it is planning to beef up protection against ID theft by offering two-factor authentication — which requires that the user not just enter a password, but also a unique code sent to their phone or other device — but the company’s security chief is realistic and doesn’t really expect less-savvy Fitbit users to take advantage of the improved security.

“I’m not sure the type of user who is using the same password at every site is the great target for that,” he points out.

WASHINGTON — Human error. That’s how the District’s fire chief explains a botched emergency response Sunday when city firefighters arrived to the street where a man was having a heart attack but left without ever reaching him.

Minutes after Albert Jackson’s family called 911, D.C. firefighters in Truck 17 arrived on the same block of 60th Street NE where Jackson was. The firefighters came upon D.C. police officers first.

“(D.C. police) had a patient. They waved them down and said, ‘Hey, we don’t need any assistance from you guys.’ They thought they had arrived at the location,” says Fire Chief Gregory Dean.

Thinking police were responding to the same call, which dispatchers described as an “unconscious, fainting man,” Dean says the fire truck left. But Jackson was not the man with police.

When dispatchers realized Truck 17 had never reached its intended patient, Dean confirms 15 minutes passed before the next EMS crew arrived. Jackson later died.

Early Wednesday, Dean released a statement extending his condolences to Jackson’s family for the part D.C. Fire and EMS crews played in his death.

When asked to what he attributed the mistake, Dean responded, “human error.”

“There’s not really an internal investigation. We have the facts. We know what happened,” he says.

Going forward, Dean says he’s requiring all first responders to confirm the address of a call to dispatchers when they arrive. They previously had used the phrase, “At location,” according to Dean.

He is also ensuring dispatchers use clearer language to describe the patient’s age and ailment — descriptive information that could have helped firefighters recognize that the man police were attending to was not their patient.

He says the responding officers are not on administrative leave.

“They made a mistake. They assumed. So their supervisor is looking at that part, as well as I looked, at what do we need to do as an organization so we can ensure this won’t happen to anyone else,” Dean says.

Dean took over the department last year after former Chief Ken Ellerbe resigned. Ellerbe’s tenure was marked by complaints of staffing shortages and poor patient care, including the death of Medric Cecil Mills, 77,  who suffered a heart attack and collapsed across the street from a D.C. fire station.

The post D.C. fire chief explains why firefighters left heart attack victim’s street appeared first on WTOP.

Washington Post

Final phase of Lorton prison redevelopment begins Washington Post Redevelopment of the final piece of the 2,300-acre property in Lorton that formerly housed prisons for the D.C. Department of Corrections has begun. Officials broke ground last month on Liberty Crest at Laurel Hill, a project that will transform the 80 ...

Prince William County community calendar, Jan. 7-13, 2016 Washington Post Woodbridge Toastmasters Club An open-house meeting. Learn effective communication and leadership skills. 7:30 p.m. Ebenezer Baptist Church, 13020 Telegraph Rd., Woodbridge. 703-898-7171. woodbridge.toastmastersclubs.org. $68 membership fee. and more »

COCKEYSVILLE, Md. (AP) — Baltimore County police say a school bus carrying high school students got stuck in a sinkhole that opened up after a water main break, but the students got off safely.

Police said in social media posts that the bus carrying Dulaney High School students got stuck Wednesday morning in Cockeysville, near the water main break.

Spokesman Cpl. John Wachter says all the students on board got off the bus safely. Police posted a photo online showing the rear of the bus sunken into water on the submerged section of road.

Police say the water main break caused the road to collapse, and motorists are being asked to avoid the area.

The post Police: School bus stuck in sinkhole, students OK appeared first on WTOP.

A simple trip for fast food can become anxiety-inducing when you throw a carful of excited kids into the mix. In an attempt to quell this chaos, Chick fil-A is testing a new service dubbed “Mom’s Valet.”

The service, Business Insider reports, enables parents with children to order their meals via the drive-thru, then come inside with their brood to eat.

Once an order is placed and paid for at the drive-thru, a Chick-fil-A employee will prepare a table for them and bring their order to them.

David Farmer, Chick-fil-A’s vice president of menu strategy and development, tells Business Insider that the idea for the service came about after employees noticed how hectic the ordering process could be for families.

The service, which will be advertised on participating restaurants’ drive-thru signs, is part of the company’s focus on “taking the stress out,” and making the dining experience more relaxing for all customers.

Chick-fil-A is making an unprecedented move to hook millennial moms [Business Insider]

Nearly three years after T-Mobile became the first of the four major wireless carriers to ditch the two-year contract business model, Sprint is now the only of these companies to still offer these traditional plans to customers. But a company insider claims that Sprint will join the rest of the pack and ditch contracts later this week.

This is according to a post from late last night by a verified employee on the Sprint subreddit.

The employee writes that, starting Friday, Jan. 8, new Sprint customers will not be able to get two-year contracts and the cheaper, subsidized phones that come with them.

Instead, customers will have to pay full price for their phones, either by purchasing them outright or by leasing through Sprint.

Like the other carriers, Sprint has been offering this sort of contract-free plan for quite some time, but it has also continued to allow consumers to sign up for traditional contracts.

Unlike AT&T, which is ditching new contracts altogether this week, the employee says that Sprint will allow existing contract customers to re-up their deals when their obligation expires.

The employee also says that the change does not affect Sprint’s wireless plans for tablets, but that the company will soon begin offering incentives to nudge contract tablet customers into leasing their devices when their contracts expire.

As the employee notes, wile contracts might offer you the cheaper sticker price on devices, customers may be able to save more by going contract-free and leasing their phones.

We asked Sprint for comment on the reddit post and a rep for the company provided a statement that still lists contracts as an option, but doesn’t explain whether they will still be an option after Jan. 8:

“Sprint continues to offer customers choices to obtain their new device in a way that best fits their budget,” reads the statement. “Customers can choose to lease a smartphone – the most cost effective way to obtain a new phone. Customers also have the choice to pay for their device through Sprint Easy Pay (installment bill), pay full retail price or sign a two-year agreement.”

We’ve asked for further clarification on this issue and will update if we hear back.

[via DSLreports]

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama’s plan to strengthen controls on guns in the U.S. is meeting swift resistance from gun rights groups, Republicans and even a few Democrats who say it’s up to Congress to enact new policies on firearms. Yet the overall effect on gun violence could prove to be relatively small.

Some questions and answers about Obama’s presidential actions on gun control:

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WHAT ACTION IS OBAMA TAKING?

Obama announced a 10-point plan to try to keep guns from people who shouldn’t have them. The centerpiece is new federal guidance that seeks to clarify who is “in the business” of selling firearms and has to get a federal license.

Licensed dealers must run background checks on prospective buyers, but private sellers don’t. Obama is aiming to narrow that loophole so that more firearms sold at gun shows, flea markets or online are subject to background checks.

Other steps include 230 new examiners the FBI will hire to process background checks. And Obama is directing federal agencies to research smart gun technology to reduce accidental shootings and asking Congress for $500 million for mental health care. Further steps aim to better track lost guns and prevent trusts or corporations from buying dangerous weapons without background checks.

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I SELL A FEW GUNS FROM TIME TO TIME. DO I NEED TO REGISTER?

There’s no cut-and-dry answer.

The new guidance says if your “principal motive” is profit, you’re a dealer, but if you occasionally sell guns from your personal collection, you’re not. Someone who only sells at gun shows or online can still be a dealer.

There’s no specific number of guns that triggers a requirement to register. But the Justice Department is warning sellers that courts have convicted people for dealing without a license even when they’ve sold as few as two guns.

It’s up to individuals to look at the guidance and determine whether they need a license. The penalties for making the wrong call are steep: up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 for those who deal firearms without a license. If you’re not sure, you can contact the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

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WOULD THIS HAVE STOPPED RECENT MASS SHOOTINGS?

Probably not.

An Associated Press review shows that Obama’s executive actions would have had no impact in keeping weapons from suspects in several of the deadliest incidents, including Newtown, Connecticut; San Bernardino, California; and Aurora, Colorado. The shooters in Newtown and San Bernardino, for example, used weapons purchased by other people.

Obama’s actions could potentially reduce other gun deaths — especially suicides, which cause two-thirds of gun deaths. But it’s unclear whether the steps will significantly curb unregulated gun sales.

Millions of guns are sold annually in informal settings outside of gun shops, including many through private sales arranged online. The Obama administration acknowledged it couldn’t quantify how many gun sales would be newly subjected to background checks. Nor could it say how many currently unregistered gun sellers would have to obtain a license.

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WHY NOW?

Obama is running out of time. With barely a year left in his presidency, he has to act quickly to roll out new policies, especially if he wants them to become ingrained and harder to rescind when the next president takes over.

After the Newtown shooting, Obama in 2013 sought far-reaching, bipartisan legislation that went beyond background checks to ban certain assault-style weapons and cap the size of ammunition clips. When the effort collapsed in the Senate, the White House said it was working to identify every legal step he could take on his own.

But a more recent spate of gun-related atrocities, including in San Bernardino, California, spurred the administration to give the issue another look.

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CAN THE PRESIDENT DO THIS ALONE?

Obama says he can. Republicans and gun rights advocates say he can’t.

The White House says Obama is acting fully within his legal authority, by clarifying existing laws that Congress has already passed. It’s an argument Obama has used before when opposition in Congress has led him to take sweeping executive action on immigration, climate change and other issues.

Still, Obama readily concedes the executive steps will be challenged in court. One likely option for opponents is to challenge Obama’s authority to define what it means to be “engaged in the business” of selling guns, since that definition isn’t laid out in the law.

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Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Michael R. Sisak contributed to this report. Follow Josh Lederman’s work at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP or http://bigstory.ap.org/author/josh-lederman

The post Questions and answers about Obama’s executive plan on guns appeared first on WTOP.

LINDA, Calif. (AP) — Authorities were considering whether to seek criminal charges against a woman whose pit bull dogs mauled to death her 9-year-old brother in California.

Alexandria Griffin-Heady, 24, was devastated by the Sunday attack in her small trailer in Yuba County, but no crime occurred, her attorney Roberto Marquez said.

He said Griffin-Heady had overnight visitation rights with her half-brother, who was in the foster care system in Sacramento County.

Griffin-Heady had raised the three pit bulls and the animals appeared tame and friendly around the boy, Marquez said.

“It’s just a sad, sad tragedy,” Marquez said. “There was nothing to indicate anything like this would happen.”

The Yuba County Sheriff’s Department said Tuesday that it’s considering whether to recommend charges.

It said Griffin-Heady left the boy alone with the dogs for about three hours Sunday while she went to work. When she returned, she found the badly mauled boy in her trailer in Linda, about 40 miles north of Sacramento.

Marquez said Griffin-Heady and her brother were from a broken home and she was attempting to adopt the boy.

“Whether this was an unrealistic fantasy or not, she was trying to do the right thing,” Marquez said.

Sacramento County Child Protective Services said it is working with investigators and declined further comment.

The post Charges considered in fatal dog-mauling of California boy appeared first on WTOP.

The gun control measures a tearful President Barack Obama announced Tuesday would not have prevented the slaughters of 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, or 14 county workers at a holiday party in San Bernardino, California.

Obama’s executive action expands mandatory background checks to gun shows, flea markets and online sales, adds more than 230 examiners and staff to help process them and calls on states to submit accurate and updated criminal history data.

Those measures are seen as crucial to stemming gun suicides — the cause of two-thirds of gun deaths — by blocking immediate access to weapons. But, an Associated Press review shows, they would have had no impact in keeping weapons from the hands of suspects in several of the deadliest recent mass shootings that have spurred calls for tighter gun control.

The shooters at Sandy Hook and San Bernardino used weapons bought by others, shielding them from background checks. In other cases, the shooters legally bought guns.

In Aurora, Colorado, and at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., men undergoing mental health treatment were cleared to buy weapons because federal background checks looked to criminal histories and court-ordered commitments for signs of mental illness. The Obama administration is making changes in that realm by seeking to plug certain Social Security Administration data into the background check system and by helping states report more information about people barred from gun possession for mental health reasons.

The suspect in a shooting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, should have been flagged at the time, but errors and delays cleared the way for his purchase.

Though the moves probably wouldn’t have prevented recent mass shootings, Obama rejected the idea that undermines the changes.

“We maybe can’t save everybody, but we could save some,” Obama said.

A look at how some recent mass shooting suspects got their weapons:

Dec. 2, 2015, San Bernardino, California, 14 killed

Syed Farook and his wife used weapons that the FBI says his neighbor, Enrique Marquez, purchased legally from a federally licensed dealer in 2011 and 2012. Marquez, now facing conspiracy and other charges, told investigators that Farook asked him to purchase the weapons because he would draw less attention. At the time, the FBI says, the men were plotting to shoot up a community college and a highway.

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Oct. 1, 2015, Roseburg, Oregon, 10 killed

Christopher Harper-Mercer and his family members legally purchased the handguns and rifle he used in the Umpqua Community College shooting from a federally licensed gun dealer, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

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July 16, 2015, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 5 killed

The FBI says some of the weapons Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez used in his attack on a pair of military facilities were purchased legally and some were not. It is unclear when the purchases were made and whether he was subject to a background check. Relatives say Abdulazeez had a history of mental illness, made a series of overseas trips and was arrested in April on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol. In May 2013, he failed a background check for an engineering job at a nuclear power plant in Ohio.

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June 17, 2015, Charleston, South Carolina, 9 killed

A February drug arrest should have prevented Dylann Roof from purchasing the pistol authorities say he used at Emanuel AME Church, but a record-keeping error and background check delay allowed the transaction to go through. The FBI says a background check examiner never saw the arrest report because the wrong arresting agency was listed in state criminal history records. After three days passed, the gun dealer was legally permitted to complete the transaction.

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Sept. 16, 2013, Washington, D.C., 12 killed

Aaron Alexis, a former reservist turned civilian contractor, passed state and federal background checks and legally purchased the pump-action shotgun used in the Washington Navy Yard shooting despite a history of violent outbursts and recent mental health treatment. Alexis was accused of firing a gun in anger in Texas in 2004 and Seattle in 2010, but was not prosecuted in either case. In 2011, he received an honorable discharge despite bouts of insubordination, disorderly conduct and unauthorized absences. None of that would have disqualified him from purchasing a weapon.

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Dec. 14, 2012, Newtown, Connecticut, 26 killed

Adam Lanza used his mother’s weapons, including a .223-caliber semi-automatic rifle, in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Investigators say Lanza’s mother, whom he fatally shot before going to the school, also purchased the ammunition.

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July 20, 2012, Aurora, Colorado, 12 killed

James Holmes was receiving psychiatric treatment when he passed required federal background checks and legally purchased the weapons he used in the movie theater assault. As in the Navy Yard case, Holmes’ treatment alone would not have disqualified his purchases. They would have been blocked if had he been adjudicated as a mental defective or committed to a mental institution.

The post Obama measures wouldn’t have kept guns from mass shooters appeared first on WTOP.

BALTIMORE (AP) — Authorities say a Baltimore City police sergeant was arrested following a high-speed chase.

Police say a state trooper pulled over Sgt. Francisco Hopkins around 3 a.m. New Year’s Day in Baltimore County during a traffic stop. He was off duty at the time.

According to a police report, Hopkins indicated he was a police officer, became angry and sped off.

Maryland State Police spokeswoman Elena Russo said Hopkins was driving up to 149 mph.

Hopkins was eventually pulled over and taken into custody. He was issued 10 citations, including one for trying to elude police.

Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis says he’s disappointed in the reported actions of the officer.

Hopkins was released on bond. He’s suspended with pay. It isn’t clear if he has an attorney.

The post Baltimore police officer arrested after high-speed chase appeared first on WTOP.

Washington Post

This female pilot was denied equal pay during WWII. Now Arlington Cemetery ... Washington Post Elaine Harmon and her comrades flew Army planes across the country. They helped train pilots on how to operate aircraft and instruments. They towed targets behind them while soldiers below fired live ammunition during training. Harmon was aware that ... Family Fights for Female WWII Pilots to Be Buried in Arlington CemeteryWBAL Radio This female pilot was denied equal pay in WWII. Now Arlington Cemetery is ...Hamilton Spectator Female WWII Pilots Denied Burial at Arlington National CemeteryABC News all 20 news articles »

Last year, I rented a car while mine was off having damage fixed. The danger in renting a car and then going about your normal routine is that you may forget that the rental car doesn’t have a toll transponder, and breeze through the EZPass lane as you normally would. I knew what was coming: a $25 bill for my 60¢ toll. Reader Allen didn’t know, and had to pay $35 for a $1 toll. Let these experiences serve as cautionary tales.

The good news is that you aren’t going to be hit with a substantial fine for zooming through an automated toll gate without paying. The booths instead charge the toll to the registered owner of the vehicle, or some rental companies will rent you the necessary local transponder. Either way, you’re going to pay an “administrative fee” for the service.

Allen, for example, drove through a toll gate, but didn’t know that by using this toll service he would then activate PlatePass for his entire Hertz rental period. “I learned, much to my dismay, that Hertz now uses a service called PlatePass that will charge you a fee for each day in which you rent a car, even if you only use the service once,” he grumbled to Consumerist.

Yes, even though he only used toll roads on one day of his rental, the daily service fee applied to each day that he had the car.

Compared to the total bill when you rent a car, being charged $4.95 per day plus actual tolls isn’t so bad. Yet it’s frustrating to receive a bill for something that could have been prevented if you only had a dollar handy, or hadn’t chosen the automated lane out of habit.

SEE ALSO:
Watch Out For Car Rental Companies’ Convenient Service To Pay Tolls
Hertz Alienates Longtime Customer With $10 Convenience Fee For 75 Cent Toll