Current Events in April 2014

Builders broke ground on new homes last month at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 946,000 -- up 2.8% from the revised February estimate, but down 5.9% from the same time a year ago.

According to government figures, single-family home construction paced the advance with a 6.0% increase to an annual rate of 635,000. Buildings with five units or more were started at an annual rate of 292,000, up 6.1% from February, but down a sharp 18.% percent from March 2013.

Building permits

However, the outlook for home construction in the months ahead is not all that good.

Building permits were down 2.4% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 990,000. Still, that's 11.2% above the March 2013 rate.

Authorizations for construction of single-family homes rose 0.5%, while permits for multi-unit buildings plunged 8.0%.

The full home construction report for March is available on the Census Bureau website.

After falling for 3 consecutive weeks applications for mortgages were on the rise last week.

Data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey show mortgage applications rose 4.3% percent from one week earlier in the week ending April 11.

The Refinance Index shot up 7%, bringing the refinance share of mortgage activity up 1% to 52% of total applications. The adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) share of activity was unchanged at 8% of total applications.

Contract interest rates

The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages (FRMs) with conforming loan balances ($417,000 or less) fell 9 basis points -- from 4.56% to 4.47%, with points decreasing to 0.32 from 0.33 (including the origination fee) for 80% loan-to-value ratio (LTV) loans. The effective rate decreased from last week.

The average contract interest rate for 30-year FRMs with jumbo loan balances (greater than $417,000) decreased to 4.39% from 4.49%, with points rising to 0.18 from 0.14 (including the origination fee) for 80% LTV loans. The effective rate decreased from last week.

The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages backed by the FHA dipped 5 basis points to 4.14%, with points decreasing to 0.06 from 0.16 (including the origination fee) for 80% LTV loans. The effective rate decreased from last week.

The average contract interest rate for 15-year fixed-rate mortgages decreased to 3.54 percent from 3.62 percent, with points decreasing to 0.24 from 0.31 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent LTV loans. The effective rate decreased from last week.

The average contract interest rate for 5/1 ARMs plunged 11 basis points -- to 3.15%, with points decreasing to 0.41 from 0.50 (including the origination fee) for 80% LTV loans. The effective rate decreased from last week.

The survey covers over 75 percent of all U.S. retail residential mortgage applications.

If you are a trendy consumer, you probably spend more time these days thinking about foods you don't want to eat than foods you do want to consume.

Over the last few years, it seems, we have become rather picky eaters. Usually there's a health-related reason.

Howard Waxman, author of the Packaged Facts report “Food Formation Trends: Ingredients Consumers Avoid,” recently told Food Production Daily that gluten has become the number one ingredient consumers try to avoid.

That's why you see so many “gluten free” products on store shelves. It's also kind of surprising, since really the only consumers who need to avoid gluten are people with Celiac disease. However Waxman says millions apparently believe they suffer from some kind of gluten intolerance.

Hard to avoid

Gluten is a protein found in grains such as wheat, barley, rye and triticale, which is a cross between wheat and rye. Gluten products include breads, crackers, and a whole host of food products that contain these grains.

Last year we reported on the gluten-free trend and the fact that more and more people who did not have Celiac disease were shying away from gluten. Harry Balzer, the head industry analyst at the NPD group, suggested at the time that people who eliminate gluten from their diet without having Celiac disease do it behind a false feeling of wellness.

Food manufacturers aren't complaining, however, as gluten-free products often cost a lot more than those containing the protein.

Foods to avoid

But beyond ingredients, there are individual foods that are increasingly being avoided, and foods that health experts say you should avoid.

Joy Bauer, a Registered Dietician and frequent Today Show contributor, lists “8 foods that should be avoided at all costs.” Stick margarine tops the list, mainly because of one of its ingredients – trans fat.

Also making the “no-no list” are soda, bagels, whole milk, toaster pastries and hot dogs.

Scientists writing at HowStuffWorks.com have their own opinions about what constitutes bad food as well. Topping their list of food to avoid is bacon.

It's not just bacon's fat content that is objectionable. Three bacon slices have 435 milligrams of sodium -- about one-fifth of the average adult's daily allowance.

Usual suspects

While their do-not-eat list includes the usual suspects – soda, processed meat and artificial sweetners – there's at least one surprise – swordfish and some tuna. The concern here is mercury from increasingly polluted waters.

Health.com recently focused on food and beverage products to avoid when eating out. Starbucks' Double Chocolaty Chip Frappuccino Blended Creme with whipped cream was singled out for its high fat content. One 16-ounce Grande tips the scale at 510 calories, 19g fat, 11g saturated; 59g sugar and 300mg sodium.

But Smoothie King's Hulk Strawberry Smoothie has it beat. The 20-ounce drink is listed at 1,044 calories, 35g fat and 120g sugar.

What should we be eating? While fruits and vegetables are always to be recommended, nutritious food consumed in moderation usually promotes good health.

USDA's Dietary Guidelines provide a good starting point.

The seafood industry, already suffering from a drop in consumption by U.S. consumers, now faces sharply higher prices for shrimp, thanks to a disease that's taking a heavy toll on the tasty crustacean.

In March, shrimp prices jumped 61% from a year earlier, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, thanks to a bacterial disease known as early mortality syndrome. It doesn't affect humans but it's killing off shrimp beds in Southeast Asia, a major global supplier. 

Restaurant chains are hesitant to pass on too much of the higher cost to consumers who still haven't fully regained their appetite for dining out, Bloomberg News reports. 

The shrimp inflation crisis comes at a particularly bad time -- Lent, a season when many consumers would be expected to switch to seafood for at least a few days.

Taking a slightly longer view, the Wall Street Journal notes that U.S. consumers have been steadily turning away from seafood, even as they seek out foods they think are healthier and less likely to pack on the pounds:  

The average U.S. consumer ate 14.4 pounds of seafood in 2012, the last year for which figures are available, down from 15 pounds in 2011 and a record high 16.6 pounds consumed in 2004. That's far less than the average 82 pounds of chicken, 57 pounds of beef and 46 pounds of pork. Americans consume in a year.

That puts us way behind countries like Japan, where the average consumer eats 120 pounds of fish a year. Spain is close behind at 96.

No organization

Why? Well, cost may be a factor. Seafood is expensive to produce -- or catch -- and therefore more expensive to buy than other protein sources. The Journal speculated that consumers are also concerned about conflicting advice on mercury and other contaminants in seafood.

Unmentioned is a lack of government and organized industry support. The American beef industry is supported by the Beef Board a semi-governmental agency that's funded by a $1-per-head "checkoff fee." In other words, each time a steer is slaughtered, a dollar gets thrown into the kitty and is "checked off" by the bean -- or in this case, beef -- counters. The money is used for "consumer education," which often translates into lobbying. Pork and other mammal meats benefit from similar organizations. 

The beef industry also has a private trade association and lobbying arm, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, which doesn't take kindly to anyone who tries to rustle even a t-bone's worth of market share away from good old red-blooded beef. And chicken? It's so cheap and versatile that it doesn't need much promotion.

Seafood? Forget about it. When's the last time you saw a talking-head pontificating on behalf of the nation's fishermen? 

While the cattlemen have long since formed some pretty effective posses, it's the fishermen who are out there on the watery version of the lone prairie all by their lonesome. They're mostly loners who wholesale their catch to the local fish wholesaler, which in turn slices and dices it to restaurants, food-service companies and buyers for large packagers.

The giant factory ships that Greenpeace loves to hate are efficient, as are the much-reviled fish farms, but costs remain much higher than mammal meats and fowl.

Of course, there's always tofu. Or beans.

Heartbleed, of course, is the latest security flaw to put consumers' personal information at risk, and from the news accounts you've read, you probably get the idea it's serious business.

It all stems from a small mistake in updated code for Open SSL, the encryption system web services like Facebook, Amazon, Google – you name it – use to protect sensitive data.

Back in late 2012 or early 2013 one of the coders working on Open SSL made a mistake. It involved the communication between a user's computer and the server using Open SSL.

The two computers talk to one another from time to time to make sure they are still connected. The user's computer gives a couple of letters of a word – “potato,” for instance – and asks the server to send it back, specifying that the word is six characters long.

Critical step left out

But the person writing the code did not put in the part of the code specifying the number of characters in the word it was looking for. Adam Allred, research technologist at the Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC), says that small oversight resulted in a huge security breach.

“Someone could then say 'send me back the word potato, but it's 500 characters long.' So the server, being none the wiser, sends back the word potato in the first six characters and then sends the next 494 characters, whatever they happen to be, after the word potato,” Allred told ConsumerAffairs.

This information is almost always encrypted as it moves over the network, but then de-encrypted and set down in the server's memory, right next to the word potato. In most cases those characters make up things like user names and passwords.

The flaw went unnoticed for months. Then, a highly skilled computer technician figured it out.

“At this point, a week later, the skill level needed to exploit the Heartbleed vulnerability is much lower,” Allred said.

One in five chance

As it turns out only about 17% of Internet servers use the flawed version of Open SSL, so as a consumer you have a one in five chance that the password-protected web servers you visit are affected. Still, Allred says consumers have a right to be concerned.

“As a consumer you have to think about every website you go to that uses 'https,'” he said. “For every one of those websites you have to ask, were they vulnerable and if they were, you need to change your password for those sites. But you have to do it after those sites patch.”

That bears repeating. Don't change your password for that site until it has been patched.

How do you know which sites were affected and which ones have been patched? Fortunately, that information is readily available online. Mashable, for example, maintains this list of updated sites.

Lessons

Are there any lessons to be learned from the Heartbleed security flaw? Allred sees one big one.

“What I would like to see happen is a new awareness that an extremely important set of code that so many people in the world rely on and don't even know it, is being developed by very few people with very little money,” Allred said. “Many of the people writing code are volunteers. The Open SSL Project has one full-time employee.”

That's right. This critically important part of the Internet infrastructure is basically a volunteer operation.

Allred suggests Google, Facebook and other web giants have a vested interested in making the system more secure, and should start investing money into Open SSL, to provide the people and infrastructure to build better software.

Today may mark the official end of the 2014 filing income tax season, but that doesn't mean the tax scam season is over.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is again warning consumers to guard against sophisticated and aggressive phone scams targeting taxpayers -- including recent immigrants -- as reported incidents of this crime continue to rise nationwide.

An “aggressive” scam

People have reported a particularly aggressive phone scam in the last several months in which immigrants are frequently targeted. Potential victims are threatened with deportation, arrest, having their utilities shut off, or having their driver’s licenses revoked. Callers are frequently insulting or hostile -- apparently to scare their potential victims.

Potential victims may be told they are entitled to big refunds, or that they owe money that must be paid immediately to the IRS. When unsuccessful the first time, sometimes phone scammers call back trying a new strategy.

Other characteristics of this scam include:

• Scammers use fake names and IRS badge numbers. They generally use common names and surnames to identify themselves.
• Scammers may be able to recite the last four digits of a victim’s Social Security number.
• Scammers spoof the IRS toll-free number on caller ID to make it appear that it’s the IRS calling.
• Scammers sometimes send bogus IRS emails to some victims to support their bogus calls.
• Victims hear background noise of other calls being conducted to mimic a call site.
• After threatening victims with jail time or driver’s license revocation, scammers hang up and others soon call back pretending to be from the local police or DMV, and the caller ID supports their claim.

What to do

If you get a phone call from someone claiming to be from the IRS, here’s what you should do:

• If you know you owe taxes or you think you might owe taxes, call the IRS at 1.800.829.1040. The IRS employees at that line can help you with a payment issue -- if there really is such an issue.
• If you know you don’t owe taxes or have no reason to think that you owe any taxes (for example, you’ve never received a bill or the caller made some bogus threats as described above), then call and report the incident to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration at 1.800.366.4484.
• If you’ve been targeted by this scam, you should also contact the Federal Trade Commission and use their “FTC Complaint Assistant” at FTC.gov. Add "IRS Telephone Scam" to the comments of your complaint.

Taxpayers should be aware that there are other unrelated scams (such as a lottery sweepstakes) and solicitations (such as debt relief) that fraudulently claim to be from the IRS.

Taxpayers should be vigilant against phone and email scams that use the IRS as a lure. The agency does not initiate contact with taxpayers by email to request personal or financial information. This includes any type of electronic communication, such as text messages and social media channels.

The IRS also does not ask for PINs, passwords or similar confidential access information for credit card, bank or other financial accounts. Recipients should not open any attachments or click on any links contained in the message. Instead, forward the e-mail to phishing@irs.gov.

The IRS will always send taxpayers a written notification of any tax due via the U.S. mail, and never asks for credit card, debit card or prepaid card information over the telephone.

For more information or to report a scam, go to www.irs.gov and type "scam" in the search box.

Easter and lilies seem to go together like -- well -- Easter and lilies.

The white, trumpet-shaped flower symbolizes Easter and spring for a lot of people, making it a popular decoration in homes at this time of year.

However, if you have cats, however, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reminds you that these particular flowers, as well as Tiger, Asiatic, Day, and Japanese Show lilies, are a safety threat.

Don't eat the flowers

While eating small amounts of plants or grass may be normal for cats, consuming lilies can be extremely harmful. FDA Veterinarian Melanie McLean points out that the entire lily plant (leaf, pollen, and flower) is poisonous to them. And, even if they just eat a couple of leaves or lick a few pollen grains off their fur, cats can suffer acute kidney failure within a very short period of time.

McLean says that if your cat has eaten part of a lily, you’ll see vomiting soon afterward that may gradually lessen over two to four hours. Within 12 to 24 hours, the cat may start to urinate frequently.

Then, if kidney failure sets in, the cat will stop urinating because the kidneys stop being able to produce urine. Untreated, she says, a cat will die within four to seven days of eating a lily.

Young cats typically have healthy kidneys, so when a young cat shows signs of acute kidney damage, consumption of a toxic substance is one of the first things veterinarians investigate, McLean says.

Get help fast

Early veterinary treatment is critical. McLean says that even if you just suspect that your cat has eaten a lily, you should call your vet immediately or, if the office is closed, take your cat to an emergency veterinary clinic.

The vet may induce vomiting if the cat just ate the lily, and will give the cat intravenous fluids to prevent dehydration and preserve kidney function.

Other lilies, like Calla and Peace lilies, don’t cause fatal kidney failure, but they can irritate your cat’s mouth and esophagus. Lilies of the Valley are toxic to the heart, causing an abnormal heart rhythm. If you think your cat has eaten any type of lily, contact your veterinarian.

Lilies are not a great danger to dogs, McLean says. Dogs may have some gastrointestinal issues if they eat a lily, but nothing considered life-threatening.

Does this mean that you can’t have lilies in your home if you have a cat? Although it’s best not to have them in your home, if you want to enjoy these pretty spring flowers, McLean says to be sure to keep the plant someplace that your high-jumping pet can’t reach.

If you use Gmail, bear in mind that Google has updated its terms of service to inform you that it is scanning and analyzing the contents of your emails.

Last August, Google faced a class-action suit in California, based on claims that its practice of scanning emails to put up customized ads violated state and federal anti-wiretap laws. Google initially responded by saying email users had no real expectation of privacy anyway:

“Just as a sender of a letter to a business colleague cannot be surprised that the recipient’s assistant opens the letter, people who use web-based email today cannot be surprised if their emails are processed by the recipient’s [email provider] in the course of delivery. Indeed, ‘a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.’"

Last month, a judge struck down the class-action suit, not on grounds that the claims were unfounded, but on the grounds that the millions of individual Google users who might take umbrage with the scanning policy should not be lumped together into a single class-action case. However, the ruling did not preclude the possibility of individuals making individual claims against Google.

Implied consent

So this week, coincidentally or not, Google updated its terms of service to say, in effect, that if you use Gmail, you automatically consent to having Google scans its contents.

Clicking on this link takes you to Google's Terms of Service page. If you scroll down or read through the first 849 words on that page (according to the “Word Count” function on my word processor), past the “Privacy and Copyright” section (which assures you: “Google’s privacy policies explain how we treat your personal data and protect your privacy when you use our Services. By using our Services, you agree that Google can use such data in accordance with our privacy policies), you will then come to the section titled “Your Content in Our Services,” which says this:

“Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.”

The very next paragraph addresses another frequent anti-Google complaint: that it lumps all its services together to pump up their perceived popularity: For example, people who open Gmail accounts end up with Google+ accounts whether they want one or not – or even, whether they know it or not.

Or: you can no longer comment on YouTube unless you do so through Google+, and sundry other complaints that what happens in one part of your Google-based life can bleed over into other areas of it.

Google's updated terms of service suggest they intend to keep right on doing that:

If you have a Google Account, we may display your Profile name, Profile photo, and actions you take on Google or on third-party applications connected to your Google Account (such as +1’s, reviews you write and comments you post) in our Services, including displaying in ads and other commercial contexts. We will respect the choices you make to limit sharing or visibility settings in your Google Account. For example, you can choose your settings so your name and photo do not appear in an ad.

When PCWorld told its readers about the new changes at Google, it also noted: “The company did not immediately comment on why it had changed its terms of service again.”

The issue of workplace safety — or lack thereof — at SeaWorld made headlines in 2010, when a 20-foot orca (the black-and-white aquatic mammal also called the “killer whale”) dragged a trainer underwater and drowned her.

The story was put to film in the 2013 movie Blackfish, which the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) described as follows: “Notorious killer whale Tilikum is responsible for the deaths of three individuals, including a top killer whale trainer. Blackfish shows the sometimes devastating consequences of keeping such intelligent and sentient creatures in captivity.”

And just this month, a D.C. Circuit Court ruled that as a result of that 2010 drowning and other incidents, SeaWorld must pay fines and implement certain safety standards, since it exposed its human employees to “recognized hazards.”

Not surprisingly, SeaWorld took issue with the ruling.

"Following the tragic death of Dawn Brancheau in 2010, we voluntarily deployed several new safety measures, including removing trainers from the water during shows," the company said in a statement. "SeaWorld remains committed to providing a safe workplace for employees, healthy environments for the animals in our care, and inspirational and educational experiences with killer whales for our guests. We are still reviewing the opinion and no decision has been made on whether we will appeal."

Recognized hazard

Courthouse News Service reported the ruling on April 14, and noted that, after the 2010 on-the-job drowning of an orca trainer, “the Occupational Safety and Health Commission (OSHA) found that SeaWorld violated work-safety standards by exposing orca trainers to recognized hazards of drowning or injury as a result of their close contact with killer whales during performances.”

Though this presumably would not surprise anyone who's actually worked at SeaWorld. Last month, on March 19, the comedy-educational website Cracked.com published the article “6 awful realities behind the scenes at Sea World,” written by a former Sea World employee.

Some of those “awful realities” are unavoidable, given the nature of the business: if you spend all day working outdoors under the Florida sun, your skin will be sun-damaged. Spend all day working with animals, and you must also work around their [oft-disgusting] biological functions.

But some of those “awful realities” refer to the same workplace-safety issues addressed in court:

SeaWorld is an entertainment industry, and as such, hiring is every bit as soulless as casting a reality show. The fact that I screwed up the interview process (and boy, did I ever) didn't end up mattering because I looked the part, and my personality seemed marketable. One senior trainer I spoke to explained that she had never trained an animal before: She got the job not because of her expertise, but because she looked good in a wetsuit and was dating a trainer.

Don't believe me? Go look up pictures of SeaWorld right now. Spot any ugly orca trainers? No? Only beautiful people spend their lives studying oceanic sciences and marine biology?

In its court case, SeaWorld tried defending itself with an argument which basically boiled down to “Those trainers knew what they were getting into,” but Judge Judith Rogers, writing the 35-page court decision, rejected that argument: “SeaWorld's suggestion that because trainers 'formally accepted and controlled their own exposure to ... risks,' the hazard of close contact with killer whales cannot be recognized, contravenes Congress's decision to place the duty to ensure a safe and healthy workplace on the employer, not the employee.”

Businesses are often quick to cry foul when their products and services are reviewed negatively. Some even dispatch their lawyers and p.r. mouthpieces to dispute the findings, threaten the website and otherwise overreact, despite evidence that reviews -- even negative ones -- help sell products.

The most recent survey that finds businesses can actually benefit from negative reviews is published in the Journal of Consumer Research and finds that negative reviews that are offset by a politeness-factor can actually help sell the item.

"Most of the research on consumer reviews has been on the content and volume of the message," write authors Ryan Hamilton (Emory University), Kathleen D. Vohs (University of Minnesota), and Ann L. McGill (University of Chicago Booth School of Business). "Our research looks at how the politeness with which a particular message is communicated affects consumer opinions."

In a series of five experiments, the authors examined how including a marker of politeness in a negative product review affected the image of both the reviewer and the product being reviewed.

For example, phrases like "I'll be honest," and "I don't want to be mean, but…" are ways to soften the arrival of bad news and warn a reader or listener that negative information is coming.

Luxury watch

In one experiment, participants were asked to read a page-long description of a luxury wristwatch. Two versions of the product description were used, one of which added this polite customer complaint, "I don't want to be mean, but the band pinches a bit."

Results indicated that people were willing to pay more for the wristwatch if they read the description that included the marker of politeness ($136 versus $95).

The study also asked participants to complete a survey evaluating the "personality" of the brand. Results showed that the review using the marker of politeness caused the brand to be seen as more honest, cheerful, down-to-earth, and wholesome than the same review without the polite customer complaint.

"Our research raises the intriguing possibility that brands might benefit when polite customers write reviews of their products — even when those reviews include negative opinions," the authors conclude.

Spring may be the time of year when groundhogs emerge to resume their careers but, more importantly, it's also the time of year when door-to-door peddlers begin slouching through neighborhoods, ringing doorbells and waking up dogs throughout the land.

Most of them are selling the same old dreary things -- vacuum cleaners, magazine subscriptions and home repair services. 

It's admittedly an odd way to make a sale. What with online shopping and strip malls jammed in just about everywhere and merchants who have dossiers on their customers that would make the NSA blanch, it's hard to see why a legitimate business would send out agents to pound blindly on doors, knowing nothing about who's likely to answer.

Which, of course, brings us to our point: door-to-door salespeople are often up to no good or, at the very least, are so down on their luck that the only way they can think to make a buck is to slog around trying to sell something everyone either already has or doesn't need, or something they don't actually plan to deliver.

Extra asphalt

The most nefarious of these pests are the paving contractors, tree-trimmers and painters who ring the bell and innocently claim that they have some asphalt left over from a job down the street, they've been trimming the neighbors' trees and can give you a discount on work done within the next hour or they have some paint left over from the Schmackhorsts' house on the next block and could slap it on your deck for next to nothing.

Of course, none of this is true. If you fall for the pitch, you'll get a substandard job at best. At worst, well, don't go there.

The Marion, Ohio, Star recently told the story of Rodney Dutlinger. After spending $1,600 with a man who came to his door and offered to do some tree-trimming, Dutlinger found himself with a yard that looked like it had been hit by a hurricane.

After being paid, the guy did about half of the job and then took off.  

Homeowners throughout the eastern half of the country went through an especially tough winter and have lots of clean-up and repairs on their to-do list, and consumer protection agencies are already seeing an influx of complaints resulting from fly-by-night contractors.

The lesson in all this: deal only with local contractors that you find by searching consumer review sites and local business directories. Be sure the company is licensed by the city or county and insist on seeing evidence that they are insured. 

Be very wary about paying upfront. Contractors may ask you to pay in advance for material but this is something you do at your own risk. 

Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane offers these additional consumer protection tips:

• Do not let anybody rush you into a home improvement project.
• Do not do business with contractors who appear at your door unexpectedly and point out problems with your home or offer a "good deal" on repair work.
• Do not allow any contractor, utility company or "inspector" in your home without confirming their identity.
• Homeowners, especially senior citizens, should rely on family, friends or neighbors for assistance in hiring a home improvement contractor.
• Make sure you have a written contract explaining guarantees, warranties, the price of labor/materials and the contractor's registration number and contact information.

Spring is not only prime time for allergies, yard work and gardening, it's also a popular time to get married. Unfortunately, weddings offer opportunities for young couples to be taken in by unscrupulous service providers -- photographers, planners, caterers, limo services and so forth. 

“Planning a wedding should be an enjoyable and exciting experience,” New York Attorney General Schneiderman said. “Unfortunately, there are unscrupulous vendors out there eager to prey upon couples who may already be under a great deal of emotional and financial pressure. Couples planning a wedding should be armed with information that will help them recognize and avoid potential consumer scams.”

Schneiderman has these tips:

• Avoid paying cash for products and services. Credit cards offer a dispute process that may help protect consumers.
• Check a company's record with the Better Business Bureau and review any complaint records.
• Insist that the company identify the individual who will be photographing your wedding.It is common for photographers to book more than one wedding on a date and send someone else to shoot the wedding. Make the identity of the photographer part of the contract.
• Check at least three references for weddings that took place within the past three months. Up-to-date references can offer critical insight into a vendor's recent job performance.
• Always review any contract carefully before you sign it. Do not make rushed decisions.
• Get multiple quotes from different vendors before you sign a contract. Talking to multiple businesses will give you more options and a better understanding of the services available.
• Do not pre-pay in full. Hold back 25 percent of the total cost until you have the products in hand. This will create a powerful incentive for service providers like photographers and videographers to complete the contract. In some instances, a photographer who has been paid in full will shoot the wedding and take months to deliver the products.
• Make sure the contract contains due dates for each task. For example, the pre-bridal photograph should be taken by a specified date, the proof should be ready by a specified date and the photograph should be ready within seven days after the consumer makes a selection.

Those who suspect they may have been victimized by an unscrupulous wedding vendor should file a complaint with their state attorney general and with consumer review sites.

There's been very little change over the last couple of months in the way builders see the market for newly built, single-family homes.

The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) rose one point to -- 47 -- in April from a downwardly revised March reading of 46. The March reading had initially been reported as 47.

“Builder confidence has been in a holding pattern the past three months,” said NAHB Chairman Kevin Kelly, a home builder and developer from Wilmington, Del. “Looking ahead, as the spring home buying season gets into full swing and demand increases, builders are expecting sales prospects to improve in the months ahead.”

“Job growth is proceeding at a solid pace, mortgage interest rates remain historically low and home prices are affordable,” said NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe. “While these factors point to a gradual improvement in housing demand, headwinds that are holding up a more robust recovery include ongoing tight credit conditions for home buyers and the fact that builders in many markets are facing a limited availability of lots and labor.”

How they see it

The HMI gauges builder perceptions of current single-family home sales and sales expectations for the next six months as “good,” “fair” or “poor.” The survey also asks builders to rate traffic of prospective buyers as “high to very high,” “average” or “low to very low.”

Scores from each component are then used to calculate a seasonally adjusted index where any number over 50 indicates that more builders view conditions as good than poor.

The HMI index gauging current sales conditions in April held steady at 51 while the component gauging traffic of prospective buyers also was unchanged at 32. The component measuring expectations for future sales rose four points to 57.

The HMI three-month moving average was down in all four regions. The West fell 9 points to 51 and the Midwest posted a 4-point decline to 49; the Northeast and South each dropped 2 points to 33 and 47, respectively.

Increases in what we pay for food and shelter sent the Consumer Price Index (CPI) higher in March.

Government figures show prices were up 0.2% last month, with the CPI up 1.5% over the last 12 months.

A 0.4% rise in food costs and a jump of 0.3% in what we pay for housing accounted for most of the increase.

Food prices

In the food category, several major grocery store food groups increased notably. Prices for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs posted the largest -- 1.2%, the same increase as in February. Dairy and related products were up 1.0%, the fifth consecutive increase. Fruits and vegetables, which rose 1.1% in February, added 0.9%. Over the last year, food prices are up 1.7% -- the largest 12-month increase since August 2012.

Energy costs

Energy prices were down 0.1% following a decline of 0.5% the month before. Drops were posted in the prices of gasoline (-1.7%), the same decline as in February and fuel oil (-2.9%). In contrast, the index natural gas costs shot up 7.5% -- the largest one-month increase since October 2005, and electricity rose 1.1%. Over the last 12 months, energy costs are up 0.4%.

Core rate

Prices for all items, stripping out the volatile food and energy categories, rose 0.2% in March. Besides the 0.3% increase in the cost of housing, prices for medical care, apparel, used cars and trucks, and airline fares also increased. Household furnishings and operations, and recreation costs declined in March. Over the past year, the core rate of inflation is running at 1.7%.

The full March CPI report is available on the Labor Department website.

Baby Trend, Inc. is recalling 16,655 model year 2011 and 2012 TrendZ Fastback 3-in-1 child restraints, models FB60070 (Granite) and FB60408 (Jellybean), manufactured between October 2011, and July 2013.

A defect makes it difficult to unlatch the harness buckle. In some cases, the buckle becomes stuck in a latched condition so that it cannot be opened by depressing the buckle's release button.

This could make it hard to remove the child from the restraint, increasing the risk of injury in the event of an emergency in which a prompt exit from the vehicle is required.

Baby Trend will notify registered owners and will provide replacement buckles when they become available. The manufacturer has not yet provided a notification schedule or buckle availability schedule.

Owners may contact Baby Trend at 1-800-328-7363.  

Nutriom LLC of Lacey, Wash., is recalling an additional 82,884 pounds of processed egg products that may be contaminated with Salmonella.

There have been no reports of illnesses due to consumption of these products.

The majority of the product included in this expansion was originally identified in a public health alert issued by U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) in March.

The recall expansion includes the products listed below.

The following products were shipped to co-packers for incorporation into consumer-size packages:

• 3,884-lb. super sack of “OvaEasy Plain Whole Egg” with the lot code “H0613-B”
• 1,989-lb. super sack of “OvaEasy Plain Whole Egg” with the lot code “I0413-A”
• 958-lb. super sack of “OvaEasy Plain Whole Egg” with the lot code “I0413-A”
• 4,422-lb. super sack of “OvaEasy Plain Whole Egg” with the lot code “L1713-A”

The following products were packaged in consumer-sized packages:

• 1.75-lb. packs of “OvaEasy Plain Whole Egg” with lot code 2814-A and the Julian dates “0374,” “0384,” “2683” and “2693”
• 66-gram spray bottles of “Bak-Klene Egg Wash” with the lot code “L1013A”
• 1.17-lb. packs of “OvaEasy UGRA, Reduced Cholesterol” with the Julian dates “3228,” “3229,” “3230,” “3231,” “3281,” “3282,” “3283,” “3284,” “3337,” “3338,” “3339” and “3340”
• 4.5-oz. cans of “OvaEasy Whole Plain Egg” with the Julian date “2883”
• 571-gram packs of “Vitovo Low Fat” with the Julian date “3193”
• 1.1-lb. bags of “OvaEasy Boil-in-Bag UGR, Heat & Serve (HS)” with the Julian dates “3188”
• 2-oz. packs of “OvaEasy Plain Whole Egg” with the Julian dates “0074,” “0084,” “0094,” “0354,” “0364,” “0374,” “2243,” “2253,” “3463,” “3473” and “3483”
• 66-gram spray bottles of “Panera Egg Wash” with the Julian dates “0144,” “0154,” “0164,” “0174,” “0214,” “0224,” “0234,” “0244,” “0284,” “0294,” “0304” and “0314”
• 2-oz. pack of “Wise Company, Wise Blend” with the Julian date “0943”

In February, the company recalled 226,710 pounds of processed egg products.

The products in the recall expansion were produced from Jan. 2013 through Jan. 2014, and bear the establishment number “INSPECTED EGG PRODUCTS PLANT 21493G” inside the USDA Mark of Inspection.

They were shipped nationwide and to U.S. military installations in the United States and abroad, and to Mexico.

Consumers with questions regarding the recall may contact Julie Cuffee, Customer Service Representative, at (360) 413-7269, ext. 101.

The good news is that children in the U.S. are drinking less sugar and caffeine-laden soda. The bad news is a reported rise in youthful consumption of energy drinks, which are loaded with caffeine.

An early 2014 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that energy drinks are responsible for increases in caffeine consumption by children and teens.

"You might expect that caffeine intake decreased, since so much of the caffeine kids drink comes from soda," said the study's lead author, Amy Branum, a statistician at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics. "But what we saw is that these decreases in soda were offset by increases in coffee and energy drinks."

The portion of the rise in caffeine consumption attributed to energy drinks isn't particularly large. But what's troubling to some public health policymakers is that just a few years ago it was almost non-existent.

Unregulated

The CDC estimates that 30% to 50% of adolescents and young adults consume energy drinks that can contain large amounts of caffeine – much more than found in soda products. Of equal concern to many public health experts is the fact that the caffeine in these products is largely unregulated.

The lack of regulation extends to the products' label. Caffeine might be listed as an ingredient but it doesn't show up on the nutrition label. Product advertising certainly doesn't mention it.

Ruth Litchfield, an associate professor and associate chair of food science and human nutrition at Iowa State University says the result is huge consumer misperceptions about these products.

She points out that the recent CDC study found 20% of young people who consume energy drinks think they are safe and 13% believe energy drinks are a type of sports drink.

“These drinks have this connotation that they are a performance enhancer because they’re an energy drink,” Litchfield said. “Whether that performance is academic or physical, that’s the perception.”

Misperception

The misperception is not limited to young consumers. Litchfield said she has witnessed adults in the grocery store buying energy drinks – containing the caffeine equivalent of 5 cups of coffee – for their children.

Besides caffeine – which gives energy drinks their kick – many energy drinks also contain ma huang – also going by the name ephedra – and guarana. Both substances are stimulants and – like caffeine – are not required to be listed on the nutrition label.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently introduced changes to the nutrition labels on food and beverages but the revamped label still has no requirement for listing caffeine. And nutrition labels rarely appear on energy drinks anyway. Instead you'll usually find a “supplement facts” label.

Health risks

Not only are young consumers unaware of how much caffeine they are getting in an energy drink, they may not even be aware of the stimulants' health risks. Litchfield says the amount of caffeine young people increasingly consume has health implications.

“Your heart rate and blood pressure will increase and you’ll have increased risk for arrhythmias,” she said. “If you consistently consume these for a prolonged period of time, you’re increasing your risk for cardiovascular disease.”

And there may not be as many – or any – positive effects from gulping down energy drinks. According to researchers at the University of California Davis, it's just assumed that these products hold special invigorating properties because they are loaded with stimulants.

“There is limited evidence that consumption of energy drinks can significantly improve physical and mental performance, driving ability when tired, and decrease mental fatigue during long periods of concentration,” the authors write.

Last year, Samsung developed a “kill switch” app that smartphone owners could use to remotely “brick” their phones (i.e., “Make them stop working, so the phone becomes little more than a fancy-looking brick”). The idea was that if enough stolen smartphones were transformed into bricks, thieves would stop stealing them.

And yet, last December we reported that “Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, United States Cellular Corporation, and Sprint have prohibited Samsung from pre-loading the app, and New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman wants to know why.”

The phone companies' motivations might remain forever a mystery, but for whatever reason, on April 4, Schneiderman and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón issued a joint statement announcing that Verizon and US Cellular (no mention of the other companies) had decided to allow the apps, which smartphone owners can activate for free.

Congressional action

As of now, no company is legally required to offer free kill switches, as Verizon and US Cellular intend to do. However, ever since February there's been a bill before Congress, HR 4065, which if passed into law would make kill switches mandatory on all phones sold in the US.

The full text of the bill is on the Congressional website here, and the official summary of the bill is here.

Though the summary is, of course, much shorter than the full bill, it's still written in fairly dense legalese. Here's the summary plus translations into standard everyday English.

Smartphone Theft Prevention Act - Amends the Communications Act of 1934 to require commercial mobile service providers to make available on mobile devices a function that an account holder may use remotely to: (1) delete or render inaccessible all information relating to the account holder that has been placed on the device; (2) render the device inoperable on the global networks of such service providers, even if the device is turned off or has the data storage medium removed; (3) prevent the device from being reactivated or reprogrammed without a passcode or similar authorization after the device has been rendered inoperable or has been subject to an unauthorized factory reset; and (4) reverse any such actions if the device is recovered by the account holder.

Translation: phones need to have kill switches which can render them completely useless to thieves, even if the stolen phone is stripped clean of all data.

Prohibits a mobile device from being manufactured in the United States or imported into the United States for sale or resale to the public, unless the device is configured in such a manner that a service provider may make such remote deletion and inoperability functions available on the device.

Translation: Any phones made or sold in the US will have to have a kill switch.

Allows the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to waive such requirements with respect to any low-cost mobile device that: (1) is intended primarily for voice-only mobile service, and (2) may have limited data consumption functions focused on text messaging or short message service.

Translation: the kill-switch mandate would apply only to smartphones, not to old-fashioned cell phones which can only be used to make phone calls and send text messages. [Presumably, that's because thieves don't bother stealing “dumb phones” anyway; they have little to no resale value on the black market.]

Prohibits service providers from charging a fee for making such remote deletion and inoperability functions available.

Translation: the kill switch must be free to end users.

Last week, AG Schneiderman's office put out another press release announcing that Schneiderman joined Congressman Dan Maffei (D-New York) in co-sponsoring the bill.