Current Events in June 2017

Car commercials often show advanced safety features without pointing out that they are only available on top-of-the-line trim levels, at added cost. Buy a base model and you don't get it.

But now Nissan has announced it will make automatic emergency braking (AEB) standard on a projected one million vehicles sold in the United States for model year 2018. AEB uses radar to hit the brakes when it senses an obstruction that could cause a collision. It's an accident avoidance system that likely has saved a number of distracted drivers from an accident.

Starting with 2018 models, the system will be standard on Rogue/Rogue Sport, Altima, Murano, LEAF, Pathfinder, Maxima and Sentra, except those with manual transmission, and all NISMO versions.

'Big step forward'

“Making auto braking standard is a big step forward in safety,” Kelley Blue Book analyst Jack Nerad said in an email to ConsumerAffairs. “Officials from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have grown increasingly dismayed at the lack of consumer interest in purchasing optional safety equipment, despite its proven ability to save lives. By making this system standard on so many vehicles, Nissan is providing added safety across a broad swath of its product line.”

Nissan is making the feature standard four years before federal regulations go into effect, requiring it on all new vehicles.

Honda, meanwhile, is accelerating plans to put self-driving cars on the street, that will automatically brake, but also obviously do lot more. Automotive News reports the carmaker has outlined its plans to develop autonomous cars with level 4 capability that can drive on city streets by 2025. Left unsaid, of course, is that these vehicles will be very expensive and the self-driving technology will not be included on base models.

Still, technology is slowly making its way into the least expensive vehicles, making them safer.

In a 2013 study, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) found that one-third of all police-reported crashes involve a rear-end collision. Nissan contends the NHTSA data show that systems such as AEB can help reduce injury insurance claims by as much as 35%.

The good news for seniors is that mild inflation is likely to produce an increase in next year's Social Security payments. Of course, the bad news is that the anticipated 2.1% increase won't be enough to make up for the rising costs of the items typically purchased by older consumers.

The predictions come from the Senior Citizens League, which says the paltry cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) of recent years have put seniors way behind in terms of purchasing power, taking away about a third of their buying power since 2000.

“The findings represent a big loss of 7 percent in buying power, from 23% in 2016 to 30% over the past 12 months," said Mary Johnson, the study's author. "This occurred as inflation has begun to climb, but people receiving Social Security received an annual cost-of-living adjustment of just 0.3 percent for 2017.”

Johnson says that housing and medical costs — particularly for prescription drug expenses — were among the most rapidly-rising spending categories over the past year.

Top 10

Johnson's group tabulated the top ten fastest growing senior costs since 2000:

* Where no average prices are available, numeric values from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U are used

 “When costs climb more rapidly than benefits, retirees must spend down retirement savings more quickly than expected, and those without savings or other retirement income are either going into debt, or going without,” Johnson says.

The survey found that a person having the national average Social Security benefit in 2000 — $816 per month — would have $1,169.80 per month by 2016. However, because retiree costs are rising at a substantially faster pace than the COLA, that individual would require a Social Security benefit of $1,517.80 per month in 2017 just to maintain his or her 2000 level of buying power.

A few years ago total student loan debt in the U.S. topped the $1 trillion mark, causing many economists to express concern. Now, a new report from the Federal Reserve shows total credit card debt is rapidly closing in on that milestone.

Overall, the Fed reported that total consumer credit increased in April at a seasonally adjusted rate of 2.5%. Of that total, revolving credit, which includes credit card debt, increased 1.8%.

In breaking down the data, personal finance site WalletHub found that consumers repaid more than $31 billion of their credit card debt in the first quarter, a big improvement over last year. Still, it was below the average first quarter pay-down since the Great Recession, and could be cause for concern.

The stepped-up pay-down came on the heels of a huge run-up in credit card bills last year, so there was a lot to pay off – and a lot still unpaid. Crunching the numbers further, the WalletHub editors project that U.S. consumers will add some $60 billion in new credit card debt in 2017, ending the year with a total balance over the $1 trillion mark.

Cautionary flag

Here's why the WalletHub editors are raising a cautionary flag: last year consumers started the year with a very weak pay-down of credit card debt. It finished the year by adding post-2007 records for new debt in the second, third, and fourth quarters.

“So it is not a question of whether consumers are weakening financially, but rather how long this trend toward pre-recession habits will last and just how bad it will get,” the editors write. “And WalletHub projects that we will end 2017 with more than $60 billion in new credit card debt. That would mean we’d owe well over $1 trillion in credit card debt overall.”

And credit card debt is very expensive debt. The average rate on credit card balances is currently at a record high of 15.83%. While this poses challenges for the economy, it also can put individual households in a bind, limiting their ability to make other purchases.

Credit card management tips

If you are struggling to pay off credit card debt, here are some tips that might make the process more manageable:

• Make a budget and stick to it. Use any eliminated expenses to pay down credit card balances faster
• If you can manage to save some money each month, put it toward an emergency fund. It may take a while to build it up, but it can provide a way to pay for an unexpected expense, instead of putting it on plastic.
• If you have marginal credit, work on improving it. The best way to do that is to pay every bill on time. As your credit score rises, you may be able to qualify for a balance transfer card offering a lengthy introductory 0% interest rate period.
• If you have more than one credit card balance, work on paying off the highest interest account first.

Hyundai Motor America is recalling 437,400 model year 2013-2017 Santa Fe and Santa Fe Sport SUVs.

The secondary hood latch actuating cable may corrode and bind, causing the secondary hood latch to remain in the unlatched position when the hood is closed.

If the hood is not securely closed or the primary latch is inadvertently released and the secondary latch is not engaged, the hood could open unexpectedly while the vehicle is moving, increasing the risk of a vehicle crash.

What to do

Hyundai will notify owners, and dealers will replace the secondary latch cable, free of charge. The recall is expected to begin June 30, 2017.

Owners may contact Hyundai customer service at 1-855-671-3059. Hyundai's number for the recall is 163.

Researchers and pharmaceutical companies are constantly releasing new novel drugs designed to treat serious illnesses and conditions, but a recent study shows that many such drugs that are tapped for “accelerated approval” by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are based on questionable data.

A team of researchers from the U.S. and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) have found that many of these approved drugs aren’t based on strong clinical evaluation and are allowed to enter the market under looser standards. This is problematic, the researchers say, because not having solid evidence of a drug’s effectiveness leaves doctors and patients in a precarious position.

“FDA’s accelerated approval pathway potentially promising drugs to receive marketing authorisation on the basis of surrogate measures that are easy to obtain, rather than clinically meaningful outcomes,” said Dr. Huseyin Naci. “The evidence ultimately accrued on these drugs has major flaws and is inadequate to address the information needs of patients and doctors.”

Looser standards

The study evaluated 37 new drugs that were given “accelerated approval” status by the FDA between 2000 and 2013, which included data on over 7,000 clinical studies.

The researchers point out that this special status was given if drugs were “reasonably likely” to provide clinical benefits, but unfortunately the standard for allowing the drugs to enter the market were far lower than the standards for drugs that only receive regular approval.

For example, the researchers found that drugs which were granted accelerated approval were far less likely to be conducted with randomized trials. However, those that did use randomized trials were not necessarily up to par either; results showed that one-third of these trials were conducted in therapeutic areas outside of FDA approval.

Further, the researchers say that there was often no substantial lag time between the average start date of trials evaluating the drugs’ effectiveness and their use as background therapy – meaning that they were being used before any strong evidence showed that they would actually be effective or safe.

The researchers say that the FDA has gradually introduced these laxer standards over the course of three decades, and that these accelerated approvals have “major limitations” that should be addressed.

The full study has been published in The Milbank Quarterly.

Nidec Motor Corp., of St. Louis, Mo., is recalling about 16,000 swimming pool motors sold in the U.S. and Canada.

The pump control cover can be improperly grounded, posing an electrical shock hazard.

No incidents or injuries have been reported.

This recall involves variable speed swimming pool motors with a programmable user interface on the top.

“Emerson” or “EcoTech EZ” is printed on top of the control box and the model number is printed on the rating plate located on the side of the pump.

The following model numbers are included in this recall:

The motors, manufactured in Mexico, were sold at Leslie’s Pool Supply and other retail stores, wholesale pool suppliers including Pool Builders Supply, Pool Corp., Pool & Electrical Products, and United Aqua Group from September 2010, through October 2016, for between $400 and $500.

What to do

Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled swimming pool motors and contact Nidec Motor Corp. (NMC) to schedule a free repair by a qualified technician to install an external ground lead.

Consumers may contact NMC toll-free at 877-282-0223 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (EST) Monday through Friday or online at www.nidec-motor.com and click on “RECALL” for more information.

Previous reports have detailed the dangers of concussions in certain high-contact sports like football and soccer. But researchers from Wake Forest and the University of Texas Southwestern say that these head injuries vary widely among youth athletes at different levels of competition.

Their study shows that the number of head impacts in practices and games ramp up dramatically as young players enter new age and weight levels, and that evaluating all of them under the wide umbrella of “youth athletes” is not enough to properly gauge the risk of injury.

“As controversy rages in relation to the damaging consequences of youth football, this study is particularly timely,” said Dr. John T. Povlishock, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Neurotrauma. “It forces us to recalibrate our understanding of youth head impact exposure not only in practice and game day settings but also in the context of athlete’s age.”

Increasing head impact exposure

The researchers point out that estimates for the number of sports-related concussions in athletes 18-years-old or younger stands between 1.1 million and 1.9 million, and that concussions comprise nearly 10% of all youth football injuries, according to the Youth Football Safety Study.

In their study of 97 youth football players between the ages of 9 and 13, the researchers found that over four years the athletes experienced over 40,000 head impacts, with one athlete experiencing anywhere from 26 to 1,003 impacts in one season. However, the number and severity of collisions ramped up as athletes got older.

“Comparing the three youth levels studied here with prior studies of high school and college athletes show that [head impact exposure] continues to increase with increasing age and level of play throughout a football athlete’s career,” the researchers said.

The findings show that even youth athletes at the lowest levels of competition face a serious chance of injury that could negatively impact them for the rest of their lives. Experts have previously worked on creating better concussion protocols that identify when a competitor is in danger and when it’s safe for them to return to the field of play.

The full study has been published in the Journal of Neurotrauma.

If you drive by many major hospitals these days, you often see electronic signs flashing a message like "emergency room waiting time -- 6 minutes."

It's puzzling because a few years ago there was growing concern that too many people were seeking treatment at hospital ERs for non-emergency conditions, putting a strain on resources. Now hospitals seem to be encouraging these visits.

Apparently, that is no longer a concern. Researchers at Johns Hopkins recently concluded that patients pay a premium when they are treated in a hospital ER, which may be keeping many of them away.

So what are these consumers to do? If you don't have a personal physician, or can't get a timely appointment, there are alternatives that may be just as good but cost a lot less.

Walk-in clinics

Several major retailers, like Kroger and CVS, operate walk-in clinics, where you can see a doctor or nurse practitioner without an appointment. There are also a number of free-standing urgent care centers that provide a full range of medical services without an appointment.

According to the Urgent Care Association of America (UCAOA), there are three main considerations when selecting a non-emergency provider -- care, convenience, and cost.

As far as care goes, you need to use good judgment. If the condition is serious or life-threatening, you should immediately head for a hospital ER. But most other things can be treated elsewhere.

For convenience, look around at the urgent care options. Know what walk-in clinics are nearby, what kind of facilities they have on-site, and when they are open.

Cost comes in when you have health insurance. By checking online or by calling, you can find out which facilities accept your insurance. In general practice, most urgent care facilities accept most insurance policies.

Costly ER visits

A possible reason that hospital emergency rooms cost more for non-emergency treatment is their function. They are designed and set up to treat serious, life-threatening conditions. Treating non-emergencies takes them away from their objective, creating potential inefficiencies.

UCAOA cites a study in Health Affairs showing up to 27% of all ER visits could take place at an urgent care or retail clinic. That, it says, could save patients and insurance providers $4.4 billion a year.

Urgent care centers provide a wide range of services, treating everything from the flu and broken bones to asthma and concussion screening. These facilities usually can perform X-rays, administer intravenous fluids, and conduct on-site lab tests.

Retail clinics offer the advantage of being located inside large stores. They can provide treatment for conditions that aren't quite as serious as those treated at urgent care centers.

Telemedicine and workplace clinics

More recent non-emergency treatment options include telemedicine, connecting patients with providers for virtual visits. This might be practical for patients who live in rural areas.

Many large employers now offer on-site clinics to treat employees. It encourages wellness and reduces the time employees take off from work to seek medical treatment. These facilities closely resemble retail walk-in clinics, offering mostly wellness and preventive services.

UCAOA president Steve Sellars says the rise of on-demand healthcare services meets a real need within the healthcare system. Patients have more access to healthcare at a cost lower than if they head for the ER.

One question new parents wrestle with is when to put baby in his or her own room for the night.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) now recommends that baby and parent room-sharing extend for a full year to help prevent sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), which tends to occur largely during the first six months of life.

New research, however, is calling that advice into question. Researchers at Penn State College of Medicine suggest that room-sharing beyond the first four months is actually associated with unsafe sleeping practices, not to mention less sleep for both baby and parents.

Dr. Ian Paul, professor of pediatrics at Penn State, believes there is little evidence backing the AAP recommendation for a full year of room-sharing. For that reason, the research took a close look at how babies and parents fared sharing a bedroom from six the 12 months. What they found was that everyone's sleep suffered.

Sleep problems

“Inadequate infant sleep can lead to obesity, poor sleep later in life and can negatively affect parents,” Paul said.

There there is the issue of developing a dependency. Paul says some pediatricians and sleep experts question the room-sharing recommendation because infants may experience separation anxiety in the second half of the first year.

"Waiting too long can have negative effects on sleep quality for both parents and infants in both the short and long term,” Paul said.

The researchers used data collected from births at the Penn State Medical Center -- births largely in middle class families. They acknowledge that may be one weakness in their findings, since it does not include low income families who may not have a separate bedroom for the baby.

Complete agreement on not bed-sharing

But the researchers say one troubling finding was that the longer a baby shared a bedroom with the parents, the more likely that was to transition to bed-sharing with the parents, which is strongly discouraged.

Paul suggests that new parents discuss the Penn State study with their pediatrician and get safe sleep guidance.

AAP's sleep guidelines, updated last November, are aimed at preventing infant deaths. It released this video that explains to new parents the best ways to prevent SIDS.

AAP suggests following its recommendations could lead to a 50% reduction in infant deaths.

The dangers of heavy alcohol consumption have been well documented, with consumers who imbibe too much facing increased risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, liver disease, and various forms of cancer. But a new study shows that drinking even a moderate amount can lead to serious health complications.

Researchers from the University of Oxford and University College London have found that drinking between 14-21 units of alcohol per week -- the equivalent of a medium glass of wine each night, plus a little more on the weekends, according to CNN -- can result in hippocampal atrophy, a form of brain damage that affects memory and spatial navigation. This is a startling finding, since current federal guidelines say that drinking even more than this amount is safe for some consumers.

“Our findings…call into question the current US guidelines, which suggest that up to 24.5 units a week is safe for men, as we found increased odds of hippocampal atrophy at just 14-21 units a week, and we found no support for a protective effect of light consumption on brain structure,” the researchers said.

Causes brain damage

The study used data that measured weekly alcohol intake and cognitive performance over the course of 30 years for approximately 550 healthy men and women who took part in the Whitehall II study, with the researchers adjusting for factors like age, sex, education, social class, physical and social activity, smoking, stroke risk, and medical history.

Over the study period, the researchers found that higher consumption of alcohol was associated with higher incidences of hippocampal atrophy, decreased language skills, and poorer white matter integrity, which is essential for the brain to process information.

While the heaviest drinkers had the greatest risks in all of these cases, the researchers say that even moderate drinkers were causing lasting damage to their brain function; participants who drank moderately were found to be at three times the risk of hippocampal atrophy when compared to light drinkers or those who abstained from alcohol.

"Normal" habits could be harmful

While the study is only observational and cannot produce any firm conclusions about cause and effect, the researchers say they also found no protective effect of light drinking on brain structure. In a linked editorial, neuropsychiatrist Killian Welch said the findings “strengthen the argument that drinking habits many regard as normal have adverse consequences for health.”

“We all use rationalizations to justify persistence with behaviours not in our long term interest. With publication of this paper, justification of moderate drinking on the grounds of brain health becomes a little harder,” he said.

The full study has been published in The BMJ. 

Online review sites are great for finding restaurants and vacation spots, but they may not be the best way to pick a doctor, according to a new study. In fact, the study says they might be the worst way to look for a top-rated specialist.

The survey found that the vast majority of top-rated specialty physicians on Yelp, Vitals, and Healthgrades aren’t the highest ranked physicians when it comes to examining actual performance data related to their medical specialty.

“This research confirms what we have long suspected,” explains David Hines, CEO of ConsumerMedical, a health concierge company. “Online patient reviews tend to reflect a patient’s care experiences, such as the physician’s bedside manner. While these attributes are important, they are simply not the main indicators of a physician’s overall quality; sadly you can have a very kind orthopedic surgeon whose patients have hospital readmission rates that are through the roof.”

The researchers identified the top 10 ranked physicians across five common specialties in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles on the three popular patient review websites. They then compared these lists to a list of the 10 physicians with the highest quality scores (by specialty) in these same cities.

Only 2 percent

The study then compared those rankings with actual physician performance on variables including patient readmission rates, surgical infection rates, average length of stay, procedure volume, and patient outcomes.

The findings: only 2 percent of physicians who showed up as top 10 ranked on the popular websites also showed up as top performers when examining actual quality metrics.

“Getting care from a high-quality physician can literally be a matter of life and death,” said Hines. “This absence of consumer-friendly tools that help the public understand that quality matters, and that offer them meaningful quality information so they can choose a high-quality physician, is very problematic.”

Hines noted that online patient reviews typically focus on attributes like a physician’s bedside manner and availability, as well as other factors like the location of the office and punctuality in scheduling. Several studies show that most consumers aren’t fully aware that physician quality matters and varies significantly depending on specific skills, experience, and a variety of other factors.

Consumers who have eaten frozen tuna recently may be at risk of contracting hepatitis A, although no illnesses have been reported so far.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says that frozen tuna distributed by Hilo Fish Company and sourced from Sustainable Seafood Company of Vietnam and Santa Cruz Seafood, Inc., of the Philippines, may have been contaminted.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that those who have eaten any of the contaminated tuna in raw or undercooked form in the last two weeks should talk to their doctor and consider being vaccinated against the disease, which affects the liver and can be both severe and long-lasting.

Those who have already been vaccinated do not need to take any further action. If you're not sure whether you've been vaccinated, getting an additional dose of vaccine will not be harmful, CDC said.

Symptoms

Symptoms of hepatitis A in adults include fatigue, abdominal pain, jaundice, abnormal liver tests, dark urine, and pale stool. People with hepatitis A may not have symptoms until 15 to 50 days after consuming a contaminated food or drink.

CDC reports that while the hepatitis A vaccine is recommended for all children, vaccination rates are lower than for other recommended childhood vaccines. Unvaccinated children can become ill and not have symptoms.

Background

The problem came to light on May 1, when the Hawaii Department of Health notified the FDA that a sample of frozen tuna cubes from Indonesia tested positive for the hepatitis A virus. On May 2, the FDA contacted the Tropic Fish Hawaii LLC, a subsidiary distributor of Hilo Fish Company, to get more information.

Tropic Fish Hawaii LLC initiated a recall because the affected product had been distributed to its customers in Oahu, Hawaii. The state of Hawaii embargoed the lot that tested positive and the FDA confirmed the sample was positive.

On May 16, Hilo Fish Company notified the FDA that it had submitted samples of additional shipments held in its cold storage facility in Hawaii to a private laboratory for testing and received additional positive results for the hepatitis A virus.

Imported tuna from that facility were sourced from Sustainable Seafood Company and Santa Cruz Seafood and were distributed to restaurants and other retail locations in California, New York, Oklahoma, and Texas. The New York State Department of Health and the FDA verified that product shipped to New York was not sold to the public. The FDA’s investigation in connection with these firms is ongoing.

Products recalled

The first recall, which took place in Hawaii, consisted of imported raw frozen ahi tuna cubes sourced from PT Deho Canning Co. of Indonesia. None of that product is thought to remain on the market, meaning it has either been eaten or disposed of.

The current recall, which began May 18, consists of frozen yellowfin tuna steaks from Sustainable Seafood Company and yellowfin tuna cubes from Santa Cruz Seafood. This recall by Hilo Fish Company includes Tuna Steaks, 8 oz. individually vacuum packed bags, production date code: 627152, Lot number: 166623; Expiration date: 2018-10-01 and Frozen Yellowfin tuna cubes, random; Individually vacuum packed; 15 lb. case, date code: 705342, Lot number: 173448; Expiration dates: 2019-04-01).

A list of restaurants known to have served the contaminated tuna is available on the FDA website.

In recent years, it has become a given. If you plan to go to college, you'll be taking out student loans. Otherwise, you can't afford it.

Of course, that wasn't always the case. Until very recently going to college was fairly affordable. It might put a crimp in the household budget but most middle-class families could afford to send their children to college, especially a state-supported college or university.

But millions of students who took out loans to attend college in the last decade are now saddled with significant debt, preventing them from buying a home or making other purchases that young people often do when starting a career and family.

Now, students planning to attend college are looking for ways to do it without piling on the debt. But is that even possible?

You need a certain income

Personal finance site GoBankingRates.com crunched the numbers in an effort to answer that question. The editors determined that it is possible, but that it requires a certain income -- and that income varies by state, based on the cost of tuition at state universities and the cost of living.

In its state-by-state breakdown, GoBankingRates.com found Indiana requires the lowest annual income in the nation in order to send a child to a four year college without taking out a loan. The annual required income is $62,091. The average college tuition and fees in Indiana amounts to $9,200 a year.

Arkansas, Ohio, Missouri, and Kentucky are also in that range, with required annual incomes ranging from $62,596 to $64,111.

At the other end of the scale are Hawaii and California. Families in Hawaii would need an annual income of $124,454 to send a kid to college debt-free. In California, the required income is $106,771.

Tuition reimbursement

Of course, there is another way to graduate from college debt free. Just go to work for the right company while you are attending school.

Dozens of firms offer their employees -- even part-time employees -- tuition reimbursement as a perk. There are often conditions placed on this benefit, however. The field of study might have to fall within a set of guidelines. In some cases, you might have to commit to remain with the firm for a period of time after graduation.

You might also have to attend a particular school, and take courses online. Starbucks reimburses employees who attend Arizona State University online. Anthem has linked up with Southern New Hampshire University's online curriculum.

You can find a list of other companies that provide at least partial tuition reimbursement here.

You might think that having an answer for every question and nailing all your talking points is the key to a successful interview. But a recent survey from staffing firm OfficeTeam shows that employers also put a great deal of importance on a candidate’s body language.

When senior managers were asked to rate how much certain nonverbal cues told them about a candidate, the responses indicated that they were very influential. On a scale of 1-5, with 1 being “not much” and 5 being “a lot,” respondents rated eye contact as the most telling cue about who a candidate was, at a 4.18. That was followed by facial expressions (3.96), posture (3.55), handshake (3.53), fidgeting/habitual movements (3.33), and hand gestures (3.03).

“Providing thoughtful responses and asking intelligent questions carry a lot of weight during a job interview, but your body language can also speak volumes,” said OfficeTeam district president Brandi Britton. “Candidates need to do everything they can to increase their chances of receiving an offer – and that includes avoiding negative and distracting nonverbal behaviors.”

What to do

To help candidates improve their nonverbal communication and increase their chances of landing the job, the researchers have offered the following tips:

• Get hands-on: Aim for a handshake that’s firm, but doesn’t crush the recipient. Limit the duration to a few seconds.
• Break out of that slump: Subtly mirror the interviewer’s body language and posture. Sit up straight and lean forward slightly to show engagement and confidence.
• Put on a happy face: A genuine smile demonstrates warmth and enthusiasm. Conduct a mock interview with a friend to find out if you’re unwittingly sending negative nonverbal cues.
• Keep your eyes on the prize: Maintain regular eye contact during the meeting, but look away occasionally. Staring may be perceived as aggressive.
• Don’t fidget: Resist the urge to shake your legs, tap your fingers, or twirl your pen. It’s fine to use hand gestures, as long as they’re not distracting. Keep your arms uncrossed to appear more open and receptive.

For candidates who get anxious during or before an interview, experts say that there’s no substitution for solid preparation. Reading and researching what your role will be with the company beforehand will allow you to answer questions more confidently and mitigate any nervous ticks that may show up during the meeting.

Building a new terminal to export fracked gas might seem like an unlikely proposal for Portland, Oregon, where residents and lawmakers pride themselves on the city’s environmentally-conscious policies. But Portland’s then-Mayor Charles Hales supported that very project when Pembina Pipeline Corporation approached city leaders with the idea in 2015.

Echoing a common refrain made by national Democratic Party leaders and the former president, Hales claimed that natural gas is a cleaner, greener "bridge fuel." Natural or shale gas will help wean consumers from their addiction to coal and other dirty fossil fuels, lawmakers like Hales who express concerns about climate change have said.

But environmental activists don't support the argument that natural gas is a cleaner "bridge fuel." And neither does the science. Numerous studies, including a paper published that same year out of Cornell University, state that methane emissions from fracked wells are so high that they undercut the environmental benefits of burning natural gas.

While “carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use in the USA declined to some extent between 2009 and 2013” due to the widespread replacement of carbon-based coal with natural gas, the Cornell researchers said, “the greenhouse gas footprint of shale gas is significantly larger than that of conventional natural gas, coal, and oil," thanks to methane leaks from shale gas production. (Methane is a greenhouse gas that researchers say is much more potent at trapping heat than carbon dioxide).

Local activists pushed back

After local activists in Portland pushed back against the project with similar arguments, Portland’s mayor eventually changed course, and responded by cancelling plans to allow the propane storage and exporting facility in his city. Then the Portland City Council unanimously passed a ban on allowing any new fossil fuel storage facilities in city limits, the first local ordinance of its kind in the nation. "The leadership on climate and sustainability rests with the cities," Hales said in a press conference afterward.

The recent news that President Trump is pulling the United States out of the Paris climate accord is a reminder once again that much of the burden of halting climate change falls on local communities and individual consumers. 

"Cities and state governments have been amazing in stepping up," Travis Nichols, a spokesman with Greenpeace USA, tells ConsumerAffairs. 

A supposed flip-flop from green groups on the Paris accord

Environmental organizations and Democrats were deeply critical of Trump’s decision to leave the Paris accord, the voluntary, international agreement calling for world leaders to limit the global temperature increase to 2°C.

Yet two years ago, when world leaders were negotiating the agreement, those same environmental groups described the goals netted out in Paris as inadequate at addressing climate change. Missing from the text in the actual agreement, as critics pointed out, were the words “shale,” “oil” or even “fossil fuel.”

After the deal was brokered, GreenPeace International director Kumi Naidoo said in a statement that he found parts of it to be frustrating, claiming that the emissions targets that the participating countries had set made it impossible for the world to meet its stated temperature goals. “There’s a yawning gap in this deal, but it can be bridged by clean technology,” Naidoo said at the time. 

Dr. James Hansen a leading climate scientist, was especially critical after the deal passed.“It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years,’” Hansen told the Guardian newspaper. “It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. “

Environmentalists’ hesitancy to hail the Paris agreement as a cure-all to climate change has become fodder for right-wing sites like the Daily Caller, which wrote a post suggesting that environmentalists were flip-flopping in their support of the climate deal after Trump took office. 

Nichols, the GreenPeace spokesman, dismisses this argument as cynical hypocrisy. "They don’t have another plan. It’s not like they’re saying, ‘Paris isn’t good enough, let's be more ambitious.” He points out that even major oil companies say they want the United States to stay in the deal.

“When it comes to policy, the goal should be to reduce emissions at the lowest cost to society,” ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods reportedly told investors last week. 

Why climate-deniers support Paris accord

Of course, the energy industry’s reasons for wanting to participate in international climate talks is probably not entirely altruistic. Exxon has spent millions to cast doubt on the causes and effects of climate change and continues to push the idea that renewable energy reliance is unrealistic. The oil corporation also wants to drill in the Arctic and calls for an increased reliance on natural gas, despite warnings from environmental scientists that natural gas worsens climate change. 

But energy companies also face pressure from investors who want oil companies to better account for the effect that climate change will have on their pocketbooks. “The world we live in acknowledges that climate change is real, that humans contribute to it and are the cause of it,” Nichols tells ConsumerAffairs."These companies live in the real world.”

Switching the grid from coal to renewables 

Also living in the “real world” are local lawmakers, who are able to see the direct effect that fossil fuel consumption and climate change have on their way of life. In response to Trump’s decision, 246 mayors across the United States signed an open letter stating that they would continue to follow the Paris accord regardless of what the president wants. 

Some cities are going further than others. The mayor of Georgetown, Texas, an Austin suburb with a population of about 50,000 people, is not one of the local leaders whose name is included in the open letter. Yet his city is one of the few in the United States that is powered completely by renewable energy. In an interview with NPR, Georgetown Mayor Dale Ross says it was a “business decision” that drove the city’s renewable policy.

The Sierra Club in a recent report identified six other municipalities that are poised to follow Georgetown’s lead by 2035 or sooner, as well three other cities -- Burlington, VT, Aspen, CO and Greenburg, KS -- that already are powered completely by renewables. 

Environmentalists stop short of saying that local lawmakers are the only hope at combating climate change. But local lawmakers have taken practical steps that even climate-concerned Democrats have been hesitant to embrace.

"You don’t have to be a scientist. You just have to be a city planner and you’d recognize this is a huge problem,” Nichols says. "Trump's administration is intent on making it as painful as possible for everyone...luckily it is not a hopeless situation, they're just making it harder."

The online rivalry between Amazon and Walmart is continuing to heat up.

In an announcement made Tuesday, Amazon said that it will be offering a 45% discount on its Prime subscription service to shoppers who receive government aid from welfare or food stamp programs, a move that experts say takes aim at Walmart’s key customer base.

“We know when people try Prime they love it, because they save time and money with low prices on millions of items, unlimited access to premium videos and music, and fast, convenient delivery,” said Greg Greeley, vice president of Amazon Prime. “We designed this membership option for customers receiving government assistance to make our everyday selection and savings more accessible, including the many conveniences and entertainment benefits of Prime.”

How to qualify

To qualify for the discount, consumers will have to provide a valid Electronics Benefits Transfer (EBT) card, which is used by state welfare departments to issue benefits. Customers will be able to qualify for the subscription every 12 months up to 4 times, but the subscription cannot be bought with an EBT card. Members are free to cancel the service at any time and can sign up for a free 30-day trial here.

After qualifying with their EBT card, new members will be able to take advantage of unlimited free shipping on qualifying Amazon purchases, as well as numerous Amazon Prime services, including Prime Video, Prime Music, Prime Reading, and Prime Photos.

Other benefits of the subscription include exclusive Audible channels, a free pre-release Kindle book every month, a Twitch prime subscription, free same-day delivery options, and free two-hour delivery options under Prime Now.

Catering to lower-income customers

The cost of the service, which is typically $10.99 per month or $99 per year, has been reduced under the program to $5.99 per month. It’s Amazon’s latest move in an effort to cater to lower-income customers, many of which might otherwise prefer Walmart.

Previously, the company created its $10.99 per month Prime offer – an alternative to paying $99 per year -- and said that it would start accepting food stamps for its grocery items, according to a report from The Verge. The company also recently lowered its threshold requirements for free shipping to cater to a wider base of online shoppers.

It's commonly thought that a daily dose of aspirin can help prevent heart attacks and stroke, but a new study finds that the benefit doesn't extend to patients who have plaque buildup in their arteries but have not yet had a heart attack or stroke.

University of Florida researchers found that while aspirin is marginally helpful for those who have already had a heart attack or stroke, it has no apparent benefit for those who have atherosclerosis — narrowed, hardened arteries — but have not had a coronary incident or stroke.

“Aspirin therapy is widely used and embraced by cardiologists and general practitioners around the world. This takes a bit of the luster off the use of aspirin,” said Anthony Bavry, M.D., an associate professor in the UF College of Medicine’s department of medicine and a cardiologist at the Malcom Randall Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Gainesville.

Useful in emergencies

Bavry said the findings do not undercut aspirin’s vital role in more immediate situations; if a heart attack or stroke is underway or suspected, patients should still take aspirin as a treatment measure.

“The benefit of aspirin is still maintained in acute events like a heart attack or a stroke,” he said.

The findings come from a study of the health histories of over 33,000 patients with atherosclerosis. For those atherosclerosis patients who had not experienced a heart attack or stroke, aspirin appeared to have no effect. The risk of cardiovascular death, heart attack, and stroke was 10.7 percent among aspirin users and 10.5 percent for non-users.

Among more than 21,000 patients who had a previous heart attack or stroke, researchers found that the risk of subsequent cardiovascular death, heart attack or stroke was marginally lower among aspirin users.

Because the findings are observational, further study that includes clinical trials are needed before definitively declaring that aspirin has little or no effect on certain atherosclerosis patients, Bavry said.

The findings were published in the journal Clinical Cardiology.

Editor's note:  This story summarizes a recent healthcare study. Many such studies are conducted each year and some may reach different conclusions. A single study does not form the basis for changing the course of treatment. You should not make any decisions solely on the basis of this or any other news story, advertisement, or social media posting. Only your physician can advise you.