General Motors is recalling 181 model year 2016-2017 Cadillac CT6s.
The Park/Position lights may be excessively bright, which may affect the vision of other drivers, increasing the risk of a crash.
Dealers will install right- and left-side in-line headlight jumper harnesses free of charge.
Owner notification letters are expected to be mailed on November 15, 2021.
Owners may contact Cadillac customer service at (800) 458-8006. GM's number for this recall is N162016079.
General Motors is recalling 181 model year 2016-2017 Cadillac CT6s.The Park/Position lights may be excessively bright, which may affect the vision of o...
AFFCO USA of Jacksonville, Fla., is recalling approximately 24,461 pounds of frozen raw lamb shoulders.
The product did not undergo import re-inspection into the U.S.
There have been no confirmed reports of adverse reactions.
The recalled product, which comes in cardboard boxes weighing between 33-lb to 39-lb, with shipping mark of M1353023 and the New Zealand establishment seal “SPM135,” was imported on July 12, 2021.
It was shipped to distributors in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, New York and Pennsylvania for further distribution to retailers.
Customers who purchased the recalled products should not consume it, but discard or return it to the place of purchase.
Consumers with questions may contact AFFCO USA at (904) 263-4971.
AFFCO USA of Jacksonville, Fla., is recalling approximately 24,461 pounds of frozen raw lamb shoulders.The product did not undergo import re-inspection...
Coronavirus (COVID-19) tally as compiled by Johns Hopkins University. (Previous numbers in parentheses.)
Total U.S. confirmed cases: 46,006,251 (45,963,579)
Total U.S. deaths: 746,289 (745,080)
Total global cases: 246,929,884 (246,633,898)
Total global deaths: 5,003,404 (4,998, 731)
The number of people who have died from COVID-19 complications rose above the 5 million mark over the weekend, according to the unofficial count maintained by Johns Hopkins University.
The United States continues to lead the world in the number of deaths, with more than 746,000. Brazil is second with 608,000 deaths and India is third with 459,000 fatalities.
According to Johns Hopkins’ COVID-19 Tracking Project, there have been 247 million cases of the virus since the pandemic began in early 2020. The 28-day average of cases is 11.7 million, and the 28-day average of COVID-19 deaths is 197,000.
Moderna has disclosed that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) needs more time to determine whether its COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective for use on teens. The FDA is investigating whether there is an unacceptable risk of myocarditis in the 12 to 17 age group.
In a statement, the pharmaceutical company, which makes one of the three approved vaccines used in the U.S., said the FDA review would likely not be completed before January 2022. Myocarditis is a condition that affects the heart.
“The company is fully committed to working closely with the FDA to support their review and is grateful to the FDA for their diligence,” Moderna said in a statement.
For thousands of New York City employees, today is D-Day -- the deadline for meeting the city’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate. Thousands of unvaccinated employees are expected to be placed on unpaid leave.
According to WABC-TV, vaccination rates on Sunday night stood at 84% for the city’s police department, 82% for the Department of Sanitation, and 80% for the New York Fire Department. The fire department has already closed some stations because of staff shortages.
At an early morning news conference today, officials of the union representing firefighters complained about a lack of time afforded to members to get vaccinated. Union leaders also denied a claim by city officials that firefighters have engaged in a sick-out.
Texas: State universities have billions of dollars at stake as a vaccination mandate deadline approaches. Administrators face a Dec. 8 deadline to impose a Biden administration vaccination mandate or lose federal contracts. The state of Texas, meanwhile, has ordered colleges not to impose a vaccine mandate.
New York: Thousands of people crowded into Greenwich Village on Sunday night for New York City’s Halloween parade. The New York Post reports that many of the costumes had a COVID-19 theme. The annual event was canceled last year because of the pandemic.
Iowa: Gov. Kim Reynolds has joined a lawsuit challenging the Biden administration vaccination mandate, saying she opposes government orders to be vaccinated. “I’ve been vaccinated,” she said. “We continue to encourage (vaccinations). It’s our best defense in addressing Covid-19 and the Delta variant, but I believe that is a personal choice.”
Louisiana: An appeals court has blocked Ochsner Health, the state’s largest hospital system, from enforcing its vaccination mandate for employees. “This ruling is inconsistent with established Louisiana law as well as with decisions of courts across the country upholding COVID-19 vaccine mandates,” Ochsner Health President and CEO Warner Thomas said in a statement.
Maryland: A 25-year-old Maryland man faces up to 25 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges related to a fake COVID-19 vaccine scheme. Federal authorities say Odunayo “Baba” Oluwalade conspired with others to market a fake vaccine before the actual vaccines were approved.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) tally as compiled by Johns Hopkins University. (Previous numbers in parentheses.)Total U.S. confirme...
By the end of this week, the Federal Register is expected to publish the Department of Labor’s rule mandating that private businesses with 100 or more employees either have to vaccinate those workers or test them weekly.
This is the final step in a requirement that President Joe Biden issued in September -- a plan that impacted some 80 million workers. The Office of Management and Budget completed its review of the rule on Monday.
"Covered employers must develop, implement, and enforce a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy, unless they adopt a policy requiring employees to choose either to get vaccinated or to undergo regular COVID-19 testing and wear a face covering at work,” a spokesperson for the Labor Department said. “The ETS also requires employers to provide paid time to workers to get vaccinated and paid sick leave to recover from any side effects."
Government officials who have weighed in on the plan say the standard is a “minimum” and that companies have permission to take the requirements even further -- for example, by mandating vaccinations as opposed to requiring workers who remain unvaccinated to produce a negative test result on at least a weekly basis.
However, if an employer decides to do nothing, there could be trouble. The government could step in and "take enforcement actions,” including fines of up to $14,000 per violation.
Dr. Robert G. Lahita, Director of the Institute for Autoimmune and Rheumatic Disease at Saint Joseph Health and author of the upcoming book Immunity Strong, told ConsumerAffairs that the emergency mandate is a double-edged sword.
“A lot of people feel this emergency mandate is appropriate. Personally, I am all for mandating vaccines for healthcare workers, school staff, fire, police, EMS, etc. Anybody on the front lines should be mandated to get vaccinated immediately,” Lahita said.
“However, I do understand that mandating for employers is walking on thin ice. I’m concerned how this will impact the economy if a significant number of people refuse to get vaccinated and are laid off.”
By the end of this week, the Federal Register is expected to publish the Department of Labor’s rule mandating that private businesses with 100 or more empl...
Tens of thousands of travelers hoping to get somewhere on American Airlines over the weekend went nowhere fast. The airline canceled 1,730 flights from Friday through Sunday -- 22.9% of its scheduled take-offs -- according to FlightAware.
"To make sure we are taking care of our customers and providing scheduling certainty for our crews, we have adjusted our operation for the last few days this month by proactively canceling some flights," David Seymour, the airline's chief operating officer, said in a memo to employees.
Last month, Southwest Airlines also suffered a spate of cancellations and actually eclipsed American Airlines’ total cancellations for October. It was a problem that a Southwest pilots union put on the shoulders of airline officials for choosing “profits over people.”
American says travelers shouldn’t give up on the airline. According to Seymour, 1,800 flight attendants are expected to return from pandemic time-off starting Monday Another 600 new hires are planned by the end of the year in hopes of closing all the workforce gaps in time for the holidays.
However, those 1,800 returns aren’t a guarantee, and American still has to make up the deficit of workers created when it temporarily furloughed more than 10,000 workers after funding and ticket sales dried up during the pandemic. While the airline reversed the furlough, thousands of employees decided to take the cash incentives and voluntarily quit their jobs instead.
The pilots union at American warned that it could also face a different staffing shortage if it implements a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. However, in trying to find a win-win, the union has suggested that both the airline and government officials consider an alternative means of complying with the White House’s mandate, including regular testing or proof of natural immunity.
American isn’t alone in this quandary. United Airlines pilots are threatening to stay at home if they’re forced to fly with unvaccinated coworkers. Six United employees who applied for a medical or religious exemption to the airline’s vaccine mandate are doing their best to haul the airline into court where a judge can decide whether or not the company has the right to place them on leave for refusing to be vaccinated.
Tens of thousands of travelers hoping to get somewhere on American Airlines over the weekend went nowhere fast. The airline canceled 1,730 flights from Fri...
Online gaming platform Roblox has resumed operations after being down for three days. Users found that they were unable to access the site starting late Thursday.
After an investigation over the weekend, the company said the root cause of the outage was an “internal system issue.” The site was reported to be fully operational as of Sunday evening.
“As most of the Roblox community is aware, we recently experienced an extended outage across our platform,” company CEO David Baszucki wrote in a Sunday evening blog post. “We are sorry for the length of time it took us to restore service. A key value at Roblox is ‘Respect the Community,’ and in this case, we apologize for the inconvenience to our community.”
Baszucki described the outage as “difficult” and said it was caused by a combination of several issues. For starters, a core system in the platform’s infrastructure became overwhelmed, caused by a “subtle bug” in the site’s backend service communications while under heavy load.
“This was not due to any peak in external traffic or any particular experience,” Baszucki wrote. “Rather the failure was caused by the growth in the number of servers in our datacenters. The result was that most services at Roblox were unable to effectively communicate and deploy.”
Though engineers were working around the clock, the company said the repair took longer to diagnose and complete because the glitch was difficult to identify. Once the bug was found, engineers completed the reconfiguration by Sunday afternoon.
Adults who are unfamiliar with Roblox might ask their children what it’s all about. The app has more than 43 million daily users, and many of them are under the age of 13. According to The Verge, over half of all U.S. children under age 16 played Roblox games in 2020 during the pandemic.
Roblox is an online platform and app store where users can play different video games. Roblox, itself, is not a game. The games are produced by independent developers.
Because holidays like Halloween are peak times for gamers and developers, the system crash came at an inopportune time. Baszucki said the company will implement a policy to make the developers who create the games “economically whole as a result of this outage.”
Online gaming platform Roblox has resumed operations after being down for three days. Users found that they were unable to access the site starting late Th...
Uber and Lyft fares rose sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic. They’re still high, with riders paying more for trips than before March 2020.
That’s because ridesharing companies adjust their fares based on supply and demand. When there are more drivers than riders, fares go down. But since the pandemic shut down the economy, there has been a big drop in people driving for either Uber or Lyft.
Both ridesharing companies expected drivers to return in droves when elevated unemployment benefits ran out, but the Wall Street Journal reports that the return of drivers is happening more slowly than either company expected.
A spokesman for Uber told the Journal that there were more drivers on the road than at any time during the pandemic by the end of October. The problem is that there were also more customers.
“Now there are so many people that want to go out and do things,” Lyft President John Zimmer said in September in a talk on Clubhouse, noting that in many cities, there still aren’t enough drivers.
Lyft still expects the balance between drivers and riders to return at some point, but the company declined to predict just when that might happen.
The Journal report suggests that the ridesharing companies may face challenges in getting drivers back behind the wheel. It cites the case of Harry Thomas, who had been driving for Uber at night for more than three years when the pandemic struck. During the lockdown, he began delivering groceries during the day and told the Journal that he prefers that routine. He’s even applying for full-time jobs.
Industry analysts say driver earnings went down during the late spring and summer in states that ended enhanced unemployment benefits early compared with states that didn’t. But with the current imbalance between drivers and riders, drivers have earned more since the end of the summer. That’s because consumers using the services are paying more.
Genie, of Erdenheim, Pa., tells us she’s paying more than expected for her Uber rides.
“I was quoted $55.23 to go to airport,” Genie wrote in a ConsumerAffairs review. “The driver arrived 10 minutes early. Easy drive to airport. Charged $68.97.”
While most taxi companies aren’t affected by supply and demand, Lifewire recently noted that the structure of cab fares usually results in a more expensive ride to the airport than if you took Uber or Lyft.
Uber and Lyft fares rose sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic. They’re still high, with riders paying more for trips than before March 2020.That’s beca...
A new study conducted by researchers from NYU Langone Health found that consumers’ proximity to fast-food restaurants may come with health risks. According to their findings, consumers have a higher chance of developing diabetes when they have greater access to fast food.
“Most studies examine the built food environment and its relationship to chronic diseases have been much smaller or conducted in localized areas,” said researcher Rania Kanchi, MPH. “Our study design is national in scope and allowed us to identify the types of communities that people are living in, characterize the food environment, and observe what happens to them over time. The size of our cohort allows for geographic generalizability in a way that other studies do not.”
For the study, the researchers analyzed data from 9 million people from the U.S. Veterans Health Administration. The team tracked the participants’ health for around five years and evaluated the types of restaurants that were in their neighborhoods.
The researchers learned that participants had a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes when there were more fast-food restaurants close to their homes. Over the course of the study, over 13% of the participants developed diabetes.
Those who lived in high-density urban areas typically resided within one mile of a fast-food restaurant. Among the participants who lived in these neighborhoods, more than 14% developed diabetes. Comparatively, 12.6% of those who lived in more rural areas and had to drive to the nearest fast-food restaurant also developed diabetes.
Moving forward, the researchers hope these findings prompt changes that could benefit consumers’ long-term health.
“The more we learn about the relationships between the food environment and chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes, the more policymakers can act by improving the mix of healthy food options sold in restaurants and food outlets, or by creating better zoning laws that promote optimal food options for residents,” said researcher Lorna Thorpe, Ph.D.
A new study conducted by researchers from NYU Langone Health found that consumers’ proximity to fast-food restaurants may come with health risks. According...
A new study conducted by researchers from Louisiana University explored some of the risk factors associated with childhood pneumonia. The findings showed that environmental influences, like air pollution, and social factors, like socioeconomic status, may put kids at a higher risk of contracting and being hospitalized for pneumonia.
“This research contributes to the body of evidence linking poor respiratory health to exposure to environmental air pollution, especially combustion-derived particulate matter,” said researcher Stephania Cormier.
For the study, the researchers analyzed several data points to better understand the risks associated with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) in kids. The team looked at data from children who were hospitalized with pneumonia in Memphis, Tenn., and paid particular attention to age, race, health insurance, bacterial or viral infection, and exposure to air pollution.
Ultimately, the researchers learned that several of these factors had significant impacts on children’s respiratory health.
From a social standpoint, both socioeconomic status and race played important roles in the severity of the children’s infection, though race proved to be a bigger risk factor in terms of hospitalization. The researchers learned that children of color were more likely to spend time in the hospital with pneumonia than white children.
Environmentally, children who lived in areas with higher levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) had a higher risk of infection and hospitalization. This was a cause for concern because even when levels of air pollution were lower than recommended guidelines, it still seriously impacted kids’ health.
“The fact that we saw an increased risk for pediatric pneumonia at PM2.5 levels lower than what is currently allowed by the EPA is a concern and signals the need for continuous review and policy adjustment based on health effects evidence and exposure or risk information such as this,” said Cormier.
Moving forward, the researchers hope these findings impact how consumers understand their children’s health risks, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“COVID-19 also causes pneumonia, and our research suggests that PM2.5 may contribute to higher rates of infection and enhanced disease among those who do get sick,” Cormier said.
A new study conducted by researchers from Louisiana University explored some of the risk factors associated with childhood pneumonia. The findings showed t...
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