Corporations in the news

A New York man sued Apple in federal court, claiming that the company misled him and others when it pitched the iPhone Upgrade Program last year.

The lawsuit asked for class action status, a move that if approved would let others join the case.

Emil Frank of Brooklyn, N.Y., complained that he had not been able to pre-order an iPhone 7 or 7 Plus on Friday because Apple limited the number of devices for Upgrade Program participants while letting others reserve new phones.

"Apple allowed non-iPhone Upgrade Program customers to snap up the limited inventory of the new devices while telling countless iPhone Upgrade Program customers to 'check back later,'" Frank asserted.

Because he was unable to pre-order an iPhone 7 or 7 Plus under the Upgrade Program, Frank purchased a new phone for around $950. But he will still be obligated to make another year's worth of payments on his iPhone 6S Plus.





http://www.computerworld.com/article/3119360/technology-law-regulation/new-yorker-sues-apple-over-botched-iphone-upgrade-program-pre-order.html
 
With its numbers up 7 percent, Chrysler said it had its best sales in 11 years, the figures stretching to 75 consecutive months FCA's streak of year-over-year sales gains.

Or did they?

The automaker has confirmed it is "cooperating with an SEC investigation" looking at whether it has inflated those sales figures - an allegation first raised by two dealers who filed a civil racketeering lawsuit against the automaker early this year.

This is by no means the first time questions have been raised about industry sales numbers over the years. Both Cadillac and Lincoln were caught manipulating numbers when they were trying to retain their leadership of the luxury market.

More recently, allegations have been levied against the current high-line leaders, including BMW and Mercedes-Benz.

Some makers have bent - if not broken - the rules by having dealers move new vehicles into their service fleets and declaring them as retail sales. In fact, the vehicles must later be sold as used.

Distorting sales is more than just a minor infraction, however. It impacts dealers who come under intense pressure to boost the numbers, even if it means they break the rules. How they perform can have a significant impact on their compensation. Dealers who don't deliver may find themselves struggling to get the products they need from the factory.

In turn, consumers often come under intense pressure to close a sale so that dealers can make their quotas.

Stockholders also are impacted by flawed sales reporting because the numbers they need to judge the value of their investments isn't necessarily accurate.




http://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/feds-probe-fiat-chrysler-over-inflated-sales-figures-n611861
 
The Food and Drug Administration, under public pressure to start testing samples of U.S. food for the presence of a pesticide that has been linked to cancer, has some early findings that are not so sweet.

In examining honey samples from various locations in the United States, the FDA has found fresh evidence that residues of the weed killer called glyphosate can be pervasive - found even in a food that is not produced with the use of glyphosate.

All of the samples the FDA tested in a recent examination contained glyphosate residues, and some of the honey showed residue levels double the limit allowed in the European Union.

Glyphosate, which is the key ingredient in Monsanto Co.’s Roundup herbicide, is the most widely used weed killer in the world, and concerns about glyphosate residues in food spiked after cancer experts determined glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen. Other international scientists have raised concerns about how heavy use of glyphosate is impacting human health and the environment.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carey-gillam/fda-finds-monsantos-weed_b_12008680.html?
 
When you check into a hotel, it seems fair to expect freshly-laundered sheets on the bed. But new evidence suggests those fluffy puffs of heaven may not be as clean as you believe.

Reporters checked into a Residence Inn in New York City. They sprayed the bed sheets with invisible paint before checking out, then checked in again the next day under a new name. When they scanned the bed, the paint was still there. The sheets hadn’t been washed.

It’s well-known that some hotels will leave the same duvet cover on a bed for months without washing it. But neglecting to clean sheets between guests is a whole new ― and very icky ― prospect.

Reporters also tested other hotels: Out of the nine properties they checked, three left dirty sheets on the bed between guests.





http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/inside-edition-hotels-dont-wash-sheets_us_57d85adde4b0aa4b722d138e?section=&
 
In a video posted to Facebook Monday night, an employee at a Subway can been seen crouched down and walking slowly behind the glass partition that separates customers from the array of deli meat and sandwich toppings.

The employee appears to be hunting for something, then stops and raises what looks like an electric tennis racket.

That action is followed by a loud zapping noise. Then another. Then another.

The clip of what looked like a Subway employee zapping bugs over uncovered food was followed by quick action by the County Health Department who paid a visit to the store.

A Subway spokesman issued the following statement:

"Food safety is our top priority. All Subway restaurants are individually owned and operated. As soon as the restaurant owner was made aware of the situation, he immediately took action by closing his restaurant and discarding all open products. He has contracted a professional cleaning service to ensure that the restaurant is in top working order."

The inspection revealed the employee was attempting to zap smaller fruit flies or gnats, the kind you would typically find on overly ripe produce or near drains that need cleaning.



http://www.indystar.com/story/news/2016/09/13/franklin-subway-employee-caught-video-zapping-bugs-over-food/90310286/
 
The Obama administration took action today to limit the use of foreign tax credits by American multinational companies to reduce their U.S. tax bills.

The Treasury issued legal guidance reducing the scope companies have to apply foreign tax credits against their U.S. tax obligations.

“We are closing another tax loophole that contributes to the erosion of our tax base,” said Treasury assistant secretary for tax policy Mark Mazur in a statement.




http://fortune.com/2016/09/15/obama-corporate-tax-evasion/
 
Deutsche Bank said it would fight a $14 billion demand from the U.S. Department of Justice to settle claims it missold mortgage-backed securities, a shock bill that raises questions about the future of Germany's largest lender.

The claim against Deutsche, which is likely to trigger several months of talks, far exceeds the bank's expectations that the DoJ would be looking for a figure of only up to $3.4 billion.

The demand adds to the problems facing Deutsche Bank's Chief Executive John Cryan, a Briton who has been in the job for a year.

The bank only scraped through European stress tests in July and has warned it may need deeper cost cuts to turn itself around after revenue fell sharply in the second quarter due to challenging markets and low interest rates.

Deutsche Bank shares, which have lost around half their value this year, tumbled 7.6 percent, with analysts saying the bank may need to raise fresh funds from investors or sell assets to shore up its capital ratios.

The cost of insuring Deutsche Bank debt against default rose by around eight percent.




http://www.reuters.com/article/us-deutsche-bank-mortgages-idUSKCN11L2VQ
 
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has opened a new line of investigation into why ExxonMobil has declined to write down the value of its assets following a two-year oil price rout, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The probe of Exxon's accounting practices comes as Schneiderman's office is already looking into whether the oil giant's past research into climate change, which did not become public until recently, could impact its business and shareholders.




http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/16/exxonmobil-accounting-practices-probed-by-new-york-attorney-general.html
 
The U.S. government moved to recall Samsung's highest-end smartphone — an unprecedented move for the smartphone industry and one that delivers a severe blow to Samsung in its pursuit to become the world's premium smartphone maker.

Samsung and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission have issued an official recall for the Galaxy Note 7, Samsung's large-screen smartphone that has been known to burst into flames.

This is the latest in a series of high-profile recalls involving lithium-ion batteries, which can be found in many different technologies.

In recent years, the battery has been blamed for exploding hoverboards, dangerously overheating laptops, and the grounding of airplanes.

A formal recall allows the U.S. government to do several things, including making it illegal to sell the devices or use them on airplanes. Absent that formal process, several airlines have been announcing at the gate or before takeoff that the Note 7 cannot be charged or used on flights, citing the explosion risk.

This recall involved the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphone sold before Sept. 15. U.S. officials said that 97 percent of the Note 7 phones sold in the United States have the type of batteries that have caused the fires.

"Samsung has received 92 reports of the batteries overheating in the U.S.," the agency said. These include 26 reports of burns and 55 reports of property damage — including fires in cars and a garage.

With the recall Note 7 owners have two options: They can either exchange their affected Note 7 phones for a new phone, or get a refund.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/09/15/consumer-product-safety-commission-issues-an-official-recall-for-the-galaxy-note-7/
 
Elizabeth Holmes, the self-made billionaire who founded Silicon Valley biotech darling Theranos, is in, well, deep shit.

Once valued at around $9 billion, Theranos turned out to be a medical house of cards, built more on buzzwords and secrets than any real science.

Not familiar with Holmes and her web of lies?

She dropped out of Stanford when she was 19 to create Theranos, a company that purported to administer full blood tests with just the prick of a finger rather than a full withdrawal, with the help of a revolutionary blood-testing device she named Edison. This would save patients and the healthcare community millions, plus be an actual lifesaver, especially for people who are terrified of needles.

She wasn't just some random unicorn in a valley supposedly full of them, either -- investors were obsessed with her. She had a glowing profile in The New Yorker, covers on Fortune and Inc. magazines, and Forbes listed her on its richest self-made billionaire women list in 2015 (Forbes has since adjusted her net worth to zero).

There's only one small, tiny issue: it was total bullshit.

Regulators from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which regulates laboratories, visited the labs and found major inaccuracies in the testing being done on patients. (The Newark lab was run by an employee who was criticized for insufficient laboratory experience.)

C.M.S. also soon discovered that some of the tests Theranos was performing were so inaccurate that they could leave patients at risk of internal bleeding, or of stroke among those prone to blood clots.

Theranos -- which had its tests available at Walgreens -- was just using other companies' technology to stay afloat.

Since being exposed by the Wall Street Journal, Holmes has received a two-year ban from labs, and the company has crumbled.



https://www.thrillist.com/health/nation/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-news-scandal
 
Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf appeared before the Senate Banking Committee this morning to answer questions about, and apologize for, company policies that led employees to open millions of fake accounts in customers’ names.

“I do want to make very clear that there was no orchestrated effort, or scheme as some have called it, by the company,” said Stumpf, who later admitted that he first learned of employees opening unauthorized accounts in 2013.

The CEO stopped short of denouncing Wells Fargo’s policies to promote cross-selling of products, like pushing checking account customers to open lines of credit.


https://consumerist.com/2016/09/20/wells-fargo-ceo-stumpf-admits-he-learned-of-fake-accounts-in-2013/
 
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A woman claims that her daughter was served fried rat instead of chicken during a trip to a Popeyes.

“This is clearly a rat,” Rosemary Thomas posted on Facebook along with a picture of the offending food.

“I can only think other people might have eaten rat.”

The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene inspected the Popeyes on April 21 and gave it a violation centering around food possibly being contaminated or discarded improperly.

However, three previous check-ins have found “evidence of mice or live mice present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas.”

As recently as last May, the chicken spot was called “not vermin proof. Harborage or conditions conducive to attracting vermin to the premises and/or allowing vermin to exist.”



http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/manhattan/woman-claims-harlem-popeyes-served-rat-head-chicken-article-1.2798607
 
Even as Republicans were striking poses of outrage during Tuesday’s Senate hearing over Wells Fargo’s abuses of customers, they were pushing for measures that would terminate the federal government’s ability to root out bank abuses — like the ones discovered at Wells Fargo.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was instrumental to exposing the way that Wells Fargo employees opened unauthorized accounts under customer names in order to meet the company’s impossible-to-meet sales goals.

The CFPB discovered “that employees opened roughly 1.5 million deposit accounts that may not have been authorized by consumers,” according to the agency’s press release, and “employees applied for roughly 565,000 credit card accounts that may not have been authorized by consumers.”

Under the authority of the Dodd-Frank bill, the agency is fining the bank $100 million.

But Republicans want to kneecap the agency, even though in its five-year existence it has returned nearly $12 billion to victims of the financial industry’s malfeasance.

Despite its high-profile victory over Wells Fargo, Republicans are still looking for excuses to destroy an agency that protects consumers and helps prevent some of the exploitative banking practices that led to the financial collapse of 2008.

In June Republicans unveiled a plan to repeal the Dodd-Frank law and replace it with legislation that would defang the CFPB, making it the only bank regulator without independent funding. In other words, Republicans want to restructure the CFPB so they can quietly bleed it dry, making it an agency with no real enforcement power to protect consumers against predatory bankers.

Trump has promised that he plans to dismantle Dodd-Frank altogether. Under his leadership, Republicans might simply eradicate the CFPB, which would give banks like Wells Fargo winking permission to return to unrestrained exploitation of their customers.



http://www.salon.com/2016/09/22/yeah-theres-a-difference-wells-fargo-scandal-is-another-reminder-that-we-cant-afford-trump-and-the-gop/
 
Legion Troll said:
Even as Republicans were striking poses of outrage during Tuesday’s Senate hearing over Wells Fargo’s abuses of customers, they were pushing for measures that would terminate the federal government’s ability to root out bank abuses — like the ones discovered at Wells Fargo.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was instrumental to exposing the way that Wells Fargo employees opened unauthorized accounts under customer names in order to meet the company’s impossible-to-meet sales goals.

The CFPB discovered “that employees opened roughly 1.5 million deposit accounts that may not have been authorized by consumers,” according to the agency’s press release, and “employees applied for roughly 565,000 credit card accounts that may not have been authorized by consumers.”

Under the authority of the Dodd-Frank bill, the agency is fining the bank $100 million.

But Republicans want to kneecap the agency, even though in its five-year existence it has returned nearly $12 billion to victims of the financial industry’s malfeasance.

Despite its high-profile victory over Wells Fargo, Republicans are still looking for excuses to destroy an agency that protects consumers and helps prevent some of the exploitative banking practices that led to the financial collapse of 2008.

In June Republicans unveiled a plan to repeal the Dodd-Frank law and replace it with legislation that would defang the CFPB, making it the only bank regulator without independent funding. In other words, Republicans want to restructure the CFPB so they can quietly bleed it dry, making it an agency with no real enforcement power to protect consumers against predatory bankers.

Trump has promised that he plans to dismantle Dodd-Frank altogether. Under his leadership, Republicans might simply eradicate the CFPB, which would give banks like Wells Fargo winking permission to return to unrestrained exploitation of their customers.



http://www.salon.com/2016/09/22/yeah-theres-a-difference-wells-fargo-scandal-is-another-reminder-that-we-cant-afford-trump-and-the-gop/
Click to expand...

Exactly bleed it dry & then bitch cause they are ineffective.:palm:
 
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