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Sunday, July 22, 2007

Virginia – Joshua Brady, a former Sprint Nextel customer, has had his cellular phone account shut off, but not because he wasn’t paying the phone bill, or even because he was late on payments, but because a customer service representative who assisted him, began to call him outside of her job, and make death threats to him in September of 2006. She was never fired for her actions, Brady says.

Brady has agreed to be interviewed by Wikinews to tell his story. All information and claims have been logged with Brady’s attorney and federal authorities.

The representative from Sprint Nextel, who for safety reasons is only being identified as Jessica, was working at the company’s call center in Ontario, Canada where Brady’s call to customer service was directed. According to Brady, Jessica then began to call him outside of her job duties at the call center after their first contact.

Brady called the center around 6:00 p.m. (eastern time) on a Saturday and attempted to receive help on a billing question and to find a way to stop prank calls. Brady requested a “soc code”, a code placed into the phone, that would allow for the number that was pranking him to be blocked. Unfortunately, Jessica did not know what that was, but tried unsuccessfully to find it. According to Brady, the only thing she could find was “the ANI feature call centers have.”

Brady then described to Jessica the billing issue he was having. He was being charged “for text messages I was not making”, even though he had unlimited text messaging with his billing plan. Meanwhile, Jessica called for a supervisor to help locate the code. As this customer service request over the phone was taking quite a bit of time, the two of them then started to discuss what two people would normally discuss if just chatting; sports, the weather, movies and music and if Virginia was a nice place to go on vacation. The supervisor then came by Jessica’s station with no luck on finding a code.

Later that night, around 10:30 p.m., Brady received a call. He answered it and much to his surprise, it was Jessica. He answered the phone with the usual “hello” and the voice on the other end answered with “hello Josh.” Brady was “surprised” that she had not said “hello Mr. Brady.”

“I then asked who it was, and she said Jessica. She told me about her day, and hoped that I did not mind her calling.” Then according to Brady, she started to describe how much she hated working in a call center, and how the job “pays the bills”, and asked if she could “come visit me sometime”. Brady said that he “immediately started to record” the call. Brady also stated that Jessica was not aware she was being recorded, and that further conversations were recorded without her knowing.

The call lasted about 15 minutes, but Brady said she “spoke so fast and moved along through things” that he “didn’t have a chance to talk if I wanted to. It [the call] ended with me interrupting her and telling her I had to go to dinner with a friend.”

Brady immediately called customer care back and reported Jessica’s actions to a supervisor (Jason), and the Floor Manager (Also named Jessica) at the Coos Bay call center, which is where his call happened to be directed. The advice he received was to “play along” and continue to report her actions until they could locate someone “better equipped” to handle the situation.

Jessica then began to call “about every other day or so” which turned out to be almost 30 calls, according to Brady who reported each call she made to Sprint Nextel.

Sprint Nextel then told Jessica to cease and desist all contact with Brady, but that didn’t stop Jessica from contacting him. She somehow found out the screen-name of his AOL Instant Messenger account, and left messages threatening to kill him. Brady logged the messages and faxed them to Sprint, who about a week later sent Brady a letter, saying that his accounts have been terminated.

“The purpose of this letter is to inform our that our office has received a complaint regarding your recent questionable interactions with our customer care group. Recent interactions with our company have prompted us to formally contact you. Sprint Nextel terms and conditions state that “termination of services. consistent with this agreement…”, said the letter from Sprint Nextel.

Brady states that Jessica is still employed with Sprint Nextel, despite the fact that all instant messages left by Jessica were forwarded to Sprint Nextel.

As recently as July 10, 2007, as many as 1,000 accounts were terminated by Sprint Nextel because customers were complaining too much and asking too many questions about billing.

“While we have worked to resolve your issues and questions to the best of our ability, the number of inquiries you have made to us during this time had led us to determine that we are unable to meet your current wireless needs,” said one letter to a sprint customer as recent as June 29, 2007. The letter states that the service will be terminated just one day after the letter was written despite saying they “understand switching to a new carrier causes an inconvenience.”

Two weeks ago, Sprint addressed the media about the mass-cancellations. “These accounts have been researched very carefully,” Sprint spokeswoman Roni Singleton said. “We feel strongly that the decisions we made, we stand by them. These decisions weren’t made lightly.”

“If the average person is calling less than once per month and these people are calling 40 or 50 times more, that takes away from customer service,” Singleton said. “Our priority is to improve the customer experience.”

Wikinews sent e-mails to Sprint Nextel on July 20 regarding the Brady incident; to date no response has been received.

Update: On July 23, 2007, Wikinews received an email response from a Sprint representative, going to some length to explain the termination of the customers who were calling up to hundreds of times a month. No information was given on the Brady case covered in this article; “customer privacy considerations” were cited as the reason and “no comment” was Sprint’s reply.

Saturday, April 30, 2005

The British Food Standards Agency (FSA) has announced a recall of foods containing banned dyes which increase the risk of cancer. The food products were sold at the Tesco, Waitrose, and Somerfield supermarkets.

A Bristol company called “Barts Spices” found the illegal Para Red substance in their Barts Ground Paprika, which was sold in 48g and 46g jars with a “Co-op” label. The batch codes on the affected products are 5032 and 5089 (expiration Dec 2007), and 5075 (expiration February 2007).

Tesco also found that their 130g package of BBQ rice cakes (expiration November and December 2005) contained both Para Red and Sudan I.

“It would be very prudent to assume that it could be a genotoxic carcinogen,” FSA scientific advisers told reporters.

“As a company committed to supplying only the very finest quality food ingredients, we took the immediate decision to withdraw our ground paprika spice from all outlets selling the product and advertised a product recall in the national press,” a Barts Spices spokesman said in a statement.

Sudan I is only authorized for industrial use to colorize petroleum products, such as shoe polish. Para Red and Sudan I are banned under the British Colours in Food Regulations of 1995.

Britain last went through a major food recall in February, when Worcester Sauce was found to contain chili powder dyed with Sudan 1.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

American Secretary of Energy Steven Chu is cutting US$100 million dollars from hydrogen fuel cell vehicle research and diverting the remaining $69 million to hydrogen fuel cell research for household current.

Former president George W. Bush advocated the zero-emission vehicles and launched $1.2 billion for hydrogen fuel cell research over a number of years.

President Barack Obama is proposing a “corporate average fuel economy,” or CAFÉ, placing standards for gas mileage at 39 miles per gallon for cars and light trucks at 30 mpg.

“The probability of deploying hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicles in the next 10 to 20 years is low.” said Tom Welch of the U.S. Department of Energy. “We asked ourselves, ‘Is it likely in the next 10 or 15, 20 years that we will convert to a hydrogen car economy?’ The answer, we felt, was ‘no,'” said Chu.

In response, the U.S. Fuel Cell Council and the National Hydrogen Association said, “The cuts proposed in the DOE hydrogen and fuel-cell program threaten to disrupt commercialization of a family of technologies that are showing exceptional promise and beginning to gain market traction. Fuel-cell vehicles are not a science experiment. These are real vehicles with real marketability and real benefits. Hundreds of fuel-cell vehicles have collectively logged millions of miles.”

“I just got the Clarity, which is a wonderful hydrogen vehicle,” said Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. He lent his car to The Hydrogen Road Tour.

On Tuesday, The Hydrogen Road Tour began in Chula Vista, California. Twelve hydrogen fuel cell cars by seven auto makers will arrive in Vancouver, British Columbia June 3 for the Hydrogen + Fuel Cells 2009 conference, a global hydrogen and fuel cell event. “The point really is to raise awareness about fuel celled vehicles and hydrogen, their benefits both to energy efficiency and the environment as well as to consumers because we really believe these vehicles are going to be a market winner,” said Catherine Dunwoody, the Executive Director of the California Fuel Cell Partnership.

The Hydrogen Fuel Cells 2009 conference began June 1. “Our global environmental challenges, such as climate change, do not stop at the border,” ” said John Tak, conference Chair, “I am pleased that scientists, engineers, government representatives and businesspeople from more than 35 countries are coming to Vancouver, an active hub for hydrogen and fuel cell development, to help create solutions to these challenges.”

The Ohio Fuel Cell Symposium was held in North Canton, Ohio on Wednesday and Thursday. “The hydrogen and fuel cell industries are at a stage where they have the momentum and energy to accomplish some truly revolutionary things in terms of how they apply their technologies,” said William Whittenberger, president of Catacel Corp. These fuel cells produce electricity and exhaust carbon dioxide and water.

A hydrogen powered municipal street cleaning vehicle is currently being tested for the next year and half in Basel, Switzerland. “Our aim is to take fuel cell technology from the laboratory onto the street,” said Empa’s Internal Combustion Engines Laboratory Project Leader Christian Bach.

Dan Lutz, the fleet manager for the Beloit, Wisconsin public works department, experimented with retro-fitting his personal truck. The department now has a large pickup truck, a garbage truck, a recycling truck, a police squad car and a small pickup truck using hydrogen technology increasing gas mileage from 14 to 22 and 31 mpg. “We know the basic technology works, but the issue is, is it practical,” said City Manager Larry Arft, “Can it be used realistically?”

The drawback is that the technology may rely on platinum, a rare metal, or palladium. Infrastructure would need to be changed to supply hydrogen fueling stations. Critics are also concerned about hydrogen fuel storage and the costs of retro-fitting existing vehicles.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

A Pembroke Pines, Florida teenager killed himself Wednesday, November 19, while broadcasting on the live video site Justin.tv. After making suicide threats and being encouraged by Justin.tv viewers and Bodybuilding.com forum members, Abraham K. Biggs, 19, committed suicide by taking an overdose of opiates and benzodiazepine, which had been prescribed for his bipolar disorder.

Biggs first began blogging about his planned suicide 12 hours before the actual event. He died after taking pills and lying on the bed in front of the webcam. After the broadcast, viewers who apparently thought it was a hoax posted messages such as “OMG”, “LOL”, and “hahahah”.

Hours later, after being alerted by viewers who had noticed that Biggs had stopped breathing, law enforcement and paramedics arrived, discovered his body, and covered the camera. The Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office has reportedly confirmed Biggs’ death.

According to Montana Miller of the Bowling Green State University, the circumstances of this case were not shocking: “If it’s not recorded or documented, then it doesn’t even seem worthwhile. For today’s generation it might seem, ‘What’s the point of doing it if everyone isn’t going to see it?'”

Biggs’ sister Rosalind was angry that neither the website nor its viewers reacted soon enough to save him. “They got hits, they got viewers, nothing happened for hours,” she said. She described him as “very happy” and “friendly and outgoing.” “On a normal day, you couldn’t really tell that he got as low as he did.” However, he did have relationship problems with his girlfriend, according to a friend.

Mental health professionals have warned about the possibility that other mentally troubled people would copy his actions. According to Dr. David Shaffer of Columbia University, “Any video showing it as heroic or romantic or glamorous could reduce the anxiety people might feel about suicide. It becomes a respectable behavior and lowers the threshold of suicide.” He and other psychiatrists recommend that potentially suicidal teens talk to others and “tell what’s going on.”

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Bramalea-Gore-Malton-Springdale Member of Provincial Parliament Dr. Kuldip S. Kular invites “everyone” to his community barbecque.

The event lasts from 1 until 4 pm in the northwest corner of Chinguasousy Park, at 9050 Bramalea Road in Brampton. The BBQ is free.

Kular was elected into office in 2003, having come to Campbellton, New Brunswick in 1974 to set up a family medical practice.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

A recent study led by Dr. Drew Westen, a Professor of Psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia has concluded that political partisans use an “almost entirely emotional and unconscious” thought process when digesting damaging information about a favored political candidate.

The experiment used fMRI scans of 30 men who self-identified as either a committed Republican or Democrat. The subjects were given a series of conflicting quotes by either President Bush or Senator Kerry, and covered such topics as the Enron scandal and the current state of Social Security. The quotes were doctored to maximize the apparent contradiction, but were presented as factual.

The results suggests that many seemingly rational political decisions are strongly influenced by unconscious emotional reactions. Such conclusions match well results from advertising psychology which say that purchases are also not as rational as people believe. Past fMRI studies have found that Democrat and Republican partisans tend to experience different emotions when shown an image of a preferred candidate.

Westen will present his results next month at a meetings of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in Palm Springs, CA.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

The director-general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Pascal Lamy, suspended negotiations in the Doha round of trade talks on Monday, after a meeting of six “core” negotiators India, Brazil, the United States, European Union, Japan, and Australia in Geneva failed to make any headway in reconciling differences over agricultural trade liberalisation. The US wanted cuts in import tariffs for farm products, which were rejected by EU, Japan and India, who asked for cuts in agricultural subsidies.

Peter Mandelson, the EU trade commissioner, told the Financial Times: “If the US continues to demand dollar-for-dollar compensation in market access [cutting tariffs] for reducing domestic support, no one in the developing world will ever buy that and the EU will not either.” Brazil also identified the US stand on subsidies as the reason the talks failed.

Susan Schwab, the US trade representative, said that the other countries sought exemptions from tariff cuts for a wide range of goods and that such exemptions would defeat the object of the talks – to expand trade. “As we went through the layers of loopholes . . . we discovered that a couple of our trading partners were more interested in loopholes than market access,” she said.

The Indian Commerce and Industries Minister, Kamal Nath said that developing countries could not allow their subsistence farmers to lose their livelihood and food security to provide market access to agricultural products from developed countries.