Imam's Wife Tells of Death Threats - New York Times

On his blog, Paul Krugman explains the economic theories others have been using – and how their predictions differ from his own.

The fiasco of the Commonwealth Games shattered illusions of the country’s progress, Pankaj Mishra writes.

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Verizon Wireless to Pay Millions in Refunds - New York Times

WASHINGTON — Verizon Wireless said on Sunday that it would pay up to $90 million in refunds to 15 million cellphone customers who were wrongly charged for data sessions or Internet use, one of the largest customer refunds by a telecommunications company.

The announcement came in a statement from Verizon Wireless as the company held talks with the Federal Communications Commission about complaints of unauthorized charges and in response to questions about a possible settlement of an F.C.C. investigation into the issue.

Verizon said in its statement that the customers would receive credits from $2 to $6 on their October or November bills or, in the case of former customers, refund checks.

The refunds will be paid to customers who did not have data access plans but who were nevertheless assessed one or more charges of $1.99 because of data exchanges initiated by software built into their phones, or because of charges for inadvertently going online on the phones.

The F.C.C. is likely to press Verizon to pay a penalty for failing to notify customers of the problem, which has been occurring since at least 2007, according to people close to the talks.

Michele Ellison, the chief of the F.C.C. enforcement bureau, said in a statement that the agency was “gratified to see the repayment, but for millions of Americans it’s a day late and a $1.99 short.”

“Getting consumers repaid is just the first step; ensuring this doesn’t happen again comes next,” Ms. Ellison said.

In the last three years, the F.C.C. has received hundreds of complaints from Verizon Wireless customers who said they were charged for data use or Web access at times when their phones were not in use or when they mistakenly pushed a button that activated the phone’s Web browser.

Beginning in 2009, The New York Times and The Plain Dealer of Cleveland, among other publications, reported that customers had been complaining of the charges but had often been ignored by Verizon Wireless. On certain flip phones sold by Verizon, a directional arrow, when pushed, automatically would initiate the phone’s Web browser.

Even if customer immediately canceled the action, they were often charged $1.99 for Internet access, according to the complaints, some of which were detailed by David Pogue of The Times on his blog, Pogue’s Posts.

Customers who contacted Verizon about the charges said that the company had often refused to reverse the charges or discouraged them from blocking the data service on their phones.

Verizon maintained that it had responded appropriately. “Verizon Wireless values our customer relationships, and we always want to do the right thing for our customers,” Mary Coyne, deputy general counsel for Verizon Wireless, said in a statement. “When we identify errors, we remedy them as quickly as possible. Our goal is to maintain our customers’ trust and ensure they receive the best experience possible.”

But Verizon initially played down the issue, telling the F.C.C. in December 2009 that it did not charge customers who had inadvertently started their phone’s Web browser and immediately ended the session.

That month, the F.C.C. formally asked Verizon about news reports detailing the charges. In a letter, Kathleen Grillo, a senior vice president for federal regulatory affairs at Verizon, wrote that, “In order to protect customers from minimal, accidental usage charges, Verizon Wireless does not charge users when the browser is launched, and opens to the Verizon Wireless Mobile Web homepage.”

That statement seems to be contradicted by Verizon’s latest statement. “As we reviewed customer accounts, we discovered that over the past several years, approximately 15 million customers who did not have data plans were billed for data sessions on their phones that they did not initiate,” the company said on Sunday.

“These customers would normally have been billed at the standard rate of $1.99 per megabyte for any data they chose to access from their phones,” the statement said. “The majority of the data sessions involved minor data exchanges caused by software built into their phones; others involved accessing the Web, which should not have incurred charges. We have addressed these issues to avoid unintended data charges in the future.”

The F.C.C. began a formal investigation into the unauthorized charges in January. Formal F.C.C. investigations, in which the agency can seek sworn testimony, are usually not disclosed publicly. The F.C.C. said on Sunday that it began looking into the Verizon issue 10 months ago.

In recent weeks, the company and the commission staff have been wrangling over how long the company had been aware of the problem and whether the F.C.C. would initiate a Notice of Apparent Liability, as formal enforcement charges are known.

As an alternative to formal enforcement, the company and the F.C.C. could enter into a consent decree, in which the company would neither admit nor deny the charges, but would agree to make a voluntary payment to settle the issue.

As settlement talks proceeded last week, Verizon indicated to the F.C.C. that it expected that the total amount of the refunds that it would pay to consumer would be about $50 million, according to people close to the settlement talks.

On Sunday, Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless, declined to comment on whether the company could narrow the range of $30 million to $90 million in potential payments.

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Hungary sludge flood called 'ecological disaster' - The Associated Press

Hungary sludge flood called 'ecological disaster'By BELA SZANDELSZKY and PABLO GORONDI (AP) – 43 minutes ago

KOLONTAR, Hungary — A lethal torrent of toxic red sludge from a metal refinery engulfed towns in Hungary, burning villagers through their clothes and threatening an ecological disaster Tuesday as it swept toward the Danube River.

The flood of caustic red mud triggered a state of emergency declaration by Hungarian officials. At least four people were killed, six were missing and 120 injured, many with burns.

Hundreds were evacuated in the aftermath of the disaster Monday, when a gigantic sludge reservoir burst its banks at an alumina plant in Ajka, a town 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Budapest, the capital. The torrent of sludge inundated homes, swept cars off roads and damaged bridges.

Named for its bright red color, the material is a waste product in aluminum production that contains heavy metals and is toxic if ingested.

In Kolontar, the town closest to the plant, Erzsebet Veingartner was in her kitchen when the 12-foot-high wave of red slurry hit, sweeping away everything in its path.

"I looked outside and all I saw was the stream swelling like a huge wave," the 61-year-old widow said Tuesday as she surveyed her backyard, still under 6 feet of noxious muck.

"I lost all my chickens, my ducks, my Rottweiler, and my potato patch. My late husband's tools and machinery were in the shed and it's all gone," sobbed the woman, who gets by on a $350 monthly pension. "I have a winter's worth of firewood in the basement and it's all useless now."

Emergency workers wearing masks and chemical protection gear rushed to pour 1,000 tons of plaster into the Marcal River in an attempt to bind the sludge and keep it from flowing on to the Danube some 45 miles away. Nearby, desperate villagers waded through the toxic mud trying to salvage possessions with little more than rubber gloves as protection.

The 1,775-mile-long Danube passes through some of the continent's most pristine vistas from its origins as a Black Forest spring in Germany to its end point as a majestic stretch of water emptying into the Black Sea.

Now a murky green — not blue as immortalized in the Strauss waltz — the river flows through four former communist nations. One of the continent's greatest treasuries of wildlife, it has been the focus of a multibillion dollar post-communist cleanup. Cormorants, swans and other birds are now common sights on the river.

Still, high-risk industries such as Hungary's Ajkai Timfoldgyar alumina plant are still producing waste near some of its tributaries, posing a threat to the waterway.

By Tuesday, about 35.3 million cubic feet of sludge had poured from the reservoir, flooding a 16 square mile area, Environmental Affairs State Secretary Zoltan Illes told the state news wire MTI. He called the spill an "ecological catastrophe."

Dozens of villagers were burned when the caustic material seeped through their clothing. Two women, a young man and a 3-year-old child were killed, and health officials said two of the injured were in critical condition.

Because chemical burns can take days to emerge, seemingly superficial injuries can turn deadly as they penetrate deeper tissue, Dr. Peter Jakabos of Gyor Hospital told state TV.

In nearby Devecser, the sea of muck in Tunde Erdelyi's house was 5 feet high Tuesday and rescue workers had to use an ax to cut through her living room door to let it flow out. Her car had been swept into the garden and her husband's van straddled a fence.

"When I heard the rumble of the flood, all the time I had was to jump out the window and run to higher ground," she said tearfully, adding that she was grateful the family's pet rabbit and cat were safe.

Her husband, Robert Kis, said his uncle was flown by helicopter to Budapest after the sludge "burned him to the bone."

Firefighters and soldiers wearing masks, rubber boots and other protective gear waded through the stricken area Tuesday, flushing away the sludge with hoses, aided by dozens of bulldozers, their loaders scraping the polluted ground.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban acknowledged that authorities were caught off guard by the disaster, telling reporters the alumina plant and reservoir had been inspected two weeks earlier and no irregularities had been found.

Red sludge is a byproduct of the refining of bauxite into alumina, the basic material for manufacturing aluminum. Representatives from industry organizations in the U.S. and London could not explain why the Hungarian victims were burned by the material, saying if it is properly treated it is not hazardous.

It is common to store treated sludge in ponds where the water eventually evaporates, leaving behind a dried red clay-like soil, the officials said.

However, Hungarian environmentalist Gergely Simon said the sludge involved in the disaster had been accumulating in the reservoir for decades and was extremely alkaline, with a pH value of about 13 — nearly equivalent to lye — and that is what caused the burns.

MAL Rt., the Hungarian Aluminum Production and Trade Company that owns the Ajka plant, said that according to European Union standards, red sludge is not considered hazardous waste.

The company also denied that it should have taken more precautions to shore up the reservoir, a huge structure more than 1,000 feet long and 500 yards wide, and high enough to dwarf trees that survived the torrent.

Clearly angered by the company's suggestions that the substance was not hazardous, Interior Minister Sandor Pinter, snapped: "They should take a swim in it and then they'll see."

This week's spill threatened to eclipse the environmental damage caused 10 years ago, when huge amounts of cyanide poured from a gold mine reservoir in a Romanian town near the Hungarian border into the Danube and four smaller rivers, destroying plant and animal life. Romania, what was then Yugoslavia and Ukraine also were affected.

___

Gorondi reported from Budapest. Associated Press Writer George Jahn in Vienna and Business Writer Jon Fahey contributed to this report.

(This version CORRECTS New approach. Corrects spelling of Kolontar. AP Video.)

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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