Harv's Corner

This issue of Harv's corner is VERY IMPORTANT!  Please take the time to read and take action to prevent fraud in you finances!

​What to do if someone opens a credit card in your name
BY HOLLY D. JOHNSON,  BANKRATE.COM  – 03/22/2024

When it comes to identity theft and fraud, there are seemingly endless ways you might be targeted. For example, a criminal with enough of your personal information may be able to file a tax return in your name, take out a payday loan or even take over accounts you have, changing your contact information to another mailing address they control.

Another type of fraud takes place when thieves open a credit card account in your name. In fact, new credit card account fraud was so prevalent in 2023 that it made up 42 percent of all identity theft complaints that year, according to data from the Insurance Information Institute (III).

Fortunately, you do have rights if you’re a victim of this type of fraud. There are also steps you can take to find out if someone opened a credit card in your name.

We outline those steps, plus additional measures that you can take to prevent future instances of fraud, in this guide.

How to find out if someone opened a credit card in your name There are several steps you can take to find out if someone has opened a credit card account (or any other loan) in your name. Consider the following moves if you’re worried about existing account fraud and future prevention:

Pull your credit reports
The best way to find out if someone has opened an account in your name is to pull your own credit reports to check. Note that you’ll need to pull your credit reports from all three bureaus — Experian, Equifax and TransUnion — to check for fraud since each report may have different information and reporting. You can get access to your credit reports from all three credit bureaus for free using the website AnnualCreditReport.com.

Check your reports in detail
Once you have accessed all three of your credit reports, take the time to look over each one in detail. Make sure every account listed on your reports is yours and that the account balances and other details listed are also correct. If you don’t recognize an account, you’ll need to report it right away. However, you should be aware that you can (and should) dispute any incorrect information and errors on your credit reports, including incorrect balances or accounts reported as open that are actually closed.

How to report identity theft
If you find an account on your credit reports that doesn’t belong to you, there are three possible explanations. It’s always possible you don’t recognize an account that is actually yours or that your account has been confused with someone else’s with a similar name. An increasingly likely answer, though, is that you are a victim of fraud. If the latter situation turns out to be true, and you discover an account on your credit reports you definitely did not open, you’ll want to take steps to halt the damage right away.

Reporting identity theft by someone you don’t know
To report identity theft when you don’t know who’s the culprit, follow these steps:

Call your credit card issuer. 
In cases of fraud, you should start by calling the company where the fraud took place — in this case, the credit card issuer. Explain to the credit card issuer that someone opened an account in your name and that they are trying to steal your identity.

Ask your issuer to freeze your account. 
You’ll want to confirm with your issuer that there’s no way for anyone to charge new purchases to the account. At this point, your issuer will help you take steps to close the account since it was opened via fraud.

Update your passwords. 
Take the time to change the logins and passwords on all your other online accounts where you have financial information, like a credit card, linked to the profile.

Activate fraud alerts on your credit reports. 
Your next step in preventing credit card fraud is placing a fraud alert on your credit reports, which you can do for one year without any charge. You can place a fraud alert using the following contact information for each of the credit bureaus:

Experian.com 888-EXPERIAN (888-397-3742)
TransUnion.com 888-909-8872
Equifax.com 800-685-1111

Report the fraud to the FTC. 
Next, you’ll want to report the identity fraud to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which you can do with this online form or by calling 877-438-4338. The FTC also suggests you may want to take the additional step of filing a police report in your municipality. Once you have taken these initial steps, you need to follow up to make sure the identity theft is stopped in its tracks. Additional steps include:

Closing any other new accounts opened in your name. 
With your FTC Identity Theft Report in hand, you need to call each company with fraudulent accounts in your name and ask for them to be closed. Make sure to keep track of who you spoke to and when, and keep any letters associated with the closures.

Remove bogus charges. 
Any new accounts with charges in your name should be disputed. Tell the company you did not make the charges, explain that they are fraudulent and ask for the bogus charges to be removed.

Fix your credit reports. 
Contact the credit bureaus and use your FTC Identity Theft Report to have fraudulent accounts removed from your credit reports.

Reporting identity theft by someone you know
While identity theft is often perpetrated by online hackers and thieves you’ve never met, it’s also common for someone you know to be the culprit. If a friend, a relative or a colleague at work could be the one who stole your identity, you’ll want to use the same steps above to report the fraud — while also being sure to file a police report. It’s likely they will face criminal charges for their acts, but you should report the crimes just the same.

What happens to my credit if I’m a victim of identity theft?
One of the common hurdles of identity theft is the potential for damage to your credit score, but you may also be on the hook for financial losses. Your liability for fraudulent charges on a credit card is limited to just $50, but your liability for fraudulent purchases made with your debit card or debit card number could be unlimited if you report the fraud more than 60 days after your banking statement was mailed to you, according to the FTC. The good news is you can use a formal process to dispute fraudulent information and credit card accounts that arise from identity fraud. You may notice initial damage to your credit score if someone opens an account in your name and racks up charges they don’t pay for, but your credit score should rebound once the credit bureaus have removed the fraudulent accounts from your reports.

Keep in mind: 
Many credit card issuers advertise some level of fraud protection, such as a $0 liability policy. So depending on your issuer's rules, you may not be liable for any fraudulent purchases at all. Check your card agreement to understand how your issuer handles fraudulent charges.

Preventing future credit card fraud
When it comes to identity theft, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Here are some of the best steps you can take now to prevent credit card fraud and other types of identity theft in the future:

Consider signing up for identity theft protection
Identity theft protection companies like Identity Guard and ID Watchdog will oversee your credit reports and keep an eye out for fraud on your behalf. These companies charge a monthly or annual fee in exchange for their services, but many also offer identity theft insurance that can protect you from financial losses and help pay for experts who can assist with the identity restoration process. You also might be able to get additional fraud protection monitoring from your credit card issuer, so look into what’s already included with your account before paying for something else.

Activate a credit freeze or extended fraud alert
The FTC suggests setting up a one-year fraud alert once you notice signs of identity theft, but you can also ask the credit bureaus for an extended fraud alert that lasts for seven years. As an alternative, you can also set up a credit freeze with each of the credit bureaus, which will prevent anyone from opening new accounts in your name until you personally take steps to “unfreeze” your reports. Fortunately, anyone can freeze their credit reports or set up fraud alerts for free — even if they have never been a victim of identity theft.

Take additional steps to protect your personal information
There are other steps you can take to prevent hackers and thieves from getting their hands on your personal information in the first place. These include:

Using a mobile wallet. 
A mobile wallet can help you protect your credit card account information by making it harder for a thief to steal information from your physical card.

Setting up multi-factor authentication on your accounts when available. 
Having additional authentication methods will mean that a thief needs more than just your password to unlock your accounts.

Signing up for transaction alerts. 
These will alert you every time you make a purchase with your card, so you’ll know right away if someone used your card information without your permission.

Taking the time to look over your credit reports. 
By doing this several times per year, you can catch discrepancies and other red flags before a thief does too much damage to your credit score.

Installing antivirus software on your devices. 
Computer viruses are still common ways for hackers to access your information, so having a good antivirus software installed can help you avoid those issues. You should also collect your mail every day, place a hold on your mail when you travel away from home for several days and check to make sure you’re receiving the bills you should be. Paying special attention to your billing cycles can also be helpful since you’ll know right away if one of your bills is missing and you can contact the sender, according to U.S. government sources on identity theft.

The bottom line
By keeping a close eye on your accounts and making sure your information isn’t easy to find, you can avoid becoming a repeat victim of identity theft. If you regularly make a habit of checking your credit card statements and credit report, you will be more likely to catch suspicious activity before the culprit wreaks too much havoc on your finances.
​

Harv's Corner

Harv

Global Warming is not a hoax or a myth, it is a stark reality that we must accept and address as a global community. The scientific evidence is overwhelming, the data is clear, and the consequences are dire. The melting of the polar ice caps, rising sea levels, more frequent and severe natural disasters, and the extinction of numerous animal species are just a few of the catastrophic effects of global warming. It is not just a political issue, it is a humanitarian and environmental crisis that threatens the very future of our planet. We must all take action now, before it is too late.

THE CRACKED EARTH OF SAU RESERVOIR WAS VISIBLE NORTH OF BARCELONA, SPAIN , IN MARCH OF 2023, EARLY IN A YEAR WHEN EARTH WENT ON TO SHATTER GLOBAL ANNUAL HEAT RECORDS.

QUANTUM LEAP IN WARMING
Scale and intensity of Earth’s extraordinary hot streak might be sign of a new climate era
Story by SARAH KAPLAN • Washington Post • Photo by EMILIO MORENATTI • Associated Press

The heat fell upon Mali's capital like a thick, smothering blanket — chasing people from the streets, stifling them inside their homes. For nearly a week at the beginning of April, the temperature in Bamako hovered above 110 degrees Fahrenheit. The cost of ice spiked to 10 times its normal price, an overtaxed electrical grid sputtered and shut down.

With much of the majority-Muslim country fasting for the holy month of Ramadan, dehydration and heat stroke became epidemic. As their body temperatures climbed, people's blood pressure lowered.

Their vision went fuzzy, their kidneys and livers malfunctioned, their brains began to swell. At the city's main hospital, doctors recorded a month's worth of deaths in just four days. Local cemeteries were overwhelmed.

The historic heat wave that besieged Mali and other parts of West Africa this month — which scientists say would have been "virtually impossible" in a world without human-caused climate change — is just the latest manifestation of a sudden and worrying surge in global temperatures.

Fueled by decades of uncontrolled fossil fuel burning and an El Nino climate pattern that emerged last June, the planet this year breached a feared warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.

Nearly 19,000 weather stations have notched record high temperatures since Jan. 1. Each of the last 10 months has been the hottest of its kind.
The scale and intensity of this hot streak are extraordinary even considering the unprecedented amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, researchers say.

Scientists are still struggling to explain how the planet could have exceeded previous temperature records by as much as half a degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) last fall.

What happens in the next few months, said Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, could indicate whether Earth's climate has undergone a fundamental shift — a quantum leap in warming that is confounding climate models and stoking ever more dangerous weather extremes.

But even if the world returns to a more predictable warming trajectory, it will only be a temporary reprieve from the conditions that humanity must soon confront, Schmidt said. "Global warming continues apace."

Mysterious heat
As soon as the planet entered an El Nino climate pattern — a naturally occurring phenomenon associated with warming in the Pacific Ocean — scientists knew it would start breaking records. El Ninos are associated with spikes in Earth's overall temperature, and this one was unfolding on a planet that has already warmed 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) from preindustrial levels.

Yet this El Nino didn't just break records; it obliterated them.
Four consecutive days in July became the hottest days in history.
The Northern Hemisphere saw its warmest summer — and then its warmest winter — known to science.

By the end of 2023, Earth's average temperature was nearly 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the preindustrial average — and about 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.36 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than climate modelers predicted it would be, even taking El Ninto into account.

Researchers have spent the past several months investigating possible explanations for that 0.2 C discrepancy: a volcanic eruption that spewed heat-trapping water vapor into the atmosphere, changes in shipping fuel that affected the formation of clouds that block the sun. So far, those factors can only account for a small fraction of the anomaly, raising fears that scientists' models may have failed to capture a longerlasting change in the climate system.

"What if the statistical connections that we are basing our predictions on are no longer valid?" Schmidt said. "It's niggling at the back of my brain that it could be that the past is no longer a guide to the future."

A key test will come over the next few months, as the planet shifts out of an El Nino and into its opposite pattern, La Nina — something that the National Weather Service predicts will happen by the summer.

Because La Nina is typically associated with cooler global temperatures, scientists expect it will bring an end to Earth's record hot streak.

There are hints that may be happening, said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth and the payments company Stripe. Even though last month was the hottest March in history, it broke the previous record by a mere 0.1 degree Celsius — not the whopping 0.5 C margin seen last September.

A whole new kind of weather
Even if global average temperatures do return to a more predictable trajectory, the effects of warming on people and ecosystems have already entered uncharted territory.

Sea ice around Antarctica shrank to its smallest extent ever last year. The mighty Amazon River has reached its lowest level since measurements began. Researchers this week declared a global coral bleaching event — just the fourth in history — and warned that the crisis in the oceans is on track to set a record.

"The climate is warming at such a rate that we're now pushing beyond the bounds of what would have been not even normal weather but feasible weather in the past," said Clair Barnes, a researcher at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London.

In the analysis published Thursday, Barnes and her colleagues reported that the recent heat wave in West Africa could not have occurred on a cooler, preindustrial planet. In one Malian city, the mercury hit 48.5 degrees Celsius (119.3 degrees Fahrenheit) — likely the hottest temperature ever reliably recorded in Africa, the researchers said.

Nights offered little relief, with temperatures often staying above 90 degrees. Studies show that high nighttime temperatures are especially dangerous, because they deny the body a chance to recover.

As in most climate disasters, the heat wave's worst effects were borne by some of the world's poorest and most vulnerable people. Few in Mali and Burkina Faso have access to air conditioning, Guigma said.

And the architecture of many poorer neighborhoods — where buildings are often constructed with heat-trapping bricks and metal roofs — exacerbated the danger.

The heat wave analysis was just the latest report from World Weather Attribution — a global network of researchers who study the influence of climate change on extreme events — to find that previously unthinkable events are becoming commonplace as the world continues to warm.

"If we keep putting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we're just going to keep warming ... and this is going to continue to get worse," Barnes said. "The sad truth is this is not the new normal.
This is on the way to the unknown."

Harv's Corner

President Biden's administration is strengthening the alliances in East Asia and Oceania to deter aggressive behavior from countries like North Korea and China. Building a powerful coalition of countries ensures mutual safety and security in the region and is a crucial step toward maintaining peace and stability. Q!  Is Biden doing the right thing, or is this just a waste of time?

Japan is an ally the U.S. can count on
A state visit by the prime minister reflects the tight ties between Tokyo and Washington.


Amid growing challenges in a turbulent world, a true friend to America arrives in Washington on Wednesday: Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

He'll take part in a leader-to-leader meeting with President Joe Biden, a trilateral summit with Biden and Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., and a state dinner, as well as address a joint session of Congress. Kishida will also meet with business leaders and everyday Americans to try to impress upon them the multiple, mutual benefits of the U.S.-Japan alliance.

The advantages for this country are clear: An indispensable, increasingly capable ally in the Indo-Pacific region that can be counted on as a bulwark against a rising and increasingly reckless China — particularly its claims to Taiwan — as well as a provocative North Korea, which not only directly threatens South Korea but Japan and, by extension, the U.S.

Kishida, building on the bold constitutional reforms of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, continues to transform Japan's defense posture into one willing to engage in "collective self-defense" — a geopolitical boost to likeminded democracies in the region.

Accordingly, the likely key summit deliverables include modernizing military command structures to improve interoperability, potential co-production of weapons systems and allowing U.S. naval vessels to be maintained and repaired in Japan so they can stay closer to where they're needed most — in and around the South and East China Seas to counter China's increasingly aggressive maritime claims and conduct.

There's also a possibility of Japan furthering its alliance with the U.S. by taking part in other multilateral defense partnerships, potentially including the grouping of Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. known as AUKUS.
And the alliance may not just be blossoming in Asia and North America, but potentially in space, as the leaders are likely to commit to Japan taking part in NASA's Artemis moon program.

"The Biden administration has carried forward a lot of the previous Trump administration's focus on Asian security, but what I think they've done particularly well is to corral allies to join the United States in taking a common position," Raymond Kuo, a senior political scientist at the Rand Corporation, told an editorial writer. Kuo, who's based in Minneapolis, noted the tighter ties between Washington, Tokyo and Seoul, and said that Japan is "probably our closest allied state other than the U.K."

The transition from Abe to Kishida is resulting in an even closer strategic security alignment with the United States, Kuo said. "They're focusing on a certain degree of power projection and offsetting Chinese advantages in a way that will help alleviate the burden for U.S. forces in the region."

As with any alliance, there is friction, although most of it is domestic. Pressure points include Biden's resistance to allow a Japanese firm, Nippon Steel, to purchase U.S. Steel. But most of these issues are manageable, especially given the growing stakes of geopolitical conflict.

And as with any democratically chosen leader, Kishida realizes there could be another eventual transition in Tokyo, especially since some members of the ruling party are caught up in a significant bribery scandal.

Biden, of course, has his own domestic political challenges and is in a tight re-election race against the presumptive Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump. Still, it's important that the alliance endure and even grow regardless of who is in office in either capital.

For now, Kuo said, the Biden-Kishida meeting "is further cementing their relationship, and I think pushing forward in terms of all those economic and security areas."

That's good news for America: Global conflict is always best met multilaterally with reliable allies.

Harv's Corner

Not many people think about NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). Some are suggesting that it is "obsolete" and not functioning properly, and that many participating nations have not paid for their participation. This raises the question of why we would want to lead an organization like that. However, it's really important to consider the facts and come to our own conclusions.

Trump’s wrong about need for NATO

The transatlantic alliance, formed 75 years ago this week, is more essential than ever.

To mark the 75th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization this week, a statue of former President Harry Truman is being installed at the U.S. ambassador to NATO's residence in Brussels. It's a fitting tribute.

Truman was commander in chief when the U.S. became a founding member of NATO, and the transatlantic alliance shares many of the traits that defined him, including a resolute, responsible commitment to collective defense.

Defense of territory, to be sure. But also something even more profound, as defined by Dwight Eisenhower, the president who succeeded Truman.
"We do not keep security establishments merely to defend property or territory or rights abroad or at sea," Eisenhower said in 1954. "We keep the security forces to defend a way of life."

The support from successive presidents, one a Democrat and the other Republican, had endured on a bipartisan basis through subsequent generations.

Until, that is, the presidency of Donald Trump, who as a candidate called the alliance "obsolete." More recently, at a campaign rally, Trump told the crowd that "one of the presidents of a big [NATO] country stood up and said, 'Well, sir, if we don't pay and we're attacked by Russia, will you protect us?' I said, 'You didn't pay? You're delinquent? ... No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.'"

A statement like that undermines NATO's deterrence effect "by creating a lot of uncertainty in the minds of our allies and maybe giving false hopes to a country like Russia," Thomas Hanson, diplomat-in-residence at the University of Minnesota Duluth, told an editorial writer.

Hanson, a former Foreign Service officer and former director for NATO and European Affairs at the Atlantic Council, said that NATO was "essential during the Cold War when there were only 12 members as a defensive alliance holding off the Soviet Union during the period of containment, and it's as important as ever because with the end of the Cold War it redefined itself and began to take on missions beyond the original intent."

Including in Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, when the U.S. became the first and only NATO nation to invoke the collective-defense mechanism known as Article 5. America's allies were there for us then, and we should be there for them in the future.

That's the unambiguous intent of President Joe Biden, who has correctly identified the fundamental struggle of this era as one of democracy vs. autocracy.

NATO is an alliance of democracies and is indispensable in keeping them that way. Meanwhile, an ad hoc alliance of autocracies has formed between Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

But none of those countries — together, let alone individually — have the force multiplier of the world's strongest alliance, NATO, which was significantly geographically, militarily and politically boosted last year with the addition of the 31st member, Finland, and just last month when the 32nd nation, Sweden, was added.

Trump's concern over the number of countries investing the targeted 2% of GDP in defense is legitimate. His way of pressing for it, however, is not, since it potentially alienates allies and emboldens adversaries.

The good news is that the Pentagon recently said that this year 18 nations will meet or exceed that mark, up from just three when then-President Barack Obama — another stalwart supporter of NATO — led an alliance-wide "Defense Investment Pledge" in 2014. Since then, there has been "an unprecedented" rise of $600 billion in defense spending, according to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

History — and common sense — shows that retreating from collective defense won't make America safer. And history shows that this is not just an international issue, but a domestic and indeed statewide concern.

Minnesotans in all branches of the armed forces — including the Minnesota National Guard, which has taken part in major NATO training exercises — may be impacted.

The NATO alliance is designed to avoid direct conflict, and to date the deterrent effect has worked, in part because of bipartisan U.S. leadership.

Hanson, paraphrasing Biden administration officials, said the president has built on former President Ronald Reagan's belief in "peace through strength" and broadened it to "peace through American and allied strength."

That's an ethos that should last another 75 years — and beyond.

Harv's Corner

Here's something we all know.  It's hot!  Records were broken all over the country last year.  This year it's starting even earlier.  This appears to be a blip in a larger pattern of Global Warming but is says the world is edging closer.  THINK . . . who is most likely to address this situation -  Biden or Trump.

Hot just keeps getting hotter
Study also finds since 1979, heat waves last longer, hurt more people.
By SETH BORENSTEIN Associated Press

Climate change is making giant heat waves crawl slower across the globe and they are baking more people for a longer time with higher temperatures over larger areas, a new study finds.

Since 1979, global heat waves are moving 20% more slowly — meaning more people stay hot longer — and they are happening 67% more often, according to a study in Friday's Science Advances. The study found the highest temperatures in the heat waves are warmer than 40 years ago.
Studies have shown heat waves worsening before, but this one is more comprehensive and concentrates heavily on not just temperature and area, but how long the high heat lasts and how it travels across continents, said study co-authors and climate scientists Wei Zhang of Utah State University and Gabriel Lau of Princeton University.

From 1979 to 1983, global heat waves would last eight days on average, but by 2016 to 2020 that was up to 12 days, the study said.
Eurasia was especially hit hard with longer lasting heat waves, and heat waves slowed down most in Africa, while North America and Australia saw the biggest increases in overall magnitude, which measures temperature and area.

"This paper sends a clear warning that climate change makes heat waves yet more dangerous in more ways than one," said Lawrence Berkeley National Lab climate scientist Michael Wehner, who wasn't part of the research.

Just like in an oven, the longer the heat lasts, the more something cooks. In this case it's people, the co-authors said.

"Those heat waves are traveling slower and so that basically means that ... there's a heat wave sitting there and those heat waves could stay longer in the region," Zhang said. "And the adverse impacts on our human society would be huge and increasing over the years."

The team conducted computer simulations showing this change was due to heat-trapping emissions that come from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. The study found climate change's fingerprint by simulating a world without greenhouse gas emissions and concluding it could not produce the worsening heat waves observed in the last 45 years.

The study also looks at the changes in weather patterns that propagate heat waves. Atmospheric waves that move weather systems along, such as the jet stream, are weakening, so they are not moving heat waves along as quickly — west to east in most but not all continents, Zhang said.

Several outside scientists praised the big picture way Zhang and colleagues examined heat waves.

​This shows "how heat waves evolve in three dimensions and move regionally and across continents rather than looking at temperatures at individual locations," said Kathy Jacobs, a University of Arizona climate scientist.