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Hawaii resident flies to California to clear name from identity theft

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Hawaii resident flies to California to clear name from identity theft


HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – A Honolulu man who had his identity stolen had to fly to California to clear his name. He acted quickly to stop his bank account from being completely drained.

Jamie Dahl said he’s speaking out because identity theft can happen to anyone and he’s not sure how his personal information was stolen.

“I’m still mystified how he pulled it off,” Dahl said.

In late November, Dahl found some fraudulent charges on his credit card so he ordered a replacement card.

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Two weeks later, he says went to his online bank account with Bank of America and discovered his identity had been stolen. The hacker had account access for instant money transfers.

“My phone number is missing, my email is missing, my mailing address. I live in Honolulu. It’s Mililani,” Dahl said.

He knew he was in trouble.

Dahl said two days after his discovered his identity had been stolen, he had to fly to California to clear his name because there are no Bank of America branches in Hawaii.

He brought several forms of ID to re-authenticate himself.

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“It was just an incredible ordeal,” he said.

“The bad guys are shopping just like everybody else for Christmas,” said former HPD Deputy Chief John McCarthy, who investigated cybercrime.

McCarthy says check your bank account daily and having a local bank is helpful.

“If you don’t have a local bank, you are that much father away. I’ve had problems with banks that are on the East Coast,” he said.

“It takes a day to communicate with them, a day to get a response. That’s a lot of damage you can do in 24, 48, 72 hours,” McCarthy added.

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McCarthy says most banks have streamlined their re-authentification process so you don’t have to see them in person.

Hawaii News Now contacted Bank of America to find out their process and are waiting to hear back.



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California braces for flooding and mudslides as atmospheric river looms

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California braces for flooding and mudslides as atmospheric river looms


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Officials in California are bracing for what could be the biggest rain storm of the winter season, alerting residents to avoid travel during the expected torrential downpours and warning about the potential for flooding and mudslides, especially in fire-ravaged areas.

An atmospheric river, the second to wallop the state in recent weeks, will bring 2 to 4 inches of rain to much of the California coast, with over 8 inches possible in some isolated areas, according to AccuWeather. The rain is expected to begin Wednesday night and move into Southern California on Thursday, when the heaviest downpours are forecast.

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“The associated heavy rain will create mainly localized areas of flash flooding, with urban areas, roads, small streams, and burn scars the most vulnerable,” the national weather service said. “The risk of flash flooding will be highest in and near recent burn scar areas in Southern California.”

The weather service office in Los Angeles said heavy rain over charred land “could trigger life-threatening and damaging flooding and debris flows.”

Ahead of the rain, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass announced several measures to mitigate the potential for mudslides in Pacific Palisades, an affluent neighborhood tucked between the San Gabriel Mountains and the Pacific Ocean that was ravaged last month by one of the most destructive wildfires in the state’s history.

Bass said “erosion control measures” include more than 7,500 feet of concrete barriers and thousands of sandbags. Additionally, the city has hastened the removal of fire debris and cleared storm drains, she said.

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“The city is making preparations to keep Angelenos safe and to prevent additional damage to burn areas that could delay rebuilding,” Bass said in a post on the social media platform X.

Flash flood watches from San Francisco to San Diego were set to go into effect beginning Thursday.

In addition to the rain, the system will bring several feet of snow and high winds to the Sierra Nevada Mountains, triggering winter storm warnings describing “difficult to impossible” travel conditions on mountain passes.



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Danish petition supporting plan to buy California ‘reaches 200,000 signatures’

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Danish petition supporting plan to buy California ‘reaches 200,000 signatures’


Danish citizens have launched a petition to purchase America’s most populous and prosperous state, California, in response to Donald Trump’s efforts to acquire Greenland.

The president has recently escalated calls to purchase the autonomous Danish territory for “national security” purposes, despite both Denmark and Greenland’s Prime Ministers insisting the Arctic island is not for sale.

Pledging to “Make California Great Again,” Danes have launched a retaliatory campaign seeking the “Denmarkification” of the world’s fifth-largest economy.

The tongue-in-cheek petition, which is apparently seeking to crowdfund $1 trillion to buy the Golden State, claims it has garnered just shy of 200,000 signatures by Tuesday morning.

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It comes after California’s Secretary of State Shirley Webster permitted a campaign to begin collecting signatures to vote to secede from the U.S. and become an independent country on the 2028 election ballot.

The Independent has contacted organizers of the Demarkification campaign for confirmation of the signatures gathered.

A petition called Demarkification is looking to crowdfund enough money to purchase California

A petition called Demarkification is looking to crowdfund enough money to purchase California (Denmarkification)

California would become “New Denmark,” according to the campaign’s website, while its world-famous theme park Disneyland would be rebranded as “Hans Christian Andersenland”.

Other benefits of the Scandinavian nation purchasing the state include “tech dominance” and “avocado on toast forever,” according to the petition.

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“Have you ever looked at a map and thought, ‘You know what Denmark needs? More sunshine, palm trees, and roller skates,’” the website reads. “Well, we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make that dream a reality.”

Executives from LEGO and the cast of the political drama Borgen would be pulled in to negotiate the deal, while a lifetime supply of Danish pastries would be on the table to sweeten the deal.

A disclaimer at the bottom of the page reads: “This campaign is 100% real… in our dreams”.

Trump and his allies have repeated calls for Greenland to join the U.S. to enhance national security.

At the start of the new year, the president once pointed to “economic security” as a reason for the takeover, with the island’s untapped mineral resources in great demand.

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Greenland’s 800,000 square miles “contains approximately 31,400 million barrels oil equivalent of oil” and around 148 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to an assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey.

According to estimates from The Washington Post, because of its natural resources and industries, buying the island could cost as much as $1.7 trillion.

Trump sent his eldest son Donald Trump Jr. (left) to Greenland last month in a bizarre publicity stunt.

Trump sent his eldest son Donald Trump Jr. (left) to Greenland last month in a bizarre publicity stunt. (charliekirk1776/Instagram)

Last month, the president stated that the majority of Greenland’s 56,000 inhabitants “want” to become Americans.

However, a mere six percent of Greenlanders are hoping their nation will join the U.S., according to a poll commissioned by Danish newspaper of record, Berlingske, and the Greenlandic daily Sermitsiaq. The survey suggests that 85 percent of those residing in the Danish territory don’t want to become a part of the U.S.

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Six percent were in favor of joining and nine percent had been left undecided, according to the poll.

It comes as a GOP congressman floated new legislation in an attempt to bolster Donald Trump’s efforts to take over Greenland, while also giving the autonomous Danish territory a new name.

Georgia Representative Buddy Carter said he wants Greeland to be called “Red, White, and Blueland” as he unveiled a new bill of the same name.

“America is back and will soon be bigger than ever with the addition of Red, White, and Blueland,” said in a statement to the New York Post.

“President Trump has correctly identified the purchase of what is now Greenland as a national security priority, and we will proudly welcome its people to join the freest nation to ever exist when our Negotiator-in-Chief inks this monumental deal.”

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California’s Rash Plastic Lawsuit Is Anti-Growth And Anti-Environment

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California’s Rash Plastic Lawsuit Is Anti-Growth And Anti-Environment


California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s plastics lawsuit against ExxonMobil may be astute politics but it is terrible policy. This lawsuit is rife with contradictions. Frivolous lawsuits are also a large and growing pall hanging over the economy.

Many studies have documented the high costs frivolous lawsuits impose on Americans. According to the Institute for Legal Reform, frivolous lawsuits cost the U.S. economy $443 billion in 2020. These costs ultimately raise the prices of the goods and services we purchase every day, which means that tort abuse imposes a $3,621 annual tax on every household.

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Attorney General Bonta’s lawsuit, along with the lawsuit filed by environmental groups making similar accusations, is no different. As I noted in a previous Forbes column, the lawsuit accuses ExxonMobil of fraudulently promoting plastic recycling as a solution to the problem of plastic waste while, at the same time, state and local governments in California have promoted, and continue to promote, the exact same solution – plastic recycling.

There are many instances of these contradictions.

When California Governor Gavin Newsom was mayor of San Francisco he promoted the practice as an essential part of his efforts to establish the “toughest recycling law” in the nation. Through CalRecycle, California state and local governments continue their long-standing promotion of plastic recycling.

According to CalRecycle, “on June 30, 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 54 (Allen, 2022) into law to address the impacts of single-use packaging and plastic food service ware.” The law requires that by 2032, the use of single-use plastic is reduced by 25%, 65% of single-use plastic is recycled, and 100% of single-use plastic is recyclable.

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If promoting plastic recycling is deceptive when ExxonMobil does it, why is it not deceptive when the Governor promotes the same activity? Isn’t CalRecycle being deceptive when it continues to promote plastic recycling today? These differences in treatment raise serious concerns regarding the AG’s lawsuit.

Also noteworthy, AG Bonta’s own constituents are supportive of expanding plastics recycling. According to a January 27th poll, “63% [of Californians]

want the state to expand and improve its recycling infrastructure to find ways to give a new life to plastics. That compares to only 27% who prefer the state eliminate single-use plastic and stop manufacturing new plastics.”

Moreover, whether plastic recycling is an economically viable option is not the relevant question. Some analyses are pessimistic about the value of plastic recycling. For instance, a commentary for the New Jersey Institute of Technology noted that “today, recycled plastic generally costs more to refine and buy than new plastic.”

There are other analyses that, while noting obstacles remain, assert that there are reasons for optimism. As a 2020 McKinsey analysis concluded,

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Our recent research has shown substantial value-creation potential in capturing plastic waste and using existing technologies to process it to make new plastics and other chemicals. To date, however, investments to translate this potential into reality have been relatively small. Globally, only around 15 percent of plastics produced each year get recycled.

It follows from the McKinsey report that investments to translate this potential into reality are needed to support more efficient plastic waste management.

There are sound reasons to believe that investing in advanced recycling technology can provide great value. For example, Exxon’s advanced recycling facility in Baytown, Texas has processed more than 70 million pounds of plastic waste into new products to date.

There are fewer reasons to believe that Governors, Attorneys General, or other state leaders can be effective arbiters of which innovative technologies have the potential to add value, and which do not. Instead, innovation is best fostered when millions of private businesses and budding entrepreneurs guide capital allocation and assess risk.

In practice, preemptive judgements on novel technology by experts and political leaders often age poorly – after all, Henry Morton (a contemporary of Thomas Edison and president of the Stevens Institute of Technology) called Edison’s light bulb “a conspicuous failure.”

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Ultimately, it is the private sector that drives innovation forward. The AG’s legal action is another demonstration of California’s growing hostility toward businesses and innovators. Beyond the lawsuit’s strong anti-growth and anti-consumer impacts, it obstructs the very creative processes necessary to more effectively manage the plastic waste problem.



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