TomorrowYesterday

courant.com | Lenders Will Be Spotting Income Fibs Much Faster
What does the IRS’s move to electronic tax verifications mean for mortgage applicants? For one thing, they will probably be asked to fill out Form 4506-Ts earlier and more frequently. Borrowers who are playing games with stated incomes or falsified 1040 tax returns are more likely to be spotted before closing, and could be subject to prosecution.
Wider uses of 4506-Ts could also increase the potential for lender or broker abuse of the system. For example, some large wholesale lenders have required borrowers to sign the forms, but not date them or indicate the tax years to be checked.
That allows secondary market investors – the firms that ultimately own and fund the mortgage – to access the data on as many as four years of filings long after the 60-day limit prescribed by the IRS.
At its worst, improperly executed Form 4506-Ts give unknown and unseen people the potential to obtain your most confidential income and tax information, then sell it, distribute it or post it on the Internet.
With income checks likely to be faster and more frequent in the new electronic format, it will be more important than ever for home mortgage applicants to follow the IRS’s instructions on Form 4506 to a “T.”
That means never signing the form without dating it and specifying the tax years you’re authorizing to be checked.
Even if the loan officer insists that it’s the mortgage company’s standard procedure – or worse, a precondition for obtaining the loan itself – never sign an incomplete 4506-T.
In the right hands, federal income verifications are a great way to fight fraud. In the wrong hands, it’s an open invitation to identity theft. Or worse.

interesting

Study: Hotel rooms have unseen guests – Yahoo! News
Hotel guests leave behind more than just socks and old paperbacks: A new study found viruses on TV remotes, light switches and even hotel pens after cold sufferers checked out.
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The germ testing was done before the rooms were cleaned, so it likely overstates the risks that most travelers would face. Nevertheless, it shows the potential hazards if a hotel’s turnaround amounts to little more than changing the sheets and wiping out the tub.
“You sure hope the cleaning people were good,” said Dr. Owen Hendley, the University of Virginia pediatrician who presented results of the study Friday at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.
Besides hotel hazards, the findings point out things that people may not think to clean in their homes when someone has a cold.
“We know that viruses can survive on surfaces for a long time — more than four days,” said Dr. Birgit Winther, an ear, nose and throat specialist at the university who led the study.

Atlanta named worst city for sleeping – Yahoo! News
Atlanta has been the named the worst city for sleeping, according to a pharmaceutical company-funded report. The Big Peach was the pits in a ranking based on survey data and on factors that deprived people of sleep like commute times, divorce and unemployment rates.
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Atlanta residents reported an average of 9.7 days of poor sleep each month, more than the 8.4 average reported for the 50 metropolitan areas studied. The commute time was about 34 minutes in Atlanta, above the 30 minute average. Divorce and unemployment rates were slightly above average as well.
Nashville, Houston, New York and St. Louis followed Atlanta at the top of the list of worst places to snooze.
The best cities for sleep were in California — Anaheim and Los Angeles were No. 1 and No. 2. Raleigh-Durham, N.C., Minneapolis and Chicago rounded out the best list.
It was mildly surprising to see traffic-clogged Los Angeles near the top of the list of best places to sleep, said Bert Sperling, the Oregon-based researcher who put together the report.

interesting

Panda Bears on Yahoo! News Photos

Chinese care takers display some of the the nine panda cubs, from two-week-old to two-month-old as they prepare to feed them at the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding and Research Center in Chengdu, China’s Sichuan province Thursday, Sept. 28, 2006. The nine panda cubs, which were born this year, will be part of the attractions that tourists coming to the center will be able to enjoy in Chengdu during the upcoming National Day holidays. (AP Photo/Color China Photo)

That’s a lot of pandas

Feds Give Mortgage Guidance to Banks
Federal regulators directed banks on Friday to properly explain the risks posed to borrowers from interest-only and other nontraditional mortgages.
The guidance was aimed at addressing the fear that consumers don’t understand all the repayment risks involved in these mortgages, including rising interest rates which could greatly increase their monthly payments.
The regulators said that banks needed to make sure that the loans they made were “consistent with prudent lending practices, including consideration of a borrower’s repayment capacity.”
The new guidance will be used as a benchmark for audits of banks’ operating procedures performed by the regulatory agencies.

a little late…

WFMU’s Beware of the Blog: Tokyo Rose (aka Orphan Ann) Dies at 90
Tokyo Rose (aka Orphan Ann) Dies at 90
Toguri Iva Ikuko Toguri was probably the most infamous female disc jockey in American history. Born in Los Angeles in 1916, Toguri was forced to broadcast propaganda for Japan during World War II after the U.S. abandoned her there just days before the Pearl Harbor attack.
In 1941, Toguri made an untimely trip to Japan to visit an ill relative, leaving the U.S. without a passport. Her attempt to return home without documentation was stymied: she applied for a passport from the U.S. Vice Consul in Japan, but the paperwork was still being processed when war was declared. Physically and culturally stuck, Toguri learned Japanese and held typist positions with various news agencies during the war.
Chosen out of the NHK/Radio Tokyo typing pool to be a disc jockey on The Zero Hour program by the very Allied POWs being beaten and starved into writing her shows, Toguri became adept at sabotaging her own broadcasts. Though employed to broadcast pro-Japanese propaganda, Toguri’s outspoken support of the Allies off-mic (while cleverly concealing it within her message and delivery on-air) resulted in numerous arguments, fisticuffs, and sometimes daily 3 am harassments thanks to the Kempeitai Thought Police. She helped keep American soldiers alive (at mortal personal risk) with food, medicine, clothing, and hope during her almost daily visits to their cells.

interesting

WFMU’s Beware of the Blog: Tokyo Rose (aka Orphan Ann) Dies at 90
Tokyo Rose (aka Orphan Ann) Dies at 90
Toguri Iva Ikuko Toguri was probably the most infamous female disc jockey in American history. Born in Los Angeles in 1916, Toguri was forced to broadcast propaganda for Japan during World War II after the U.S. abandoned her there just days before the Pearl Harbor attack.
In 1941, Toguri made an untimely trip to Japan to visit an ill relative, leaving the U.S. without a passport. Her attempt to return home without documentation was stymied: she applied for a passport from the U.S. Vice Consul in Japan, but the paperwork was still being processed when war was declared. Physically and culturally stuck, Toguri learned Japanese and held typist positions with various news agencies during the war.

interesting

ESPN pulls plug on cell phone operation – Yahoo! News
The planned shutdown of the Mobile ESPN cell phone service marks the first major bust in a rush of specialized wireless ventures targeting niche audiences they contend are underserved by the Cingulars and Verizons of the world.
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Mobile ESPN had made the same argument since its launch less than a year ago. But in announcing the decision Thursday to close its service at year-end, the company essentially said it will be joining the enemy: The new plan is to cut deals with major wireless carriers so they can offer the flashy multimedia features and content developed by Mobile ESPN to an established customer base of millions.
Still, ESPN was quick to stress that its change in strategy had no bearing on Disney Mobile, another ambitious foray into the cellular market by parent company Walt Disney Co. that was officially launched just recently.
Disney recently disclosed it has so far invested a combined $150 million in developing Mobile ESPN and Disney Mobile, which are two of the highest-profile and most-heavily marketed efforts to create what’s known as an “MVNO,” or mobile virtual network operator.

not surprising

Journal: Agency blocked hurricane report – Yahoo! News
- A government agency blocked release of a report that suggests global warming is contributing to the frequency and strength of hurricanes, the journal Nature reported Tuesday.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration disputed the Nature article, saying there was not a report but a two-page fact sheet about the topic. The information was to be included in a press kit to be distributed in May as the annual hurricane season approached but wasn’t ready.

doh

Hospital emergency rooms overcrowded – Yahoo! News
Emergency rooms at U.S. hospitals are becoming stretched as patient visits increase while the number of emergency facilities declines, a new report said.
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Almost two-thirds of hospital emergency rooms in U.S. cities are sometimes crowded, according to the report released Wednesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“In recent years, growth in the use of hospital emergency medical services (ED’s) has coincided with a decline in the number of EDs, leading to concerns about the capacity of EDs that continue to operate,” said the report.
The annual number of visits to an emergency service rose by 18 percent in the 10 years from 1994, but the number of hospitals operating 24 hours a day decreased by 12 percent over the same time period, it said.
Between 1995 and 2003, the average caseload among operating emergency rooms rose by 78 percent, according to the report.

yipes.