mi shares a report from Phys.Org: The Pacific nation of Tuvalu — long seen as a prime candidate to disappear as climate change forces up sea levels — is actually growing in size, new research shows. A University of Auckland study examined changes in the geography of Tuvalu’s nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, using aerial photographs and satellite imagery. It found eight of the atolls and almost three-quarters of the islands grew during the study period, lifting Tuvalu’s total land area by 2.9 percent, even though sea levels in the country rose at twice the global average. Co-author Paul Kench said the research, published Friday in the journal Nature Communications, challenged the assumption that low-lying island nations would be swamped as the sea rose. It found factors such as wave patterns and sediment dumped by storms could offset the erosion caused by rising water levels. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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‘Sinking’ Pacific Nation Tuvalu Is Actually Getting Bigger
JustAnotherOldGuy writes: According to a recent report by the Financial Times (paywalled), some of the top credit rating companies are now using people’s social media accounts to assess their ability to repay debt. “If you look at how many times a person says ‘wasted’ in their profile, it has some value in predicting whether they’re going to repay their debt, ” Will Lansing, chief executive at credit rating company FICO, told the Financial Times. “It’s not much, but it’s more than zero.” According to the Financial Times, both FICO and TransUnion have had to find “alternative ways” to assess people who don’t have a traditional credit profile — including people who haven’t borrowed enough to give creditors an idea of what kind of risk they pose. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
When you misplace a credit card, the first thing you usually do is cancel it in case it falls into the wrong hands. But it’s a hassle to wait for a new card and update your information. Discover cardholders can now get around this by temporarily freezing their cards instead of canceling them altogether. Read more… 
New submitter meeotch writes: According to a new study by the Urban Institute, 35% of U.S. adults with a credit history (91% of the adult population of the U.S.) have debt “in collections” — a status generally not acquired until payments are at least 180 days past due. Debt problems seem to be worse in the South, with states hovering in the 40%+ range, while the Northeast has it better, at less than 30%. The study’s authors claim their findings actually underrepresent low-income consumers, because “adults without a credit file are more likely to be financially disadvantaged.” Oddly, only 5% of adults have debt 30-180 days past due. This latter fact is partially accounted for by the fact that a broader range of debt can enter “in collections” status than “past due” status (e.g. parking tickets)… But also perhaps demonstrates that as one falls far enough along the debt spiral, escape becomes impossible. Particularly in the case of high-interest debt such as credit cards — the issuers of which cluster in states such as South Dakota, following a 1978 Supreme Court ruling that found that states’ usury laws did not apply to banks headquartered in other states. Even taking into account the folks who lost a parking ticket under their passenger seat, 35% is a pretty shocking number. Anyone have other theories why this number is so much higher than the 5% of people who are just “late”? How about some napkin math on the debt spiral? Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes “Just in time for the April 15 IRS filing deadline comes news from the Washington Post that hundreds of thousands of taxpayers expecting refunds are instead getting letters informing them of tax debts they never knew about: often a debt incurred by their parents. The government is confiscating their checks, sometimes over debts 20—30 years old. For example, when Mary Grice was 4 (in 1960), her father died … ‘Until the kids turned 18, her mother received survivor benefits from Social Security … Now, Social Security claims it overpaid someone in the Grice family in 1977. … Four years after Sadie Grice died, the government is coming after her daughter. … “It was a shock, ” says Grice, 58. “What incenses me is the way they went about this. They gave me no notice, they can’t prove that I received any overpayment, and they use intimidation tactics, threatening to report this to the credit bureaus.”‘ The Treasury Department has intercepted … $75 million from debts delinquent for more than 10 years according to the department’s debt management service. ‘The aggressive effort to collect old debts started three years ago — the result of a single sentence tucked into the farm bill lifting the 10-year statute of limitations on old debts to Uncle Sam.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 