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IRS warns of ‘Dirty Dozen’ tax scams

For National Slam the Scam Day, the Internal Revenue Service on Thursday released its annual “Dirty Dozen” list of tax scams for 2026 that threaten the tax and financial information of taxpayers, businesses and tax professionals. The Dirty Dozen is part of a broader campaign conducted through the Security Summit, a partnership among the IRS, state tax agencies and the nation’s tax industry, according to an IRS news release. The IRS advises all taxpayers to remain cautious year-round, as criminals will always be on the lookout for new ways to obtain money, personal identifiable ...

Reflections on a half-century of reporting

LANSING — It was 50 years ago this month when I took a big gamble. With a fresh law degree, student debt, a new Volkswagen Rabbit with a car loan — and a 3-week-old baby — I gave up a safe congressional staff job I enjoyed, took a 13% pay cut and became a newspaper reporter. No ...

The president that plays by no rules

Donald Trump breaks every rule in the book, and he's never read the book of rules. Time after time, Americans see he's constitutionally unable to follow the Constitution. To wit, he, with Israel, just started a war on Iran that ricochets around the Middle East. Contrary to the War Powers ...

Michigan AG: AI scams, fraud a growing threat

For National Consumer Protection Week, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel again is warning about fraudsters’ growing use of artificial intelligence — such as deepfake audio and video — to take advantage of consumers. Scammers can clone a person’s voice using audio data collected from public social media posts or videos. They can then call victims, spoofing the phone number of a loved one to impersonate them in distress and make urgent demands for money, Nessel advised in a news release. “Fraudsters are increasingly using AI to make their scams more convincing,” Nessel ...

An illegal war that could become the new normal

The killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, by a U.S.-Israeli strike is a targeted assassination of a head of state. It also marks a grave escalation in a region already burdened with smouldering wars and fragile states. The consequences of the deliberate strike will reverberate across a Middle East marked by the aftershocks of foreign intervention. Revulsion against the hard-line regime in Tehran, or the desire for a better future for the Iranian people, does not confer a legal justification. Force is lawful, under the UN charter, only in self-defense against an ...

Board of Peace serves private interests more than public good

In Gaza, aid still trickles in at levels relief agencies say are far below what is required. Temporary shelters are scarce. Reconstruction materials are restricted by Israel’s controls on goods entering the territory. Conditions, say the UN, remain “dire.” The violence has not stopped: Israeli strikes on Gaza have killed about 600 people since the ceasefire began. The announcement that the US would transfer $10 billion to President Donald Trump’s newly convened Board of Peace is hard to reconcile with the reality on the ground. Even worse is that Washington has paid only a ...