Social Security Corrects Tens of Millions of Files in the Social Security Number Database Improving the Integrity of Vital Records Baltimore, MD—The Social Security Administration (SSA) today announced substantial progress in its ongoing effort to strengthen the accuracy and integrity of the Social Security Number (SSN) database. This work represents the most comprehensive SSN record clean‑up in the agency’s 91-year history. “The Social Security Number database is our country’s books and records. The database’s accuracy is essential to maintaining integrity of government services for citizens. Accurate SSN records prevent fraud across federal programs and support the proper administration of benefits,” said Commissioner Frank J. Bisignano. “This is the first time SSA has undertaken an effort of this scale, and I am proud of the work we have done to strengthen the foundation of identity data relied upon throughout government and the economy.” Since the beginning of the Trump Administration, SSA has corrected nearly 15 percent of all active SSNs across approximately 330 million U.S. citizens and nearly 390 million total records. SSA records are referenced by agencies across the federal government and in states to validate identities and prevent improper payments of taxpayer dollars. These improvements demonstrate a government‑wide commitment to safeguarding identity data, preventing fraud, and preserving proper program administration. As part of this effort: SSA has added 17 million dates of death to records that previously lacked this information, using a combination of internal SSA systems and Department of State data. Through data received from the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) service, SSA has updated approximately 25 million records that previously had missing citizenship information. SSA is currently in the process of correcting an additional 8.5 million records with inaccurate citizenship status. The agency has implemented stronger internal controls to prevent inaccuracies due to manual data entry from occurring in the future. These improvements reflect the first time SSA has undertaken a record‑integrity initiative of this magnitude and marks a significant step toward strengthening the SSN system for the American public. ### For more Social Security news, follow the agency on X @SocialSecurity.

 

 If You've Seen A Speed Limit Sign With A Red Border, Here's What It Means

By Sam D. Smith,

5 days ago

If you've ever driven in Texas and wondered what the aggressive, red-bordered speed limit signs mean, don't worry: you're not alone. We're all familiar with regular speed limit signs, which are pretty straightforward with black letters and numbers over the white background, right? You see them, you keep your speed below their posted number, and you're fine. And with today's digital speedometers and full-screen gauge clusters, there's really no excuse for not being able to reasonably comply. Cruise control can even help out if you've got a particularly meaty right foot that's itching.

But for drivers traveling through Texas, does the red border signal doom? Well, no, not as much as we made you may think. The penalty for speeding in an area with red-bordered or red-ringed speed limit signs isn't any more draconian than usual. But, the red-bordered sign isn't to be trifled with, nevertheless. It means business. And you must pay attention.

Read more: Too-Bright Headlight Debate Heats Up, But Data Points To A Deadlier Threat

What does a speed limit sign with a red border mean?

Simply put, the red-bordered signs in Texas mean that you're entering a reduced speed area right now. Not in five miles, not in a quarter mile, right now. 

You must slow down without delay. In a way, it's only extra relevant if you've not been paying attention or been distracted when driving, which, in its own right, is pretty concerning.

You see, the red border sign is basically your last warning. It's typically preceded by other signs (digital or physical) that inform drivers of a reduced speed limit well in advance. If you've missed all these, the red border sign is the final point, beyond which law enforcement will be more than happy to take a very close look at whether you've chosen to comply or not.

Texas' red-bordered speed limit signs are typically placed in hazardous places or accident black spots. They may be along the freeway/highway, where a highway ends and becomes a regular, rural road, or at any point on the road. They may have been placed there from the creation of the road, or after experience with moderate to severe accidents or incidents.

Is it legal to put up speed limit signs?

Texas multi-lane interstate from above. Ryanjlane/Getty Images

Right now, the red-bordered speed limit signs are only really prevalent in Texas. But if you're reading this and thinking "wow, that's a great idea, maybe I should put up my own," slow your roll and don't be tempted to erect your own signage.

Even if you think creating your own speed limit signs on the road outside your house would have a positive impact on the community, you can't. Instead, you would have to engage with your local authorities and prove as to why it's a danger, nuisance, or simply undesirable behavior. You should not be erecting your own speed limit signs, as you could be prosecuted.

CarScoops Newsletter?

Read the original article on CarScoops.

The U.S. used potatoes to attack a submarine during World War II.

 Starchy vegetables aren’t usually top of mind when thinking of weapons of war, but potatoes played a vital role in a World War II battle and not by feeding soldiers.

 Everyone’s favorite tuber took a break from being boiled, mashed, and stuck in a stew on April 5, 1943, when the crew of the USS O’Bannon was alarmed to see a Japanese submarine approaching.

 According to U.S. Navy Commander Donald J. MacDonald who wrote that, prior to the incident, “the sea was calm; there was no moon; the night was very dark; the sky was overcast and there were intermittent squalls” the vessel was first spotted at a distance of 7,000 yards traveling at a speed of 10 or 11 knot

After initially engaging with depth charges and 20 mm guns, the O’Bannon was eventually close enough to its target for sailors to begin throwing objects at it — including, for lack of a better option, potatoes recovered from their deck lockers. One version of the story suggests the Japanese soldiers on the deck of the submarine, believing the spuds were actually hand grenades, panicked by throwing them both overboard and back at their attackers. Their efforts were for naught: The submarine sank and the Americans were victorious. Because the potatoes used were from Maine, the Maine Potato Growers Association presented the O’Bannon with a plaque “for their ingenuity in using our now proud potato” to sink an enemy vessel. The plaque remained on the ship until it was decommissioned in 1970.

Moment Oregon fisherman is rescued from under massive boulder

 

Moment Oregon fisherman is rescued from under massive boulder

translate in burmese

အော်ရီဂွန်ပြည်နယ်တွင် ဧရာမကျောက်တုံးကြီးအောက်၌ ပိတ်မိနေသော ငါးဖမ်းသမားတစ်ဦးကို ကယ်ဆယ်နိုင်ခဲ့သည့် အခိုက်အတန့်

စကားလုံးအဓိပ္ပာယ်များ

• Moment = အခိုက်အတန့်

• Oregon fisherman = အော်ရီဂွန်ပြည်နယ်မှ ငါးဖမ်းသမား

• Rescued = ကယ်ဆယ်ခဲ့သည်

• Under massive boulder = ဧရာမကျောက်တုံးကြီးအောက်တွင်

Tax credits

 အမေရိကန်ရောက် မြန်မာများအတွက် ၂၀၂၆ Federal Income Tax အပြောင်းအလဲနှင့် အခွန်သက်သာခွင့်များ

===================

၂၀၂၆ အခွန်နှစ်အတွက် အမေရိကန် IRS က Standard Deduction နဲ့ အခွန်နှုန်းထားတွေကို သတ်မှတ်ပေးထားသလို အချိန်ပိုလုပ်ခ (OT)၊ Tips၊ ကားချေးငွေအတိုးနဲ့ အသက် ၆၅ နှစ်အထက်သူတွေအတွက် အခွန်နှုတ်ပယ်ခွင့်အသစ်တွေကိုလည်း ထည့်သွင်းပေးထားပါတယ်။ အဆိုပါ အပြောင်းအလဲတွေဟာ အခွန်ဆောင်ရမယ့် ဝင်ငွေပမာဏကို လျှော့ချနိုင်တဲ့ Deduction တွေ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

၂၀၂၆ အတွက် Standard Deduction ကတော့ Single သို့မဟုတ် Married Filing Separately အတွက် ဒေါ်လာ ၁၆,၁၀၀၊ Married Filing Jointly အတွက် ဒေါ်လာ ၃၂,၂၀၀ နဲ့ Head of Household အတွက် ဒေါ်လာ ၂၄,၁၅၀ သတ်မှတ်ထားပါတယ်။

အချိန်ပိုလုပ်ခ (Qualified Overtime Compensation) ရရှိသူတွေအနေနဲ့ သတ်မှတ်ချက်နဲ့ ကိုက်ညီပါက တစ်နှစ်ကို ဒေါ်လာ ၁၂,၅၀၀ အထိ Deduction ရနိုင်ပြီး Married Filing Jointly ဖြစ်ရင် ဒေါ်လာ ၂၅,၀၀၀ အထိ ရနိုင်ပါတယ်။ ဒါပေမယ့် အချိန်ပိုလုပ်ခရဲ့ အပိုဆောင်းပေးချေတဲ့ အပိုင်းသာ သတ်မှတ်ချက်အရ Deduction ရနိုင်တာဖြစ်ပြီး OT လုပ်ခအားလုံးကို အခွန်ကင်းလွတ်တာ မဟုတ်ပါဘူး။

Tips ရရှိတဲ့ အလုပ်သမားတွေအတွက်လည်း သတ်မှတ်ချက်နဲ့ ကိုက်ညီတဲ့ Qualified Tips ကို တစ်နှစ်လျှင် ဒေါ်လာ ၂၅,၀၀၀ အထိ Deduction ရနိုင်ပါတယ်။ ဒီ Deduction ဟာ ဝင်ငွေမြင့်လာရင် တဖြည်းဖြည်း လျော့နည်းသွားနိုင်ပြီး သတ်မှတ်ထားတဲ့ အလုပ်အကိုင်နဲ့ Tips ရရှိမှုဆိုင်ရာ စည်းမျဉ်းတွေကိုလည်း ပြည့်မီရမှာ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

အသက် ၆၅ နှစ်နဲ့အထက် အခွန်ဆောင်သူတွေအတွက်လည်း အပိုဆောင်း ဒေါ်လာ ၆,၀၀၀ Deduction ရရှိနိုင်ပါတယ်။ ဇနီးမောင်နှံနှစ်ဦးစလုံး သတ်မှတ်ချက်နဲ့ ကိုက်ညီပါက စုစုပေါင်း ဒေါ်လာ ၁၂,၀၀၀ အထိ ရနိုင်ပါတယ်။ သို့သော် ဝင်ငွေအပေါ် မူတည်ပြီး ဒီ Deduction လျော့နည်းသွားနိုင်ပါတယ်။

သတ်မှတ်ချက်နဲ့ ကိုက်ညီတဲ့ ကိုယ်ပိုင်အသုံးပြု မော်တော်ယာဉ်အတွက် ချေးငွေအတိုးပေးဆောင်ထားသူတွေလည်း တစ်နှစ်ကို ကားချေးငွေအတိုး ဒေါ်လာ ၁၀,၀၀၀ အထိ Deduction ရနိုင်ပါတယ်။

၂၀၂၆ ခုနှစ် Federal Income Tax ရဲ့ အခွန်နှုန်းထားတွေကတော့ 10% ကနေ 37% အထိ အဆင့် ၇ ဆင့် ရှိပါတယ်။ Single filer အတွက် 37% အမြင့်ဆုံးအခွန်နှုန်းထားက အခွန်တွက်ဝင်ငွေ ဒေါ်လာ ၆၄၀,၆၀၀ ကျော်တဲ့အပိုင်းမှာ သက်ရောက်ပြီး Married Filing Jointly အတွက်တော့ ဒေါ်လာ ၇၆၈,၇၀၀ ကျော်တဲ့အပိုင်းမှာ သက်ရောက်ပါတယ်။

ဒါ့အပြင် ကလေးအတွက် Child Tax Credit နဲ့ ဝင်ငွေနည်းသူတွေအတွက် Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) လို ရှိပြီးသား အခွန်သက်သာခွင့်တွေလည်း ဆက်လက်ရှိနေပါတယ်။ ၂၀၂၆ အခွန်နှစ်အတွက် ကလေး ၃ ဦးနဲ့အထက် သတ်မှတ်ချက်ပြည့်မီသူတွေရဲ့ EITC အများဆုံးပမာဏက ဒေါ်လာ ၈,၂၃၁ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

၂၀၂၆ အခွန်နှစ်အတွက် အခွန်ကြေညာလွှာကို ၂၀၂၇ ခုနှစ်အတွင်း IRS ထံ တင်သွင်းရမှာ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ အထက်ပါ Deduction တွေမှာ ဝင်ငွေကန့်သတ်ချက်နဲ့ အရည်အချင်းသတ်မှတ်ချက်တွေ ရှိတာကြောင့် လူတိုင်း အလိုအလျောက် ရရှိမယ်လို့ မဆိုနိုင်ပါဘူး။

@TheBurmeseAmerican

#USATax #FederalIncomeTax #TaxUpdate #IRS #Tax2026 #OvertimeDeduction #TipDeduction #ChildTaxCredit #EITC #USNews #TheBurmeseAmerican

a security warning about using AI tools with your bank account or financial information.

A security warning about using AI tools with your bank account or financial information.

The main point is that AI can be useful, but a third-party AI app may ask for access to sensitive information. 

Wells Fargo is warning you not to give an AI tool your Wells Fargo username, password, one-time security code, PIN, or other login credentials.

For example, suppose an AI app says:

“Give me your Wells Fargo username and password and I’ll automatically manage your bills and investments.”

That is risky.

 If you provide your actual banking credentials, the AI service or anyone who compromises that service could potentially access your account. Wells Fargo is also warning that you could have less protection if you voluntarily give your credentials to another service.

There is an important distinction between sharing your password and authorizing a secure connection. Some legitimate financial services connect to banks through an authorization process where Wells Fargo itself asks you to approve specific access. 

In that situation, the third-party service generally does not need to receive your actual Wells Fargo password directly. You should still check what data it can see, what it can do, how long access lasts, and how you can revoke access.

Wells Fargo is also saying that its own Fargo® virtual assistant operates inside Wells Fargo's environment, so using Fargo through the official Wells Fargo app or website is different from handing your credentials to an outside AI service.

Simple rule to remember

Okay to tell an AI:
“I spent $500 on groceries this month. Help me make a budget.”

Be careful:
Uploading bank statements because they may contain your name, account numbers, balances, transactions, or other identifying information.

Never provide:
Wells Fargo username/password, PIN, debit-card PIN, CVV, one-time verification/security codes, or answers to security questions.

And if an AI app says “Give me your bank password so I can connect your account,” don't do it. A legitimate connection should normally send you through the bank's own authorization process rather than asking you to type your banking password directly into an AI chat.

roth

 Roth IRA limit is separate from 401(k)/403(b) employee contribution limit.

2026, if you’re under age 50:

• 401(k) + 403(b) combined: up to $24,500 in employee elective deferrals.
• Traditional IRA + Roth IRA combined: up to $7,500, subject to the Roth IRA income eligibility rules.
• So potentially you could contribute $32,000 total across these accounts: $24,500 + $7,500.

Your 401(k) loan repayments also do not count toward either of these contribution limits.

One thing we should check before you put the full $7,500 into the Roth IRA is your 2026 income/MAGI, because Roth IRA eligibility phases out at higher incomes. If your income is around $100,000, as in your earlier estimate, you’d generally be comfortably below the 2026 phase-out range for a single filer, assuming no unusual income adjustments. You may be able to put the $1,100 back, but the key question is when you withdrew it and whether the $1,100 came from your Roth IRA contributions or earnings.

For Roth IRAs, your regular contributions come out first. If the $1,100 was entirely from your prior Roth IRA contributions, the withdrawal itself is generally tax- and penalty-free.

There are two different ways putting the money back can work:

• Within 60 days: If the withdrawal qualifies for a rollover and you’re within 60 days, you may be able to redeposit the $1,100 as a 60-day rollover. A rollover does not count toward your $7,500 annual contribution limit. 
• Regular contribution: If you’re not treating it as a rollover, putting money into the Roth IRA is a new contribution and counts toward your $7,500 2026 limit. Simply withdrawing $1,100 does not automatically restore $1,100 of contribution room.

For example, if you already contributed $7,500 for 2026 and then withdrew $1,100, you generally can’t simply make another $1,100 regular 2026 contribution and call it $7,500 net. That could create an excess contribution. A properly completed 60-day rollover is different. The IRS confirms that rollover contributions aren’t included in the annual IRA contribution limit. 

Tell me two things: how much you’ve contributed to your Roth IRA for 2026 specifically, and the date you withdrew the $1,100. I can tell you exactly how much you can put back without exceeding the limit.

 Got it. In your situation, you contributed $1,100 to your Roth IRA for 2026 and later withdrew that $1,100 because you needed the cash.

The important point is that simply withdrawing the $1,100 generally does not automatically erase the original $1,100 contribution for purposes of your annual contribution limit. For 2026, the IRA contribution limit is $7,500 if you’re under 50. 

So if that $1,100 was a normal 2026 contribution:

$7,500 − $1,100 = $6,400

You can still make $6,400 of additional regular 2026 Roth IRA contributions, assuming you’re eligible based on income.

However, if your withdrawal was less than 60 days ago, there may be another option: you could potentially return the $1,100 as a 60-day rollover. A properly completed rollover doesn’t count toward the $7,500 contribution limit. There are additional rollover requirements, including the IRA one-rollover-per-12-month rule. 

Also, if the $1,100 you withdrew consisted entirely of your regular Roth IRA contributions, Roth ordering rules generally make regular contributions come out before earnings, so an early-withdrawal penalty may not apply to that portion.

Tell me the exact date you withdrew the $1,100. Then I can determine whether you’re still inside the 60-day window and show you the safest way to get your Roth IRA to the full $7,500 for 2026 without accidentally overcontributing.

 If you withdrew the $1,100 in April or May 2026, the normal 60-day rollover window has already passed, so I would not simply redeposit it now and label it a rollover unless you qualify for a special IRS waiver. 

For your situation, assuming the original $1,100 was a normal 2026 Roth IRA contribution:

2026 Roth IRA limit: $7,500
You contributed: $1,100
You later withdrew: $1,100
Remaining regular contribution room: generally $6,400

So you can contribute another $6,400 as a regular 2026 Roth IRA contribution, assuming your income allows the full Roth contribution. The IRS confirms the 2026 IRA limit is $7,500 for someone under 50. 

There is an important exception: if your brokerage processed that April/May withdrawal specifically as a “return of contribution” (including the required treatment of associated earnings), the IRS can treat that contribution as though it wasn’t made.  In that case, your available room could be different.

Also, if that $1,100 withdrawal was simply a withdrawal of your regular Roth contributions, rather than earnings, it generally does not mean you owe a 10% penalty just because you took the money out.

If you show me a screenshot of the Roth IRA transaction history showing the $1,100 deposit and withdrawal (hide your account number), I can help determine whether you should contribute $6,400 or $7,500 for the rest of 2026.