(Radio Iowa) — As the Christmas shopping season hits full stride an expert says its time to be sure your on-line purchases are properly protected. The spokesman for the Johnston-based SHAZAM, Patrick Dix, says you should review how you are buying items on-line. “This a great opportunity for consumers to take stock of where they shop on-line and make sure that they are changing their passwords. That they are not using passwords — they are using pass phrases,” according to Dix.  A pass phrase is a familiar line that you can make a few adjustments to and still remember. “A song lyric or a quote that you might like,” Dix explains. “And then what you do is you take letters out of the pass phrase and you use special characters. For instance, you might use a dollar sign for an S, a hashtag for an H or the at symbol (@) for an A.”

He says this should easily give you a strong pass phrase that won’t be hacked. “If you replace a couple of letters — two special characters at least — and then at least 12, probably 15 letters total in the pass phrase that you will always remember, that’s a really good way to make your password much more secure than your address, or your dog’s name,” Dix says. Dix says your address and dog’s name and other personal information are not that hard for someone who wants to hack your accounts to find out. “The fraudsters are using social engineering. They’ll get on your Facebook page and find out your mother’s maiden name very easily, or your old address, or the high school you went to or the college mascot or whatever it was” according to Dix. “All of those things are very hackable where random phrase or lyric from a song mixed with special characters is not.”

Another key to preventing the theft of your identity online is to keep your devices current.  “Update the software on your computer or your phone to make sure that you have all of the latest security patches so you are protecting yourself,” Dix says. “These are the things if we are going to be shopping on-line — that old password that we’ve used forever on Amazon or Netflix –needs to be changed. And it needs to be changed about every 90 days.” Dix says a lot of problems that people have with getting hacked are because they didn’t do enough to make it hard to find out their passwords.

(Radio Iowa) — The Iowa Attorney General’s Office has reached settlements with three satellite T-V companies that resulted in refunds to customers. A-G spokesman Lynn Hicks.  He says all three violated the consumer fraud act and the door-to-door sales act. One settlement involved First Choice Communications from Mesa, Arizona, which sold packages at the 2016 Iowa State Fair.”One consumer in particular signed up and complained to our office because he thought it was going to be 90 dollars a month for two years. That was August at the fair and by December he was getting a bill for 160 dollars a month,” Hicks explains.

X-cite (excite) Satellite was another company which got into trouble for the way it sold its packages. “They were selling both Direct-TV and Viasat services and they were misleading customers into believing that they were with A-T&T or Dish Network. They were telling them things like you are in a red zone and your rates are going to be going up soon and you might want to consider changing your provider,” according to Hicks. IKONIK (Iconic) Satellite of Utah was the third provider to reach a settlement after the Attorney General’s Office found the made misrepresentations to customers over contracts, improperly assessing cancellation fees, and failing to provide a three-day notice of the customer’s right to cancel. Hicks says you should never be pushed into signing a satellite contract. He says if someone is trying to rush you into something, you can always ask for time to consider a purchase and under the Door-To-Door Sales Act, you should get written and oral notice that you have three business days to cancel a purchase for any reason.

He says you should also ask questions about what you are getting. “Be very clear about who you are dealing with. Are you actually dealing with DirectTV or are you dealing with a third party seller?,” Hicks says. “And where are they doing business, how do you get ahold of them if you have problems. And also, another thing, make sure you understand just what a provider is offering and charging. If this is a teaser rate, how long does it last?”

The settlements were negotiated earlier this year and Hicks says customers should have already heard from the company. He says if anyone who is a customer of the three companies and hasn’t heard from them, then you can contact the Attorney General’s Office. The companies also paid a total of 52-thousand dollars to the state for the Consumer Education and Litigation Fund.

Police in Mason City responded at around 4:30-p.m. Thursday, to a shooting near a storage facility that involved a railroad police officer. Upon arrival, officers found a man suffering from a gunshot wound. A railroad police officer was also present. The unidentified shooting victim was transported to Mercy Medical Center. The unidentified railroad officer was evaluated for minor injuries. The incident remains under investigation by the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.

Mason City Police were assisted at the scene by Union Pacific Railroad staff at the Mason City yard, the Mason City Fire Dept., Cerro Gordo County Sheriff’s Office, and the Iowa State Patrol.

The Creston Police Department reports two men were arrested a little before 1-a.m. today (Friday), following an incident at a residence in the 300 block of N. Walnut Street, in Creston. Authorities say 33-year old Manuel Luke Richardson, of Creston, was arrested for Domestic Abuse Assault. He was being held in the Union County Jail without bond. And, 24-year old Denzel Christopher Marlow, of Altoona, was arrested for Interference with Official Acts. Marlow was later released on a $300 cash bond.

(Radio Iowa) — A new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City concludes something many Iowa farmers already know — the farm economy has yet to rebound. Fed economist Nathan Kauffman says farm income and credit conditions continue to deteriorate across the region. “The primary challenge has been low commodity prices,” Kauffman says. “We’ve seen a drop in primarily soybean prices that began earlier this summer and that has persisted through the fall. Revenue has generally been relatively weak so it has continued to weigh on the farm sector.” The report says the agricultural economy continues to suffer from high yields and and lower demand, which Kauffman says is primarily due to the trade war with China. “The China market is very large, especially going into the fourth quarter and into the first quarter,” he says. “Exports to China specifically of soybeans account for a large share of exports during that time.”

Kauffman, who is based in Omaha, says farmers have been cutting expenses, some are even taking off-the-farm jobs to cope. He says a resolution of the trade disputes would give commodity prices a boost. Kauffman says the silver lining in the agricultural downturn is strong farmland values. “It has really supported the finances and the balance sheet of a lot of producers that have equity to be able to tap in terms of farmland values,” Kauffman says. “We continue to watch that just to be sure we’re not seeing some cracks start to emerge in that particular market and so far, it’s held up okay.”

Kauffman says crop prices have pulled down the agricultural economy with the livestock sector holding stable. This is the fifth year of the economic downturn in the ag sector.

The area’s latest and/or top news stories at 7:06-a.m. From KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.

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Medivac Ambulance was dispatched to the scene of a vehicle in the ditch early this (Friday) morning, north of Atlantic. The accident occurred a little after 6-a.m. on north Olive Street, near the ADM Grain facility. The female driver of the vehicle was complaining of neck pain. Roads in the area were slick at the time, with fog having frozen on an already wet surface. No other details are currently available.

(Radio Iowa) — Senator Joni Ernst says there appears to be a breakthrough in negotiations on the Farm Bill. Ernst is the only Iowan on a conference committee that’s been struggling for weeks to reconcile House and Senate versions of the Farm Bill. A provision championed by Iowa’s other Senator, Chuck Grassley, is not in the final deal. It would have imposed limits on farm subsidy payments to NON-farmers. Republicans in the HOUSE had been pressing for new work requirements for food stamp recipients. That’s not in the final version either. “That has been worked out between the House and the Senate and so I do believe that we will be able to move forward and get that bill on the floor of the Senate as soon as possible,” Ernst says.

Ernst says the Republican leader in the senate who decides which bills get debated has assured her a vote on the Farm Bill will happen in the Senate in December. “So as we’re laying out the road map for the rest of 2018 — the ‘lame duck’ session — the Farm Bill has been included in that mix,” Ernst says. “…So I believe that we will get…this done. We will get it to the president and he will get it signed and reauthorized.”

The Farm Bill expired October 1st. If congress fails to pass a replacement by December 31st, the NEXT congress would have to start at square one in drafting a bill and first pass it through COMMITTEES in the House and Senate before votes could be taken in the full House and Senate.

Police in Council Bluffs arrested a man this (Friday) morning, after they were dispatched a little before 3-a.m., to 305 N 6th Street, for report of a suspicious male. The suspect gave the responding officers a false name, threw punches at the officers and ran from them before officers were able to gain control of the him and place the man in handcuffs.

Michael Wickman

The suspect, identified as 31-year old Michael Wickman, of Council Bluffs, was transported to the hospital for treatment of minor injuries. Wickman will be charged with two counts of Assault on Police Officers, False Information, Interference with Official Acts and Eluding when he’s released from the hospital. The officers involved also suffered minor injuries during the incident.

FAIRFIELD, Iowa (AP) — A Canadian woman was found by snowmobilers after she spent three days stuck with her car on a muddy rural road in southeast Iowa. Seventy-two-year-old Terry Harnish, of Hubbards, Nova Scotia, was visiting friends on Thanksgiving when she took a wrong turn onto a dirt road outside Fairfield. Her car became mired in mud up to its wheel wells, and she was unable to walk to one of the farmhouses she’d passed. The Des Moines Register reports that she spent the next three days in her car, surviving on a tea drink and marzipan cake.

Fairfield police Lt. Colin Smith says Harnish had ended up on a dirt road that’s just not traveled this time of year. The heavy snow that fell Sunday proved her salvation, because it brought out two teenage snowmobilers whose attention she attracted with her car lights and horn. Their father used a tractor to take Harnish back into Fairfield.