Credit Cards

Inside Iran: Western tourism a growing government money-maker

The once notoriously enigmatic country of Iran is experiencing a steady but significant boom in Western tourism despite being hit with hefty monetary sanctions, detaining several Americans and having its nuclear ambitions and support for criminalized militias constantly thrown into question by the international media.

Data provided to Fox News by leading travel intelligence analyst ForwardKeys showed that there has been a five percent growth in Westerners visiting Iran between September 1, 2016 and September 1, 2017 – and Americans make up 14.5 percent of all Western arrivals.

“Political change in Iran is making the country more approachable – an attractive place to visit and potentially do business,” said ForwardKeys CEO Olivier Jager. “I expect visitor numbers to increase, so long as Iran’s airport capacity can keep pace.”

There have also been ten new flights per week into Tehran from Europe and the United Kingdom over the past year, making travel smoother and simpler. The total contribution of Travel and Tourism to the country’s GDP in 2016 was 7.7 percent, and it is expected to rise some 4.9 percent in 2017 alone as the once-closed country cracks open its doors.

Iranian authorities purport to have made more than $8.3 billion in tourism revenue over the past year, an increase of eleven percent over the previous fiscal year, with around 5.5 million foreign travelers setting foot on Iranian soil.

Filled from corner to corner with ancient bazaars, museums, mosques, monuments, gardens and palaces set inside bustling cities, historical ruins and rich rural landscapes, the country is increasingly filled with camera-wielding Westerners seeking adventure, archeology and art.

“Iran is a bright star. The potential is enormous, Iran is likely to become the leading tourism market in the Middle East and North Africa region, providing the infrastructure is able to develop and cope with changes,” Nikola Kosutic, head of research for the Middle East region at international market research firm Euromonitor, predicted.

Euromonitor’s latest report says that the current Iranian government seeks to encourage international tourism because, above all, it needs the revenue. Foreigners pay twice the price to enter most public places and exhibits.

Even though the U.S. still has financial sanctions in full force, hotel groups based outside America, such as the French Accor Group, the UAE’s Rotana and Spain’s Melia, have already made their way in.

The staunchly Islamic Republic is also marketing itself as a beacon of religious diversity – allowing outsiders to visit its various churches, with the Armenian quarter known as Jolfa and its lauded Vank Cathedral in the city of Isfahan a growing drawing card.

There also is an additional promotion of “medical tourism,” in which foreigners can undergo relatively cheap elective and non-elective surgery procedures in plush places.

But due to the three-decades-old American-led embargo, Western credit cards don’t work, meaning travelers must bring wads of cash.The caveat is that local foods, teas, Persian poetry books and nomadic carpets are all on the relatively low-cost side. Crime rates remain extremely low, along with very rare instances of terrorist attacks compared with much of the world, and Iranians of all ages and backgrounds are heralded for their hospitality.

And while Iranian women are mandated to cover their heads, it is usually loosely with a scarf. They can also drive a car – but technically not a motorcycle in the largely two-wheel dominated country – for fear their head scarfs “may blow away in the wind,” one local explained.

Being a passenger, however, it acceptable. Females can also travel alone, and foreign unmarried couples can share hotel rooms unlike in most of their neighboring Middle East countries which legislate room sharers of the opposite sex must be married.

Nonetheless, Saul Greenland, Marketing Manager for Responsible Travel, noted that “preconceptions and fears” will likely remain a hindrance stopping many from visiting Iran. But at the same time it will serve as something of a hotspot for those who especially value culture and heritage, and appreciate places not overrun by other tourists.

NORTH KOREA: HOW CHRISTIANS SURVIVE IN THE WORLD’S MOST ANTI-CHRISTIAN NATION

Despite threats of retaliation as President Trump slaps more sanctions on Iran as he continues to review the overall Iranian policy and Obama-era nuclear agreement – formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – the country’s foreign ministry has specifically stated that it has not retaliated by rejecting American tourist visa applications.

However, in keeping with long-running protocol, American citizens are not allowed to freely wander through the country and must remain with a state-approved tourism agency guide at all times.

The tourism lure is likely to cause something of a headache for U.S officials. Last month, the Department of State issued a renewed Iran travel warning, “to reiterate and highlight the risk of arrest and detention for U.S citizens.”

As it stands, at least five U.S nationals are being held in Iran and this week their courts upheld a ten-year prison sentence for Chinese-American student Xi Yue Wang, who was in the country researching his Princeton University PhD dissertation, on charges of collaborating with foreign governments.

GERMANY’S MERKEL: IRAN DEAL A MODEL FOR SOLVING NORTH KOREA PROBLEM

“Iranian authorities continue to unjustly detain and imprison U.S. citizens on charges including espionage and posing a threat to national security,” the department cautioned.

“The U.S. government is concerned about the risks of civil aircraft flying into, out of, within or over Iran due to hazards from military activity associated with the conflicts in Iraq and Syria.”

According to Jim Phillips, Senior Research Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at The Heritage Foundation, safety isn’t the only cause for concern.

“Since the government is heavily involved in tourism and those revenues are fungible, tourism revenue could end up bolstering Iran’s military threats,” he added.

Hollie McKay has been a FoxNews.com staff reporter since 2007. She has reported extensively from the Middle East on the rise and fall of terrorist groups such as ISIS in Iraq. Follow her on twitter at @holliesmckay

09.28.17 Credit Cards

Suspect in Temple University student’s murder has criminal past

A former Temple University student has been charged in the death of a current student whose remains were found over the weekend.

Joshua Hupperterz, 29, was taken into custody Friday and charged with murder after authorities found a body, confirmed to be missing college student Jenna Burleigh, 22. Burleigh’s body was found on property belonging to Hupperterz’s grandmother.

We need your help in finding Temple student Jenna Burleigh, who was last seen on August 31st at 2am. Please share any information. pic.twitter.com/eqRnyjcc3u

— Temple Police (@TU_Police) September 1, 2017

Burleigh was reported missing on Thursday night, and was last seen on surveillance footage leaving a bar near campus in north Philadelphia, with a man police identified as Hupperterz.

Hupperterz was charged with murder, and faces charges of possession of an instrument of crime, evidence-tampering and abuse of a corpse.

Hupperterz last took classes as a junior at Temple last spring, Philly.com reported.

Court records showed he pleaded guilty to theft from a motor vehicle in 2013, and drug possession in 2011.

In 2013, Hupperterz allegedly broke into a home and stole electronics, credit cards and beer.

Hupperterz gave a “partial confession,” according to Philly.com. Police say they believe he killed Burleigh in his Philadelphia apartment, then moved her body at least twice.

ARREST MADE IN SLAYING OF TEMPLE UNIVERSITY STUDENT

When investigators entered his apartment – which was near the bar where investigators believe he and Burleigh met – they found blood, drugs and cash.

Philadelphia Police Capt. John Ryan said the murder did not appear to be premeditated.

Burleigh’s cause of death was determined to be from a mixture of blunt trauma and strangulation, according to the news outlet.

Burleigh, who was studying film and media arts, had transferred to Temple last week from a community college and commuted to school.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

09.26.17 Credit Cards

Harvey Costs Seen at Catastrophic Levels With Many Uninsured

Hurricane Harvey’s second act across southern Texas is turning into an economic catastrophe — with damages likely to stretch into tens of billions of dollars and an unusually large share of victims lacking adequate insurance, according to early estimates.

Harvey’s cost could mount to $30 billion when including the impact of relentless flooding on the labor force, power grid, transportation and other elements that support the region’s energy sector, Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler with Enki Research, said in an email Monday. That would place it among the top eight hurricanes to ever strike the U.S. David Havens, an insurance analyst at Imperial Capital, said the final tally might be as high as $100 billion.

Less than a third of Harvey’s losses are likely to be insured, Watson said.

Steve Moore, a 68-year-old who owns Houston’s Villa Serena Communities, about 5,000 apartment units that rent for about $500 a month each, expects more than $10 million of damage. Moore said the buildings aren’t fully insured.

Many of the low-income residents who live on lower floors of his buildings near the Houston airport had some flooding, but nobody was hurt, he said.

“I’m pretty depressed this morning,” said Moore, who tripped on a curb earlier Monday while surveying the damage and lost his phone and credit cards in three feet of water. “It’s just a mess.”

“A historic event is currently unfolding in Texas,” Aon Plc wrote in an alert to clients. “It will take weeks until the full scope and magnitude of the damage is realized,” and already it’s clear that “an abnormally high portion of economic damage caused by flooding will not be covered,” the insurance broker said.

Many forecasters were hesitant over the weekend to make preliminary estimates for how much insurers might pay. Researchers were shifting from examining Harvey’s landfall Friday as a roof-lifting category 4 hurricane to the havoc it later created inland as a tropical storm. Typical insurance policies cover wind but not flooding, which often proves costlier. Blaming one or the other takes time.

Insurers were among the biggest decliners Monday in the S&P 500 Index, with Travelers Cos. dropping 2.8 percent and Progressive Corp. down 2.5 percent at 12:22 p.m. in New York.

In the Houston area, rainfall already has surpassed that of tropical storm Allison in 2001, which wreaked roughly $12 billion of damage in current dollars. In that case, only about $5 billion was covered by insurance, according to Aon.

Those storms are dwarfed by Hurricane Katrina, which struck in 2005 and devastated New Orleans. By some estimates, it inflicted $160 billion in total economic damage. About 47 percent of Katrina losses were covered by the insurance industry, but only about 27 percent is expected to be insured for Harvey, Watson said.

Most people with flood insurance buy policies backed by the federal government’s National Flood Insurance Program. As of April, less than one-sixth of homes in Houston’s Harris County had federal coverage, according to Aon. That would leave more than 1 million homes unprotected in the county. Coverage rates are similar in neighboring areas. Many cars also will be totaled.

“A lot of these people are going to be in very serious financial situations,” said Loretta Worters, a spokeswoman for the Insurance Information Institute. “Most people who are living in these areas do not have flood insurance. They may be able to collect some grants from the government, but there are not a lot, usually they’re very limited. There are no-interest to low-interest loans, but you have to pay them back.”

The federal program itself is already struggling with $25 billion of debt. The existing program is set to expire on Sept. 30 and is up for review in Congress, which ends its recess Sept. 5.

Stranded vehicles in Houston on Aug 28.

Photographer: Erich Schlegel/Getty Images

Investors Brace

Costs still will likely soar for insurance companies and their reinsurers, biting into earnings. As Harvey bore down on the coastline Friday, William Blair & Co., a securities firm that tracks the industry, said the storm could theoretically inflict $25 billion of insured losses if it landed as a “large category 3 hurricane.”

Policyholder-owned State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. has the largest share in the market for home coverage in Texas, followed by Allstate Corp., which is publicly traded. William Blair estimated that, in that scenario, Allstate could incur $500 million of pretax catastrophe losses, shaving 89 cents off of earnings per share.

Investors began bracing for losses last week. But many didn’t believe that Harvey could wipe out bonds that were issued to protect insurers against storm damage in the region, according to Brett Houghton, a managing principal at Fermat Capital Management. His firm manages more than $5 billion, with allocations to catastrophe bonds.

The Swiss Re Cat Bond Price Return Index dropped 0.44 percent in the week ended Aug. 25, the steepest decline since January. The benchmark is recalculated every Friday, so it’s unclear how the debt performed as the storm continued through Sunday. Reinsurers, which provide a backstop for primary carriers, also may get burned. That group include Bermuda-based companies Arch Capital Group Ltd., Axis Capital Holdings Ltd. and RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd., according to a note last week from Meyer Shields, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.

Flooding and debris after Hurricane Harvey hit Rockport, Texas, on Saturday, Aug. 26.

Photographer: Alex Scott/Bloomberg

Interrupting Business

Businesses are probably better covered than individuals. Companies across the retailing, manufacturing, health-care and hospitality industries will be seeking reimbursements from insurers for lost revenue during the storm and subsequent repairs, said Aon’s Jill Dalton, who helps manage claims.

But for Texas’s massive energy industry, it’s still too early to project how badly the storm will disrupt supply and distribution. That’s because the devastation keeps spreading.

“If it continues to rain, I just don’t think the situation is going to get better any time soon,” said Rick Miller, who leads Aon’s U.S. property practice. “In fact, it could get a lot worse.”

09.25.17 Credit Cards

Heres What Your Identity Sells For on the Dark Web

How much is your personal data worth to you? A (Thanks, Equifax.) And how much is it worth to an identity thief?

You may be surprised, or insulted, or enraged, to find out.

Verified high-limit credit cards from countries including the U.S., Japan, and South Korea are selling on the dark web for the bitcoin equivalent of about $10 to $20, according to an annual report on cybercrime by Secureworks, a unit of Dell Inc.

The dark web is “the collection of Internet forums, digital shop fronts and chat rooms that cybercriminals use to form alliances, trade tools and techniques, and sell compromised data that can include banking details, personally identifiable information and other content,” as Secureworks defines it.

Verified means the seller has tested out transactions on the card and found it hasn’t been canceled yet. For scammers on a budget, there’s unverified stolen credit card data, which comes out to pennies a card when bought in bulk.

This is a screen grab of merchandise for sale on the dark web. It’s a little fuzzy but you get the awful idea.

Credit cards generally aren’t selling any cheaper on the dark web these days, said Alex Tilley, a senior security researcher on Secureworks’ counter threat unit research team. But buyers are more likely to get higher-quality cards today, ones with sizable limits and suitable properties for fraud. It isn’t as hit-or-miss as it used to be—a welcome change for criminals, chilling news for most of us.

Business credit cards are in favor, since they sometimes have no limit on spending, Tilley said. Those and high-end personal cards—say, a Platinum American Express that has been verified and has an 85 percent rating (judged by the seller to have an 85 percent chance of being successfully used in a fraud)—will go for $15 to $20. A regular Mastercard that doesn’t have a big limit might go for $9. An underground market inexplicably called Trump’s Dumps is one of the many sellers of this kind of stolen credit card data.

But wait, there’s more. Underground markets also sell full identities of individuals just like you for as little as $10 apiece. They’re called fullz, “dossiers that provide enough financial, geographic and biographical information on a victim to facilitate identity theft or other impersonation-based fraud,” the report explains. Fullz can help a criminal get past those irritating “secret questions” that sites ask to verify your identity.

Recently, Secureworks’ researchers have seen more offers of bulk pre-verified card details, along with more identifying information about the owners. In some cases, offers even include the cardholder’s mother’s maiden name. Still, they cost just $10 to $12. Below is a fullz offer with a lot of personal identification on a Korean consumer.

In fact, the prices Secureworks cites for these examples of personal data are lower than what fraudsters have been willing to pay for documents like W-2s, which can be used to file false tax returns. Tax-filing data, which don’t expire, can go for about $40 to $50, according to a report from IBM’s security research group, known as the IBM X-Force, published earlier this year. The researchers found one vendor selling W-2 and 1040 returns as a package for $30; if a buyer wanted information on that person’s adjusted gross income it would be another $20.

No piece of personal information is innocuous, Tilley said. Criminals will amass bits of data on people, waiting until they have enough that their fraud attempt is likely to succeed.

“Everything is valuable,” he said. One bit of information “could be the last piece of a puzzle someone needed to take out a loan in your name. You don’t know how far along criminals are until it’s too late.”

Credit monitoring and freezes could be the only hope of protecting yourself, Tilley said. “The problem is that you put a lot of trust in the third-party companies that hold your data, and that’s a little out of your control.”

Tell us about it.

(Corrects eighth paragraph to describe what Trump's Dumps does.)

09.24.17 Credit Cards

Never Thought I Would Experience My Sexual Liberation At A Strip Club

and yet I was completely enamored with the dirt and sleaze
and dollar bills

big nipples, little nipples,
scrawny women, thick women,
young women, mothers,
that coy sweet vanilla body spray
mixed with expectation
and I could taste skin
before I could even see it.

I went in thinking:
I’m a feminist, the sex industry is bad,
but I like women, I like people, and I like sex, a lot,
but sex workers are exploited,
and women’s bodies are not for men’s entertainment,
but then I thought about it,
the hustle,
and I bet you Candy is getting her engineering degree
and will design a new art museum one day,
and even if she isn’t, who the fuck cares,
I have 2 degrees and get dehumanized every Sunday,
slinging coffee and eggs benedict,
meanwhile,
Candy is drying her tears in 20 dollars bills.

But when we sit down at the rail,
I swear, it could be
my high school counselor,
the same one that told me to have safe sex,
and she’s
sitting on the edge of the stage,
laughing while
shaking her ass
inches from my face.

And I remember when that ex mocked
my porn history
blonde lesbians kissing
(they looked enough like me)

“They are so nice to each other,”
I explained with a shrug,
and masturbated
at work instead of at home

and when I broke up with him,
he bought me liter of blackberry Wild Vines
so I could get drunk and cry, and man I cried
so hard that night when I
finally felt that orgasm in my own bed,
because I’d just spent seven months
performing,
like the rest of them.

But at that strip club,
where I bought the owner a shot of tequila,
then took off my clothes to Beyoncé,
I didn’t even mind looking right at my audience.
I’m still a feminist, I thought, wee!
I love dancing,
holy shit this is really fucking hard,
I am so sweaty in so many places,
oh my god
this is so fucking fun.
Maybe can I pay off my credit cards and student loans in one dollar bills.

I can have a stage name finally!
I will go by Fergie Fernet
since my whole life everyone’s been
laughing at my name anyway,
Devin Devine sounds like porn star,
or drag queen, or stripper,
someone destined for the stage,
so yes, even mistaken sometimes as a poet.

I love this idea of
covering myself in someone’s eyes,
letting them see every inch of me,
and then it’s sort of still
like I get to masturbate at work
instead of at home.

09.22.17 Credit Cards

Why don’t parents talk to their kids about money?

(CNN)There is one question that most parents seem to dread more than any other when it comes to talking to their kids about money. Can you guess what that might be?

If you said “How much money do you make?” you are exactly right, according to Jayne Pearl, author of several books about what she calls financial parenting.

Pearl said she was caught off guard when her own son, now grown, asked her that question at the age of 8. “I was initially like, Ahhh. I write a lot about personal finance and I wasn’t prepared for this question,” she said during an interview.

She eventually answered her son’s question, but focused on the expenses of the household to make the case that the amount she made covered most of their costs and that the money left over either went into the bank or could be used to pay for additional things they might want or need.

“I realized that if I told him that I made $1,000 a year, he would think that we were rich. How did he have any frame of reference?” said Pearl, who also made sure her son understood that this was private information that should not be shared with anyone else.

That experience is part of the reason why she decided to write a series of books about kids and money, including her most recent, “Kids, Wealth and Consequences: Ensuring a Responsible Financial Future for the Next Generation.”

There are two main reasons why more parents don’t talk to their kids about money and help them develop critical financial literacy skills, said Pearl, a writer, editor and mother of one.

For one, they’re terrified they’re not good role models when it comes to money, she said.

“Many of us make a lot of mistakes ourselves with money, or spend too much, or will say, ‘I need a new pair of shoes’ when you really don’t,” she said.

Second, many parents feel like they don’t know a lot about money and then don’t have the confidence they can teach their kids about it. “We think we need a Ph.D. in finance to be able to teach our kids when it’s not true at all. All you have to do is talk out loud about what you’re doing as you’re going about your business,” said Pearl.

For instance, when you are at the ATM with little kids, it’s a great opportunity to explain how you put money in the bank to keep it safe and to have money there when you need it, and that you can only take out as much as you put in, she said.

Parents can also learn alongside their kids. “You don’t have to just say ‘I don’t know.’ You can say, ‘I need to learn more about this too, so let’s sit down and learn about it,’ ” said Pearl.

If you start with financial literacy web sites that are geared for kids, you’re probably going to be learning at your level as well, she added.

Why should you talk to kids about money?

If you get past your insecurities about money and eventually talk to your kids, they’ll definitely benefit, said Pearl. Kids are ultimately going to need to know how to handle their own money when they get older so better for them to learn when the stakes are low.

“It’s better that they should make $20 mistakes than $20,000 mistakes when they’re older,” she said.

There are a lot of misconceptions about money, just like with another topic that’s often taboo among parents — sex.

“They’re going to learn a lot of things that are not accurate or what you want them to learn so you need to check in and make sure that (they) have your take on things,” Pearl said.

Talking with your kids about money also allows you to impress your financial values on your kids, said Pearl. Those values dictate a lot about how we live and how we interact with the world. They include understanding the differences between wants and needs and learning how to make tradeoffs, she said. “You can’t have everything. You can have this or you have that, and these are opportunities to teach your kids how to do that by giving them tradeoffs, discreet decisions that they can make around things that get bought for them.”

How to talk to kids about money

OK, so how can you actually start talking to your kids about money? For some answers, we asked some kids themselves, elementary and middle school students in Caldwell, New Jersey, as part of a new video series called “If I Were a Parent,” where we ask kids how they would handle things if they were in charge.

Grace Szostak, who just started middle school this year, said she would start early, as young as age 4. She would get one of those play cash registers and have her kids do a little role play with it, selling stuff to each other to understand the concept of money and learn how to count it.

Lance Jenkins, who is also in the sixth grade, said he would follow his grandfather’s advice and give three envelopes to his kids. “You just put money in each every week so you’d have one for donations, I think, then one for spending, then one for saving.”

Toniann Garruto, a fifth grader, said she would talk to her kids about credit cards. “Even though credit cards have a lot of money on them, if you use them frequently and a lot then you’ll be broke,” she said. “You won’t have any money to do what you really want.”

Pearl, the author and financial expert, said parents shouldn’t hesitate to talk to their kids about the mistakes they’ve made, and that includes talking about the perils of credit card debt, something I will tell my kids I learned about all too well during my 20s when I was working as a reporter and having trouble making ends meet.

She’s also a big believer in giving kids allowance, but not connecting the weekly money to grades and behavior. The goal of allowance, she believes, is to start teaching kids about financial responsibility.

See the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter.

“They’re going to lose some of it. They’re going to mismanage some of it, make bad decisions. They’re going to give some of it away to a friend just because they want to be popular. They’re going to make all kinds of crazy mistakes, better they should make them now.”

Pearl says parents know their kids and know when they are ready to talk about finances. “If your kid is ready to have a conversation, you can try to have a conversation. If it bombs, you can try again in a few months or next year but I think it’s never too early to try … and if you miss the boat and your kid is 17 and going off to college next year, don’t throw your hands up and say, ‘I missed the boat.’ Start whenever you can.”

09.21.17 Credit Cards

Debt-laden targeted by credit card firms – BBC News

One in five people struggling with debts has seen their credit card limit automatically increased – a higher proportion than for cardholders in general, a charity has claimed.

Citizens Advice said 18% of those struggling financially had seen the limit increased without request, compared with 12% overall.

It wants a ban on increases without a cardholder’s explicit consent.

The regulator has estimated that 3.3 million people are in persistent debt.

In a report published earlier this year, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said that “customers in persistent debt are profitable for credit card firms, who do not routinely intervene to help them”.

Recent industry figures have also shown a rise in the use of credit, debit and charge cards.

The number of transactions grew by 12% in the year to the end of June, the highest annual rate since 2008.

Meanwhile the value of spending also rose, accelerating to 7.2%.

‘Irresponsible lending’

Citizens Advice said that poor affordability checks by lenders were making people’s financial situations worse.

“It is clear that irresponsible behaviour by some lenders is making people’s debt situation worse – such as offering more credit when they already have thousands of pounds of unpaid debt,” said Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice.

“The regulator must ensure that lenders are taking into account people’s whole financial and personal situation before agreeing further credit.

“Banning firms from raising existing customers’ credit limits without seeking their express permission first would also help people take more control over their finances,” she added.

Jon Pearson, a former IT engineer, told Wake up to Money on BBC Radio 5 live about his experiences.

He got into debt a few years ago and ended up owing £35,000, spread over three credit cards.

Part of the problem, he said, was that there seemed to be no limit on his borrowing.

“I never applied to any card company to raise my [borrowing] limits – they just did it without me asking for it,” he said.

‘Breathing space’

A spokesman for the industry body UK Finance said: “Helping customers struggling with persistent credit card debt is a priority for our members.

“The industry has already developed a number of proposals to address the regulator’s concerns and ensure that no customer in persistent debt will be offered a credit limit increase.

“Where customers are in financial difficulty, the industry introduced a breathing space to allow customers to engage with a debt advice provider,” he added.

Lenders face an upcoming deadline to prove to regulators that they are not lending recklessly.

The Bank of England has consistently expressed the need for vigilance over growth in the consumer credit market during “benign” economic conditions, at a time when household income has been relatively stagnant.

The FCA has also suggested that credit card companies could cancel any interest or charges in extreme cases.

Firms should have to work more closely with people in debt, such as drawing up a faster repayment plan, it proposed.

Have you seen your credit limit automatically increased despite struggling with debt? Share your views and experiences by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.

Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also contact us in the following ways:

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China’s biggest tech CEO makes a grand entrance at a stadiumas Michael Jackson

You probably wouldn’t see Tim Cook doing this anytime soon.

Jack Ma, Alibaba CEO and Asia’s richest man, turned up at his company’s 18th anniversary birthday bash dressed as Michael Jackson.

He first rode onstage in a black motorcycle, before getting off and striking a number of poses, in a black and gold outfit similar to Jackson’s iconic Dangerous World Tour suit.

But because he was wearing a mask, the stadium of 40,000 Alibaba employees only broke into surprised applause when he stepped forward and took off the bejewelled accessory. What an entrance.

Watch the whole performance:

At the end of the opening sequence (which included Ma’s deputies marching onstage in Beyoncé’s “Formation” style) Ma put on a black helmet, and rode his motorcycle into a cage, which then hoisted him into the ceiling.

People watching the live stream of the party on Weibo were rapt.

“Not bad, an admirable effort,” said one.

“Okay, I’m applying for a job at Alibaba,” another user commented.

Why Jack Ma is Asia’s richest man

Alibaba is often referred to as China’s Amazon, running the biggest B2B marketplace, as well as the consumer retail juggernaut, Taobao.

Remember that last year in November, Taobao sales on its Singles’ Day shopping event (China’s version of Black Friday) moved $14.3 billion in merchandise in 15 hours.

Consider that in comparison, Black Friday last year saw $4.45 billion in spending.

The stadium in which Ma addressed his 40,000 employees.

Riding high on Alibaba’s success, Ma addressed the crowd, celebrating Alibaba’s status as the world’s sixth-largest company in terms of market capitalisation.

The company has 54,000 employees globally.

WATCH: You can now pay for your fried chicken with a smile because credit cards are so 2016

09.19.17 Credit Cards

Would you kill my mother for me?: a dark case of abuse and revenge

Dee Dee Blanchard forced her healthy daughter Gypsy to use a wheelchair and fabricated endless medical emergencies for her. Then Gypsy found a boyfriend, and made a grisly plan to escape her mother and start a new life. Erin Lee Carr tells a deeply disturbing story of Munchausen by proxy and murder

I have four VHS tapes in a large ziplock bag. They are family home movies, but not of my family. The label of one tape reads simply Gypsy. A little girl appears in the centre of the frame, her eyes are large and brown, her hair almost white blonde. She is gazing up at the camera, asking for Mama.

Born in Louisiana in 1991, Gypsy Rose Blanchard was raised solely by her mother, who was known by family and friends as Dee Dee. When the baby was three months old, Dee Dee told doctors that she didnt seem to be breathing properly. Gypsy was diagnosed with sleep apnoea and given breathing apparatus. Dee Dee was convinced that something else was wrong. When Gypsy was seven, Dee Dee met with her extended family and told them the bad news. The little girl had a chromosomal disorder and her range of motion was limited so using a wheelchair would be a necessity. After that, the health troubles seemed endless. A feeding tube was put in when Gypsys weight was too low. When she was diagnosed with epilepsy, the doctors prescribed the drug Tegretol, which made her teeth crumble from inside her mouth. Gypsys grandparents wondered to each other if their granddaughter would even make it to adulthood.

Dee Dee often clashed with her family about Gypsy and the care that she thought the girl needed. After it was discovered that Dee Dee had opened up credit cards in her fathers name, she left her familys house in the middle of the night, leaving no forwarding address.

Fairytale — Living a lie: despite her many supposed health problems, when prison doctors recently examined her Gypsy was given a clean bill of health

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Download this: Facebook’s redesign makes more sense than you might think

Image: brittany herbert/mashable

Facebook’s app is looking a lot different and, surprise surprise, not everyone is a fan.

The company showed off the redesign back in August, when it introduced its latest News Feed updates. But the revamped mobile app is still gradually rolling out to everyone, so many people are just starting to see it.

Predictably, as with most major Facebook updates, there’s been a strong reaction even though the update isn’t finished rolling out yet.

The app is now really gray, and looks much flatter, with comments looking more like chat messages than a threaded conversation.

Facebook says the update is meant to make News Feed “easier to navigate,” but not everyone is convinced. While a significant redesign can always be a bit jarring the first few times you see it, many are calling the new look, with its redesigned icons and rounded corners, “cartoonish.”

The new navigational icons in the Facebook app.

But Facebook’s reasoning holds more weight than you may think, explains Kori Handy, VP of Design at Shyft.

“The grey ‘dull’ colors are on purpose, Because of its neutrality, it is frequently used as a background color. It makes other colors pop,” he says.

And those round “cartoonish” avatars? It’s more simple than you might think, according to Handy, who previously lead design teams at Microsoft and PayPal.

“Why make an avatar image round? Well your face is more round than a box, right? Also, from a visual design perspective, the content is boxed, and if the avatars are boxed too, it makes the user have to divide content from people’s faces.”

Though Facebook users may be particularly sensitive to these types of changes, the social network is far from the only company retooling its look. As we pointed out when the update first released, Twitter also redesigned its app to feature round avatars and new fonts.

In Handy’s view, both companies have drawn inspiration for their new look from what may seem like an unlikely source: Instagram. It’s easy to forget now, but in May 2016 the company rolled out a major redesign. That revamp brought users a cleaner, flatter look complete with more subtle navigational icons and a minimalist black and white design.

“Both Facebook and Twitter have been influenced by Instagram’s past design changes,” Handy says. “This new design thinking is basically the next ‘safe’ design, when 1-2 yrs ago it was a risky design.”

Though Instagram’s update was controversial at the time, it’s difficult now to imagine anyone wanting to go back to the previous look, which actually felt closer to a cartoon than Facebook’s current app.

So while some people are likely continue complaining about Facebook’s latest makeover for some time, the bulk of users could adapt to the new look faster than you’d think.

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