(Radio Iowa) — The Internal Revenue Service is highlighting the importance of keeping your tax information safe this week. I-R-S spokesman, Christopher Miller says “National Tax Security Awareness Week” is especially important based on the trend this year. “We’re seeing a large increase in bogus e-mail and phishing (fishing) scams that seek to steal people’s tax data,” Miller explained.  Phishing is when someone uses an email address that looks legitimate, but is not and they are trying to get your personal information. He says the reports of the problem are up dramatically this year. “We saw a 60 percent increase in bogus emails and phishing scams — and what’s perhaps most disturbing about that — before that in the three previous years we saw a decline. So we know that the crooks are back at the phishing game,” Miller says.

Miller says the scams can be very sophisticated. “So if they get an email in their inbox that looks like a trusted source has sent it to them — like a bank or credit card company or even the I-R-S — be very cautious. Don’t open any of the links, because that’s where people get into trouble,” Miller says.  He says once you open the links they ask you for personal information that can use to file a tax return in your name. He says they will try all avenues to get to you and it may be someone close to you. “Thieves may have even compromised your friend’s email address so it might look like your friend is sending you a message, but they are spoofing that address with a slight change in text. Maybe a letter or two is change. So, be sure that look at your friends who are sending you messages that seem a bit suspicious,” Miller says.

If the email is asking you for things like your Social Security number or bank information — that’s a big clue that it is a phishing attempt. “Remember the I-R-S doesn’t initiate contact with taxpayers by email to ask for personal information,” Miller says, “in fact, no reputable agency or business will ask for personal information over the email.” Miller says you can help them try to stop these attacks. “If you get one of these phishing email scams in your inbox, we want to you take the entire thing and copy it and put it into another message and send it to the I-R-S,” Miller says. “You can send suspicious emails to phishing at I-RS-Dot-gov (phishing@irs.gov), and we’ll try to track it or potentially shut it down.”

One recent campaign used emails with subjects like “I-R-S Important Notice,” “I-R-S Taxpayer Notice” and other variations to demand a payment or they threaten to seize the recipient’s tax refund.

Authorities say a semitrailer heading the wrong way on an interstate in central Illinois collided head-on with a school bus carrying members of a girls high school basketball team, killing the driver of the truck and an adult on the bus. The truck driver was identified by police as a 34-year-old man from Iowa. His name was not immediately released. Illinois State Police say eight girls on the bus were injured in the head-on crash Wednesday night on Interstate 74 near Downs, about 115 miles southwest of Chicago. Police say the bus driver and a coach also were injured.

Police say preliminary reports indicate the truck was traveling eastbound in the westbound lanes. The bus was heading westbound. Normal West High School athletic director Stan Lewis told The (Bloomington) Pantagraph the junior varsity girls’ team was returning from a game. Lewis said later, that some junior varsity players also made the trip. Police say 72-year-old Charles Crabtree of Normal, Illinois, was the bus passenger who died. He was a volunteer with Normal West.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Des Moines authorities say a second teenager has died after the stolen car he was driving crashed into a delivery van. Police identified him Wednesday night as 17-year-old Des Moines resident Jair Sanchez-Banos. His passenger, 16-year-old Des Moines resident Emilio Esteban Garcia, died earlier. The car was reported stolen a little after 8:10 p.m. Monday after it was left running unattended. A vehicle matching its description was seen about 30 minutes later where gunshots rang out several blocks northwest.

Police say an officer soon spotted the suspect vehicle and tried to pull it over. It raced away but crashed into a U.S. Postal Service van and then into trees and fencing. A gun was recovered from the car. Police say the van driver was not injured.

Police in Red Oak report 45-year old Tiffany Lea Palmer, of Red Oak, was arrested at around 4:45-p.m. Wednesday. Palmer was taken into custody for Failure to File SR-22 Insurance. She was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $1,000 bond.

A traffic stop in Adams County at around 10:15-p.m. Wednesday, resulted in a man being arrested on drug and other charges. The vehicle was pulled over on Highway 25, for speeding. Upon further investigation, Dirk Parrish, of Lenox, was placed under arrest for Possession of a Controlled Substance (methamphetamine) 1st Offense, Possession of Drug Paraphernalia, and Driving Under Suspension. Parrish was also cited for speeding and failure to provide proof of insurance.

A vehicle stolen from Adair Wednesday evening was recovered several hours later, in Perry, and the suspect was arrested. Jim Zimmerline, owner of Zipps Pizzaria in Adair, posted on social media Wednesday evening, that his 2001 Chevy Tahoe was stolen from outside of his shop at around 5:45-p.m. The vehicle, which was seen on surveillance video, stopped at the Casey’s store in Adair, where it took off at around 6:25-p.m., after filling-up with gas that was not paid for. The suspect was described as a tall, thin male.

The man was taken into custody at around midnight. Zimmerline said the man made a mess inside the vehicle, broke some things, pulled several wires, and caused other damage.

HONOLULU (AP) — More than 75 years after nearly 2,400 members of the U.S. military were killed in the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, some who died on Dec. 7, 1941, are finally being laid to rest in cemeteries across the United States. In 2015, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency exhumed nearly 400 sets of remains from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii after determining that advances in forensic science and genealogical help from families could make identifications possible. They were all on the USS Oklahoma, which capsized during the attack, and had been buried as unknowns after the war.

Altogether, 429 sailors and Marines on board the Oklahoma were killed. Only 35 were identified in the years immediately after the attack. The Oklahoma’s casualties were second only to the USS Arizona, which lost 1,177 men. As of earlier this month, the agency has identified 186 sailors and Marines from the Oklahoma that were previously unidentified.

FILE – In this July 7, 2018 file photo, U.S. Navy sailors remove the casket with the remains of Seaman First Class Leon Arickx from a hearse at Sacred Heart Cemetery where they will be put to rest in Osage, Iowa. Arickx’ remains, which were unidentifiable after his death after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor in 1941, were identified through DNA testing earlier this year. More than three-quarters of a century after the devastating attack killed nearly 2,400 in Hawaii, the bodies of some sailors killed at Pearl Harbor are finally being laid to rest. (Chris Zoeller/Globe-Gazette via AP, File)

Slowly, the remains are being sent to be reburied in places like Traer, Iowa, and Ontanogan, Michigan. Hundreds of people filled a Catholic church in Traer, Iowa, in November for William Kvidera’s funeral. The solemn ceremony in his hometown included full military honors, the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reported . “It’s something like a dream,” his brother, John Kvidera, 91, said. John Kvidera was 14 when he found out about the bombings at Pearl Harbor and remembers huddling around a radio to find out what was going on. The family initially received a telegram saying William, the oldest of six siblings, was missing in action. A telegram in February 1943 notified the family of his death.

More than 76 years after he died, the remains of Navy Seaman 1st Class Leon Arickx were buried on a brilliant summer day at a small cemetery amid the cornfields of northern Iowa. Hundreds gathered in July for Arickx’s graveside service at Sacred Heart Cemetery outside Osage, Iowa, in a sparsely populated farming region just south of Minnesota, where Arickx grew up. Although they didn’t have Arickx’s remains, his family held a memorial service and placed a grave marker at Sacred Heart Cemetery in 1942. When his remains were finally returned, they were buried at a site not far away.