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Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Robert Wilson, the bassist for funk group The Gap Band, has died at the age of 53. Wilson’s death was announced by his manager and publicist, Don Jackson. He died in Los Angeles on Sunday night. The cause of death was announced as a massive heart attack.

Born in Tulsa, Wilson formed funk and R&B group The Greenwood, Archer and Pine Street band with his brothers, Charlie and Ronnie. They later shortened the name to The Gap Band to make it stand out on gig posters.

The group had reached success by the time Wilson was 14. Hits by the brothers included “I Don’t Believe You Want to Get Up and Dance (Oops)”, “Party Train” and “You Dropped a Bomb on Me”, which was later included in the 2004 hit videogame, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Wilson, who had been touring at the time of his death, returned to his hometown of Tulsa last week. He told newspaper Tulsa World that he would be headlining the Timeless Music Festival on August 28. Sources have said that it is likely the festival will become a tribute show to Wilson.

Funeral arrangements have remained private and have not been announced.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Liverpool FC revealed the plans for its new Stanley Park Stadium today. The stadium is to be built over the next three years in Stanley Park, to replace Liverpool’s long time home at Anfield. The plans as submitted would provide for a capacity of 60,000, with a possible increase towards 80,000.

The design by HKS is situated approximately 8 meters below the surface to lessen its impact. The cost of construction is said to be £300 million.

Monday, March 28, 2005

San Jose, California — As the April 15 deadline for U.S. private citizens to file their 2004 income tax returns draws near, the government is reminding sellers on eBay that they may have to report any proceeds from sales on the auction site as taxable income.

This could be a surprise to some of the 135 million registered eBay users who consider trading on San Jose-based auction site to be a non-taxable hobby. Complicating matters, eBay says it doesn’t report individual sales figures to the government – users are responsible to report any profits on their own tax returns.

The amount of money traveling through eBay is big business. $33.8 billion worth of merchandise was sold on the site in 2004, up from $5.2 billion in 2000.

Although eBay pays taxes on its share of the sales (5.25 percent cut from each transaction as of Feb. 18), the IRS fears some small businesses are using the site to dodge tax responsibility. Adding to the confusion, some sellers may legally be a taxable business without realizing it.

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service has a nine-point checklist it uses to determine whether or not a money-making activity is legally a business, which means money made is taxable, or a simple hobby – where it is not taxable. The IRS can consider a person to be a legal “business” even though they never incorporated or claimed to be one.

According to Woodbury, New York-based accountant Bart Fooden in an Associated Press interview, the IRS looks for such things as evidence that the auction seller depends on the eBay sales income to pay for activities other than maintaining the hobby, acts in a businesslike manner when selling on auctions or puts enough time and effort into the eBay activities that there is an obvious intent to make a profit.

But Fooden said in the same interview casual users probably have nothing to worry about. Those cleaning out closets or the garage and selling off junk for less than the original price paid are not turning a profit, so that money is not considered income and is not taxable.

Monday, January 11, 2010

United Airlines Flight 634 made an emergency landing yesterday morning when only two of the three landing wheels on the Airbus A319 deployed as the plane was making its final approach into Newark, New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport. After multiple attempts to fix the problem failed, the pilot decided that an emergency landing was the only remaining choice.

Only the plane’s nose gear and left landing gear had descended. The right landing gear would not release. The airliner made a go-around as the crew attempted to fix the problem. Passenger Jim Falk knew something was wrong saying, “Normally a big plane like that doesn’t do a bypass, so we knew something was wrong.”

However, the pilot decided that nothing could be done to bring the gear down, and an emergency landing was declared. “We are going to have an unusual landing,” the pilot calmly announced to the 53 passengers seated on the plane, according to passenger Moritz Loew. Another passenger, Paul Lasiuk said he was more shocked than scared, telling himself, “You have no choice. You’re going to go through this.”

“Brace! Brace! Brace!”, the pilot announced over the plane’s public address system, calling for passengers to enter the brace position as the plane made a touchdown on the runway at Newark. The plane touched down on the nose wheel and left rear wheel before lurching to the right causing sparks to fly as the right engine skidded along the runway. Eventually, the plane came to stop at 9:27 A.M. EDT.

Afterward, passengers and crew evacuated the plane by sliding down the evacuation slides and moving quickly away from the plane. They were then taken by bus to the airline’s lounge where they told their stories to investigators and waited for their luggage. Three passengers reported minor injuries but refused treatment.

The emergency landing caused the airport to shut down for 20 minutes, but service quickly resumed on two of the airports three runways. The plane remained on the runway throughout the afternoon as investigators determined the cause of the landing gear failure.

This is in contrast to last week, when the airport was shutdown for six hours after a young man named Haisong Jiang breached security by passing through an exit to kiss his girlfriend goodbye.

According to passengers, the crew remained calm during the ordeal. Jim Falk said, “They did a great job. There was no yelling, screaming, panicking or anything.” Falk said he wanted to buy a bottle of champagne for the currently unnamed pilot. Falk added, “The pilot did a beautiful job. He didn’t put it in the water like the other pilot did, but he should be commended.”

Martin Trebino, a spokesperson for United Airlines said they would not release the pilot’s name on Sunday, but did not indicate when his name would be made available either.

Paul Lasiuk said, “I’ve had a lot of worse landings at Newark before. It was unbelievably smooth.”

Moritz Loew joked with himself afterward saying, “What’s a great landing? One that you walk away from.”

The flight, which left Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport early Sunday morning around 6 A.M. reported no other problems during the flight up until the incident. According to United Airlines spokesperson Robin Urbanski, it remains unclear why the landing gear failed to deploy. Urbanski added that passengers’ tickets would be refunded and that they would receive vouchers and credit towards any future flight.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Grameen Bank of Bangladesh has made the first loans to U.S. citizens who do not have a bank account. Grameen Bank is experienced in micro-financing in its home country, lending money to poor women that want to start small businesses.

Since the start of the mortgage-crisis more people in the U.S. tend to turn to fringe financial institutions bypassing the mainstream bank institutes. “Now is a good time because of … the subprime crisis and that highlights the issue that the financial system is not perfect,” , says the bank’s founder and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus. Grameen Bank started in 1976 by lending a total amount of $27.00 to 42 Bangladesh women. To date the bank has made over $6.5 billion in loans to 7 million people in Bangladesh.

Grameen Bank’s first loans of approximately $50,000.00 in total in the U.S. was to a group of women in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City. Garmeen Bank plans to offer $176 million in loans in New York City the next five years, and after that expanding into business as remittances and mortgages all over the U.S., as it has done in Bangladesh.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006

All across the Canadian province of Ontario, college teachers have gone on strike, leaving more than 150,000 students in 24 colleges without classes.

The Ontario Public Service Employees Union rejected the final offer from college management, after negotiations at the Delta Chelsea Hotel in downtown Toronto.

This strike comes just a month before many student’s scheduled graduations. If courses are extended into the summer, to compensate for lost school time, students’ ability to maintain jobs to pay for their education would be severely limited.

“A prolonged strike would not only affect college students, but also have a ripple affect on the Ontario economy and workforce. Potential employers are expecting 44,000 new graduates and 100,000 returning students to enter the workforce this May, families have made summer plans, and some seasonal businesses may experience a significant loss if the school year does not finish on time,” says Tyler Charlebois, Director of Advocacy for the College Student Alliance. “I hope for the sake of Ontario, the provincial government takes this situation as seriously as we are and takes action as necessary.”

OPSEU was asking for more teachers, smaller classes, and more faculty time for students. A strike vote was 80.4% in favour of action. Humber had the least support for the strike, with only 67.0%, followed by St. Lawrence with 67.7%. St. Clair, Boréal, Centennial, and Sault all had more than 90% support.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

On Tuesday, United States President Barack Obama saw two of his cabinet nominations withdraw from consideration after issues with their taxes became public knowledge.

Former Senator Tom Daschle from South Dakota withdrew after it was revealed he failed to pay US$128,203 in taxes. He has since made the payment including a $11,964 interest payment. Obama had nominated him as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Nancy Killefer, whom Obama had appointed to the newly created position of Chief Performance Officer, withdrew her nomination because she had failed to pay payroll taxes on a household employee.

“I think I screwed up,” Obama said in an interview with CNN. “And, I take responsibility for it and we’re going to make sure we fix it so it doesn’t happen again.”

Last week, Timothy F. Geithner survived his nomination and was confirmed as Secretary of the Treasury, even though it was revealed that he had failed to pay $34,000 in taxes on income earned while working for the International Monetary Fund.