Saturday, December 5, 2015
Spanish Galleon 'Laden With Gold' Found At Bottom Of Caribbean Sea
BOGOTA, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Colombia has found the wreck of a Spanish galleon that sank off the coast of Cartagena and is thought to be laden with emeralds and gold and silver coins, President Juan Manuel Santos said on Friday.
More details will be provided at a news conference on Saturday, Santos said from his Twitter account.
The San Jose sank in 1708 in the Caribbean Sea close to the walled port city of Cartagena. It was part of the fleet of King Philip V as he fought the English during the War of Spanish Succession.
"Great news! We have found the San Jose galleon. Tomorrow we will provide details at a press conference from Cartagena," Santos tweeted.
The government's claim on Friday did not shed light on a legal wrangle with Sea Search Armada, a U.S.-based salvage company which had a long-standing suit against Bogota over ownership of the wreck. SSA said in 1981 it had located the area in which the ship sank.
SSA and the government were partners back then and following international custom, they agreed to split any proceeds. The government later said any treasure would belong to Colombia.
In 2011 a U.S. court declared the galleon property of the Colombian state. (Reporting by Helen Murphy; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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Why the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Is an LLC
Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded to questions about the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative philanthropy organization with a clarification post.
After Zuckerberg announced earlier this week that he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, had formed the charitable initiative, questions emerged as to why they decided to structure it as a limited liability corporation.
Zuckerberg wrote in a post Thursday (embedded below):
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is structured as an LLC rather than a traditional foundation. This enables us to pursue our mission by funding nonprofit organizations, making private investments and participating in policy debates–in each case with the goal of generating a positive impact in areas of great need. Any net profits from investments will also be used to advance this mission.
By using an LLC instead of a traditional foundation, we receive no tax benefit from transferring our shares to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, but we gain flexibility to execute our mission more effectively. In fact, if we transferred our shares to a traditional foundation, then we would have received an immediate tax benefit, but by using an LLC we do not. And just like everyone else, we will pay capital gains taxes when our shares are sold by the LLC.
What’s most important to us is the flexibility to give to the organizations that will do the best work–regardless of how they’re structured.
Readers: What did you think of Zuckerberg’s explanation?
This Could Be The Last Big Anti-Poverty Effort Of Obama's Presidency
President Barack Obama and some of his allies are trying to transform an ugly piece of tax legislation into something that gives critical help to millions of low-income Americans.
The gambit hasn't gotten much attention until now. But if it works, the resulting commitment of resources would arguably represent the biggest anti-poverty effort of Obama’s second term.
The legislation is a big bundle of tax breaks that could be worth somewhere between $700 billion and $800 billion over the next 10 years, depending on how negotiations go. To put those numbers in perspective, the high end of that range would approach the projected cost of the Affordable Care Act in its first decade. The package has no offsetting spending cuts or revenue, which means that, at least on paper, it would increase the federal deficit.
Most of the tax breaks are for corporations, and while some have dubious justification, some have no justification at all. Probably the worst and most notorious among them is one that became law relatively recently -- a “bonus depreciation” provision that lets companies write off the full cost of new equipment right away, rather than spreading it out over time. This provision became law in 2009, as part of the Recovery Act, and it was supposed to encourage businesses to invest in production equipment and then hire more workers. There’s no good reason to think it did.
In theory, this and the rest of the business tax breaks are temporary. In reality, they haven't been. Whenever they expire, or are about to expire, corporations demand that Congress extend all of them, and Congress complies. Republicans vote yes. Democrats vote yes. Nobody worries what it does to the deficit. Approval of the “extenders,” as they’ve come to be known, has actually become something of a holiday ritual, since it usually happens just before Congress adjourns for December -- and the Internal Revenue Service is getting ready to print the next year’s tax forms.
The renewals have become so routine that corporations assume they will become law and make financial plans accordingly. But companies still wish they didn’t have to wait for Congress to act and their biggest allies, in the Republican Party, have other reasons to make the tax cuts permanent. By enshrining them in the tax code now, the thinking goes, it will be easier to pass other tax reforms later. To make the business tax cuts permanent, Republicans need votes from congressional Democrats and, of course, they need a signature from the president. That has given liberals, including the one in the Oval Office, a little leverage -- and now that leverage may produce some results.
Back in 2009, when Congress was trying to pump up the economy, it didn’t just create that bonus depreciation tax cut. It also expanded the Child Tax Credit, which gives relief to families with children, and the Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC, which basically makes small paychecks bigger.
The EITC may sound familiar, because it has a well-deserved reputation as one of the most effective anti-poverty measures around. And while it generates antipathy from some Republicans, who allege (incorrectly) that the program is prone to fraud, it also has a history of moderate bipartisan support -- largely because, to claim the credit, you have to have an income. To Ronald Reagan, probably its best known champion, that made the EITC the antithesis of a welfare giveaway.
Like the bonus depreciation cut, the EITC and Child Tax Credit enhancements were also temporary, though Congress has since extended them twice. All along, Obama, the Democratic leaders in each house, and key allies like Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), have been agitating to make these cuts permanent. In the past, they’ve proposed offsetting the lost revenue with higher taxes on the rich.
That’s not happening in this Congress, so Democrats have also offered what amounts to a trade. They’ll sign off on a package that extends some of corporate tax breaks permanently, as long as it limits or winds down the less defensible ones while making those tax cuts for the working poor and middle class permanent. (The package would likely include a tax credit for education costs, in addition to the enhancements of the Child Tax Credit and EITC.)
The impact for the people who get these tax credits would be considerable. According to calculations by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, expiration of the tax credits for the working poor would put 16.4 million people, about half of them children, into or deeper into poverty. And while the improvements are not set to expire for another two years, waiting means risking the outcome of the next election. If Republicans win control of the White House and Congress, they may demand a much higher ransom for extending the EITC and Child Tax Credit. Or they could refuse to do so at all.
The officials and advisers trying to put this deal together from the left aren’t wild about extending the corporate tax cuts, particularly without offsetting spending cuts or revenue. But, they reason, the alternative is to continue the existing charade, with Congress approving these tax cuts year after year -- and adding to the deficit anyway. If the deal works out as some promoters hope, some of the largest and least attractive tax cuts, like bonus depreciation and some shelters for multinational corporations, would remain temporary and require new acts of Congress to extend.
That last part is important. Since the more egregious cuts would no longer come up for renewal as part of much larger packages, with more defensible features, Congress would be more likely to let them expire. That would produce savings, relative to what Congress would do absent a deal. Bonus depreciation alone accounts for more than one-third of the total value of the business extenders.
Or so the argument goes. Groups like the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget take a very different view, and they have company on both sides of the aisle. They argue that the deal would reaffirm a double-standard conservatives have long favored, in which new spending requires offsets but new tax cuts don't. These critics of the deal also worry that the package will get worse in negotiations, accumulating more corporate giveaways, while making future deficits worse.
Those concerns may still cause negotiations to unravel. So could arguments among the bill’s supporters. Congressional Democrats, for example, want the bill to include postponement of the Affordable Care Act’s “Cadillac tax” -- a levy on expensive health insurance policies that economists say helps to hold down health costs, but that is highly unpopular with just about everybody else. The White House opposes that. Tea party Republicans could still stage a revolt, since tax breaks for poor people, even the ones who work, are not especially popular with their supporters.
Still, negotiations over this bill have gotten farther than many people ever expected. Legislation could still pass. And whatever else its effects, that would mean bolstering two programs for the working poor -- at a time when the working poor can use all the help they can get.
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MSNBC, CNN Dig Through San Bernardino Shooters’ Home
Google Launches Cardboard Camera App for Taking VR Photos
Google has announced the release of its Cardboard Camera app on Android, allowing users to take VR photos (three-dimensional panoramic images), which can be viewed later with a Google Cardboard virtual reality headset.
To take a VR photo, users move their phone in a circle around themselves. When viewing the image later on, the photo has a slightly different view for each eye to accurately represent distance. In addition, users can record sound with their photo to capture more of the moment to experience later.
On the Google Blog, Carlos Hernandez, software engineer on Cardboard Camera, said:
With Cardboard Camera, anyone can create their own VR experience. So revisit the mountaintop that took hours to hike, or the zoo where you saw (and heard) the monkeys, or your birthday party with the cake out and candles still lit. Capture the moments that matter to you and relive them anytime, from anywhere.
The Cardboard Camera app is available to download for free on Google Play in 17 languages.
Google recently introduced Cardboard support for its Google Street View app on iOS and Android. The main Cardboard app is also available on iOS and Android, which helps users set up their Cardboard virtual reality device.