- So maybe Usain Bolt wasn’t so far out in deciding not to run any races in Britain because of exorbitant and ludicrous taxes that would drastically cut into his earnings if he ran so much as one meet in Britain. Those same moronic tax laws are threatening to keep leading golfers from playing in the Ryder Cup in October and European Tour officials frantically negotiating with the British government to change the aforementioned tax rules. "These tax rules are discouraging leading sportsmen and sportswomen from competition in Britain," Mitchell Platts, the tour's director of public relations corporate affairs, said Tuesday. Playing in the tournament would have a drastic impact on the bank accounts of players because of recent rules issued by the customs and revenue agency, known as HMRC. Those laws allow the agency to tax foreign athletes not just on prize money earned but on sponsorship and endorsements connected to performances in Britain. Bolt was among the first athletes to abstain from competition in the U.K. because of the laws, which were put in place after HMRC won a landmark case four years ago against tennis star Andre Agassi. That made endorsement payments liable for tax and you can bet that rich athletes don’t like it one bit. The biggest victims of the tax in terms of the Ryder Cup would be any non-British player competing because they receive no prize money from the event. "Our aim is to attract the best players to provide the best entertainment for our audiences in the U.K. This tax rule is seriously hampering our efforts," Platts said. "Discussions continue to take place with the HMRC and these discussions include the Ryder Cup." One possible solution would be to exempt the Ryder Cup from the rules, similar to the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Of course, that could cause an uproar among athletes from other sports who would then demand similar treatment for their sport. If only Agassi had hired better attorneys who were able to win that 2006 case in which he was ordered to pay tax on a portion of cash paid to him by Nike and Head because he endorsed their products at Wimbledon and other events in Britain. Now, HRMC exercises its right to claim tax on a proportion of an athlete's worldwide endorsements earnings. If 50 percent of an athlete's events are in Britain, 50 percent of their global endorsement earnings can be taxed. Best fix that issue or at least create a loophole for golfers, HRMC, because if you don’t, you can have the distinction of ruining the Ryder Cup for one and all when golfers begin pulling out to avoid your insipid taxes………
- Just bring it, would-be illegal immigrants. The House of Representatives sees your attempted border crashings and they raise you a $600 million boost of emergency funding to help secure the U.S.-Mexico border. The house approved that emergency funding Tuesday by a voice vote, allowing it to advance to the Senate for final congressional approval before being signed into law by President Obama. The Senate passed a similar bill last week, so this one seems a bit redundant, but it seems likely to pass. Along with the additional funding, the provides for roughly 1,500 new law enforcement agents, new unmanned aerial vehicles, new forwarding operating bases and $14 million in new communications equipment. That’s going to make it more difficult to slip across the border in the cargo hold of an unmarked box truck and drop your anchor babies, illegal immigrants. But I know you are a hearty and determined people and will find a way to counter this maneuver, so game on. The bill is unique in that it has both strong Democratic and Republican support. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is also down with the bill, praising it effusively last week and saying it would "add important, permanent resources to continue bolstering security on our Southwest border." J. Nap also linked the bill to the fight against illegal drugs and weapons making their way across the border. "These assets are critical to bringing additional capabilities to crack down on transnational criminal organizations and reduce the illicit trafficking of people, drugs, currency and weapons," she said. So how will the money for this bill be raised, what with our struggling economy? Well, it will be funded in large
part by imposing higher fees on personnel companies that bring foreign workers into the United States. In other words, some double-barrel anti-foreigner action going on here………
- Discovery Channel wilderness tough guy Bear Grylls may take on alligators, snakes, bears and hyenas around the world, make huts out of reeds and swamp mud and carve dwelling places out of glaciers with his bare hands, but one thing he can’t conquer seems to be television cameras. Grylls, whose series Man vs. Wild shows him globetrotting and surviving for several days in some of the world’s harshest environments on his wilderness know-how and savvy, suffered the most serious injury of his four-year TV career in an episode from the upcoming season of his show, which begins a new season this Wednesday. But it wasn’t a poisonous snake or angry hippopotamus that did him in; it was one of the camera for the show. Grylls was glissading (sliding) down a mountain when he was struck in the leg by a camera. One of his camera men was temporarily blinded by snow while sliding down a snowy incline beside him and the camera he was carrying
smashed into Bear’s leg. All involved parties were evacuated to the nearest hospital by a helicopter and are now resting comfortably. They’ll be able to enjoy the season premiere of their own show from their hospital beds, which is a nice touch of irony. The season should actually be an interesting one, with one special “Fan vs. Wild” episode saddling Grylls with two lucky fans he has to drag with him through the Canadian Rockies. For a guy who has brave some of the world’s most un-liveable deserts, parachuted into some impossibly tight spots and lived to tell about it, getting snipered by one of his own cameramen and then having to put up with two sure-to-be-out-of-their-element fans for a few days in the Canadian Rockies should be an interesting experience………
- Nice gesture on your part, Brazil, formally offering asylum to Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, an Iranian woman convicted of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning. The offer was made official Tuesday after Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had made a previous offer for asylum. Regardless of your feelings about moving halfway around the world to a place where you don’t speak the language, that is always a preferable option to being executed for a crime you may or may not have committed. The formal offer came from Brazil's ambassador in Tehran, who has now officially made the offer at Iran's foreign ministry. The informal offer by Lula was rejected by Iran because officials claimed that he lacked sufficient information about the case. Malek Ajdar Sharifi, who is the head of the judiciary of East Azerbaijan province, followed the rejection by stating last month that Ashtiani's crimes were "numerous" and said she was "convicted of adultery and murder and was sentenced to death." Now, it’s a bit of a stretch, but there seems to be a good possibility that even in a fair, upstanding judicial system like Iran’s, those charges could be misconstrued. That’s the argument made by Ashtiani's lawyers, who said Iranian authorities are mischaracterizing the status of the adultery and murder charges against her. Attorney Hootan Kian claims that even though Ashtiani was officially acquitted of her husband’s murder five years ago, the Iranian government continues to insist that she is guilty. Not one to look the proverbial gift horse in the mouth, Ashtiani said she was "grateful" for Brazil's offer and would "graciously" accept. To provide a little background on the case, Ashtiani was convicted of adultery in 2006 and was originally sentenced to death by stoning. A vociferous international outcry convinced Iran to “postpone” the sentence, but a decision is expected very soon as to whether the courts will reinstate Ashtiani's sentence of death by stoning, execute her by other means or grant her a reprieve. With improved relations between Iran and Brazil in recent years (you may recall that Brazil and Turkey were the only two nations to participate in talks with Tehran aimed at restarting negotiations about Iran's nuclear program), it is possible that the asylum offer could be accepted. Here’s hoping that it is because an execution under these circumstances would not only be a travesty of justice, but a massive abuse of basic human rights……….
- Want to go beyond just using Skype to talk with faraway friends and own a piece of the action? If so, you may be excited to know that the popular Internet video phone service is planning a $100 million initial public offering, according to a regulatory filing Monday. Skype, formerly property of eBay before being sold off in September, will offer American depositary shares, although the company's headquarters will remain in beautiful Luxembourg. Since being sold, Skype has soared on its own and this year alone has generated more than $406 million in sales, with 560 million registered users -- up 41 percent from a year earlier. Additionally, paying users (who represent a small fraction of the overall user base), rose 23 percent to 8.1 million from 6.6 million a year ago. Even with those strong numbers in its back pocket, Skype adamantly believes that it can do even better. In the filing, the company touted its "significant global scale and user growth," but pointed out that "the penetration of our connected and paying users is low relative to our market opportunity." Aiding those efforts is unquestionably the deal Skype struck with Verizon Wireless this year. In the past, mobile providers had been hesitant to allow the service to be used on their networks because Skype users would not have to pay the wireless network for the voice minutes used. That stance changed when wireless companies realized they could turn a healthy profit from data services as well, which means increased traffic and earnings for services like Skype and rival Google Voice, which are starting to be embraced. The profits from a public offering would likely surpass the earnings eBay raked in after buying Skype for $2.6 billion in 2005, only to sell it four years later for $2.75 billion to an investment group led by private equity firm Silver Lake Partners. The intent of SLP was to use Skype to facilitate communication between auction buyers and sellers, but that never materialized. Still, with projection that Skype will break $1 billion in revenue by 2011, the IPO should attract quite a bit of attention………
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