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While millions of Americans are anxiously awaiting the arrival of their $1,400 stimulus checks, debt collectors are licking their chops for a bite. |
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Stolen stimulus?: Congress passed President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion relief package with designs of helping struggling Americans, but now it appears the biggest beneficiaries could be debt collectors. The Senate shot down a bill to protect stimulus payment recipients from having debt collectors from taking a bite out of their $1,400 checks -- a measure that was in place in December when Congress approved a round of $600 stimulus checks for the holiday season. Republicans refused to go along with the protection plan this time. “If the Senate doesn’t pass this bill, predatory debt collectors will continue to seize relief payments for anything from credit card payments to medical debt,†protested Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. But Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., refused to give quick approval, opening the door to collectors to take a cut of stimulus payments. GOP members argued that the seizures would apply only to “valid legal claims†that courts have ruled for garnishment, not basic late fees. Democrats will try to pass the measure again but it might be too late. Stimulus payments have already started arriving in bank accounts. FIND OUT HOW DEBT COLLECTORS COULD TAKE A CUT
Beat the clock: Counting down the dreadful days until the traditional April 15 deadline to file your taxes? You can add some more time to the clock this year thanks to a deadline extension from the IRS. Due to the massive backlog of tax returns to process during the pandemic, the IRS has pushed back the filing deadline to May 15 to give taxpayers more time to prepare, and tax processors more time to play catch-up on the forms they are temporarily storing in trailers. “There is so much mail that the Post Office can't hold it," one IRS official said of the overflow of unprocessed tax forms. "So we are literally holding it in trailers until our employees can get back.†This marks the second year in a row the IRS has been forced to push back the filing deadline due to the pandemic. One word of warning; most states are not adjusting their deadlines this year. FIND OUT WHEN AND HOW TO FILE YOUR FEDERAL TAXES
Illegal opinion: It's never a good sign when your former lawyer says you're in for "a proctological exam of the highest order." But those are the exact (albeit very explicit) words Michael Cohen used to describe the treatment his former client is about to undergo. Former president Donald Trump's ex-fixer Michael Cohen said now that New York prosecutors have broad access to his old boss' tax records, Trump, his family and company are about to experience a painful probe. Prosecutors are still reviewing documents they gained access to last month, when the Supreme Court authorized their release. Cohen predicts they will be bad news for his ex-client. Those aren't the only legal issues mounting for Trump. The district attorney's office in Fulton County, Ga., has opened a grand jury investigation in response to his alleged effort to overturn the state's 2020 election results, and the New York attorney general's office is also leading a civil investigation into the Trump family's finances. SEE HOW MUCH TAX TROUBLE TRUMP COULD BE FACING
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Markets
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Google on the go
Why would a company make a massive investment in expanding office space in the midst of an economy racked by the pandemic? Google it. Google unveiled its plans Thursday to invest more than $7 billion in the U.S. this year while adding thousands of new jobs in an effort to bolster economic recovery. The new data centers are projected to create "at least 10,000 new full-time Google jobs in the U.S. this year," the company said. And not just remote jobs, which have become the norm during the pandemic, but in-person positions in actual brick-and-mortar locations. The move not only shows Google's commitment to future growth, but also its belief in bringing employees together to get maximum dividends. “Coming together in-person to collaborate and build community is core to Google’s culture, and it will continue to be an important part of our future," one Google executive said. "So we continue to make significant investments in our offices around the country." Google's expansion will include new data centers to handle the tech giant's capabilities to provide internet searches, email and other services. The project will include 19 states, focusing on cities where it can fulfill its stated goal to provide opportunities to under-served communities. FIND OUT WHERE GOOGLE IS EXPANDING ITS WORK FORCE
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Merch madness
Licensed merchandise is a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry, but there is only one undisputed king of the Magic Merch Mountain. Do we have to spell it out for you? OK, feel free to sing along: "M-I-C K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E!" That spells big bucks for Disney, which laughs all the way to the bank to the tune of nearly $55 billion annually. In addition to creating the lovable characters it markets to children and the young at heart, Disney makes additional fortunes by putting their images on t-shirts and coffee mugs and selling them to us poor saps who just have to have a Buzz Lightyear hat. Disney makes double its closest competitor in merchandise licensing, but the rise of rivals shows just how big the industry has become in pop culture. In fact, some companies have climbed the charts by specializing in acquiring consumer brands for the sole purpose of licensing deals. From Star Wars action figures to SpongeBob bubble bath, Americans are willing to shell out big bucks to associate themselves with their pop culture heroes. And a growing number of companies are happy to sell it to them. CHECK OUT THE TOP 10 LICENSED MERCHANDISE COMPANIES
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Making it rain
The United Arab Emerates, one of the richest nations on the planet, is about to make it rain -- literally. The Middle Eastern nation, located in a desert on the Persian Gulf, is preparing to use drones to trigger a storm. If it sounds like some high-tech weird science, that's because it is. Developers of the project plan to launch drones to send electrically charged signals into the clouds and induce the production of much-needed precipitation. The UAE's annual rainfall totals less than 4 inches. The UAE has long been seeding clouds with salt to promote rainfall but the process is expensive and unreliable. Scientists are hoping that drones can handle the task and that they can strike gold as well as lightning. If it works, the method could be used to fight droughts and famine worldwide. CHECK OUT THE UAE'S NEW RAIN-MAKING DRONE PROJECT
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First draft
Cartoons have come a long way since the early hand-drawn incarnations. Name the world's oldest cartoon, the year it was made, and the artist. (Thursday's answer: Sloppy Joes were first served at Ye Olde Tavern in Sioux City, Iowa. Namesake creator Joe slung hash there in the 1930s.) SEND YOUR ANSWER HERE TO SHOW OFF YOUR KNOWLEDGE
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