Tax bill beginning to deliver bigger paychecks to workers
WASHINGTON — The contentious tax overhaul is beginning to deliver a change that many will welcome — bigger paychecks.
Workers are starting to see more take-home pay as employers implement the new withholding guidelines from the IRS, which dictate how much employers withhold from pay for federal taxes. Those whose checks have remained the same shouldn’t fret — employers have until Feb. 15 to make the changes.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has estimated that the new rules will mean more take-home pay for about 90 percent of American workers.
How much extra cash? It depends on several factors, such as workers’ income, how often they are paid and the number of withholdings allowances they claim on their IRS Form W-4 with their employer.
Those whose employers were quick to make the change welcomed the extra money — anywhere from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars.
AP finds evidence for graves, Rohingya massacre in Myanmar
BALUKHALI REFUGEE CAMP, Bangladesh — The faces of the men half-buried in the mass graves had been burned away by acid or blasted by bullets. Noor Kadir finally recognized his friends only by the colors of their shorts.
Kadir and 14 others, all Rohingya Muslims in the Myanmar village of Gu Dar Pyin, had been choosing players for the soccer-like game of chinlone when the gunfire began. They scattered from what sounded like hard rain on a tin roof. By the time the Myanmar military stopped shooting, only Kadir and two teammates were left alive.
Days later, Kadir found six of his friends among the bodies in two graves.
They are among at least five mass graves, all previously unreported, that have been confirmed by The Associated Press through multiple interviews with more than two dozen survivors in Bangladesh refugee camps and through time-stamped cellphone videos. The Myanmar government regularly claims such massacres of the Rohingya never happened, and has acknowledged only one mass grave containing 10 “terrorists” in the village of Inn Din. However, the AP’s reporting shows a systematic slaughter of Rohingya Muslim civilians by the military, with help from Buddhist neighbors — and suggests many more graves hold many more people.
“It was a mixed-up jumble of corpses piled on top of each other,” said Kadir, a 24-year-old firewood collector. “I felt such sorrow for them.”
California prosecutors dropping, reducing pot convictions
SAN FRANCISCO — With pot now legal in California, prosecutors in San Francisco and San Diego are moving to erase thousands of marijuana convictions en masse, a step that could prove life-changing for some and could especially help minorities, who were more likely than whites to be arrested for such crimes.
“We want to address the wrongs that were caused by the failures of the war on drugs for many years in this country and begin to fix the harm that was done not only to the entire nation but specifically to communities of color,” San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon said.
Advocates are calling on more counties to do the same. Gascon’s office said Thursday that other California district attorneys have called San Francisco for advice on handling marijuana cases.
Gascon said he hopes to spark a trend in California.
“That’s awesome. It’s wonderful and appropriate,” said Josh Freeman, a marijuana farmer who recently had his felony conviction for selling small bags of weed at a reggae concert reduced to a misdemeanor.
Girl in Slender Man stabbing gets maximum mental commitment
WAUKESHA, Wis. — A Wisconsin girl who stabbed a classmate to curry favor with the fictional horror character Slender Man will be committed to a mental hospital for 40 years, a judge ordered Thursday, explaining his decision as “an issue of community protection.”
Judge Michael Bohren granted the maximum penalty that prosecutors had sought and discounted Morgan Geyser’s youth — she was just 12 — at the time of the attack in 2014.
“What we can’t forget is this was an attempted murder,” Bohren said. Earlier, he heard from four doctors who talked about how Geyser is making progress with her mental illness, to various degrees. But Bohren called the teenager “a fragile person” whose long history suffering from delusions make her a risk to hurt herself and others.
Geyser, now 15, spoke briefly before she was sentenced, breaking down in tears as she apologized to the girl she stabbed, Payton Leutner.
“I just want to let Bella and her family know that I’m sorry,” she said, using a nickname for Leutner. “And I hope she’s doing well.”
