Reports: Tax authorities swoop for Maradona’s earrings

Football legend Diego Maradona had his earrings seized by Italian authorities Friday to help pay off his back taxes, according to media reports. The current coach of Argentina’s national team was staying at a clinic in northern Italy in a bid to lose weight when finance police swooped, Reuters.com reported

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‘Pioneer’ in online sports betting pleads guilty

The man who founded and ran the online sports gambling operation BetOnSports pleaded guilty and agreed to forfeit more than $43 million in proceeds, prosecutors announced Friday. Now, I know that’s a strong opening statement, but consider this: The government decides where your kids go to school; what curriculum they’ll study; and even develops long-term educational plans just like the Communists devised five-year plans.

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U.S. ‘Soviet-style’ education system not cutting it

Our educational system is essentially a Soviet-style government-run monopoly that could only be loved by the likes of Lenin and Stalin. Now, I know that’s a strong opening statement, but consider this: The government decides where your kids go to school; what curriculum they’ll study; and even develops long-term educational plans just like the Communists devised five-year plans. This kind of “one-size-fits-all” approach really punishes kids.

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Obama Has a Polite Town-Hall Meeting on Health Care

The beginning of the town-hall meeting in Belgrade, Mont., was ominous. As Katie Gibson, the petite woman chosen to introduce President Obama, began, her soft-spoken testimony about losing medical-insurance coverage amid cancer treatment was suddenly overwhelmed by thunderclaps and a heavy downpour of rain and hailstones that reverberated through the cavernous metal airport hangar.

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Will Obama Tax Employer-Provided Health Benefits?

As lawmakers continue to struggle to find a way to pay for a health reform that could cost $1 trillion or more over the next decade, Barack Obama seems to be opening the door a little wider to an approach that he rejected soundly when John McCain proposed it during last year’s presidential campaign: taxing the health benefits that employers provide their workers.

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Florida’s Property Taxes Go Wacky in Housing Slump

In Palm Beach County, Fla., buyers who find fire-sale bargains at foreclosed home auctions — picking up, say, $400,000 houses for $100,000 or less — are also realizing they’re required in many cases to pay the same property taxes, as if the homes were still valued at $400,000. In Miami-Dade County to the south, where one in four homeowners are 30 days or more behind in their mortgage payments, residents are bracing for what Mayor Carlos Alvarez says could be an imminent property tax hike to fill an almost $400 million budget hole — a move that veteran Miami realtors like Alex Shay insist would set recovery back.

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Can the U.S. Government Afford to Let California Fail?

With his round face and sad eyes, Oracio Sandoval, 33, sits at a Los Angeles County welfare office in Carson, Calif., armed with a thick pile of job-application forms. Out of work since January, Sandoval is struggling to stay afloat financially. Married with two children, he and his wife used to make $3,000 a month

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Can Democrat Creigh Deeds Win the Race for Virginia Governor?

One candidate is from western Virginia — so far west, in fact, it’s closer to Charleston, West Virginia and Greensboro, North Carolina than to Washington D.C. — who promotes his rural, pro-gun values and aw-shucks humble persona, and is named for his Confederate grandfather. The other moved to the D.C.

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