Offshorecash.net

I don’t know how empirical this study is, but here’s the skinny. Reader’s Digest dispatched several undercover reporters in 3 dozen cities across the world. In each city, the reporters:

• Walked into public buildings 20 times behind people to see if they held open the door.
• Bought small items from 20 stores and recorded whether the sales assistants thanked them.
• Dropped a folder full of papers in 20 busy locations to see if anyone would help collect the scattered contents.

The reporters awarded one point for each positive outcome and nothing for a negative one. The results of this “study” show that the top three most polite cities are New York, Zurich, and Toronto. Conversely, Asia fared very poorly. Eight out of nine cities there finished in the bottom 11. Could this be a cultural thing?

The least friendly city? Mumbai, India. They may be rude in Mumbai, but they sure can cook.

Shortly after an Air Mauritania flight took off on Thursday evening, it was hijacked by a gunman. But thanks to a rough landing, forewarned passengers were able douse the hijacker in boiling water, tackle, and restrain him.The turning point came when the pilot realized the gunman, Mohamed Abderraman, didn’t speak French. Using the plane’s public address system, the pilot then alerted the passengers — in French — to his plan to take the plane down hard. After warning women and children to move to the back of the plane, the pilot broke abruptly upon landing, then quickly sped up — throwing Abderraman off-balance, and giving the passengers the chance they’d been waiting for.

Abderraman wasn’t a terrorist, but instead wanted the plane to fly to France so he could request political asylum. Upon arriving at Gando airport outside Las Palmas — the plane’s original destination — he was arrested by Spanish police.

That’s one quick-thinking pilot, and a plane full of heroic passengers.

I know this is somewhat elementary stuff but I’ve been getting a lot of searchers looking for these contribution limits and they’re going to pages that don’t display it in a convenient and easily scannable format - thus, I’ve written this entirely new post to address these limits.

Contribution Limits:

• The Over 50 Limit takes into account a catch-up contribution you’re allowed to make if you turned 50 at any point during the year, so if you turned 50 on December 31st, then you’re allowed to contribute the Over 50 Limit. Your contribution is also limited by your income, you are permitted to contribute the lesser of your income or the limit (so if you made $500 in income, you’re only allowed to contribute $500 to your IRA).
• Traditional and Roth IRAs share the same limits, thus if you contribute $1,000 in 2007 to your Traditional IRA, you may only contribute an additional $3,000 to your Roth IRA (assuming you’re under 50).
• The Roth IRA income phase-out is linear, so if you are Married Filing Jointly, under 50, and your total income were $161,000 (2007), you are permitted to contribute $2,500 to your Roth IRA. There are two special cases though: 1) when calculating your limit, round up to the nearest $10; 2) If your limit is under $200 but still positive, round up to $200.