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Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin “Has anyone had clients actually do the apocryphal story of a client using a 529 to go on a continuing education cruise of Europe?” asked one of my peers in a recent forum, “Trying to figure (this out) after client asked.” Can You Get An Education At Sea? There are a host of companies offering education opportunities in combination with a cruise. Continuing Education, Inc. claims to have, “over 100 Continuing Medical Education and Dental CE cruise conferences.” This allows medical professionals to fulfill the requirements of their professional designation in combination with a vacation. There’s also University at Sea, CME Away at Sea, AEA Optometric Cruise Seminars, and many, many more companies that would gladly give a professional continuing education classes and an excuse to vacation. However, these are all continuing education classes, not college courses from an accredited school. These are for-profit companies … [Read more...] about Can You Use Your 529 To Take A Cruise?

If veteran banker Cezar “Bong” Consing didn’t have to take over the helm of conglomerate Ayala Corp. following tycoon Fernando Zobel de Ayala’s medical emergency and subsequent retirement, there’s a good chance that he would be appointed the next Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor. From what we gather, there are prime movers in the Marcos administration who are batting for Consing to be the country’s next chief monetary and banking regulator. But now that Consing may be out of the game after accepting the post of Ayala CEO, who could the other candidates be? By this time, it appears that former BSP chief and Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno is comfortably nestled in his position as chief of the economic team. Whether or not he wants to return to the BSP, an influential source says Diokno will likely stay in this current post. Thus, among President Marcos’ options is to keep the status quo: BSP Governor Felipe Medalla (whom we hear has been backed by Diokno himself) … [Read more...] about BIZ BUZZ: The next BSP chief

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Businesspeople like graphs. C-suite executives are fond of pie charts, Venn diagrams, histograms and all manner of schematics to illustrate sales performance, market penetration and product trajectory status. They love to use these illustrative tools as they present to each other in the boardroom. But there’s another type of graph that drives contemporary cloud-connected businesses and it runs as a new intelligence undercurrent in the IT department. There are many types of database and most are built with columns and rows, but the graph database is essentially different because it is made up of a collection of ‘nodes’ and ‘edges’. You can think of a graph database as a set of interconnected circles (nodes) and each node represents a person, a product, a place or ‘thing’ that we want to build into our data universe. The relationships and connections between the nodes on our graph database are described by ‘edges’ … [Read more...] about Why Your Next Database Is A Graph

Trade secrets are a valuable asset for businesses of all sizes, providing a competitive edge and valuable information that is kept secret from the public as well as competitors. But what trade secrets and what kind of protection, exactly, is given to their owners? In the case of Air Philippines Corp vs. Pennswell, Inc., a collection case filed by Pennswell Inc. (PENN) against Air Philippines Corp (AIR), AIR refused to pay on the grounds that PENN misrepresented that the items they sold belonged to a new product line, but which AIR claimed were not new but the same products it had previously purchased from PENN under a different brand name. AIR claimed that had it known about this, it would not have purchased the items. AIR asked the court to compel PENN to disclose the ingredients and chemical components of the products, to show that the old and new products were the same. For its part, PENN claimed it should not be compelled to disclose the chemical components, because these were … [Read more...] about What are trade secrets ?

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin The Secure Act 2.0 brought about several consumer-friendly policies that should help people save more over time, as well as more flexibility when it comes to how funds in a 529 college savings plan can be used. Specifically, families will soon be able to move up to $35,000 from a 529 college savings plan into a Roth IRA for the account beneficiary, although annual contribution limits apply. This becomes an option for savers in 2024. Because annual contribution limits come into play here, maximizing the cap on this benefit will take several years. In fact, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has set the annual contribution limit across all IRA accounts at $6,500 for 2023 (unless you're 50 or older, in which case you can contribute up to $7,500 per year). ADVERTISEMENT The 529 plan making the transfer must also be open for at least 15 years, so it's not possible to open an account, fund it quickly, then move money … [Read more...] about Prevent State Tax Issues Before You Move 529 Funds To An IRA

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin By Satta Sarmah Hightower Identity theft can upend someone’s life, both financially and emotionally. It’s a reality facing customers daily. Someone becomes a victim of identity theft every four seconds , reports the National Council on Identity Theft Protection. With increasingly sophisticated cybersecurity threats on the rise, companies have a responsibility to protect their consumers—and a big opportunity to deepen trust and loyalty if they get it right. To help businesses navigate this, we talked to Erik Nienaber, CTO and head of product at Iris Powered by Generali , a leading provider of identity and personal cyber protection solutions for businesses to offer to their customers. Below, he shares five tips to help companies bolster identity protection efforts and ultimately enrich the customer experience, build trust and boost business outcomes. 1. Assess Your Plan What’s your company’s approach to … [Read more...] about This Cybersecurity CTO Shares 5 Tips To Better Protect Your Customers

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin On January 1, 1984, George Orwell was greeted with a television program unlike any ever broadcast. The fact that Orwell died in 1950 was utterly beside the point. As the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four , Orwell had set expectations for the mid-80s more than anyone alive. With Good Morning, Mr. Orwell , the video artist Nam June Paik sought to reclaim the maligned future for the present. In Orwell’s visionary fiction, TV was destined to become a primary instrument of political control, a delivery mechanism for propaganda slyly combined with a surveillance system by which thought police would be able to monitor private citizens 24/7. Paik believed that television could, to the contrary, become an apparatus for cultural liberation. "I want to show [television's] potential for interaction, its possibilities as a medium for peace and global understanding,” Paik explained. “It can spread out, cross international borders, … [Read more...] about A Video Art Retrospective At MoMA Reveals The Utopian Hopes Behind Tech We Now Dread

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today issued a complaint against Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world, alleging that the firm put profits over compliance and committed “numerous violations of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) and CFTC regulations.” Also mentioned were Changpeng Zhao, the Binance founder and CEO, and former Chief Compliance Officer Samuel Lim, who is cited widely throughout the complaint and allegedly orchestrated much of the malfeasance. Today’s filing is the latest in a series of questionable behaviors by the company. However, while the CFTC is seeking disgorgement of profits, civil monetary penalties, registration bans and a permanent injunction against violations of the CEA and CFTC regulations, the long-term impact of this filing is unclear. Specifically the document, filed today in the federal courthouse in Chicago, alleges that the company offered crypto derivatives, … [Read more...] about U.S. Regulator Says That Binance Illegally Helped Americans Trade On Its Exchange

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin The battle over TikTok has become a proxy for worsening U.S.-Chinese relations and the anxieties generated by that clash. Shou Chew , TikTok’s chief executive officer, was grilled for five hours last week by members of Congress concerned primarily about potential Chinese government interference in the company’s U.S. operations. The hearing took place amid growing fear in Congress and the Biden Administration that a Chinese technology company can’t be relied upon to protect user privacy and may be exploited by the Chinese government to disrupt our democratic process. While the challenge posed by TikTok is clear, the way forward is not. Some members of Congress have called for TikTok to be banned in the U.S. The chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), led the hearing and set the tone. “We do not trust TikTok will ever embrace American values,” Rodgers said. But expecting … [Read more...] about TikTok’s Links To China Demand A Serious U.S. Response

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Alok Kulkarni is Co-Founder and CEO of Cyara , a customer experience (CX) leader trusted by leading brands around the world. Out with the old, in with the new. Contact centers are evolving, and your technology should, too. In the past, with legacy call centers, customer journeys were relatively simple and linear: Call in, talk to an agent and resolve the problem. But those days are long gone. With the rise of omnichannel communication, today’s customer journey is more complex and the route to a successful customer experience (CX) may crisscross its way through several different channels, touching not only human agents but bots along the way. In today’s tense economic climate, CIOs and CX leaders have a crucial but challenging task: maintain growth while simultaneously cutting expenses and increasing efficiency. Most IT executives would agree that putting money into new technology will help accelerate growth and … [Read more...] about How To Determine Where To Invest Your CX Technology Budget First