Successful Businessman

Massachusetts stands to lose more than 300 jobs at U.S. Air Force facilities under cuts announced by the Defense Department.

The cuts announced today for the 2013 fiscal year that starts Oct. 1 include the loss of more than 150 jobs at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford. More than 100 are civilian jobs.

Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod is also in line to lose about 170 jobs.

The Air Force plans to eliminate 3,900 active duty members, 5,100 Air National Guardsmen and 900 Air Force Reserves nationwide under the proposal.

Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray says the state is working on making the strongest possible case to keep …military personnel on the job. He says the proposal has significant national security and economic implications.

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Online: Air Force budget, http://www.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-120306-055.pdf

A TEAM of entrepreneurial students from York went to Wembley to compete in the final of a national business competition run by Coca-Cola

The students from Huntington School got through to the finals of the Coca-Cola Enterprises CCE Real Business Challenge, where they hoped to win tickets to the London Olympic Games this summer

More than 500 schools from across the UK entered the competition, designed to inspire the business leaders and entrepreneurs of the future, with regional heats taking place throughout November Ten regional winners travelled to Wembley Stadium, where they met Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, one of the most successful disabled athletes in the UK

Liam Wharin, a teacher at Huntington School, said the competition started last summer, when the school held an internal competition to decide the best team to submit

The winning team then designed a new drink for Coca Cola

They chose an Italian-themed grape drink, for which they had to work out how to source the ingredients sustainably and ethically

After reaching the regional finals, the students designed a recycling campaign that would encourage people to recycle more and litter less, inspired by the Olympic Games

They designed a bin with different holes cut into the Olympics logo, and for each piece of rubbish recycled, the bin, powered by a solar panel, would spit out a ticket, giving the recycler a chance at winning a ticket to the Olympic games

At the Wembley final, students were given the opportunity to develop business ideas with expert mentoring and skills workshops, before pitching their campaign to a panel of judges, including Baroness Grey-Thompson, Sir Keith Mills, deputy chair of London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games and CCE managing director Simon Baldry

Although a team from Cramlington Learning Village in Northumberland won the competition, the Huntington School team has a billboard of its campaign on show near Selby

Simon Baldry said: “The level of innovation we have seen throughout the competition this year has been truly inspirational, and a demonstration of the entrepreneurial spirit of the country’s younger generation”

HOUSTON (AP) — Texas financier R. Allen Stanford lied to investors and stole their hard-earned savings so he could live the lavish lifestyle of a billionaire, a prosecutor said Tuesday at his fraud trial.

Prosecutor Gregg Costa told jurors in Houston federal court that Stanford used investors’ money to buy homes and yachts and fund cricket matches.

“He treated depositors’ savings like it was his own personal piggy bank,” Costa said.

The prosecution says Stanford’s business empire was built on smoke and mirrors and he bilked investors out of more than $7 billion over 20 years as part of a massive Ponzi scheme centered on sales of certificates of deposit from an Antiguan bank he owned.

Stanford, who denies the claims and says his businesses were legitimate, is charged with 14 counts, including wire and mail fraud. H

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A conservative think tank that holds shares in Apple is asking the company to investigate whether board member Al Gore violated the company’s business policies by advocating for actions that would be benefit him personally, but not necessarily benefit the company.

The National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) has filed the proposal in Apple’s Proxy Statement for the 2012 meeting of shareholders, which will take place in February. Entitled the “Conflict of Interest Report,” NCPPR has requested that Apple’s board of directors look into “board compliance with Apple’s Business Conduct Policy.”

The report, NCPPR wrote, should specifically, “Disclose the investment of board members that could reasonably be viewed as a financial conflict of interest; describe the role board members play in the development of the company’s policies and the process by which Apple determines if board member participation violates its Business Conduct Policy; disclose policies that could financially benefit board members.”

The target of this request, in particular, is former Vice President Gore, and what role he might have played in Apple’s decision to resign its membership from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in

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A NUMBER of households have already paid the new 100 charge which will eventually be replaced by a property tax, new figures show.

According to the Household Charge Project Board, 2,390 people have agreed to make the payment, the majority of which are doing so with a credit or debit card.

A further 400 have set up direct debits.

An online system householdcharge.ie has been established so households can register to make the controversial payment.

But the charge can be paid by postal order, cheque or at local authority offices.

Meanwhile, the campaign against the charge, which includes a number of politicians, has said it will step up its campaign against it.

It added it is confident that as many as half of households will not register for the charge.

The deadline for payment is March 31 and late penalties and fines will arise after that date.

Some people are exempt from the payment including those in local authority housing and ghost estates.

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A YORK accountancy firm has launched an app for smart phones and tablets to help clients calculate their tax.

HPH Chartered Accountants, based on Bootham, launched the app as part of a £50,000 investment to maintain its use of technology, including computer software, networks and file servers, as part of its growth and client-service strategy.

Robert Woolley, the firm’s marketing and business development partner, said: “We are launching this mobile app service to demonstrate that while we are among the longest-established accountancy practices in York and North Yorkshire, we are also one of the most modern in our application of the latest technology.

“This initiative demonstrates to clients that we are always looking for ways to improve the speed, efficiency and quality of our services to them and it will mean that we are constantly in their thoughts when they access the service even outside working hours.”

As well as providing details of tax-saving schemes and eight tax calculators to provide different projections at the touch of a button, the app includes live financial and current affairs news feeds from MoneySavingExpert.com and Reuters.

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