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Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-7H4 takes off from Hollywood Burbank Airport on September 16, 2020 in Burbank, California.

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Southwest Airlines canceled 500 flights, 15% of its schedule, on Tuesday as it struggled with connectivity issues a day after a technical problem with a weather data provider delayed hundreds of flights.

The Federal Aviation Administration briefly issued a statewide ground stop for Southwest preventing their flights from starting to avoid overwhelming targets.

More than 1,690 Southwest flights were delayed Tuesday, nearly half of the airline’s schedule, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. The airline announced that operations returned to normal on Tuesday afternoon.

“Southwest is in the process of resuming normal operations after a brief pause in our flight activities due to intermittent performance problems with our network connectivity on Tuesday afternoon,” said Southwest spokesman Chris Mainz in a statement. “Our teams work quickly to minimize flight disruptions and customer impact. We value our customers’ patience as we work to get them to their destinations.”

Southwest said it is investigating the issue and has no reason to believe it is related to Monday’s issue.

Denver International Airport previously tweeted that Southwest had a “network connectivity problem” and warned travelers that flight delays are likely.

As of Monday, 1,541 Southwest flights, roughly 41% of the flight schedule, were delayed, according to FlightAware.

The airline said its operations were suspended on Monday evening after “intermittent performance issues” with its third-party weather provider, but told staff on Tuesday that it was in “relatively good shape” to resume operations.

The problem arose as airlines like Southwest fly increasing numbers of travelers as demand recovers from the coronavirus pandemic.

Freight forwarders are grappling with a surge in customer numbers and downsizing after offering buyouts and other packages to cut costs in the pandemic. For example, Southwest, Delta Air Lines and American Airlines have warned travelers about long waits for customer service and encouraged them to take advantage of self-service options.

While Tuesday’s Southwest release appeared to have had a brief impact on systems, prolonged technology issues or outages can be costly. Delta estimated that a data center outage in August 2016, which resulted in approximately 2,300 cancellations in three days, cost approximately $ 150 million in pre-tax revenue that quarter.

Harvey Weinstein leaves the courtroom in New York City with attorney Benjamin Brafman before the New York State Supreme Court on October 11, 2018.

Stephanie Keith | Getty Images

Harvey Weinstein, the once prominent film producer convicted of rape last year, was extradited from New York on Tuesday to face sexual assault charges in Los Angeles.

Weinstein, who is currently serving a 23-year sentence in New York State, is charged with rape, sexual harassment and other crimes in connection with five incidents that allegedly occurred between 2004 and 2013.

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His lawyers fought extradition to Los Angeles last year, citing, among other things, his poor health.

But Erie County, New York, Judge Kenneth Case ultimately dismissed her arguments on Tuesday.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Weinstein, 69, is unlikely to move to California until July at the earliest.

Weinstein faces up to 140 years in prison if convicted in the Los Angeles case.

Weinstein became the face of the #MeToo movement in 2017 after The New Yorker magazine and the New York Times published articles describing allegations by women alleging that he committed rampant sexual misconduct against them.

The entertainment company co-founder Miramax was convicted by the Manhattan Supreme Court in February 2020 of a first-degree sexual act against production assistant Mimi Haleyi in 2006 and third-degree rape for assaulting aspiring actress Jessica Mann in a hotel room in 2013.

Weinstein’s lawyers appealed his conviction in April.

During his career, Weinstein has produced award-winning films such as Pulp Fiction, Shakespeare in Love and Gangs of New York.

Former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns told CNBC on Tuesday that rethinking the criteria can help companies improve the gender and racial diversity of their boards of directors.

In an interview on Closing Bell, Burns – the first black woman to become CEO of a Fortune 500 company – said the notion that there is a shortage of qualified board members who are female, colored, or both is “small-minded” .

“The specs are biased, not that people are incapable. Some people are, but we’re not talking about that here, ”said Burns, who sits on the boards of Uber and Exxon Mobil.

“They specified it so that only 5 or 10 people could meet the specification, and every one of those guys is boarded up. Some of them are getting too old to serve, ”she said.

For example, Burns said the requirement that board members be current or former CEOs has been a barrier to black business people being nominated.

“Guess what? We were probably 20 in our entire existence. So when you get through 20 you won’t get any more if that’s the criteria,” said Burns, whose memoir “Where Are You? Not Who You Are” , was released on Tuesday.

The issue of director diversity was brought to a brighter spotlight last year after the assassination of George Floyd sparked a wave of anti-racial protests around the world and corporations pledged to eradicate racial inequalities in recruitment, board composition and the economy.

In 2020, according to a recent report by consulting firm Deloitte and the Alliance for Board Diversity, 82.5% of board seats in Fortune 500 companies were occupied by whites.

Burns has said that she is working to ensure there is a sustained momentum in improving representation across American businesses. “The intensity has changed a lot,” she told CNBC earlier this year. “We’ll make a movement out of it.”

There are structural challenges to be overcome, Burns said on Tuesday.

“What happened in America is that the field of play was … defined by white men. The rules of the game were defined by white men. The referees are white men,” she said. “These white men say, ‘We don’t have anyone to go with this game that I made especially for me, except people who look like me,'” she added. “Well, surprise, surprise.”

Burns said when someone in the US asks her about referrals for prospective directors who are female, colored, or both, “I can give you a list of names if you want them.”

However, she said, she would rather handle such a request differently.

“I would tell them, ‘You send me your spec, I’ll fix it for you, help you fix it, and then I’ll give you a ton of names that you wouldn’t believe would be phenomenal directors. ‘ “

Hollie Adams/Bloomberg via Getty Images

President Joe Biden has consistently pledged not to raise taxes on households making less than $400,000 a year.

Whether his tax proposal keeps or breaks that promise depends on one’s frame of reference.

Primarily, it’s a question of how an observer considers a taxpayer earning less than $400,000 who has a one-time income windfall, according to tax experts.

That might be from the sale of a home, business, stock or other asset — whether during life or at death — that has appreciated significantly in value.

Let’s consider a hypothetical family that consistently earns $200,000 a year over two decades:

Taxes likely wouldn’t rise for this household over that time, all else being equal, if Biden’s plan were enacted, experts said. However, the following year, what if the same family sells a highly appreciated business for $2 million? This would likely trigger a higher tax rate on capital gains that year, according to Biden’s proposal.

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This scenario raises a fundamental question: Should the public consider such a taxpayer to fall in the category of people making less or more than $400,000?

Based on a strict reading of Biden’s pledge, higher taxes for this hypothetical family (during the year of the business sale) wouldn’t break the president’s promise, according to tax experts. The family’s total income for the year would be $2.2 million — much higher than the $400,000 mark.

This is the lens through which the White House views Biden’s tax plan.

“Consistent with the president’s campaign proposal, individuals and families earning less than $400,000 will not see an increase in their taxes,” according to a White House official.

However, some observers might view higher taxes for this hypothetical family as breaking the “spirit” of the pledge, said Jeffrey Levine, chief planning officer at Buckingham Wealth Partners in Garden City, New York.

Such taxpayers had consistently earned less than $400,000 and spent years building up business equity, said Levine, an accountant and certified financial planner. The sale proceeds may be the family’s biggest source of retirement savings, too, he said.

Of course, Levine said, this scenario wouldn’t be a technical breach of Biden’s campaign pledge and would apply only to a tiny fraction of taxpayers.

“So many of the changes [the administration is] talking about, they’re all geared toward those who make more than $400,000,” he said. “They’ve done a solid job of holding to that campaign promise.”

Biden tax plan

Biden’s tax proposal would likely affect aforementioned taxpayers via a higher capital gains tax, which is paid on an asset’s appreciated value.

The Biden administration aims to raise taxes on the wealthy to fund domestic initiatives, like additional years of free education and expanded tax credits, in the American Families Plan. The benefits would largely accrue to low- and middle-income households.

The president would raise the top capital-gains rate to 39.6%, from the current 20%, for assets sold after more than a year of ownership. (That would be the same top tax rate as regular income.)

It would apply only to taxpayers whose adjusted gross income exceeds $1 million — the top 0.3% of taxpayers.

We’re talking about relatively few people. But it’s not zero.

Howard Gleckman

senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center

And only the portion of income or gains over $1 million would be taxed at the top 39.6% rate, according to a White House official.

The administration would also change rules around how assets are treated at a taxpayer’s death.

Specifically, death would be treated as a “realization” event. Assets with more than $1 million of appreciation would be treated as if sold — and subject to capital gains tax. (It would apply to married couples with at least $2 million of gains.)

Currently, appreciated assets aren’t subject to a capital gains tax at death. Heirs receive stock, homes and other assets at current market value and pay tax only on subsequent gains if and when they sell.

The first $1 million for single taxpayers ($2 million for married couples) would be excluded from Biden’s tax on unrealized capital gains. Single and married taxpayers could exclude an additional $250,000 and $500,000 of gains, respectively, for a principal residence.

There are limited scenarios in which taxing unrealized gains at death would affect taxpayers who earned less than $400,000 the year they died, according to Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

For example, this might apply to an individual who bought a lot of Microsoft stock in the 1980s and held it until death, but had been living on a modest Social Security and pension income, according to Gleckman.

“That’s the guy who’d fall between the cracks and end up paying the tax even though he was making less than $400,000 in that last year of life,” he said.

These situations would apply to just 0.6% of taxpayers earning $200,000 to $500,000 the year they died, according to a Tax Policy Center analysis.

“We’re talking about relatively few people,” Gleckman said. “But it’s not zero.”

Of course, such taxpayers would be deceased; higher taxes may not much matter in these cases, from a practical perspective. But they would perhaps leave a smaller estate for heirs, to the extent assets had to be sold to pay for the additional tax. (There are mechanisms like insurance to prevent such an outcome, however.)

And the Biden administration offers certain exemptions to blunt the impact of a capital gains tax at death. For example, certain family-owned and family-operated businesses wouldn’t owe tax until the business ceases to be family owned.

Billionaire businessman Joe Tsai told CNBC on Tuesday that Asian Americans have been unfairly exposed to violent backlash for various challenges the US has faced throughout history.

In an interview on Squawk Box, the co-founder and vice chairman of China-based technology giant Alibaba gave a personal and historical reflection on the rise in racist attacks on Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic.

“If the economy is doing well, Asian Americans are playing by the rules and thriving with everyone else, that’s fine,” said Tsai, who owns the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets and the WNBA’s New York Liberty.

“But when there is a crisis – if there is a pandemic, a war or an economic downturn – Asian Americans become scapegoats,” added Tsai, whose parents were from mainland China. Born in Taiwan, he came to the United States at the age of 13 to attend boarding school in New Jersey. He received his bachelor’s and law degrees from Yale.

Tsai noted the restrictions on Chinese immigration that were introduced in the late 19th century and lasted well into the 20th century, as well as the United States, which forced more than 100,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II.

He also recalled the assassination of Vincent Chin in 1982 when Japanese automakers expanded their operations in the United States. Chin, a Chinese-American, was attacked in Detroit by two white auto workers who believed Japan was responsible for the problems facing the US auto industry.

“There’s a lot of that undertone of anti-Asian sentiment. If things are good, that’s fine. When things are bad for everyone, these ugly” anti-Asian attitudes come out, “Tsai said.

The recent surge in hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders has spurred US lawmakers to take action. In May, President Joe Biden signed bipartisan law that gives law enforcement agencies additional tools to improve the reporting and investigation of such incidents.

“Everyone thinks Covid comes from China, and as a Chinese I felt it personally,” said Tsai. “There was a time when every day you wake up you see a new report of an anti-Asian hate crime,” he added.

Tsai serves on the board of directors of the recently formed Asian American Foundation, founded this year with the aim of serving Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders through a wide range of philanthropic activities. Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, KKR co-president Joseph Bae and Himalaya Capital founder Li Lu are also on the board.

Tsai said the group plans to immediately begin addressing the lack of foundations and corporate donations specifically intended for Asian Americans and Pacific islanders. Last month, the Asian American Foundation announced that it had already received more than $ 1 billion in pledges.

“Not all the money will … go to the foundation,” said Tsai. “Most of the money is being spent on other Asian-American organizations that are doing a great job against hatred, getting people to vote, and all the great work they are doing.”