Gladys Knight’s son gets prison over taxes
ATLANTA — The son of R&B legend Gladys Knight has been sentenced to serve two years in prison for failing to withhold payroll taxes for the restaurants that bore his mother’s name, federal prosecutors in Atlanta said.
Shanga Hankerson opened his first restaurant, Gladys Knight’s Chicken and Waffles, in Atlanta in 1997. Over the next several years, he opened at least three more locations in Georgia and Washington, D.C.
Hankerson, 45, “willfully disregarded his tax obligations for many years,” Acting U.S. Attorney Kurt Erskine said in a news release. During his sentencing Wednesday, Hankerson, who pleaded guilty in July, was also ordered to serve a year of supervised release following his prison sentence and to pay more than $1 million in restitution.
He was the sole owner of the business and was required to withhold payroll taxes from his employees’ gross pay. From at least 2012 to 2016, Hankerson failed to remit more than $1 million in payroll taxes, prosecutors said.
“While ownership of a well-known restaurant in our community has its perks, it also comes with great responsibility,” IRS Criminal Investigation Special Agent in Charge James Dorsey said.
“Paying taxes is a way to give back to the community, but unfortunately Hankerson chose to use those funds for other means.”
9-foot video game joystick holds record
HANOVER, N.H. — A 9-foot-tall video game joystick made of wood, rubber and steel has made it into the Guinness World Records 2022 as the largest.
Dartmouth College professor Mary Flanagan created the giant controller — nearly 14 times the size of an original classic Atari controller — in 2006 to celebrate her childhood experience of “maniacally” playing Atari 2600 video games.
She also wanted to see what it would be like when a single-player experience becomes collaborative: It takes at least two people to operate the joystick and push the button to play classic Atari games such as “Centipede” and “Breakout.”
The joystick, which toured Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, is now part of the permanent collection of ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany.
Brazilian singer dies in plane crash
SAO PAULO — Marília Mendonça, one of Brazil’s most popular singers and a Latin Grammy winner, died Friday in an airplane crash on her way to a concert. She was 26.
Mendonça’s press office confirmed her death in a statement, and said four other passengers on the flight also perished. Their plane crashed between Mendonça’s hometown Goiania and Caratinga, a small city in Minas Gerais state located north of Rio de Janeiro.
Minas Gerais state’s civil police also confirmed Mendonça’s death, without providing details about the cause of the accident, which occurred shortly before arrival. Photographs and videos show the plane laying just beneath a waterfall; Mendonça had posted a video this afternoon showing her walking toward the plane, guitar case in hand.
The rising star performed country music, in Brazil called sertanejo. She was known for tackling feminist issues in her songs, such as denouncing men who control their partners, and calling for female empowerment.