Dan Bobkoff

Tens of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians live in New York City, and many with close ties to their countries are on edge over what's happening back home.

We're used to rounding up the total on our taxi ride or dropping a buck or two in a jar at the coffee shop. Now, new high-tech ways to pay are nudging us to tip more generously and more often.

Cartooning was his passion as a kid, and he enrolled in the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture to become better at drawing backgrounds. Now, some call Ingels a "starchitect," because his challenging designs are getting built.

For freelancers and artists living in expensive cities like New York, the home-sharing site Airbnb has become a way to subsidize their rents. It's also often illegal. With the site's users in the crosshairs of New York's attorney general, and questions elsewhere, some now wonder if the good times are going to end.

At least four people are dead after a Metro-North Railroad train derailed in New York on Sunday morning. This past summer, a freight train carrying trash derailed on the other side of the curve. And in May, two Metro-North trains collided in Connecticut, injuring more than 70 people.

If you want to raise money, charge a sales tax. If you want people to smoke less, tax producers. Traditional economics says this shouldn't make a difference, but it does.

Two members of the up-and-coming indie band The Yellow Dogs were among the dead in a Monday morning murder-suicide in Brooklyn. It's a tragic ending for a band that came from Iran to escape crackdowns on rock music.

The value of a brand doesn't include anything physical. It's just the name of the company — and all of the customer loyalty attached to that name.

JPMorgan Chase agreed pay $5.1 billion to settle litigation over mortgage assets sold during the housing bubble. The deal, announced late Friday afternoon, is to resolve claims the company misled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the housing market crashed. It is part of a tentative $13 billion deal the company is trying to reach with federal and state agencies over its mortgage liabilities.

Tuesday is the deadline for taxpayers who requested an extension on their 2012 tax returns. With most of its staff currently furloughed, the Internal Revenue Service is not answering calls, issuing refunds or collecting audits. Even so, don't expect a filing reprieve; the midnight deadline is still in effect.