The 44-year-old Democrat made his candidacy official at a news conference Saturday in Newark, New Jersey's largest city. He was joined by former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley, a former pro basketball player who for 18 years held the seat Booker is seeking.

Bradley, who endorsed Booker, called him "the right person for the right office at the right time."

Booker began raising money for a Senate run even before Lautenberg, who died Monday, announced retirement plans in February. He had raised $1.9 million by the end of the last reporting period in March.

Reps. Frank Pallone and Rush Holt are also planning to enter the Democratic primary. Booker is considered the early front-runner.

Pallone, 61, had $3.7 million in his campaign coffers at the end of March and has deep union support. Holt, 64, a former research physicist, had $800,000 on hand.

Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, announced this week that there would be party primaries Aug. 13 and a special general election Oct. 16

The only Republican running so far is Steve Lonegan, a former Bogota mayor who runs the New Jersey office of Americans for Prosperity.

Booker, 44, has 1.4 million followers on Twitter or five for every resident of the city where he's the mayor. He tweets frequently, answering questions about city services, posting about his workouts and, perhaps most often, trying to provide inspiration.

He's frequently gotten public attention, from staging a hunger strike to protest drug-dealing to rescuing a woman from a burning home last year. His life story is also captivating. He grew up in Harrington Park as the son of civil rights activists who were among the first black executives at IBM, went to Stanford, was a Rhodes Scholar, earned a law degree from Yale and took a job with the Urban Justice Center, which provides legal and other services to the vulnerable. He also moved to a public housing complex in Newark.

Booker started fundraising for a 2014 Senate campaign after announcing he would not run against Christie for governor, citing his desire to finish his term in Newark. The term expires in June 2014, meaning if he wins the Senate election he'll go back on his word.

Booker's critics in Newark see him as an ambitious interloper who spends too much of his time outside the city.

According to a Senate campaign filing made in May, Booker has brought in $1.3 million for 90 speeches he has given around the country since 2008. His campaign says he has donated the majority of that money to charities that serve Newark.

Booker's campaign has said that the networking he does ultimately helps the city.

In 2010, he was seated next to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at a dinner during a conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. Two months later, Zuckerberg announced a $100 million donation to improve education in Newark.

____

Mulvihill reported from Haddonfield. Associated Press writer Katie Zezima contributed from Newark.

The 49-year-old former Wham! frontman was being treated for "minor cuts and bruises" after the accident, Michael's spokeswoman said.

"George Michael was a passenger in a vehicle involved in a traffic accident yesterday evening, no third party was involved," a spokeswoman said on Friday. "He is being treated for superficial cuts and bruises but is fine."

British media reported that the accident occurred just outside London on a motorway during rush hour.

The "Careless Whisper" singer has suffered a string of accidents and health scares recently.

Last year he canceled his tour of Australia due to "major anxiety" brought on by a 2011 battle with severe pneumonia in Vienna, where he was treated in intensive care for a month for a life-threatening illness.

Michael has sold an estimated 100 million records over his career, but has hit headlines in recent years for his personal life more often than for his music.

In 1998 he was arrested in California for "engaging in a lewd act" in a public toilet and also had a number of run-ins with British police for possession of narcotics. He served a term in jail for driving under the influence of cannabis.

(Reporting by Paul Casciato; editing by Mike Collett-White)

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Thousands of Turks dug in on Saturday for a weekend of anti-government demonstrations despite Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's demand for an immediate end to protests that have spawned the most violent riots of his decade in power.

In central Istanbul's Taksim Square, where riot police backed by helicopters and armored vehicles first clashed with protesters a week ago, activists spent the night in a makeshift protest camp, sleeping in tents and vandalized buses, or wrapped in blankets under plane trees.

Police fired teargas and water cannon on protesters in the working class Gazi neighborhood of Istanbul, which saw heavy clashes with police in the 1990s, but the situation was quieter in the capital Ankara, where a few dozen demonstrators remained in tents in a central park.

In a rare show of unity, fans from Istanbul's three main football clubs Besiktas, Galatasaray and Fenerbahce, who have been heavily involved in some of the protests, plan simultaneous marches on Taksim later on Saturday.

What began as a campaign against the redevelopment of Gezi Park in a corner of Istanbul's Taksim Square spiraled into an unprecedented display of public anger over the perceived authoritarianism of Erdogan and his Islamist-rooted AK Party.

Riot police have clashed with groups of protesters night after night in cities across the country, leaving three dead and close to 5,000 injured, according to medics.

Erdogan has given no indication of plans to remove tents in Taksim, around which protesters have built barricades of paving stones and corrugated iron, clogging part of central Istanbul.

"Let them attack, they can't stop us," a member of the Turkish Communist Party shouted through loudspeakers to a cheering crowd from on top of a white van in the square.

Taksim is lined by luxury hotels that should be doing a roaring trade as the summer season starts in one of the world's most-visited cities. But a forced eviction might trigger a repeat of the clashes seen earlier in the week.

ANGER BOILS OVER

The gatherings mark a challenge to a leader whose authority is built on three successive election victories and Erdogan takes the protests as a personal affront.

Sources close to the AK Party that Erdogan founded in 2001 suggest a sense of siege within the leadership, with influential if disparate forces worried about the extent of his power.

Citing a party source, the Radikal newspaper said an AK Party executive meeting on Saturday may discuss the possibility of calling early elections, although it could also change party rules to enable Erdogan to seek a fourth term as prime minister rather than running for the presidency.

The party has made no public statement on the agenda.

Erdogan has made clear he has no intention of stepping aside - pointing to the AK Party's 50 percent of the vote in the last election - and has no clear rivals inside the party or outside.

He has enacted many democratic reforms, taming a military that toppled four governments in four decades, starting entry talks with the European Union and forging peace talks with Kurdish rebels to end a three-decade-old war.

But in recent years, critics say his style, always forceful and emotional, has become authoritarian.

Media has come under pressure, opponents have been arrested over alleged coup plots, and moves such as restrictions on alcohol sales have unsettled secular middle-class Turks who are sensitive to any encroachment of religion on their daily lives.

"These protests are partly a result of his success in economic and social transformation. There's a new generation who doesn't want to be bullied by the prime minister and who is afraid their lifestyle is in danger," said Joost Lagendijk, a former European parliamentarian and Istanbul-based academic.

(Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Ece Toksabay; Editing by Louise Ireland)

The event was designed to encourage those struggling with mental illness to seek treatment, although some attendees noted the government needs to provide more resources to meet that goal.

Despite its origins, there was a notable lack of discussion of gun violence at the conference. The president never mentioned the matter as he opened the gathering from the East Room, instead stressing that he wants to make it clear that the majority of the mentally ill are not violent. He said his main goal in hosting the conference is "bringing mental illness out of the shadows" and encouraging those suffering to get help, particularly veterans and young people.

"We whisper about mental health issues and avoid asking too many questions," the president said. "The brain is a body part, too. We just know less about it. And there should be no shame in discussing or seeking help for treatable illnesses that affect too many people that we love. We've got to get rid of that embarrassment. We've got to get rid of that stigma."

The conference comes after Obama's effort to pass gun control, including more background checks for purchases and a ban on assault weapon sales, was voted down in the Senate. The need to improve the country's mental health care system is something all sides of the gun debate, including the National Rifle Association, have advocated.

"It's really something that uniquely can bring our country together, whether the issue is health care, gun control, media violence, however they want to characterize it," said Gordon Smith, a former Republican senator from Oregon whose son, Garrett, suffered from depression and committed suicide in 1998 a few days after his 13th birthday. Smith now heads the National Association of Broadcasters, which announced as part of the conference a new campaign to reduce negative perceptions of mental illness through television and radio ads and social media.

Smith's passing mention of guns, during a panel discussion, was the only mention of the issue in the daylong convention that came out of Obama's executive orders following the shooting at Connecticut's Sandy Hook Elementary School.

There's been little publicly disclosed about the mental health of Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza, although it's been documented that other gunmen involved in mass shootings suffered from mental illness. Federal law bans certain mentally ill people from purchasing firearms, but the background check system is woefully incomplete and Obama is trying to get more mental health records included.

The conference featured around 150 invited attendees including mental health advocates and patients, educators, health care providers, faith leaders, lawmakers and local government officials from across the country. The two celebrities seemed impressed to be at the White House, with Close snapping a photo of Obama on her Iphone and Cooper gushing, "Wow," as he began to speak as part of the closing remarks with Vice President Biden.

Cooper has been promoting mental health awareness since his Oscar-nominated leading role as a man with bipolar disorder in last year's "Silver Linings Playbook."

"I'm sort of here by accident. It's not that I didn't know about mental illness. I think it's just that I just didn't see it as a part of my life," Cooper said. But he said since his performance, he learned people around him have been suffering in silence, including a close friend who is bipolar. "I want to be part of the solution," he said to applause.

Close's experience is more personal. Her sister, Jessie, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 51 and Jessie's son, Calen, spent two years in a psychiatric hospital with schizoaffective disorder. In 2009, Close's family battles led her to help start a non-profit called Bring Change 2 Mind, which produces public service announcements to fight the stigma and discrimination associated with mental illness.

"The truth is the stigma has hardly budged," Close said during a panel discussion on how to address negative attitudes moderated by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Close referred to studies showing the public doesn't want to have those with mental illness as neighbors, supervising them at work or taking care of their children and believe they are violent.

The conference comes after public spending on mental health services has been slashed across the country in recent years, driven by the recession and in some cases a zeal to shrink government. That has led to the closure and cutbacks at state-run psychiatric hospitals and cuts to services for the poor and people in the criminal justice system.

But the trend may be turning around in the wake of last year's mass shootings at Sandy Hook and the movie theater in Aurora, Colo. There are moves to restore funding in several states, and Obama pointed out that his signature health care law includes improvements for mental health coverage, including a ban beginning next year against denying coverage to those who are mentally ill.

Wayne Lindstrom, president and CEO of nonprofit Mental Health America, rose from the audience during a Q-and-A session of Sebelius' panel to express concerns about cuts in public services coinciding with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

"We will have millions of more Americans with coverage, potentially increasing the demand at a time when we are still far under capacity," Lindstrom said, appealing to members of Congress present to increase funding. "Unless we have additional resources we will not have the kind of access that we're all advocating for here today."

There were other concerns expressed by attendees Lindstrom pressed for rules being developed by the Obama administration to end insurance discrimination against people with mental illness and drug and alcohol addictions. Former Democratic Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island, who had high-profile struggles with substance abuse and mental health while in office, pressed Sebelius to require insurance companies to publicly disclose data about their mental health coverage.

"Insurance companies will make all of us do the runaround unless they know that someone's looking at them," Kennedy said in an impassioned appeal from his seat in the audience that was met by loud applause from attendees.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., added that until community mental health and substance abuse are funded like other medical problems, the stigma can't be eliminated. "If we don't have services, we're not going to get this done," she said, standing from her front-row seat, among more than a dozen other members of Congress who have fought for mental health funding.

Sebelius said she hopes the conference will help raise awareness of funding gaps so that there will be more public pressure on lawmakers to fill them. As for the mental health parity rules, she said she's aware there are a lot of unanswered questions and she's committed to finalizing them by the end of the year.

Biden cited HHS figures that the country needs 8,000 more mental health professionals. "Think of the irony here if through your great efforts, we encourage people to come forward and they find out there's no one there to help them or they have to wait a long time," he said.

___

Follow Nedra Pickler on Twitter at https://twitter.com/nedrapickler

The suspension will keep Andersen from playing on Saturday when the Heat, one win away from a third consecutive trip to the NBA Finals, visit the Indiana Pacers with a 3-2 series lead.

"Andersen knocked Indiana Pacers forward Tyler Hansbrough to the floor, escalated the altercation by shoving Hansbrough, and resisted efforts to bring the altercation to an end," the NBA said in a statement.

Andersen, who received a flagrant foul 1 on the play, finished the game with four points, four rebounds, two blocks and one steal in Miami's 90-79 win.

(Reporting by Frank Pingue in Toronto; Editing by Mark Lamport-Stokes)

Those fears were highlighted Wednesday when twoin the streets of London and the recent bombings at the Boston Marathon by Chechen born Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan. These terrorist attacks have left investigators - on both sides of the Atlantic - with more questions than answers. Were these groups acting alone or were they following orders from al-Qaeda central, or one of its fringe groups?

Rebel fighters in Syria. Credit: AP

At a congressional hearing, acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller said he did not find political motivation among the employees who were processing conservative groups' applications for tax-exempt status.

Miller was fired on Wednesday as President Barack Obama sought to stem criticism over IRS targeting of conservative groups for special scrutiny. On Thursday, Obama chose White House budget official Daniel Werfel to replace him as acting commissioner.

(Reporting by Laura MacInnis; Editing by Eric Beech)

SAN FRANCISCO/DUBLIN (Reuters) - Apple has operated almost tax-free in Ireland since 1980, welcomed by a government keen to bring jobs to what was then one of Europe's poorest countries, former company executives and Irish officials have said.

Chief Executive Tim Cook faced criticism from a Senate subcommittee in Washington on Tuesday over the iPad and iPhone maker's tax practices, which had been shrouded from full view behind secretive tax-exempt Irish-based corporate entities.

Apple, one of Ireland's top multinational employers, denied avoiding billions of dollars in U.S. taxes and said its arrangements helped fund research jobs in the United States.

The committee revealed that Apple's Irish companies, some of which are not tax resident in any jurisdiction, allowed the group to pay no tax on much of its overseas earnings in recent years.

Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the subcommittee, said Apple had sought "the Holy Grail of tax avoidance".

A former company executive and Irish officials told Reuters the almost tax-free status dates all the way back to Apple's arrival in County Cork 32 years ago.

Apple must have seemed attractive to Ireland and to Cork. Amid a generally moribund Irish economy, Cork had been hard hit by the closure of its shipyards and a Ford car plant, and in 1986 nearly one in four were out of work in the city.

In the early days, Apple's staff sat down to meals together. Now the company employs 4,000 in Ireland.

"There were tax concessions for us to go there," said Del Yocam, who was Vice President of manufacturing at Apple in the early 1980s. "It was a big concession."

In fact, the deal was about as good as a company can get.

"We had a tax holiday for the first 10 years in Ireland. We paid no taxes to the Irish government," one former finance executive, who asked not to be named, said.

Apple wasn't an exception, although it was among the last to enjoy such favorable treatment. From 1956 to 1980, Ireland attracted foreign companies by offering a zero rate of tax, according to the Irish government's website. Eligible companies arriving in 1980 were given holidays until 1990.

"Any multinational attracted into Ireland that was focusing on the export market paid zero percent corporation tax," said Barry O'Leary, CEO of IDA Ireland, which is charged with attracting investment into Ireland.

Apple said it pays all the tax due in every country where it operates. It declined to comment on the tax treatment it received in the 1980s.

As part of Ireland's accession to the European Economic Community, precursor to the European Union, in 1973, it was forced to stop offering tax holidays to exporters.

From 1981, companies arriving in Ireland had to pay tax, albeit at a low 10 percent rate, providing they qualified for manufacturing status.

ECONOMIC COUP

Apple's investment was a major coup for Ireland. At the time, the country was struggling with high and rising unemployment, double-digit inflation and a brain drain of the young and educated through emigration.

"We were the first technology company to establish a manufacturing operation in Ireland," recalled John Sculley, Apple's CEO from 1983 to 1993. He said government subsidies had also played a role in deciding to set up a base in Ireland.

Ireland also offered low wage rates - a big attraction when it came to hiring hundreds of people for the relatively low-skilled work of assembling electronic equipment.

Apple told the subcommittee it could not answer questions about why it chose Ireland as a base since it had lost the paperwork from the period.

The operation in Cork built the company's Apple II computer and would later build disc drives, Mac' computers and others. These would be sold in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

But having a tax holiday in Ireland would not, in itself, have allowed Apple to operate tax free in these markets.

Equipment assembly is not the kind of activity that economists or tax authorities usually credit with generating a large share of a technology company's profits.

More value has been associated with generating the intellectual property behind the technology - which Apple did in the United States - and with the selling of goods, which was to be done on the ground in France, Britain and India.

But none of these countries offered the tax advantages Ireland did. The key to minimizing Apple's tax bill was maximizing the amount of profit that could be ascribed to Apple's Irish operations.

THE ARCHITECT

This task fell to Mike Rashkin, Apple's first tax director, two executives from the period said. One called him "the father of it all".

Rashkin arrived at Apple in 1980, from computer pioneer Digital Equipment Corp (DEC) in Massachusetts, where he had learnt about tax-efficient corporate structuring in tech companies.

Apple had already decided to establish its base in Ireland when Rashkin moved to Silicon Valley, but he used his experience at DEC to set up a tax structure that took advantage of Apple's base in the country, the executives said. Rashkin declined to comment.

The Senate subcommittee's report reveals how the arrangement was structured. In 1980, Apple entered into a deal with its Irish operation, whereby the latter would share the cost of funding Apple's research and development. In return, the Irish unit would be able to enjoy rights to Apple's intellectual property for goods sold outside the Americas.

Apple secured the blessing of the U.S. tax authority, the Internal Revenue Service, for the deal, one executive said. The IRS gave Apple an advance pricing agreement, or APA, an agreement which establishes how the IRS will treat a transaction between affiliates for tax purposes, before it is entered into.

Many countries' tax authorities offer APAs, and companies say they are necessary to facilitate international trade and investment. Tax campaigners say tax authorities have been too ready to accept the pricing proposed by companies which apply for APAs.

The New York Times reported last year that Apple's low taxes were at least in part due to the confidential technology transfer arrangement.

The terms of the deal and subsequent cost-sharing deals were favorable for Apple's Irish unit. In effect, the Irish unit paid much less to its U.S. parent for the use of Apple intellectual property than it made from selling that property on to affiliates.

"Apple's cost sharing agreement (CSA) with its offshore affiliates in Ireland is primarily a conduit for shifting billions of dollars in income from the United States to a low tax jurisdiction," the subcommittee's report said.

Meanwhile, Apple also constructed a system whereby the affiliates which were actually selling the finished equipment would earn minimal profits.

The techniques Apple used over the years included selling goods to affiliates at prices which generated little profit at the retail level, or by paying sales affiliates commissions which are just about enough to cover their operating costs.

Rashkin's work and Ireland's accommodating approach had the desired result for Apple.

"We're very, very pleased," Apple's then-President A.C. Mike' Markulla said in 1981. "The Irish have really lived up to their promises."

Indeed, the accounts for Apple's main Irish unit, then known as Apple Computer Inc. Ltd, for 1989, the earliest year for which detailed accounts were filed, show exactly how effective the arrangement was.

The subsidiary paid $500,000 in income tax on profits of $317 million, a rate of 0.2 percent.

END OF THE HOLIDAY

In 1990, Apple's tax holiday came to an end, and in that year, the Irish operation's tax rate hit 4 percent, accounts from the period show.

At the same time, Apple's Irish manufacturing activities came under question as the company looked to cut costs by outsourcing. In 1992, the company announced plans to cut hundreds of jobs after deciding to shift some work to Singapore, which at this time was attracting increasing investment by offering tax holidays.

"They nearly left Ireland altogether," O'Leary said.

By this stage, the European Community had banned tax holidays of the kind given to Apple, so the company and Dublin negotiated an arrangement which had a similar outcome but fell within European rules.

The precise details of the arrangement were not disclosed, but Phillip Bullock, Apple's head of tax operations, indicated that it was linked to minimizing taxable profit.

"Since the early 1990s, the Government of Ireland has calculated Apple's taxable income in such a way as to produce an effective rate in the low single digits," he told the subcommittee.

The deal didn't stop Apple from shifting manufacturing work to Asia, but in the years that followed new jobs were created in Cork, in sales and administrative support for the European operation, the accounts of the Irish units show. Some manufacturing remains in Ireland, the subcommittee said.

An Irish government spokesman declined to even confirm it held discussions with Apple regarding tax, citing rules on taxpayer confidentiality.

From 1996 Ireland phased in a 12.5 percent tax on all corporate trading income, although foreign companies often pay effective rates lower than this by shifting money into tax havens such as Bermuda.

Apple's Cook told the Senate panel on Tuesday that Apple does not hold money on a Caribbean island or divert profits from sales to U.S. customers to other jurisdictions to avoid U.S. taxes.

(Writing by Tom Bergin; Additional reporting by Conor Humphries in Dublin, Jonathan Weber and Peter Henderson in San Francisco, and Tom Bergin in London; Editing by Giles Elgood)

The 400-acre area known as Castle Rocks has been closed off and on to climbers since 2003, and may close permanently sometime this summer. Agency officials say they hope make a decision this month, depending how much feedback they receive from the public.

Mike Courtney, BLM field manager in Burley, said both the Shoshone-Bannock and Shoshone-Paiute tribes consider the land sacred and are worried cultural resources could be destroyed if climbing continues. BLM surveys have determined the region contains important archaeological resources and artifacts, including spearheads dating back thousands of years.

Courtney said the agency spent time combing the trail routes and climbing walls with the intention of finding middle ground with sport climbing enthusiasts. But unfortunately, Courtney said, environmental impact studies showed all the climbing areas posed at least some risk to resources the agency aims to protect.

"We kept running into resource issues with the locations of the trails and the potential climbing routes," Courtney said Friday. "We inventoried the entire area, and a lot of the areas at risk are the most desirable (climbing) areas."

Citing those and other reasons, a report from the BLM dated April 12 proposed closing the Cassia County area to climbers for good, although hikers and hunters would still have access to existing trails. Courtney said the plan targets climbing because soil erosion and vegetation destruction are most severe around staging areas, the spot near rock walls where climbers prepare for their assent.

But the BLM's plan has left regional climbers upset. They argue they've offered less prohibitive proposals that still protect the area's abundant cultural heritage and environment.

"They reversed course really quickly and went from considering the climbing management plan to coming to a decision that banned climbing right away," said R.D. Pascoe, a policy director with the climber advocacy group Access Fund.

Pascoe argues rock climbers are willing to avoid historical or archeologically significant sites, and his organization and local climbers came up with a plan that offered guidelines for when the BLM can close certain routes.

The BLM's most recent proposal, he said, unnecessarily eliminates all climbing access.

Several other routes at the nearby City of Rocks Natural Reserve will remain open for climbers. But Doug Colwell, founder of the Boise Climbers Alliance, said Castle Rocks is considered a national or even international destination by many of the sport's enthusiasts.

"When you go down there on Memorial Day weekend you will see people from other countries because it's a very well-known intermediate rock climbing area," Colwell said. "We believe there are areas we could compromise on."

Curious what a 529 plan is and how it works? A 529 plan is similar to a 401(k) plan, but whereas the latter type of account is used to build your nest egg, the former is used to pay for college expenses.

However, the tax advantages of a 529 plan are similar to a Roth investment retirement account since you pay federal income tax on your contributions, but then the earnings from your investments grow tax-free.

There are two types of 529 college savings plans: the prepaid plan and the savings plan.

529 college prepaid plan. With the 529 prepaid plan, you purchase tuition credits in your state's university system at current tuition rates. This means your child is protected against futuredespite the likely increase in inflation. However, before opening a 529 prepaid plan, make sure your child plans to attend the school for which you are purchasing tuition credits to ensure the investment doesn't go to waste.

529 college savings plan. The 529 savings plan is a tax-advantaged account that allows you to accumulate assets that can be used toward any accredited college or vocational school in the United States. The funds can be used to pay for more than just tuition costs, including textbooks and other education-related fees.

Contribution limits. The annual maximum contribution allowed per person to either plan is $14,000, and if you are married, your spouse can contribute an additional $14,000 each year for a total of $28,000. Each spouse is also allowed to make a one-time contribution of $70,000 (five years worth of annual maximum contributions), but parents who opt for this will have to wait six years before they can start contributing again.

The total maximum contribution allowed on a 529 plan is $360,000 (market value) for each beneficiary. However, your assets can grow beyond that amount through .

Risk level and investment options. With a 529 savings plan, depending on the state, you can choose between several investment options based on factors such as your child's age, your asset allocation preference and . You can also decide to invest your money in a portfolio of stocks, bonds and/or money market funds. However, don't assume your state's plan is the best option, as not all states offer tax deductions. If that's the case, you may want to open an account in another state with options that better suite your child's needs.

For a list of theby state residency, see NerdWallet Investing's comparison of the top accounts.

Neda Jafarzadeh is a financial analyst at NerdWallet Investing, a financial literacy organization that helps investors select better mutual funds, figure outand make smarter investment decisions overall.