What's in the News

The Panama Papers: how the world’s rich and famous hide their money offshore

The hidden wealth of some of the world’s most prominent leaders, politicians and celebrities has been revealed by an unprecedented leak of millions of documents that show the myriad ways in which the rich can exploit secretive offshore tax regimes.

The Guardian, working with global partners, will set out details from the first tranche of what are being called “the Panama Papers”. Journalists from more than 80 countries have been reviewing 11.5m files leaked from the database of Mossack Fonseca, the world’s fourth biggest offshore law firm.

The records were obtained from an anonymous source by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with the Guardian and the BBC.

Though there is nothing unlawful about using offshore companies, the files raise fundamental questions about the ethics of such tax havens – and the revelations are likely to provoke urgent calls for reforms of a system that critics say is arcane and open to abuse.

The Panama Papers reveal:

Twelve national leaders are among 143 politicians, their families and close associates from around the world known to have been using offshore tax havens.

A $2bn trail leads all the way to Vladimir Putin. The Russian president’s best friend – a cellist called Sergei Roldugin - is at the centre of a scheme in which money from Russian state banks is hidden offshore. Some of it ends up in a ski resort where in 2013 Putin’s daughter Katerina got married.

Among national leaders with offshore wealth are Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister; Ayad Allawi, ex-interim prime minister and former vice-president of Iraq; Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine; Alaa Mubarak, son of Egypt’s former president; and the prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson.

Six members of the House of Lords, three former Conservative MPs and dozens of donors to UK political parties have had offshore assets.

The families of at least eight current and former members of China’s supreme ruling body, the politburo, have been found to have hidden wealth offshore.

Twenty-three individuals who have had sanctions imposed on them for supporting the regimes in North Korea, Zimbabwe, Russia, Iran and Syria have been clients of Mossack Fonseca. Their companies were harboured by the Seychelles, the British Virgin Islands, Panama and other jurisdictions.

A key member of Fifa’s powerful ethics committee, which is supposed to be spearheading reform at world football’s scandal-hit governing body, acted as a lawyer for individuals and companies recently charged with bribery and corruption.

One leaked memorandum from a partner of Mossack Fonseca said: “Ninety-five per cent of our work coincidentally consists in selling vehicles to avoid taxes.”...


See the details is coming days, and say goodbye to The Guardian.

In pictures: Chernobyl's eerie exclusion zone 30 years on




In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (1), there's a mission set in Pripyat. By way of introduction, one character says, "Fifty thousand people used to live in this city. Now it's a ghost town... I've never seen anything like it." And every time I'm like, pffft, haven't you been to China?! This looks just like China!

... Why not beyond "early August"?

Presumably in the cooler months women put their clothes back on and are no longer "asking for it". Alternatively, perhaps the female commuter's interest in stuffed toys is seasonal.

Captain Shanzhai?

Five years ago, but I only just happened across this today:

Almost 600,000 foreigners counted in China

Beijing - Nearly 600,000 foreigners were living on the Chinese mainland at the end of 2010, results from the sixth national census released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Friday showed.

It is the first time the country has included foreigners who would stay on the mainland for at least three months in its once-in-a-decade population census, as "they've been playing an increasingly important role for the nation's social and economic development", said Zhai Zhenwu, dean of Renmin University's school of sociology and population.

According to the census, the top three home countries of the foreigners on the mainland were the Republic of Korea (ROK), the United States and Japan....

They never came around and counted me.

This caught my eye, today ~

http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20160527-children-of-the-chinese-super-rich-arent-all-burning-money

Foreigners and Chinese came together to rejoice on celebrating China Daily's 35th anniversary


There you go again, China Daily, celebrating diversity and difference.

...

Is this for real? Have any of you heard anything about this?

http://www.eastasiatribune.com/north-asia/china-bans-interracial-marriages-for-females-no-plans-to-restrict-men/

lol

Meanwhile, industry groups representing ESL teachers in China have also criticized the new policy. “The majority of teachers are male, and most end up wedding local women,” said a spokesperson for a chain of English-teaching cram schools in Shanghai. “If our teachers are banned from marrying Chinese girls, they may not stay in the country as long, and we risk losing talented staff.”

unfortunately, the internet is saying hoax.