It's follow all the offshore money parked in Panama since 1975!
The Panama Papers: what you need to know
What is Mossack Fonseca, how big is it, and who uses offshore firms? Key questions about one of the biggest ever data leaks
Revealed: the $2bn offshore trail that leads to Vladimir Putin
Iceland’s PM faces snap election over revelations
Fifa faces new credibility crisis over leaked papers
Luke Harding
Sunday 3 April 2016 16.49 EDT
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What is Mossack Fonseca?
It is a Panama-based law firm whose services include incorporating companies in offshore jurisdictions such as the British Virgin Islands. It administers offshore firms for a yearly fee. Other services include wealth management.
Where is it based?
The firm is Panamanian but runs a worldwide operation. Its website boasts of a global network with 600 people working in 42 countries. It has franchises around the world, where separately owned affiliates sign up new customers and have exclusive rights to use its brand. Mossack Fonseca operates in tax havens including Switzerland, Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands, and in the British crown dependencies Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man.
How big is it?
Mossack Fonseca is the world’s fourth biggest provider of offshore services. It has acted for more than 300,000 companies. There is a strong UK connection. More than half of the companies are registered in British-administered tax havens, as well as in the UK itself.
How much data has been leaked?
A lot. The leak is one of the biggest ever ‐ larger than the US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in 2010, and the secret intelligence documents given to journalists by Edward Snowden in 2013. There are 11.5m documents and 2.6 terabytes of information drawn from Mossack Fonseca’s internal database.
Are all people who use offshore structures crooks?
No. Using offshore structures is entirely legal. There are many legitimate reasons for doing so. Business people in countries such as Russia and Ukraine typically put their assets offshore to defend them from "raids" by criminals, and to get around hard currency restrictions. Others use offshore for reasons of inheritance and estate planning.
Are some people who use offshore structures crooks?
Yes. In a speech last year in Singapore, David Cameron said "the corrupt, criminals and money launderers" take advantage of anonymous company structures. The government is trying to do something about this. It wants to set up a central register that will reveal the beneficial owners of offshore companies. From June, UK companies will have to reveal their "significant" owners for the first time.
What does Mossack Fonseca say about the leak?
The firm won’t discuss specific cases of alleged wrongdoing, citing client confidentiality. But it robustly defends its conduct. Mossack Fonseca says it complies with anti-money-laundering laws and carries out thorough due diligence on all its clients. It says it regrets any misuse of its services and tries actively to prevent it. The firm says it cannot be blamed for failings by intermediaries, who include banks, law firms and accountants.
Privacy in private affairs is just part of being a citizen. Without it, you aren't.
Openness in public affairs is part of living in a healthy democracy. Without it, you aren't.
The outrage here is justifiably centered on corruption of public officials. I would also add that the NSA, FBI, Interpol and all the rest had nothing to do with this leak.
#5
"Yes, this money belongs to the people who earned it." Mossack-Fonseca has been handling accounts from more than 200 "countries." There is enough here -- including the data on Brazil and Argentina -- to keep journalists/investigators busy for years. Hell, M-F activity in Nevada should be worth at least a year. Finally, the next shoe to drop after Nevada will be the "trust" cover-ups in South Dakota and Wyoming.
#6
"The outrage here is justifiably centered on corruption of public officials. I would also add that the NSA, FBI, Interpol and all the rest had nothing to do with this leak."
You want the real source? Start with German intelligence service.
#9
In the past these leaks have always wound up somewhere on the net. I'm starting to think this one won't. Imagine if just anyone knew how this sort of 'tax management' was done...
I think I just figured out how to end the WoT . . . .
We've already seen guns on drones, even flamethrowers, so it was really only a matter of time before someone went and attached a chainsaw.
The stuff of sweat-drenched nightmares, the terrifying "chainsaw drone" is apparently the work of a pair of "crazy" Finnish farmers.
In a recently posted YouTube video, the two guys that built the kit appear to want to lull us into a false sense of security with their unique contraption. There are smiles, there's laughter, there's even a moving soundtrack.
The upbeat atmosphere continues as the chainsaw lifts off the ground, with the two friends demonstrating several sensible uses for their special drone. For example, how about trimming branches off tall trees, or sawing through icicles hanging off buildings?
But hold on a moment ‐ the words "killer drone" are scrawled along the chainsaw's guide bar. And what's this innocent-looking snowman for? The terrifying truth is about to be revealed....
Having apparently become bored with using its chainsaw-wielding drone for what could be described as "reasonable" activities, the pair decides to turn the irrationality dial all the way up to 11, destroying a group of harmless snowmen by approaching them at speed and slicing clean through their heads. It's messy and it's shocking, but it may offer a glimpse of the sheer terror awaiting us when the robot apocalypse finally comes.
However, when that day arrives, the humble party balloon could save us from a grisly end. As the video shows, the drone is no match for these air-filled rubber bags, the copter's blades unable to turn once a burst balloon becomes entangled in its machinery. Just don't be under it when it comes down, that's all.
Now, if a couple of Finnish guys show up in the Darwin Awards anytime soon, who's betting against the involvement of a chainsaw and a drone?
[ClimateDepo] No, it is not an April Fools Day joke, snowflakes actually fell in the neighbouring French island of Guadeloupe.
The event, described as âexceptional' by French meteorologist Alain Museleque, took place on Thursday, March 31 in the municipality of St. Claude. Reports from French media indicate that a very fine snowfall blanketed the hills above the town.Museleque explained the extraordinary phenomenon on Guadeloupe Premiere TV. "We had a mass of clouds that arrived over St. ClaudeâŚ. In the mass of clouds, we had the creation of some snowflakes which fell to the ground. This has never before been seen in Guadeloupe. This is an exceptional event that we will never forget." Quick! Drive more SUVs! We are losing the Man Made Global Warming Warâ˘!!! 315,000 Lose Power in Midwest, Northeast as Wind & Heavy Snow Hit
APRIL 3, 2016 â Thanks to damaging wind gusts of 50, 60 miles an hour and heavy snowâŚTwo rounds of snow were expected in the Upper Midwest, Great Lakes and Northeast, The Weather Channel reported.
Eight inches of snow was recorded near Negaunee in northwestern Michigan, just over 7 inches fell in Wisconsin near Twin Lakes, and 5.5 inches of snow was seen in Minnesota near Leonidas Saturday as the storm swept through, according to The Weather Channel. Parts of Western Pennsylvania could see 8 to 10 inches. Was Al Gore there again? Colorado Ski Resort sees second snowiest march on record â Snowiest in 50 years
APRIL 3, 2016 â
"Wow! Low and behold 101 inches for the month is extraordinary,"' said Hurlbert.That's almost 8½.5 feet (2.5 meters) â in just the month of March. I thought Colorado ski resorts were supposed to be out of business by now. Instead, they get one of the biggest March snowfall amounts on record. Powder Dude!!
Snow chaos in Germany on April Fools Day
APRIL 2, 2016 â Many drivers had already mounted their summer tires â Snowplow in continuous use.
Ein Lastwagen im StraĂenrand | Bildquelle: dpa
Surprising heavy snowfall has significantly impeded traffic on the motorways in Hesse and Thuringia, bringing accidents, road closures and kilometer-long traffic jams.
In Alsfeld a truck slid into two stopped trucks, fully blocking the road towards Frankfurt.
In Fulda county firefighters numerous overturned trees of many roads had to move because of the new snow and strong wind gusts.
In Thuringia, the A73 and A71 had to be partially closed because trucks were crosswise on the road or overturned. Also on all of A4 and parts of the A9 there were problems caused by the snow. According to the highway patrol, many cars were skidding because they had already installed summer tires. So where is that warming they promised would come if we don't stop using all fossil fuels? Anyone?
Maybe the quiet sun has something to do with this?
#8
Heh. Note that the paramedic/responder at the back of the ambulance isn't being bothered at all while the attendees were swatting at the insects while getting into it.
Biblical? Sorta. There is a record in the conquest of Canaan where two Amorite kings were attacked by hornets, defeating them and their armies, without the Hebrews lifting sword or bow (Joshua 24:12).
#9
Islamophobe bees buzzed a Muslim!
But why? For a moment it puzzles him.
'Twas just Allah's sweetness
And Musselman meekness
That caused the wee beasties to nuzzle him.
[Dhaka Tribune] An activist of the Awami Jubo League ... the youth wing of the Bangla Awami League... in Bogra’s Nandigram upazila was incarcerated Into the paddy wagon wit' yez! for allegedly sexually assaulting a newly wed teenage girl on Saturday night.
Continued on Page 49
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Azerbaijani military shot down Armenian drone in the direction of Azerbaijan’s Fizuli district, Azerbaijan's defense ministry said Apr. 3. The counter-attack was made following provocations of the Armenian armed forces at night of April 2, which resulted in deaths and injuries of civilians.
Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures have been destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the fights, the ministry said.
Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank damaged by a mine, according to the ministry.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The two countries signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Russia, France and the US are currently holding peace negotiations.
Armenia has not yet implemented the UN Security Council's four resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
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[ENGLISH.ALMANAR.LB] Sporadic fighting between Azeri and Armenian forces was reported Sunday, a day after Russia and the West appealed for calm following festivities that killed some 30 troops in the worst violence in decades over the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region. Nagorno-Karabakh is an Armenian enclave surrounded by Azerbijan. They've been fighting over it since the Soviet Unon broke up, and probably from before it was formed.
Both sides said there had been intermittent festivities overnight and on Sunday as well, accusing each other of using heavy weapons, tanks and artillery and of pulling the trigger first.
"Armenian armed forces violated the ceasefire 130 times during the night. They were shooting from mortars, grenade launchers, and large-caliber machine guns," Azerbaijan's defense ministry claimed in a statement.
"The shelling was carried out from both Armenian territory and from Armenian-occupied Karabakh," the statement said. "The Azerbaijani army returned fire."
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#1
Is there a group of Muslims anywhere who are not involved in a conflict with their neighbors?
[NBC] BEIJING -- Vietnam detained a Chinese ship for "illegally" entering its waters, state media reported, amid continued territorial tensions in the South China Sea.
The vessel was "carrying three Chinese sailors and 100,000 liters of oil [26,000 gallons] without clear origin" and it "illegally entered Vietnamese territory," Vietnam's official news agency reported.
It was seized Thursday by Hai Phong coastguards 12 nautical miles from the international boundary in the Gulf of Tonkin it said.
"The captain of the vessel admitted the oil was to be sold to other Chinese boats which were fishing illegally in Vietnam's waters," the report added.
Vietnam's Thanh Nien News said the ship's captain could not explain the origin of the oil while his two crew members did not have a work permit, citing the country's chief border guard.
There was no immediate reaction from China, which was observing a public holiday Monday.
#1
Take photos of the crew on their knees crying. The Chinese are bad neighbors. Hostility does exist towards them. The Chinese government seems to me like they consider their neighbors a lower form of life. As they treat North Korea. Simply buffers or wall from the rest of the world. Now that I think about this Tibet would certainly be another. Consider the artificial islands as well.
[ENGLISH.ALMANAR.LB] US Secretary of State John Kerry and fellow envoys from the G7, including nuclear powers Britain and France, will visit Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park this month, Japan announced.
Kerry will be the first US Secretary of State to have ever visited the iconic park, where he is set to lay flowers at the memorial dedicated to the victims of the world's first nuclear attack on August 6, 1945.
Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said late Saturday: "Foreign ministers from the G7 countries will all visit Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and offer flowers at the cenotaph for the victims on April 11."
The visit will take place on the sidelines of a foreign ministers' meeting this month, where the envoys are scheduled to hammer out the agenda for the G7 summit in May.
US officials are still considering a possible visit to Hiroshima by President Barack Obama during his trip to Japan for the meeting, however, no official announcement has been made.
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#3
US officials are still considering a possible visit to Hiroshima by President Barack Obama during his trip to Japan for the meeting, however, no official announcement has been made.
[DAWN] The sons and daughter of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... reportedly set up at least four offshore companies in British Virgin Islands (BVI), said a report released by International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on Sunday.
These companies owned at least six upmarket properties overlooking London’s Hyde Park, The Indian Express reported.
"Thousands of Mossack Fonseca (MF) documents reviewed by The Indian Express and subsequent enquiries reveal that the Sharif family mortgaged four of these properties to the Deutsche Bank (Suisse) SA for a loan of GBP 7 million and the Bank of Scotland part financed the purchase of two other apartments," it said.
Then there are all the others whose names appear in those leaked documents:
[IsraelTimes] Year-long investigation into 11.5 million leaked documents reveals vast network of banks, including some in Israel, shadow companies shuffling funds for the wealthy and powerful
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But the vexing accuracy gap isn’t about targeting innocent civilians or ending the world as we know it. If deterring war requires a capacity to limit the damage a nuclear-armed enemy could wreak, both a nuclear blast and pinpoint accuracy are believed required to disable or destroy the hardest targets, according to defense sources.
Air Force briefing slides reviewed by The Daily Beast characterize the Minuteman 3 as being 50 percent less accurate than the MX was. That could mean the difference between disabling a very hard target and leaving it untouched.
#4
Does it really take a direct hit by 1 MT warhead to knock out a hardened missile silo?
My gosh me, that's a thousand TONS or 2 million pounds of explosive. So you could level a major city and not dig a hole in the ground deep enough to disable a missile silo?? Wouldn't the zillion tons of debris piled on the blast doors be enough.
Please explain, my Combat Engineer explosives expertise can't comprehend why?
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#5
And I have to ask this question:
Is the Minute Man 3 the space command equivalent of the F-35?
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#6
No the Minuteman three is more like the Phantom.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[ClimateDepo] No, it is not an April Fools Day joke, snowflakes actually fell in the neighbouring French island of Guadeloupe.
This illustration depicts mooslims no longer in conflict with their neighbors. 
