Thursday, September 19, 2019

How the super-rich stay safe today


Plant four rows of squash: squash gossip - squash indifference - squash grumbling - squash selfishness 

How the super-rich stay safe today
Joe Shute, via The Telegraph
Cybersecurity, tracking devices, and female bodyguards.


Now that's what we're Tolkien about: You need one storage system to rule them all and in the darkness bind themAn argument in favor of a single source of truth in your organization
Tolkien 


Donations gnaw at the integrity of an MP

Like most MPs with a past before politics, I found sniffing out the rat walking into the electorate office with a sheaf of papers demanding a favour came easily.



The expanding gap between rich and poor is not only widening the gulf in incomes and wealth in America. It is helping the rich lead longer lives, while cutting short the lives of those who are struggling, according to a study released this week by the Government Accountability Office [Income and Wealth Disparities Continue through Old Age].
Almost three-quarters of rich Americans who were in their 50s and 60s in 1992 were still alive in 2014. Just over half of poor Americans in their 50s and 60s in 1992 made it to 2014.





Emojis Have Unsettled Grammar Rules (and Why Lawyers Should Care) – Eric Goldman discusses a new article by three Dutch researchers on the grammar of emojis, or more precisely, the lack thereof. Their abstract concludes: “while emoji may follow tendencies in their interactions with grammatical structure in multimodal text-emoji productions, they lack grammatical structure on their own.” Goldman states, in other words, when emoji symbols are strung together, we don’t have a reliable way of interpreting their meaning. He goes on to discuss the impact of emojis and the law.

‘Game of Thrones’ prequel series about the Targaryen family in development at HBO, reports say CNBC. I wish Martin would have finished the books, particularly with a more fitting ending, but he’s not about to undermine the franchise.


You might be able to silence one journalist but not hundreds of journalists,” our Hungarian partner Blanka Zöldi told the first L.A. Press Freedom Week event last night. She took the stage with Maria Ressa from Rappler, Kathleen Carroll from the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Terry Tang from the LA Times. As our director of strategic initiatives Marina Walker Guevara said, it was an “all female, all star panel of courageous journalists.” 
Follow our coverage on Twitter tonight – #PressFreedomWeek!

COUNTING THE DEAD

“Everyone who has been murdered should be remembered,” says Patrick Ball, a statistician with the Human Rights Data Analysis Group. Ball helped a group of investigative reporters count the number of unreported murders in the Philippines' bloody war on drugs. Working with the journalists, he used a  statistical technique to analyze data they’d collected from interviews, police records and human rights groups.

DEAL OR NO DEAL?

Has Odebrecht lived up to its obligations under a 2016 plea agreement to fully disclose all of its illegal activities to the United States, Brazilian and Swiss authorities? That’s the question U.S. Senator Marco Rubio is asking after our investigation, Bribery Division, revealed millions of dollars in secret payments by the company. Rubio wants the U.S. Department of Justice to look into whether the disgraced multinational fully confessed its crimes to authorities. He also suggested that prosecutors could reopen their investigation into the company.

LUXEMBOURG’S FAIL

The nation at the center of our 2014 investigation, Lux Leaks, has fallen further behind European anti-money laundering rules. Luxembourg authorities have granted companies an extra three months to register their beneficial ownership details after more than 68,000 failed to meet the deadline.

SHAM COMPANIES

The Panama Papers are “are not reliable enough to serve as a basis for sanctions,” according to Ramses Owens’ lawyer. Owens, a former Mossack Fonseca employee, is one of the four people charged in the U.S. in relation to our 2016 investigation. Owens’ lawyer wants to stop prosecutors using leaked and legal documents in their case, but U.S. attorneys asked the judge to ignore the request. They argue Owens helped clients “create and manage sham foundations” to conceal income.

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