USA
Biden to meet Kenya president as war roils nearby Ethiopia
President Joe Biden is set to hold his first one-on-one, in-person talks as president with an African leader on Thursday, hosting Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta as war and a humanitarian crisis roil neighboring Ethiopia, according to the White House.
The Oval Office talks come just weeks after Biden signed an executive order threatening to levy sanctions against Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and other leaders involved in a conflict gripping the Tigray region if steps aren't taken soon to wind down the 11-month-old war.
But the situation appears to have only worsened on the ground, with Tigray forces saying Ethiopia’s government has launched a long-threatened major military offensive against them in an attempt to end the war. A statement from the Tigray external affairs office earlier this week alleged that hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian “regular and irregular fighters” launched a coordinated assault on several fronts.
Kenya, which shares a border with Ethiopia, has long had a strong relationship with the U.S., partnering with Washington in efforts to thwart Islamic terrorism.
Kenya currently holds the presidency of the U.N. Security Council, a post that rotates monthly, one reason why Kenyatta is in the United States. Kenya also has been relatively vocal among African nations on the war in Ethiopia.
Speaking to reporters at the U.N. on Tuesday, Kenyatta said the two sides need to come to “a political resolution because we do not believe that there is any military solution."
The Biden administration is conducting an interagency review as it considers targets that might be hit by sanctions. The review is, in part, to make certain all agencies are “fully on board” with proposed targets, according to a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the internal deliberations.
The Biden administration has said it would move forward with sanctions quickly if there is not a dramatic shift on the ground. The United Nations has warned that hundreds of thousands are living in human-made famine-like conditions as the conflict festers.
With Ethiopia’s government rejecting international “meddling” in its affairs, recent emphasis has been placed on trying to find an African solution to the crisis that has killed thousands, some now by starvation.
The U.S. and United Nations say Ethiopian troops have prevented passage of trucks carrying food and other aid. Scores of people have starved to death, The Associated Press has reported.
The meeting with Kenyatta comes as the Kenyan leader has faced scrutiny over his and his family’s offshore holdings uncovered in the Pandora Papers.
Kenyatta is one of more than 330 current and former politicians identified as beneficiaries of the secret accounts unveiled in recent reporting by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The ICIJ found that as Kenyatta publicly campaigned against corruption, his family stowed away about $30 million in offshore wealth.
The Pandora Papers revelations are expected to be brought up during the Oval Office meeting, the administration official said.
Plane crash kills 2, burns homes in California neighborhood
A twin-engine plane that killed at least two people and left a swath of destruction in a San Diego suburb nose-dived into the ground after repeated warnings that it was flying dangerously low, according to a recording.
The Cessna 340 smashed into a UPS van, killing the driver, and then hit houses just after noon Monday in Santee, a suburb of 50,000 people. The pilot also is believed to have died, and at least two people on the ground were hurt, including a woman who was helped out the window of a burning home by neighbors.
An investigator from the National Transportation Safety Board was expected to be at the scene Tuesday morning, according to an agency tweet.
Read: Light aircraft crashes in Russia
The plane was heading in to land at Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport in San Diego when it crashed. Shortly before, when the plane was about a half-mile from the runway, an air traffic controller alerted the pilot that the aircraft was too low.
“Low altitude alert, climb immediately, climb the airplane,” the controller tells the pilot in audio obtained by KSWB-TV.
The controller repeatedly urges the plane to climb to 5,000 feet, and when it remains at 1,500 feet warns: “You appear to be descending again, sir.”
KGTV-TV, an ABC affiliate, posted video the station said it received from a viewer showing the plane arcing in the sky and then plunging into the neighborhood in a burst of flames.
The plane was owned by Dr. Sugata Das, who may have been piloting the aircraft and died in the crash.
He worked at Yuma Regional Medical Center in Arizona, the hospital's chief medical officer said.
Das, a licensed pilot, lived in San Diego and commuted back and forth to Yuba, according to a website for a non-profit organization he served as director. He leaves two young sons.
United Parcel Service of America Inc. confirmed one of its workers died, although the employee's name wasn't immediately released.
Read: Tourist helicopter crashes in Russian crater lake; 8 missing
People a block away from the scene said their homes shook from the thunderous crash.
Neighbors ran to help and helped rescue a couple believed to be in their 70s from one burning home.
Michael Keeley, 43, ran barefoot outside and saw flames engulfing the UPS truck and a home on the corner. He joined two neighbors at the burning home in calling through an open window.
With thick smoke inside the home and flames licking the roof, Keeley reached through the window to grab a woman’s arm and help her climb out. Her forearms were burned, and her hair was singed, he said.
“I’m glad I didn’t have to go inside with my bare feet,” said Keeley, a probation officer.
At the same time, other neighbors knocked down the couple’s fence to rescue the woman’s husband from the backyard.
Keeley said after the couple escaped to the sidewalk, the woman pleaded for help for her dog that was believed to be inside the home.
“She kept saying, ‘My puppy, my puppy,’ ” he said.
Read:28 feared dead in plane crash in Russia’s Far East
But moments later, there were explosions inside the home. The group helped the couple walk a safe distance away until paramedics arrived.
Andrew Pelloth, 30, lives across the street from the couple and was working from home when he heard a whirring and then a huge boom.
“My initial thought was that it was a meteorite coming down,” he said. “I could hear it falling, and then some kind of explosion.”
Pelloth looked outside and saw the UPS truck on fire. He grabbed a fire extinguisher and then joined other neighbors who pulled the boards off the couple’s fence to rescue the woman’s husband.
Erik Huppert, 57, who ran down to help after his house shook, said he saw the man walking in the backyard after they pulled off the boards.
“Both were definitely in shock, but at least they were alive,” said Huppert, a military contractor.
No one was home at the other house that was destroyed, which sold only a month ago, Pelloth said.
Brazil's COVID-19 death toll tops 600,000
Brazil, which has the world's second-highest death toll from COVID-19 behind the United States, saw its death toll exceed 600,000 on Friday.
According to the latest data from the Ministry of Health, the South American nation logged 600,425 deaths and 21,550,730 cases, after registering 615 deaths and 18,172 cases in the last 24 hours.
Brazil managed to emerge from the healthcare collapse caused by the second wave of COVID-19 infections between March and June, and is currently in a stable situation, with an average of 453 deaths per day, the lowest figure since November 2020.
READ: BGMEA seeks duty-free access to Brazil for RMG products
It took the country 111 days to go from 500,000 COVID-19 deaths to 600,000, in contrast to the 51-day period it took to jump from 400,000 to 500,000 deaths registered in the first half of the year.
Brazil has the third-largest caseload worldwide, after the United States and India.
READ: South America World Cup 2022 Qualifiers: Argentina, Brazil to face Uruguay in October
According to official data, Brazil has fully vaccinated 97.2 million people, or 45.5 percent of the population, while 148.8 million people, or 69.7 percent, have received one dose.
Pfizer's request to OK shots for kids a relief for parents
Parents tired of worrying about classroom outbreaks and sick of telling their elementary school-age children no to sleepovers and family gatherings felt a wave of relief Thursday when Pfizer asked the U.S. government to authorize its COVID-19 vaccine for youngsters ages 5 to 11.
If regulators give the go-ahead, reduced-dose kids’ shots could begin within a matter of weeks.
That could bring many families a step closer to being done with remote learning, virus scares and repeated school shutdowns and quarantines.
Also read: J&J seeks US clearance for COVID-19 vaccine booster doses
“My son asked about playing sports. ‘After you’re vaccinated.’ He asked about seeing his cousins again. ‘After you’re vaccinated.’ A lot of our plans are on hold,” said Sarah Staffiere of Waterville, Maine, whose 7-year-old has a rare immune disease that has forced the family to be extra cautious throughout the pandemic.
“When he’s vaccinated, it would give our family our lives back,” she said.
Expanding vaccine availability to roughly 28 million more U.S. children is seen as another milestone in the fight against the virus and comes amid an alarming rise in serious infections in youngsters because of the extra-contagious delta variant.
It would also push the U.S. vaccination drive further ahead of much of the rest of the world at a time when many poor countries are desperately short of vaccine.
The Food and Drug Administration must decide whether the shots are safe and effective in younger children.
Also read: Am I fully vaccinated without a COVID-19 vaccine booster?
Many parents and pediatricians are clamoring for protection for youngsters under 12, the current age cutoff for COVID-19 vaccinations in the U.S.
Nine-year-old Audrey Moulder, who lives in the Philadelphia suburb of Drexel Hill, is looking forward to visiting her grandmother without worrying she will give the older woman COVID-19.
“She’s excited because she thinks it’s a responsibility,” said her father, Justin Moulder. “She wants to keep her friends safe and her family safe.”
Dr. Amanda Powell, an internist and pediatrician who runs a clinic in Portland, Maine, is eager to set up worry-free play dates and plan a family trip again once her 9-year-old son is vaccinated.
“We want to be able to resume some normal activities,” she said.
But there are also plenty of parents who are wary about getting the shot themselves and are in no hurry to have their children vaccinated.
Heather Miller, a mother of four from Dexter, Maine, said she wants to wait for follow-up studies on the vaccine. “I’m not 100% against getting it eventually, but I kind of fall into the ‘not right now, wait and see’ category,” she said.
Cindy Schilling, an elementary school principal in West Virginia, which ranks dead last in the percentage of fully vaccinated residents, said it has been a rough start to the year because so many children are testing positive or quarantining at different times, making it hard for teachers and students to stay on track.
Still, she said she often hears parents say they are more concerned about the effects of the vaccine than COVID-19.
“Some parents are all for it and getting it for peace of mind,” she said, “but the majority of parents I’ve talked to will not be getting it.”
While kids are at lower risk of severe illness or death than older people, COVID-19 does sometimes kill children — at least 520 so far in the U.S., according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech said their research shows younger children should get one-third of the dose now given to everyone else. After their second dose, the 5- to 11-year-olds developed virus-fighting antibody levels just as strong as those that teens and young adults get from regular-strength shots.
On Oct. 26, an independent expert panel that advises the FDA will publicly debate the evidence. If the FDA authorizes emergency use of the kid-size doses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will make a final decision, after hearing from its outside advisers.
To avoid mix-ups, Pfizer is planning to ship the lower-dose vials specially marked for use in children.
It studied the lower dose in 2,268 volunteers ages 5 to 11 and said there were no serious side effects. The study isn’t large enough to detect any extremely rare side effects, such as the heart inflammation that sometimes occurs after the second dose of the regular-strength vaccine, mostly in young men.
Moderna has requested FDA permission to use its vaccine in 12- to 17-year-olds and also is studying its shots in elementary school children. Both Pfizer and Moderna are studying even younger children as well, down to 6-month-olds. Results are expected later in the year.
J&J seeks US clearance for COVID-19 vaccine booster doses
Johnson & Johnson asked the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday to allow extra shots of its COVID-19 vaccine as the U.S. government moves toward expanding its booster campaign to millions more vaccinated Americans.
J&J said it filed a request with the FDA to authorize boosters for people 18 and older who previously received the company's one-shot vaccine. While the company said it submitted data on several different booster intervals, ranging from two to six months, it did not formally recommend one to regulators.
Last month, the FDA authorized booster shots of Pfizer’s vaccine for older Americans and other groups with heightened vulnerability to COVID-19. It’s part of a sweeping effort by the Biden administration to shore up protection amid the delta variant and potential waning vaccine immunity.
Read:FDA adds warning about rare reaction to J&J COVID-19 vaccine
Government advisers backed the extra Pfizer shots, but they also worried about creating confusion for tens of millions of other Americans who received the Moderna and J&J shots. U.S. officials don't recommend mixing and matching different vaccine brands.
The FDA is convening its outside panel of advisers next week to review booster data from both J&J and Moderna. It’s the first step in a review process that also includes sign-off from the leadership of both the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If both agencies give the go-ahead, Americans could begin getting J&J and Moderna boosters later this month.
J&J previously released data suggesting its vaccine remains highly effective against COVID-19 at least five months after vaccination, demonstrating 81% effectiveness against hospitalizations in the U.S.
But company research shows a booster dose at either two or six months revved up immunity even further. Data released last month showed giving a booster at two months provided 94% protection against moderate-to-severe COVID-19 infection. The company has not yet released clinical data on a six-month booster shot.
FDA's advisers will review studies from the company and other researchers next Friday and vote on whether to recommend boosters.
The timing of the J&J filing was unusual given that the FDA had already scheduled its meeting on the company's data. Companies normally submit their requests well in advance of meeting announcements. A J&J executive said the company has been working with FDA on the review.
Read: To launch J&J Covid shot in India, Biological E begins talks with govt lab to test vaccine
“Both J&J and FDA have a sense of urgency because it’s COVID and we want good data out there converted into action as soon as possible,” said Dr. Mathai Mammen, head of research for J&J's Janssen unit.
The vaccine from the New Brunswick, New Jersey, company was considered an important tool in fighting the pandemic because it requires only one shot. But its rollout was hurt by a series of troubles, including manufacturing problems at a Baltimore factory that forced J&J to import millions of doses from overseas.
Additionally, regulators have added warnings of several rare side effects to the shot, including a blood clot disorder and a neurological reaction called Guillain-Barré syndrome. In both cases, regulators decided the benefits of the shot still outweighed those uncommon risks.
Rival drugmakers Pfizer and Moderna have provided the vast majority of U.S. COVID-19 vaccines. More than 170 million Americans have been fully vaccinated with the companies’ two-dose shots while less than 15 million Americans got the J&J shot.
Records show slow response to report of California oil spill
The U.S. Coast Guard received the first report of a possible oil spill off the Southern California coast more than 12 hours before a company reported the major leak in its pipeline and a cleanup effort was launched, records show.
Oil spill reports reviewed Monday by The Associated Press raise questions about the Coast Guard’s response to one of the state’s largest recent oil spills as well as how quickly Amplify Energy, the company operating three offshore platforms and the pipeline, recognized it had a problem and notified authorities.
Two early calls about the spill came into the National Response Center, which is staffed by the Coast Guard and notifies other agencies of disasters for quick response. The first was from an anchored ship that noticed a sheen on the water and the second, six hours later, from a federal agency that said a possible oil slick was spotted on satellite imagery, according to reports by the California Office of Emergency Services.
The spill sent up to 126,000 gallons (572,807 liters) of heavy crude into the ocean off Huntington Beach and it then washed onto miles of beaches and a protected marshland. The beaches could remain closed for weeks or longer, a major hit to the local economy. Coastal fisheries in the area are closed to commercial and recreational fishing.
Read: Firefighters advance on blaze that shut California highway
Gov. Gavin Newsom proclaimed a state of emergency in Orange County, directing state agencies “to undertake immediate and aggressive action to clean up and mitigate the effects" of the spill.
Experts say it’s too early to determine the full impact on the environment but that so far the number of animals found harmed is minimal.
Investigators are looking into whether a ship’s anchor may have struck a pipeline on the ocean floor, Coast Guard officials said Monday.
Amplify Energy CEO Martyn Willsher said company divers were inspecting the area of the suspected leak reported Saturday, and he expected that by Tuesday there would be a clearer picture of what caused the damage. Willsher said an anchor from a cargo ship striking the pipeline is “one of the distinct possibilities” behind the leak.
Cargo ships entering the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach routinely pass through the area. Backlogs have plagued the ports in recent months and several dozen or more of the giant vessels have regularly been anchored as they wait to enter the ports and unload.
“We’re looking into if it could have been an anchor from a ship, but that’s in the assessment phase right now,” Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Jeannie Shaye said.
Shaye said the Coast Guard was not notified of the disaster until Saturday morning, though records show its hazardous spill response hotline received the first report of a possible oil slick Friday evening.
A foreign ship anchored off the coast witnessed an “unknown sheen in the water near their vessel” at 6:13 p.m. and the report was called into the response center just after 8:22 p.m., according to the state report.
Lonnie Harrison Jr., vice president of Colonial Compliance Systems Inc., which works with foreign ships in U.S. waters to report spills, said one its clients reported the sighting.
Harrison, a retired Coast Guard captain, said the ship was not involved in the spill and was later given clearance over the weekend to enter the port to refuel after determining it wasn’t contaminated by the slick.
About six hours after the first report was received, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that satellite imagery spotted a possible oil slick more than 3 miles (5 kilometers) long. The report by the National Response Center said the image of a “possible oil anomaly” was probably associated with the first report.
“Although there were numerous vessels within immediate proximity to the anomaly, none were clearly associated with the anomaly,” the report said. “These factors prevented the possible identification of a point source. Still, the NRC report allows for high confidence that this was oil.”
The company that operates the pipeline first reported the spill to the Coast Guard’s response center at 8:55 a.m. Saturday. However, the report said the incident occurred at 2:30 a.m.
Federal and state authorities require rapid reporting of a spill. Failure to do so led to criminal prosecutions against Plains All American Pipeline, which caused a coastal spill near Santa Barbara in 2015, and Southern California Gas Co. for a massive well blowout later that year.
A 2016 spill response plan for the Amplify platforms submitted to federal regulators called for immediate notification of federal officials when more than one barrel of oil is released into the water. Releases greater than five barrels — or that threaten state waters or the shoreline — require immediate notification of the state fire marshal and California wildlife officials.
Read: California wildfire dangers may be spreading south
The pipeline was supposed to be monitored under an automated leak detection system that would report problems to a control room staffed around the clock on the oil platform known as Elly.
The system was designed to trigger an alarm whenever a change in the flow of oil is detected. But how fast it can pick up on those changes was expected to vary according to the size of the leak. For a large leak — 10% or more of the amount of oil flowing through the pipeline — the detection time was estimated at 5 minutes. Smaller leaks were expected to take up to 50 minutes to detect, according to the response plan.
The spill plan warned that a break in the pipeline could cause “substantial harm to the environment” and that in a worst-case scenario 3,111 barrels (131,000 gallons) of oil could be released from the pipeline.
Willsher said required agencies were notified “instantly” when the company recognized the leak was from its pipe. Records show the spill was not reported by Amplify Energy, but by Witt O’Brien’s, a crisis and emergency management firm listed on the spill response plan as the point of contact to notify the NRC.
The report said the leaking pipe had been shut off but containment was not confirmed. The cause of the rupture was unknown.
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said he has investigators looking into whether he can bring state charges for the spill even though the leak occurred in waters overseen by the U.S. government. Other potential criminal investigations were being pursued by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Coast Guard and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, officials said.
Safety advocates have pushed for years for federal rules that would strengthen oil spill detection requirements and force companies to install valves that can automatically shut down the flow of crude in case of a leak. The oil and pipeline industries have resisted such requirements because of the high cost.
“If the operator had more valves installed on this line, they’d have a much better chance at having the point of failure isolated by now,” said Bill Caram with the Pipeline Safety Trust, an organization based in Bellingham, Washington.
The pipeline was built using a process known as electric resistance weld, according to a regulatory filing from the company. That welding process has been linked to past oil pipeline failures because corrosion can occur along seams, according to government safety advisories and Caram.
Annual reports filed with federal regulators in 2019 and 2020 showed inspections for the inside and outside of the pipe revealed nothing requiring repairs.
Refugee admissions hit record low, despite Biden's reversal
Refugee admissions to the United States fell to a record low during the 2021 budget year, despite President Joe Biden's pledge to reverse the sharp cuts made by the Trump administration, according to figures obtained by The Associated Press.
A total of 11,445 refugees were allowed into the United States during the budget year that ended on Thursday, according to a person with access to the information who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the figure.
That number does not include the tens of thousands of Afghans brought to the United States as American troops withdrew from Afghanistan, ending the 20-year war there. Many of those Afghans were allowed into the country under a different legal status known as humanitarian parole, which is why they are not included in the refugee tally.
Read: Libya’s migrant roundup reaches 4,000 amid major crackdown
Still the number highlights Biden's challenges in reversing the restrictive refugee policies set by former President Donald Trump's administration, which targeted the program as part of a broader campaign to slash both legal and illegal immigration to the United States.
The U.S. president determines the cap on refugee admissions each budget year, which runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. Biden didn't take office until almost four months after the last fiscal year began.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the number.
The 11,445 refugee admissions total falls far below the nation’s cap of 62,500 for the 2021 budget year that Biden set in May. It's also below the record-low ceiling of 15,000 that Trump had initially set for the year.
Biden initially indicated he would not override the 15,000-person cap, saying in an emergency determination that it “remains justified by humanitarian concerns and is otherwise in the national interest."
But that brought sharp rebuke from Democratic allies who criticized him for not taking the symbolic step of authorizing more refugees this year. The White House quickly reversed course and raised the cap, though Biden said at the time that he did not expect the U.S. would meet the new 62,500 ceiling with only four months left in the 2021 budget year, given the ongoing restrictions put in place due to the coronavirus pandemic and work the administration says is needed to rebuild the program.
Refugee advocates said the record-low number reflects the damage done by the Trump administration to the program. Before the 2021 budget year, the lowest number of refugees allowed in was during the 2020 budget year when the number hit 11,814.
The historical yearly average was 95,000 under previous Republican and Democratic administrations.
The Biden administration has expanded the narrow eligibility criteria put in place by his predecessor that had kept out most refugees, among other steps. But critics say it's not enough and that the Biden administration has moved too slowly.
It remains to be seen whether refugee admissions will reach anywhere near the 125,000 cap that Biden has set for the current budget year, which started Friday.
Read:Many migrants staying in US even as expulsion flights rise
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, one of nine U.S. agencies working to resettle refugees, said efforts need to be accelerated to add personnel overseas, do more remote interviews and relieve the enormous backlog of refugee applications.
She said that while the program was gutted by the Trump administration, it is now Biden's responsibility to revive it.
“If we are to reach President Biden’s goal of welcoming 125,000 refugees, the administration must be aggressive and innovative in ramping up processing," she said in a statement.
Mark Hetfield of HIAS, another resettlement agency, agreed that Biden “should have done better."
“What this record low number really shows ... is that the administration needs to remove the red tape and other obstacles that hinder the resettlement program from effectively responding to emergencies like Afghanistan," he said.
Biden, who co-sponsored legislation creating the refugee program in 1980, has said reopening the door to refugees is “how we will restore the soul of our nation.”
'Pandora Papers' bring renewed calls for tax haven scrutiny
Calls grew Monday for an end to the financial secrecy that has allowed many of the world’s richest and most powerful people to hide their wealth from tax collectors.
The outcry came after a report revealed the way that world leaders, billionaires and others have used shell companies and offshore accounts to keep trillions of dollars out of government treasuries over the past quarter-century, limiting the resources for helping the poor or combating climate change.
The report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists brought promises of tax reform and demands for resignations and investigations, as well as explanations and denials from those targeted.
The investigation, dubbed the Pandora Papers, was published Sunday and involved 600 journalists from 150 media outlets in 117 countries.
Read: Leaked records open a 'Pandora' box of financial secrets
Hundreds of politicians, celebrities, religious leaders and drug dealers have used shell companies or other tactics to hide their wealth and investments in mansions, exclusive beachfront property, yachts and other assets, according to a review of nearly 12 million files obtained from 14 firms located around the world.
“The Pandora Papers is all about individuals using secrecy jurisdictions, which we would call tax havens, when the goal is to evade taxes,'' said Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in Washington.
The tax dodges can be legal.
Gabriel Zucman, a University of California, Berkeley, economist who studies income inequality and taxes, said in a statement one solution is “obvious’’: Ban “shell companies — corporations with no economic substance, whose sole purpose is to avoid taxes or other laws.’’
“The legality is the true scandal,'' activist and science-fiction author Cory Doctorow wrote on Twitter. “Each of these arrangements represents a risible fiction: a shell company is a business, a business is a person, that person resides in a file-drawer in the desk of a bank official on some distant treasure island.''
The more than 330 current and former politicians identified as beneficiaries of the secret accounts include Jordan’s King Abdullah II, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, Czech Republic Prime Minister Andrej Babis, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, Ecuador's President Guillermo Lasso, and associates of both Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Some of those targeted strongly denied the claims.
Oxfam International, a British consortium of charities, applauded the Pandora Papers for exposing brazen examples of greed that deprived countries of tax revenue that could be used to finance programs and projects for the greater good.
“This is where our missing hospitals are," Oxfam said in a statement. “This is where the pay-packets sit of all the extra teachers and firefighters and public servants we need."
The European Commission, the 27-nation European Union’s executive arm, said in response to the revelations that it is preparing new legislative proposals to enhance tax transparency and reinforce the fight against tax evasion.
The Pandora Papers are a follow-up to a similar project released in 2016 called the “Panama Papers" compiled by the same journalistic group.
The latest bombshell is even more expansive, relying on data leaked from 14 different service providers doing business in 38 different jurisdictions. The records date back to the 1970s, but most are from 1996 to 2020.
The investigation dug into accounts registered in familiar offshore havens, including the British Virgin Islands, Seychelles, Hong Kong and Belize. But some were also in trusts set up in the U.S., including 81 in South Dakota and 37 in Florida.
The document trove reveals how powerful people are able to deploy anonymous shell companies, trusts and other artifices to conceal the true owners of corrupt or illicit assets. Legally sanctioned trusts, for example, can be subject to abuse by tax evaders and fraudsters who crave the privacy and autonomy they offer compared with traditional business entities.
Shell companies, a favored tax evasion vehicle, are often layered in complex networks that conceal the identity of the beneficial owners of assets — those who ultimately control an offshore company or other asset, or benefit from it financially, while other people’s names are listed on registration documents. The report said, for example, that an offshore company was used to buy a $4 million Monaco apartment for a woman who reportedly carried on a secret relationship with Putin.
While a beneficial owner may be required to pay taxes in the home country, it’s often difficult for authorities to discover that an offshore account exists, especially if offshore governments don’t cooperate.
A Treasury Department agency working on new regulations for a U.S. beneficial ownership directory has been debating whether partnerships, trusts and other business entities should be included. Transparency advocates say they must or else criminals will devise new types of paper companies for slipping through the cracks.
Read:Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever
International bodies like the G7 group of wealthiest nations and the Financial Action Task Force have begun initiatives in recent years to improve ownership transparency, but the efforts have moved at a modest pace.
Pointing to the secrecy behind many of the tax dodges, some critics are calling for a global wealth registry that would make sham investments in shell companies public, embarrassing politicians or celebrities worried about their reputations.
In the U.S., the House passed legislation this summer that would require multinational corporations to publicly disclose their tax payments and other key financial information on a country-by-country basis. Anti-money laundering and corporate transparency measures were tucked into legislation funding the Defense Department; it has yet to be implemented by the Treasury Department.
The Biden administration is also pushing for U.S banks to be required to report customers’ account information to the IRS as part of the $3.5 trillion economic and social spending package before Congress. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other officials say it’s an important way to prevent tax dodging by wealthy individuals and companies, but it has raised fierce opposition from banking industry groups and Republican lawmakers, who maintain it would violate privacy and create unfair liability for banks.
Tax havens have already come under considerable scrutiny this year.
In July, negotiators from 130 countries agreed to a global minimum tax of at least 15% to prevent big multinational corporations from minimizing taxes by shifting profits from high- to low-tax jurisdictions such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. Details of the plan by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, have yet to be worked out; it's supposed to take effect in 2023.
And while the plan would cover huge multinational corporations, it would not include the shell companies and other entities behind the schemes described in the Pandora Papers.
Whistleblower: Facebook chose profit over public safety
A data scientist who was revealed Sunday as the Facebook whistleblower says that whenever there was a conflict between the public good and what benefited the company, the social media giant would choose its own interests.
Frances Haugen was identified in a “60 Minutes” interview Sunday as the woman who anonymously filed complaints with federal law enforcement that the company's own research shows how it magnifies hate and misinformation.
Haugen, who worked at Google and Pinterest before joining Facebook in 2019, said she had asked to work in an area of the company that fights misinformation, since she lost a friend to online conspiracy theories.
“Facebook, over and over again, has shown it chooses profit over safety,” she said. Haugen, who will testify before Congress this week, said she hopes that by coming forward the government will put regulations in place to govern the company's activities.
She said Facebook prematurely turned off safeguards designed to thwart misinformation and rabble rousing after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump last year, alleging that contributed to the deadly Jan. 6 invasion of the U.S. Capitol.
READ: Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram suffer worldwide outage
Post-election, the company dissolved a unit on civic integrity where she had been working, which Haugen said was the moment she realized “I don't trust that they're willing to actually invest what needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous.”
At issue are algorithms that govern what shows up on users' news feeds, and how they favor hateful content. Haugen said a 2018 change to the content flow contributed to more divisiveness and ill will in a network ostensibly created to bring people closer together.
Despite the enmity that the new algorithms were feeding, Facebook found that they helped keep people coming back — a pattern that helped the Menlo Park, California, social media giant sell more of the digital ads that generate most of its advertising.
Facebook’s annual revenue has more than doubled from $56 billion in 2018 to a projected $119 billion this year, based on the estimates of analysts surveyed by FactSet. Meanwhile, the company’s market value has soared from $375 billion at the end of 2018 to nearly $1 trillion now.
Can Democrats hold together? Biden's agenda depends on it
It’s one of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s favorite sayings, a guidepost for Democrats in trying times: "Our diversity is our strength. Our unity is our power.”
But as Democrats try to usher President Joe Biden's expansive federal government overhaul into law, it's the party's diversity of progressive and conservative views that's pulling them apart.
And only by staying unified does their no-votes-to-spare majority have any hope of pushing his rebuilding agenda into law.
Biden will set traveling to Michigan on Tuesday to speak directly to the American people on his vision: It's time to tax big business and the wealthy and invest that money into child care, health care, education and tackling climate change — what he sees as some of the nation's most pressing priorities.
Together, Biden, Pelosi and other Democrats are entering a highly uncertain time, the messy throes of legislating, in what will now be a longer-haul pursuit that could stretch for weeks, if not months, of negotiations.
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“Let me just tell you about negotiating: At the end, that’s when you really have to weigh in,” Pelosi said recently. “You cannot tire. You cannot concede.”
“This,” she added on a day when negotiations would stretch to midnight, “this is the fun part.”
The product — or the colossal failure to reach a deal — will define not only the first year of Biden's presidency, but the legacy of Pelosi and a generation of lawmakers in Congress, with ramifications for next year’s midterm elections. At stake is not only the scaled-back $3.5 trillion plan, but also the slimmer $1 trillion public works bill that is now stalled, intractably linked to the bigger bill.
As Democrats in Congress regroup, having blown Pelosi's self-imposed Friday deadline for passing legislation in the House amid bitter finger-pointing, they now face a new one, Oct. 31, to make gains on Biden's big plans. The $3.5 trillion package is being chiseled back to around $2 trillion and final approval of the Senate-passed $1 trillion public works bill is on hold, for now.
Attention remains squarely focused on two key holdouts, Sen. Joe Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who along with a small band of conservative House Democrats are the linchpins to any deal.
Biden is expected to be in touch as the senators return Monday to Washington. Pelosi has been in conversations with both West Virginia's Manchin and Arizona's Sinema.
“The president wants both bills and he expects to get both bills,” Biden adviser Cedric Richmond said on “Fox News Sunday.” “We’re going to continue to work on both.”
The inability to win over Manchin and Sinema to support Biden's broader vision contributed to the collapse last week of a promised House vote on their preferred $1 trillion public works bill, which they had negotiated with Biden.
Tempers flared and accusations flew over who was to blame. Progressives lashed out at the two senators for holding up Biden's big agenda; the centrists blamed Pelosi for reneging on the promised vote; and progressives were both celebrated and scolded for playing hardball, withholding their votes on the public works bill to force a broader agreement.
Ultimately Biden arrived on Capitol Hill late Friday afternoon to deliver a tough-love message to all of them — telling centrists they would not get their vote on the bipartisan deal he helped broker until the progressives had a commitment on the broader package and warning progressives the big bill's price tag would likely come down to around $2 trillion.
In many ways, the weeks ahead are reminiscent of the last big legislative undertaking by Democrats pushing the Affordable Care Act toward the finish line during the Obama administration.
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No one doubts Pelosi — and Biden — can do it again. But the fight ahead is certain to be politically painful.
With no support from Republicans who deride Biden's vision as socialist-style big government, Democrats must decide among themselves what size package can win over support in the 50-50 Senate and narrowly held House.
Paid for by raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy, those individuals earning more than $400,000 a year, or $450,000 for couples, the measure, Biden insists, will carry an overall price tag of “zero.”
Still, private discussions about trimming back various programs have now delved deeper into conversations over wholesale cuts that may need to be made. It's all on the table.
For example, will the push from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to expand Medicare to include dental, vision and other health care benefits survive? Or will those benefits have to be scrapped or reduced?
What about the new child care subsidies or COVID-19-related tax credits for families with children — will those be able to run for several years or have to be scaled back to just a few?
Will free community college be available to all, or only those of lower incomes, as Manchin proposes?
Can Biden's effort to tackle climate change be extended beyond the money already approved for electric vehicles and weather-resilient buildings in the public works bill?
"What we have said from the beginning is, it’s never been about the price tag. It’s about what we want to deliver,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., a leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, in a Sunday interview on CNN.
“The president said this to us, too. He said don’t start with the number. Start with what you’re for,” she said.
Pelosi has been working the phones to win over Manchin and Sinema, who in many ways are outliers among Democrats in the House and Senate who lean more progressive.
The two senators' prominence has morphed beyond the beltway into popular culture — Sinema was lampooned on “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend, while a flotilla of kayak-activists recently swarmed Manchin's D.C. houseboat.
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Pelosi and Sinema had a prickly relationship when the Arizonan first joined Congress, but they now share a common interest in tackling climate change.
Manchin and Pelosi have a warmer alliance, and she showered the senator with praise as someone with whom she shared values as Italian Americans and Roman Catholics. “We’re friends,” she said.
But Pelosi has made it clear she is prepared to fight to the finish for a bill she called the “culmination of my service in Congress."
At a private caucus meeting last week, when one lawmaker suggested she had gone back on her word to have the infrastructure vote, she said that was before some among them were joining with the senators to reject Biden's broader plan, according to a person who requested anonymity to recount her private remarks.
“Let’s try to at least stick together,” Pelosi implored the Democrats.