Archives for June 2016

The Shadow Doctors: The underground race to spread medical knowledge as the Syrian regime erases it

Ben Taub, The Shadow Doctors: The underground race to spread medical knowledge as the Syrian regime erases it. The New Yorker, 27 June 2016. “In the past five years [2011-2016], the Syrian government has assassinated, bombed, and tortured to death almost seven hundred medical personnel, according to Physicians for Human Rights, an organization that documents attacks on medical care in war zones. (Non-state actors, including ISIS, have killed twenty-seven.) Recent headlines announced the death of the last pediatrician in Aleppo, the last cardiologist in Hama. A United Nations commission concluded that “government forces deliberately target medical personnel to gain military advantage,” denying treatment to wounded fighters and civilians “as a matter of policy.””

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How Donald Trump Bankrupted His Atlantic City Casinos, but Still Earned Millions

Russ Buettner and Charles V. Bagli, How Donald Trump Bankrupted His Atlantic City Casinos, but Still Earned Millions. The New York Times, 11 June 2016. “[Trump’s] audacious personality and opulent properties brought attention — and countless players — to Atlantic City as it sought to overtake Las Vegas as the country’s gambling capital. But a close examination of regulatory reviews, court records and security filings by The New York Times leaves little doubt that Mr. Trump’s casino business was a protracted failure. Though he now says his casinos were overtaken by the same tidal wave that eventually slammed this seaside city’s gambling industry, in reality he was failing in Atlantic City long before Atlantic City itself was failing.”

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Hundreds allege Donald Trump doesn’t pay his bills

Steve Reilly, Hundreds allege Donald Trump doesn’t pay his bills. USA Today, 9 June 2016. “Donald Trump casts himself as a protector of workers and jobs, but a USA Today Network investigation found hundreds of people–carpenters, dishwashers, painters, even his own lawyers–who say he didn’t pay them for their work.”

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Panama Papers Show How Rich United States Clients Hid Millions Abroad

Eric Lipton and Julie Creswell, Panama Papers Show How Rich United States Clients Hid Millions Abroad. The New York Times, 5 June 2016. Financial transactions “for a stable of wealthy clients from the United States are outlined in extraordinary detail in the trove of internal Mossack Fonseca documents known as the Panama Papers. The materials were obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and have now been shared with The New York Times. In recent weeks, the papers’ revelations about Mossack Fonseca’s international clientele have shaken the financial world. The Times’s examination of the files found that Mossack Fonseca also had at least 2,400 United States-based clients over the past decade, and set up at least 2,800 companies on their behalf in the British Virgin Islands, Panama, the Seychelles and other jurisdictions that specialize in helping hide wealth…. For many of its American clients, Mossack Fonseca offered a how-to guide of sorts on skirting or evading United States tax and financial disclosure laws.”

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