Americas

Days before the ICIJ released this weekend's trove of "Panama Papers" international tax haven data involving Panamaian law firm Mossack Fonseca, Bloomberg conducted an interview on March 29 with the two founding lawyers. In it, it found that even before the full leak was about to be made semi-public (any of the at least 441 US clients are still to be disclosed), the Panama law firm knew that the game was already largely over.

In 1937 the CIA authorised a plan to ethnically cleanse the entire Haitian population by orchestrating Plan Osorio – a U.S. government-backed project that allowed the brutal murder of 6,000 Haitians in the Dominican Republic.  Over the next few decades, the U.S. government continued its eugenics program on the Haitians via biological and weather warfare. Abreureport.com reports: The dictator of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo, was not a very articulate man, and he was a poor orator; most Dominicans today would not recognize his voice.

Scientists have announced plans to shine laser beams into space in an effort to protect the earth from an incoming alien invasion.  Two US-based astronomers suggest the lasers could be used to cloak the earth’s biosignature from malicious intelligence lifeforms, making them believe that the planet is effectively ‘dead’ and thus not worth exploring. BBC News reports: A number of researchers have questioned the wisdom of advertising our existence to the galaxy. They fear that if aliens did visit us they might not be very friendly, and could introduce disease.

As President Obama explained in his Townhall in Cuba...

Having spent a couple of days glad-handing (and watching baseball) with Raul Castro in Cuba, 89-year-old Fidel Castro has come out swinging against "the empire" with a bristling 1500-word open letter recounting the history of US aggression against Cuba suggesting Obama "reflects and doesn't try to develop theories about Cuban politics." Despite all of The White House's claims of progress, Castro rages "we don't need the empire to give us any presents."