Here is a news article: Image caption The deposits came from 8,000-year-old sediment cores from Bouldnor Cliff, near Yarmouth

 DNA from an archaeological site off the Isle of Wight suggests there was an international wheat trade 2,000 years before agriculture came to Britain.

 Scientists analysing the DNA fragments from the underwater site said they matched wheat strains but there was no evidence of cultivation.

 The deposits came from 8,000-year-old sediment cores from Bouldnor Cliff.

 When the DNA was deposited, the English Channel was yet to be formed and Britain was part of mainland Europe.

 Agriculture was unknown in Britain until about 6,000 years ago so the discovery suggests trade between English hunter gatherers and Neolithic farmers must have existed for thousands of years previously.

 Unanswered questions

 Lead researcher Dr Robin Allaby, of the University of Warwick, said: "We found ancient DNA evidence of wheat that was not seen in mainland Britain for another 2,000 years. However, it was already being grown in southern Europe.

 "This is incredibly exciting because it means Bouldnor's inhabitants were not as isolated as previously thought.

 "In fact they were in touch, one way or another, with more advanced Neolithic farming communities in southern Europe."

 Dr Allaby said many questions remained unanswered and more research was needed.

 Bouldnor Cliff, identified as the site of an ancient Mesolithic settlement in 1999, lies 11 metres (36ft) below the surface of the Solent, near Yarmouth.

 It forms part of the Solent Maritime Special Area of Conservation. ||||| Food For Thought

 Stone Age Britons Were Eating Wheat 2,000 Years Before They Farmed It

 i itoggle caption Darren Staples/Reuters/Landov Darren Staples/Reuters/Landov

 Scientists have learned a lot about our distant ancestors from DNA that's thousands of years old. Like the fact that we've inherited some Neanderthal DNA, so apparently our ancestors mated with them. Now there's new research from DNA that moves on from paleo-mating to paleo-eating.

 About 10,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers in the Near East figured out how to grow cereal crops like wheat. The farming culture spread, and wherever it went, people traded in their spears for plows.

 That's the conventional view. Apparently, it was more complicated than that.

 Evidence comes from archaeologists who've been digging into Bouldnor Cliff, a submerged prehistoric site off the coast of the Isle of Wight, in the south of Great Britain. They found tools, burned nutshells and animal remains and worked wood.

 "We sort of got the lunch spot of this boat-building workshop 8,000 years ago," says Robin Allaby, a molecular archaeologist at the University of Warwick in England.

 He says even though the locals could build boats, they were still hunter-gatherers. Agriculture didn't take off in Britain for another 2,000 years.

 And yet he found DNA from cultivated wheat along with the lunchtime paraphernalia. He didn't find any wheat pollen at all, so it wasn't grown there. In fact, there's never been evidence that wheat was cultivated in Britain earlier than about 6,000 years ago.

 i itoggle caption Courtesy of Roland Brookes Courtesy of Roland Brookes

 Which meant the Brits must have been getting wheat from someone else, grown somewhere else.

 Writing in the journal Science, Allaby says that apparently Stone Age Britons weren't isolated on their little island. It seems they were getting their wheat from Europe, where agriculture had already established itself.

 "They were perfectly happy with using the products of agriculture," he says, "but they didn't actually start farming themselves. They were interacting with the farmers some ways away, contributing to this process [of creating a Neolithic agricultural society], which is not the conventional view."

 He suspects that farmers from what is now France established a regular wheat trade across the English Channel, which was narrower and shallower at the time. Which meant that the Stone Age Brits could have their cake and eat it, too. ||||| OSLO Stone Age Britons imported wheat about 8,000 years ago in a surprising sign of sophistication for primitive hunter-gatherers long viewed as isolated from European agriculture, a study showed on Thursday.

 British scientists found traces of wheat DNA in a Stone Age site off the south coast of England near the Isle of Wight, giving an unexpected sign of contact between ancient hunter-gatherers and farmers who eventually replaced them.

 The wheat DNA was dated to 8,000 years ago, 2,000 years before Stone Age people in mainland Britain started growing cereals and 400 years before farming reached what is now northern Germany or France, they wrote in the journal Science.

 "We were surprised to find wheat," co-author Robin Allaby of the University of Warwick told Reuters of finds at Bouldnor Cliff.

 "This is a smoking gun of cultural interaction," between primitive hunter-gatherers in Britain and farmers in Europe, he said of the findings in the journal Science.

 "It will upset archaeologists. The conventional view of Britain at the time was that it was cut off," he said. "We can only speculate how they got wheat -- it could have been trade, a gift or stolen."

 The scientists also found DNA of oak, poplar and beech and of dogs or wolves, deer, grouse and auroch, a type of cow. There was no trace of wheat pollen in the samples, indicating that it was not grown locally.

 The scientists found the DNA at what was apparently a pre-historic site for boat building. The sediments are now 11.5 metres (38 feet) below sea level.

 Britain used to be connected by land to Europe during the Ice Age but melting icecaps pushed seas higher about 10,000 years ago. A land bridge may have lingered 8,000 years ago.

 Farming reaching the Balkans about 8-9,000 years ago from the Middle East and eventually spread throughout Europe.

 Greger Larson, an American archaeologist at Oxford University who was not involved in the study, praised the experts for extensive checks to ensure against mis-interpretation or contamination of DNA.

 The find of wheat "will make us re-evaluate the relationships between farmers and hunter-gatherers," he told Reuters.

 He said there has been other signs of contacts, including bones of domesticated pigs in Germany in Stone Age hunter-gatherer settlements. "There are trade networks that pre-date agriculture," he said.

 (Reporting By Alister Doyle) |||||
A summary of this is?

– Scientists studying a Stone Age site in Britain came across something that by all rights shouldn't have been there: wheat. More specifically, the researchers found the DNA of wheat dating back 8,000 years off the coast of the Isle of Wight, reports Reuters. That's about 2,000 years before ancient Brits began growing it, but scientists don't think this means that hunter-gatherers in the region were farming earlier than thought. In fact, the lack of wheat pollen at the site suggests it wasn't cultivated there at all. Instead, the scientists say it shows that these old inhabitants were in contact with farmers elsewhere in Europe and participating in a heretofore unknown "international wheat trade," reports the BBC. "This is a smoking gun of cultural interaction," says a co-author of the study in Science. "The conventional view of Britain at the time was that it was cut off," but the find very much suggests otherwise. "We can only speculate how they got wheat—it could have been trade, a gift, or stolen." The best guess is that the wheat came from farmers in what is now France, reports NPR. It's also possible that a land bridge existed at the time linking Britain to Europe, one now covered by the English Channel. The research site itself, called Bouldnor Cliff, is now underwater, but researchers think it was used for boat-building back in its day. (Click to read about how other ancients used flour to try to predict the future.)


– Looks like there's still some life in the 84-year-old media tycoon the Brits know as the "Dirty Digger." Rupert Murdoch announced his engagement to 59-year-old former supermodel Jerry Hall in a discreet advertisement in the Times, reports the Guardian, which notes that the ad would have cost him $436 if his News Corp. company didn't own the newspaper. "Mr Rupert Murdoch, father of Prudence, Elisabeth, Lachlan, James, Grace, and Chloe Murdoch, and Miss Jerry Hall, mother of Elizabeth, James, Georgia, and Gabriel Jagger, are delighted to announce their engagement," the notice reads. Murdoch and Hall—who was in a long relationship with Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger that ended in 1999—started dating around four months ago and he proposed after the Golden Globes ceremony on Sunday, according to the Times. This will be the fourth marriage for Murdoch, who split up with third wife Wendi Deng in 2013 amid rumors that she had been having an affair with Tony Blair, reports the New York Daily News. (After her split from Jagger, Hall said her daughters wouldn't end up dating womanizers like their rock star father.)

Expand this summary.

Murdoch and Hall’s engagement notice appeared in the births, marriages and deaths section of the Times newspaper in London

 Rupert Murdoch has announced his engagement to Jerry Hall in the births, marriages and deaths section of the Times newspaper in London.

 The Rupert and Jerry show: more gripping than Dynasty or Empire Read more

 The 84-year-old media mogul and the 59-year-old former supermodel have been dating for four months after being introduced by Murdoch’s sister and niece in Australia.

 Their relationship became public knowledge after they appeared together at the rugby World Cup final at Twickenham in London in October.

 They were engaged over the weekend in Los Angeles, where they attended the Golden Globes.

 The notice appeared in the Tuesday 12 January edition of the Times. The newspaper also ran a news story online, behind its paywall.

 “Mr Rupert Murdoch, father of Prudence, Elisabeth, Lachlan, James, Grace and Chloe Murdoch, and Miss Jerry Hall, mother of Elizabeth, James, Georgia and Gabriel Jagger, are delighted to announce their engagement.”

 An announcement in the Times newspaper on 12 January. With black border Photograph: The Times

 Guardian Australia investigations suggest Murdoch could have paid close to £300 ($US436) for the classified, though as the executive chairman of News Corporation, which owns the Times, it seems reasonable to assume that he would not have paid full price.

 He, or his representative, did shell out extra for a black border.

 News Corp Australia journalists have been among those to congratulate the couple on social media.

 Luke Dennehy (@LukeDennehy) Congratulations to @rupertmurdoch and Jerry Hall on their engagement.

 This will be Murdoch’s fourth marriage, and Hall’s second – or first, depending on how much credence you give Mick Jagger’s claim, made during divorce proceedings in 1999, that their Hindu ceremony in Bali in 1990 was invalid.

 Murdoch has been married to former flight attendant Patricia Booker, journalist Anna Torv and most recently Wendi Deng, whom he divorced in 2013 after 14 years of marriage.

 The Times quoted a spokesman for the Murdoch family as saying, “They have loved these past months together, are thrilled to be getting married and excited about their future.”

 A source told the Daily Mail that “he is very happy, and she makes him laugh”.

 Elsewhere the relationship has been credited as responsible for Murdoch’s “renewed vigour”. ||||| Former model Jerry Hall didn’t get what she wanted then, but is she now getting what she needs?

 The Texas-born stunner is trading in life as the woman Rolling Stone Mick Jagger never married to become the fourth Mrs. Rupert Murdoch.

 The November-December couple — she’s 59 to his 84 — made the announcement Monday in The Times of London, which Murdoch owns.

 RUPERT MURDOCH APOLOGIZES FOR 'REAL BLACK PRESIDENT' REMARK

 “It’s ridiculous to watch them together. Beauty and the Beast,” said a source familiar with the courtship.

 Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall seen at Twentieth Century Fox Golden Globes Party on Sunday, Jan. 10, 2015, in Beverly Hills, CA. (Eric Charbonneau/Eric Charbonneau/Invision/AP)

 Murdoch is executive chairman at News Corp., which also owns the downmarket New York Post. He has written checks for years to the tune of hundreds of millions to keep the flailing tabloid afloat. Despite his best efforts, the money-losing rag continues to be irrelevant, most say.

 “Mr. Rupert Murdoch ... and Miss Jerry Hall ... are delighted to announce their engagement,” the London Times announcement read.

 The unlikely duo apparently met four months ago and have been dating ever since.

 FBI SEIZES EMAIL FROM NEWS CORP. IN PHONE HACKING SCANDAL

 “They have loved these past months together, are thrilled to be getting married and excited about their future,” a Murdoch family rep told the London newspaper.

 Others do not so warmly share their bliss.

 “They say love is blind,” sniped a Murdoch insider.

 According to the London Times, the bald and saggy octogenarian was introduced to the still-statuesque blonde in his native Australia by one of his sisters and a niece. The mismatched duo got engaged in Los Angeles over the weekend while in town for the Golden Globes, the report said.

 Hall had four children with Jagger.

 Their 22-year relationship ended in 1999.

 Jerry Hall, right, shown in this 1988 file photo with Mick Jagger, (SUSAN RAGAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

 Murdoch married Patricia Booker in 1956, but ditched the former flight attendant in 1967. That was the same year he married Anna Maria Mann, a Scottish journalist 15 years his junior who was toiling at one of his newspapers.

 He divorced her in June 1999 and 17 days later married the woman his intimates nicknamed “The Gold Digger.”

 MURDOCH EX DENG POSSIBLY CHEATED WITH TONY BLAIR

 Wendi Deng, a Chinese-born businesswoman, had worked her way into the upper echelon at Murdoch’s media empire. She solidified her standing as a fierce protector of the family interests in 2011, when she slapped away a pie a comedian threw at her decrepit husband’s head as he testified about a phone hacking scandal at one of his tawdry London tabs. That earned her another moniker: “Crouching Wendi: Hidden Tiger.”

 Murdoch dumped Deng in 2013 amid rampant rumors she had fallen in love with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The media mogul suspected the two had an affair and reportedly cut all ties with Blair, a longtime friend who was godfather to the youngest of two girls Murdoch had with Deng. |||||


News article:

Panic! at the Disco frontman Brendon Urie is giving new meaning to the band’s queer anthem “Girls/Girls/Boys.” In a new interview with Paper magazine, the musician opened up about his sexuality, identifying as pansexual.

 “I’m married to a woman and I’m very much in love with her, but I’m not opposed to a man because to me, I like a person,” Urie said. “I guess you could qualify me as pansexual because I really don’t care. If a person is great, then a person is great. I just like good people, if your heart’s in the right place. I’m definitely attracted to men. It’s just people that I am attracted to.”

 “I guess this is me coming out as pansexual,” he added.

 Urie has been recognized as an advocate for the LGBT community since Panic! dropped “Girls/Girls/Boys” in 2013 as part of the band’s fourth studio album, “Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die!” The song, which is about a woman who loves both men and women, has since become a staple for Panic!’s live sets, during which fans wave pride flags and rainbow signs.

 “That song was about my first threesome, but they made it about coming out and accepting who you are as a person, which I thought, ‘What a way better message,'” Urie said. “Taking this thing that I wrote about and then changing it to be more inspiring for your own purposes — what a beautiful idea.”

 The singer also discussed what he used to call his “stage gay” persona, which he acknowledged has made some uncomfortable in the past.

 “For our first headline tour I would go up to Ryan, our guitar player, and like kiss him on the neck or kiss him on the mouth, and he would be so mad,” Urie said. “I was like, ‘I just want to kiss you, bro.’ I would hang out with friends and after five or six beers, we’re just kind of like smooching on each other. People just get hammered and fool around.”

 Urie also recently starred on Broadway in “Kinky Boots,” which features LGBT themes and celebrates drag queen culture. Panic!’s latest album, “Pray for the Wicked,” dropped on June 22. ||||| This will appear next to all of your comments

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What is a shorter version of the above article?

– The head vocalist in rock band Panic! At The Disco has come out as pansexual. Brendon Urie opened up about his sexuality in a recent interview in Paper magazine, per BuzzFeed. While the crooner is married to a woman, he told the magazine that it's the person, not the gender, that he's attracted to. "If a person is great, then a person is great. I just like good people, if your heart’s in the right place. I’m definitely attracted to men. It’s just people that I am attracted to," he said. As Variety notes, the revelation should come as no real shock to Panic! fans. The band's song “Girls/Girls/Boys," about a woman who loves men and women, won praise from the LGBT community when it appeared on their fourth studio album back in 2013. Per the AP, Urie recently launched a non-profit aimed at supporting "communities subject to discrimination or abuse on the basis of gender, race, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity."


Write an article based on this summary:

– Andre Davis served 32 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit. Now he might be going back for one that prosecutors say he did. As NBC Chicago explains, Davis served his lengthy prison sentence after being convicted of the 1980 rape and murder of a young girl, but he was released in 2012 after DNA evidence overturned the conviction. He had been a free man since—until this week, when he got arrested and charged with the kidnapping and murder of a 19-year-old, reports the Sun-Times. Police say the victim got into a fight with Davis' nephew during a house party, and the nephew shot him. According to prosecutors, witnesses say the victim was still alive when Davis put the teen into his trunk and said he would find a place to dump the body, reports the Chicago Tribune. He told another witness the next day that he cut the victim's throat, say prosecutors. Both he and his nephew have been charged, and Davis is once again behind bars awaiting trial. For an in-depth look at the original case, see the Chicago Reader. (Click to read about another man who spent three decades on death row before his exoneration.)

Cops: 2nd man charged in man killed over dice game

 Derrick A. Hillard, 37, of the 8300 block of South King Drive, has been charged with with first-degree murder and one count of unlawful use of a weapon by a felon for the Oct. 6 slaying of Jamal Harmon, said police.

 A second man has been charged this evening in connection with a 2013 slaying of a 19-year-old man whose body was dumped in a South Side alley after an argument over a dice game, said officials.

 Hillard's uncle, Andre Davis, 52, of the 8200 block of South Eberhart Avenue, was charged earlier this week in connection with the slaying.

 Prosecutors had said earlier that Harmon had been at a party at a previous home of the nephew near the 6500 block of Ross Avenue, when he got into an argument with the nephew about losing money in a dice game.

 Prosecutors said the nephew went into the house and came back with a gun and shot Harmon. Another attacker also shot Harmon. A witness said Harmon was still alive after being shot, and Davis ordered another person to help him move Harmon. They carried Harmon to a trunk of a Cadillac, said prosecutors.

 Davis drove away with Harmon in the trunk and witnesses said he told them he was going to find somewhere to dump Harmon's body, said prosecutors at Davis' bond hearing. They said Davis admitted to witnesses to cutting Harmon's throat.

 Harmon's body was discovered about 7:30 a.m. on Oct. 26 in an alley on the 7600 block of South Carpenter Street in the city's Gresham neighborhood, said police.

 Harmon was shot three times in the face, neck and left side. He also was stabbed twice in the torso and suffered two cuts on the front of his neck, said prosecutors earlier this week.

 Davis was arrested Wednesday morning at his home. He was charged with murder and kidnapping, said police.

 Hillard is scheduled to appear in Central Bond Court Saturday afternoon.

 dawilliams@tribune.com

 Twitter: @neacynewslady ||||| Part one of two. Read part two here.

 On a summer day in 1980, 19-year-old Andre Davis stepped off a train 125 miles south of his native Chicago. He expected his visit would last the summer. Little did he know he wouldn't return home for more than 30 years.

 Andre had just graduated from high school and traveled to the central Illinois town of Rantoul, population 20,000, to learn his father's business. Richard Davis—known as "Crazy Legs" for his brilliant moves on the dance floor—was a disc jockey serving nearby Chanute Air Force Base.

 Andre had grown up on Chicago's south side, where he lived with his mother, Emma, who owned a beauty salon. Emma and Richard had divorced when Andre was two, and though Andre didn't see much of his father, he had an extended family to rely on. Andre's grandfather had moved to Chicago from the south in the 1920s, part of the initial Great Migration of African-Americans. He started a corner store and was later successful in real estate. In decades of difficulty for so many blacks, members of the Davis family attended college and went on to lucrative careers. They were, as several of them proudly put it, pillars of the community—lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, teachers, and scholars.

 Andre's mother recalls that her son was a good student but also a "typical teenager." "He always did very well in school, but was bored by it," she says. She believes that boredom, perhaps accentuated by the sporadic presence of his father, led to Andre acting out. In his early teens, Andre started breaking curfew and running away from home for short periods. A few years later, he faced an auto-theft charge for what he calls "a joy ride" that left him in the hospital. "He was hanging out with the bad boys on the block," Emma Davis says, "and they were a bad influence on him."

 Some time spent in Rantoul, his family thought, would be good for him.

 Rantoul was a far cry from Chicago. Historically, the town has averaged less than a murder per year. Blacks accounted for just 10 percent of the population. Former police chief Eldon Quick says that gangs have always been nonexistent and race relations in the town "were not a big deal." Still, the small African-American population felt it was necessary to stick together. Andre's father had a big network—most of the parties he DJed were thrown on the base, where Crazy Legs was the man to know. And so Andre instantly had a network, too.

 When Andre arrived at the train station, he was greeted by Crazy Legs and his friend Donald "Don Juan" Douroux. Andre quickly took to Don, who had enlisted in the Air Force several years prior, was discharged in 1979, and decided to stick around Rantoul with a girlfriend while attending nearby Parkland College. It was also through his father that Andre met Lutellis "Sonny" Tucker. Sonny had five kids, was divorced, and lived two blocks from Crazy Legs. Sonny's kids came and stayed with him occasionally, but mostly they lived with their mother in Gary, Indiana, Sonny's hometown. Sonny's brother, Maurice, who was around Andre's age, had recently moved into Sonny's house.

 Sonny, a cook at Chanute, had been convicted in April of 1978 of felony theft and placed on two years' conditional discharge. On one occasion, Don would later claim, he overheard one of the Tucker brothers thanking a police officer from Gary for beating him up instead of taking him to jail after he was caught stealing a car.

 The crew would often drink together and get into wrestling matches. Andre was only 5'7" and 130 pounds, but he was muscular enough to hold his own with Maurice Tucker, who was six inches taller and 50 pounds heavier. Neither of the two had found work, so they'd get together and lift weights, drink beer, smoke weed, and hang around the NCO club on base. When Sonny's kids weren't staying with them on the weekends, the Tucker brothers often threw parties at their house on Eastview Avenue "for all the brothers," as Don put it.

 Friday, August 8, 1980, was steaming. Andre headed over to the Tuckers' at around 10 AM to waste the day away with Maurice while Sonny was in and out of the house. They took out weights from the utility room, where Maurice slept, and lifted barbells in the backyard under the blazing sun. They played records. Most ambitiously, they climbed the generous fruit trees that leaned from a neighbor's house into the yard and picked apples and pears. But mostly they sat on the stoop drinking beer and cheap Wild Irish Rose wine and listening to breaks.

 Andre would later recall that when he left the house, sometime after 6 PM, he saw a little girl playing outside. He remembered telling her to stay out of the garbage can she was getting into.

 The girl, Brianna Stickel, was adorably blonde and had recently turned three. Earlier that day her stepfather, Rand Spragg, who was stationed at Chanute, had worked until noon before taking Brianna's mother, Becky Spragg, to apply for a job at the local Holiday Inn Jr. The couple then picked up Brianna and her 18-month-old brother, Simon, from their nursery and returned home. The kids hadn't napped yet, so the family lay down to rest together, as they often did.

 The children woke first, around 6 PM. When Rand got up, he noticed that Brianna and Simon had gotten into the fridge; Brianna had spilled some juice. Becky took Simon for a bath, and Brianna was told to go play outside. The heat was so intense that the little girl was clad only in yellow underwear. Rand went to the window and saw her sitting beneath the large shade tree, biting her nails.

 After wiping up the spilled juice, Rand squeezed the liquid out of the mop and turned again to the window. Brianna was gone. He went outside and circled the house. No Brianna. He went inside and asked Becky if the little girl was with her. She wasn't.

 At around 6:30 PM, Rand began knocking on doors. He went to the Tuckers' house and heard a stereo playing on low volume. He knocked but got no answer, figuring that somebody had left the stereo on. He then got in his car to continue the hunt. The Spraggs didn't own a phone, so Becky flagged down a passing police car and told the officer that Brianna was missing. Officer Ronald McLemore began checking around the neighborhood.

 Brianna Stickel's stepfather last saw her alive in the family's front yard, where she was sitting beneath a large shade tree.

 Courtesy Judi Stickel

 Shortly before 8 PM, as the officer was conducting his search, "a black man come up there in a car—I don't remember the car—and he knocked on the [Tuckers'] door," Becky later recalled. It was Don Douroux. He was carrying a glass of Kool-Aid and wearing a T-shirt with the words master blaster emblazoned on the front and don juan on the back. A short while later, Rand and Becky saw Don walk out the back door of the house and lock it up. Becky walked up and asked if they could look for Brianna inside. Perhaps she had wandered over? At first Don demurred—it wasn't his house, he said. But he relented and they searched the house while he supervised. No sign of Brianna. Rand did notice a wet red stain on the twin bed in the messy utility room where Maurice slept. He passed his finger across the stain, but chalked it up to "a single man living there and having girlfriends, you know," he later said. The room had clothes strewn everywhere. Don saw the Spraggs to the front door, and went to lock up the back.

 As Rand and Becky stood in front of the Tucker house debating what to do next, Don emerged. He was shaking and crying, borderline hysterical, and dropped the glass of Kool-Aid he was drinking on the front porch. Becky thought he was having an epileptic seizure. He was silent for a bit and then said there was something on the bed in the back room under a pile of clothes. "I can't look," he said. Rand went in with Simon and pulled back the sheets on the bed in Maurice's room. There was Brianna, lying on her stomach, her head turned to one side. Rand rolled her over. She wasn't breathing, and she had no pulse. Her lips were purple. He began CPR, and saw some vomit. He didn't want Simon to continue to see the disturbing scene and took the baby out of the room. As Simon whimpered, Rand went back to resume CPR on Brianna. He got no response.

 At 8:15 PM, Officer McLemore received an ambulance call directing him to the Tuckers' house. He raced over and found a crowd standing around the home. Becky was outside crying. Rand escorted McLemore to the utility room, where Brianna lay limp and naked, with bloodstains on her genitals. The blankets were all in a ball at the end of the bed, wet with blood. The officer performed CPR on Brianna for two minutes. It was futile. Don told the officer that "the person that done this is at 1056 Eastview"—Don's own house, the next block over.

 Sergeant Arthur Wiseman and Quick, the police chief, went to the address and knocked on the door. Don, who had raced home ahead of them, answered the door and let them in. Andre was inside, watching television. Wiseman later said Don was "acting somewhat nervous" and said he wished to speak to one of the lawmen. He went outside with Chief Quick. Wiseman stayed inside with Andre, who appeared "nonchalant or uninvolved in what was going on." Andre told Wiseman he didn't know why the sergeant was there, and Wiseman stayed quiet about the crime. Outside, Don was telling the chief that he'd returned from work to find Andre hiding under a trailer behind the bushes. He said Andre had told him he'd "been in bed with a woman" at the Tuckers' when a knock at the bedroom door led him to put his hand over the woman's mouth to keep her silent—and he soon noticed she wasn't breathing. Don told Chief Quick that at first he didn't believe Andre and told him so. He said he went over to the Tuckers' to prove Andre was lying, and found the little girl dead.

 "Everything happened so quick I barely had time to think. I had a brain freeze times a thousand.” —Andre Davis, describing his realization that police were charging him with the rape and murder of a three-year-old girl

 Andre later would deny Don's account. He said he never claimed to have been with a woman that day, let alone killed anyone. His recollection was that he left the Tuckers' between 6:15 and 7 PM, when Maurice and Sonny were still at the house—a point on which all parties agreed—and headed over to Don's. Finding nobody there, he said he went to a friend's house across the street and made a phone call. He said he then returned to Don's and waited for him until he came home, which was about 20 minutes later. According to Andre, the two drank some Kool-Aid together and discussed getting high later on, after which Don told him he was going for a run. (Don went over to the Tuckers' instead.) Andre recalled Don returning 20 minutes later, and the police arriving soon after.

 Wiseman stepped outside to talk with Don and the chief. He went back into the house and cuffed Andre—who would later say that he thought the police were just taking him in for questioning about a crime that had occurred. They began asking him pointed questions, though, and when he understood he was being charged, he "went ballistic," he would later recall. "I couldn't understand it. Everything happened so quick I barely had time to think. I had a mind freeze times a thousand." He says that as far as the police were concerned, he was guilty. They slapped him around, he claims, hurling racial slurs. "There was no possibility in their mind that I didn't do it."

 In the five months leading up to his trial, Andre was held in the Champaign County jail. He barely slept. "I didn't know what was happening one moment to the next." He kept his mind focused on his family; his mother reassured him that he would be acquitted, and told him to pray and stay optimistic.

 Andre's trial got under way at the Champaign County Courthouse in January 1981. He wore a beige plaid suit, brown shirt and tie, and green sweater. The strategy of his court-appointed attorney was to finger Don Douroux as being involved in Brianna's death, which would explain why Don would falsely—according to the defense—implicate Andre. It was Don, after all, who had found Brianna. What's more, if Andre had told Don he'd killed a woman he was having sex with, why didn't Don find Brianna on his first sweep of the house? He would have known he was looking for a corpse, after all. "Donald Douroux knows a lot more about this than he is telling us," Andre's lawyer, Donald Parkinson, told the jury. "I don't know if he did it or not, but I suspect that he knows something more about it than he's telling us. Don Douroux, Don Juan, came home and found a patsy. And from that moment on, he's put this on Andre Davis. And he's putting it on Andre Davis because he's trying to cover for himself or someone else."

 The state's first witness was pathologist Stanley Bobowski, who testified that Brianna had been suffocated by somebody putting a hand or other object over her mouth and nose. He told the jury she'd been raped at the same time. Though dried blood and feces were found around Brianna's anus, there were no breaks or tears, Bobowski said, which suggested she had not been anally raped.

 Next on the stand was Robert Beams, an FBI special agent who headed up the Washington lab where the evidence in the case was tested. At the time, the FBI was the only agency in the country capable of doing sophisticated forensic analysis. Type O-positive blood, the most common blood type in the United States, covering about 45 percent of the population, was found at the scene. Brianna was type O-positive, as is Andre. Moreover, Andre is what's called a "nonsecretor." Eighty percent of Americans are secretors, individuals whose blood type is present in the rest of their fluids. Andre is among the remaining one-fifth of the population who do not have blood-group substances in their saliva, urine, sweat, and semen. Beams told the court that a mattress and bedsheet with semen on them had been sent to him for testing. Both contained no trace of blood-group substances—meaning they came from a nonsecretor, like Andre.

 Rantoul police officer Montgomery Portis testified that Andre—after being arrested by Officer Wiseman and advised of his Miranda rights—shook his head in a negative fashion and declined to sign a Miranda form. He was then interrogated further by Portis and Wiseman. During the questioning, Andre told them that he and Don Douroux had been wrestling—which explained why he had fresh, bloodied scratch marks. In the course of undressing Andre at the station, Portis also noticed grass in both his head hair and pubic hair. Andre then changed his story, according to Portis, saying, "Juan and I is too big to be wrestling." Portis testified that Andre then said he didn't know where the scratches came from. "I didn't rape no little two- or three-year-old white girl," Portis recalled Andre saying.

 When Don Douroux took the stand, his recollection of Andre's confession was damning. "He said something similar to that he had killed someone," Don testified. "So I asked him who did he kill and where, and he said it was just a woman who lived down the street next door to a mutual friend of ours, Sonny Tucker."

 Sonny testified that on the morning of the crime, he left his house at about 10 AM to run some errands. Andre was already there, he recalled. He returned home at around noon with some wine, and shared it with his brother and Andre. "We were just sitting around and talking, you know." Sonny told the jury he stepped out again that afternoon and returned between 5:30 and 6 PM with a friend, Ida Parker, at which time he said Andre and Maurice were still there drinking. Sonny had plans to drive to Gary, Indiana, to visit his parents. Before he departed, he said, Andre left on foot, in the direction of Don Douroux's house. (Prosecutors contended that Andre later returned to the house.) Soon after, Sonny said, he locked up the doors and left, with Maurice and Ida still at the house. He told the jury that was the extent of what he knew about the day's events.

 Maurice also took the stand, testifying that after Andre and Sonny were gone, he himself left—with Ida Parker—to go spend the night with relatives in Champaign. Maurice testified that he found out about the killing that very night, at his relatives' house. Someone—he didn't specify who—called him around midnight and told him there had been a child found murdered at his brother's house. He knew Brianna Stickel, he said, "but she never came inside" the house. He said he had nothing to do with the crime.

 Ida Parker testified that she arrived at the Tuckers' early that evening with Sonny, saw Andre and Sonny leave, then left with Maurice to go to Champaign.

 Perhaps the most persuasive testimony came from Jose Raquel. Raquel was the emergency room physician at Burnham City hospital the night Brianna was killed. He described to the jury how he examined Andre's genitals after he was arrested. Raquel testified that the head of Andre's uncircumcised penis had been "red or recently traumatized." The only way a penis can get that traumatized, Raquel said, was "by forcing it against a tight opening" when it is erect. Could the penis of a man who had masturbated, or had been walking around without underwear, show the same type of trauma? "Absolutely not," Raquel said. He also said he found "unmistakably fecal material . . . from the anus of a human being" in Andre's foreskin. Raquel took saline swabs from Andre that showed no presence of semen or blood, but testified that Andre could have washed them off.

 When Andre himself took the stand, he was sure his testimony would convince the jury of his innocence. "I thought from day one that I would be found not guilty," he told me. "I always believed in justice, and I thought innocence was more powerful than anything else." He explained that after he left the Tuckers' house that evening, he made a phone call at a friend's house and waited for Don Douroux at Don's place. He said Don told him he was going for a run and came back 20 minutes later, shortly after which the police arrived.

 Asked point-blank on the stand if he had anything to do with Brianna's death, Andre replied, "No, I didn't." He was never at the Tuckers' house without them, he said, and had made no confession to Don.

 Phone records were checked, however, and no calls had been made from Andre's friend's house that day, according to testimony from an employee of the Eastern Illinois Telephone Company (the employee also testified that, if it had been a collect call, no record would exist). The prosecutor said in his closing argument that this proved Andre had "lied, lied, lied." Andre's lawyer retorted in his closing argument that Andre was "confused" (which certainly didn't help lend credibility to anything else he said on the stand). "The days are pretty similar when you're not working," Parkinson said. "And you might forget what day you made a phone call."

 Andre's lawyer focused his closing argument on discrediting Don Douroux. Parkinson pointed out that Don's girlfriend had testified earlier that he had occasionally hit her. And it was Don, not Andre, who was nervous when the police first arrived.

 Jane Raley, an attorney with Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions, knew there was something familiar about Andre Davis when he wrote her seeking help in 2003.

 Anjali Pinto

 The jury deliberated for just under three hours before delivering a verdict: Andre Davis was guilty of the rape and murder of Brianna Stickel. "None of us had any doubt," Melvin Parker, a juror at the trial, told me more than 30 years later.

 When being questioned during jury selection, all potential jurors had to agree that they would be willing to apply the death penalty if it were appropriate. Parker and nine other jurors voted for death for Andre, but two others said they couldn't condone the killing of a human being. Parker and the others pushed, saying they had all agreed in principle during jury selection. But the two holdouts said that, when faced with the real thing, they couldn't vote to put a man to death. Instead, Andre was sentenced by the judge to 80 years in prison without the chance of parole.

 Andre was devastated, but still hopeful. He even got a second trial. It turned out that the jury had requested a copy of the transcript of the trial testimony during deliberation, but the bailiff had failed to pass on the request to the judge.

 Before the second trial, Andre was offered a deal. If he pleaded guilty, he would serve a maximum of 25 years. Under Illinois law at the time, he would get a day off his sentence for every day he behaved well in prison. The offer on the table, then, was for 12.5 years in prison. Andre declined. "I would never plead guilty," he says. "Never, never. I was innocent, and that was going to come out some day, I knew it." Andre's mother, Emma, encouraged him in that decision.

 The second jury heard virtually the same information as the first—though this time around, Don's testimony included a revelation that was not made in his prior testimony and did not appear in prior police records. Don told the jury that Andre had asked him at his house—shortly before Don went to the Tuckers' and discovered Brianna's body—what would happen in a town like Rantoul if a black man killed a white person. And again, in 1983, Andre was found guilty of first-degree murder and received the same sentence of 80 years. Harold Jensen, the judge at the second trial, says now that he had "no doubt whatsoever" about Andre's guilt at the time. "The evidence was quite clear to me, and there was nothing to contradict that evidence."

 For the first 18 years of his sentence—almost as many years as he'd been alive at the time he was locked up—Andre passed the time at the maximum-security Pontiac Correctional Center by obsessively going over his case and praying to a god he still had faith in. At no time did he ever abandon his belief that he would one day be released. "I still believed in justice," he recalls. "I did anything I could to keep my sanity."

 In addition to examining his case, Andre spent his time studying religion. Christianity, Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam, in particular. "What screamed to me was that in Islam, the biggest pursuit of justice is really emphasized." Early into his sentence, in 1984, he converted. His faith sustained him for the hardest part of his sentence—the part that wouldn't arrive for more than 25 years.

 He kept himself in shape by exercising in his tiny cell. He did whatever else he could to maintain his mental stability. If you let your bitterness get the better of you in prison, he says, you'll never make it. "I spent my time reading, watching TV, talking to myself, writing thousands of letters." He wrote to the NAACP, to the Nation of Islam, to the Urban League. But the most important letter turned out to be one he received—from an unlikely source.

 "I never adjusted to prison," Andre says. "In my mind, in my spirit, I rejected the fact that I was in that world—I wasn't going to accept that I was in that world." He adds: "I was a captive, so why would I ever accept that?"

 Of all the criminal charges that can land someone in prison, sexual abuse of a child is considered the worst by most inmates and guards. "Everyone's out to get you," Andre says. "Keeping yourself safe is a constant struggle." On top of that, he wanted to assert his will as much as he could, to discourage other prisoners from attacking him and to convince himself that prison hadn't broken him. He says that his constant attempts to protect himself—and to send other prisoners a message—resulted in a mind-set that repeatedly got him in trouble. He racked up one of the longest prison disciplinary records in the state, according to the Chicago Tribune. It eventually caught up with him.

 July 20, 1998, was Andre's 37th birthday. It was also the day he was transferred from the maximum-security state prison to the newly built Tamms Correctional Center, the now-notorious supermax facility reserved for the worst of the state's violent criminals. For at least 23 hours a day, Andre, like all Tamms prisoners, would be locked in solitary confinement in a windowless 7-by-12-foot cell. If he was well behaved, he was permitted an hour outside of his cell to get exercise in the yard. In Tamms, Andre didn't eat with other inmates—there was no mess hall. Meals were stuffed through a slot in a steel door. Inmates were not allowed to interact with each other, and they rarely had contact with guards. There was no library, no classroom—even medication was typically passed through the steel door.

 An Illinois federal court would later find that "Tamms imposes drastic limitations on human contact, so much so as to inflict lasting psychological damage and emotional harm on inmates confined there for long periods." Amnesty International determined that the facility "flout[s] international standards for humane treatment." (Tamms was finally closed by Governor Pat Quinn on January 4, 2013.)

 Judi Stickel says of the man convicted of killing her young niece: "It became clear to me that Andre was innocent. Nothing added up."

 Kevin E. Schmidt/Chicago Tribune/MCT via Getty Images

 Andre's mother and sister were consistently amazed at his optimism while in prison. During his parents' regular visits, he tried to cheer them up.

 Emma always shared her son's conviction that he would one day be freed. When asked if she ever had any doubt about Andre's innocence, Emma's jaw squares up. "No," she says. "I know my son."

 Another woman shared Emma's conviction: Judi Stickel, Brianna's aunt.

 Stickel had spent years reading and rereading police records and court documents describing the death of her niece. And she came to believe that the accounts witnesses gave police were contradictory. "It became clear to me that Andre was innocent," she told me. "Nothing added up." She sent Andre a letter in 1992, she recalled to the Tribune last year, which he ignored for fear that she had ulterior motives. She kept sending letters until he finally responded, two years later. Stickel then met with Andre's mother. She visited Rantoul. She pored over transcripts, interviewed witnesses herself, and wrote everyone she could think of who might want to hear what she had to say. Finally—more than ten years after she first wrote Andre—Judi Stickel stumbled upon someone who might listen.

 In 2003, when he was closing in on a quarter of a century of prison life, Andre—at Stickel's urging and with her help—wrote a desperate letter to a woman named Jane Raley, a law professor at Northwestern University and, since 2000, an attorney at the university's Center on Wrongful Convictions. Stickel had discovered the center and believed that they'd be able to act on Andre's behalf.

 Raley is slender and polite, with thin bangs that sometimes fall into her eyes. When she begins talking about her defenses of wrongfully convicted individuals, her calm demeanor vanishes and she can shake with anger. At a recent panel on the use of DNA in wrongful convictions, one of the formerly incarcerated men she works for called her a "drum major for justice."

 Raley received Andre's letter, written on lined yellow paper. It was one of the estimated hundreds of letters she'd received in her three years at the Center on Wrongful Convictions, and the words described a scenario familiar to her—though not because of her past work at the center. Raley had, coincidentally, been the backup attorney in the public defender's office during Andre's appeal. "I knew the case—and we thought he might be innocent," she recalled earlier this year, sitting in her small Northwestern office. Several pieces of the investigation seemed strange to her. And the fact that Andre had gotten a second trial suggested to Raley that perhaps other errors had been made—earlier on.

 What's more, two juries had decided against the death penalty for Andre. But if any case cried out for an execution, it was the horrific rape and murder of three-year-old child. "It suggested to me that they had reasonable doubt," she says, "that the evidence was problematic."

 Raley began parsing court transcripts and police records. The initial police report mentioned something relevant that was never discussed in court: Don Douroux had written in a statement to police that Becky Stickel, Brianna's mother, asked to look for Brianna in Sonny's house because "the girl visited there frequently." Maurice had testified, however, that Brianna had never been in the house.

 In addition, a junior high school student who was a neighbor of the Tuckers and had been in his backyard around the time of the crime had a clear view of a black man coming out of the house—yet didn't identify Andre in a police lineup. And hairs consistent with those of an African-American male that were found on Brianna's body did not match Andre's hair (or, for that matter, Don's).

 In his letter to Raley, Andre offered to take a DNA test. That, for Raley, was the decisive factor. Guilty men, she felt, typically don't want DNA tests done.

 The first of Andre Davis's many letters to Judi Stickel. (Click on the image to read the letter in its entirety.)

 Courtesy Judi Stickel

 Exoneration through DNA testing is extremely rare. DNA evidence plays no role in 90 to 95 percent of criminal convictions. But exonerating someone based on DNA evidence is, of course, far easier than exonerating defendants in cases in which DNA evidence doesn't exist. Successfully working a non-DNA wrongful-conviction case takes an average of 3,500 hours, according to Lesley Risinger, director of the Last Resort Exoneration Project at Seton Hall University. Those hours, billed to a midlevel associate, would compute to at least $1.5 million. Proving one's innocence through DNA is usually a far less costly and time-consuming endeavor.

 Andre, like most inmates, had no money to pay a lawyer. And once an individual is convicted, he has no right to a court-appointed attorney after his initial appeal. If Raley didn't listen to him, Andre's innocence claims likely weren't going to be heard by anyone else.

 On February 13, 2004, Raley filed a motion for DNA testing in Andre's case. She foresaw a fight. All states have laws granting some form of postconviction DNA testing. But in Illinois, as in other places, anyone seeking that testing still must meet burdensome criteria. And so prosecutors had the option to force Andre to prove he met the standards before being tested, which would have delayed Raley's motion.

 But they didn't. "To their credit, the state always said, 'Go right ahead and test it, we don't care,'" Raley says. The problem was that a lot of the evidence in Andre's case was either destroyed or missing. Hairs, swabs, a bloody brown paper towel discovered in the Tuckers' bathroom—all were tested using the technology of the time, but weren't introduced at trial and therefore weren't preserved. Fortunately, the evidence that was introduced—sheets, a mattress, and toilet paper—was stashed in the basement of the Champaign County Courthouse.

 Raley sent the material, along with a vial of Brianna's blood and an oral swab from Andre containing his DNA, to Cellmark Diagnostics, a testing lab in North Carolina. "These sheets and bedding—they were filled with just blood and semen," she recalls.

 The minimum cost for a DNA test at California's Serological Research Institute (SERI) is $2,200, says Gary Harmor, the lab's executive director. For that price, SERI can test one swab from an individual and compare it with one sample of blood or semen from a piece of evidence. Of course, most cases have far more evidence than just one piece—Harmor is currently working a cold case that's running a $110,000 tab so far. DNA degrades, so old evidence, such as in the Davis case, requires extra testing and is pricier. In addition, there are costs for having the lab prepare a report and for having a lab expert testify at a hearing or trial. The Virginian firm Bode Technology Group charges $1,900 per day plus expenses for an expert witness to appear at a courtroom outside of the local area.

 Northwestern University provides the Center on Wrongful Convictions with student help and pays for overhead and the lawyers' salaries. But any money for investigations and DNA testing has to be raised from private sources—and the center receives hundreds of requests annually from prisoners and their families to work their cases. But May 2004 happened to be a time when some money was available.

 Cellmark representatives told Raley that they couldn't do anything with the blood on the bedsheets—it was 24 years old and too degraded to be properly tested. The lab could, however, test the semen on the bedding. On November 16, 2004, they called Raley with the results.

 This article was reported with assistance from the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute, with additional support from the Puffin Foundation.

 Correction: This article was amended to correct the name of the Center on Wrongful Convictions.

 Read part two of this story here. ||||| Andre Davis is charged with murder and kidnapping.

 A man who served 32 years in prison for rape and murder before being exonerated by DNA evidence in 2012, faces new murder charges for the death of a man found stabbed and shot in a South Side alley last year.

 Andre Davis, 52, of the 8200 block of South Eberhart Avenue, is charged with murder and kidnapping in connection with the death of 19-year-old Jamal Harmon on Oct. 7, 2013, authorities said. On Thursday, he was ordered held without bond.

 According to media reports at the time, Davis served more than 30 years in prison for the August 1980 rape and murder of 3-year-old girl Brianna Stickle in downstate Rantoul.

 DNA evidence overturned his conviction and he was released from prison in July 2012. Prosecutors did not retry him, claiming it would have been too hard to bring a 32-year-old case to trial.

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 About 15 months later, Harmon was at a party hosted by Davis’ nephew in the 6500 block of South Ross about 3 a.m. on Oct. 7, 2013, authorities said. Harmon and the nephew got into an argument outside of the home over money lost at a dice game during the party.

 Davis’ nephew went back into the house, then came back outside with a handgun and shot Harmon, prosecutors allege. A witness said Harmon made sounds after he was shot, indicating he was still alive.

 Davis and the witness carried Harmon to the trunk of a Cadillac, prosecutors said. Davis drove off with Harmon in the trunk, telling others he was going to find a spot to dump him.

 Harmon’s body was discovered later that morning in an alley in the 7600 block of South Carpenter Street, prosecutors said. He had suffered three gunshot wounds to the face, lower neck and left armpit, and had been stabbed four times.

 An autopsy found Harmon died of multiple stab and gunshot wounds, and his death was ruled a homicide, according to the medical examiner’s office.

 The next day, Davis told someone he cut Harmon’s throat, prosecutors said.

 Along with he 1980 murder conviction, Davis has also previously been charged with attempted murder, aggravated discharge of a weapon, and two counts of aggravated battery, according to court records. He currently faces two misdemeanor counts of DUI.

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How Much Water Actually Goes Into Making A Bottle Of Water?

 Enlarge this image toggle caption Steven Depolo/Flickr Steven Depolo/Flickr

 Environmental activists have long claimed that bottled water is wasteful. Usually, they point to the roughly 50 billion (mostly plastic) bottles we throw away every year.

 The International Bottled Water Association, ever sensitive to criticism that it's wasting precious resources, has commissioned its first ever study to figure out how much water goes into producing one liter. The results, released this month, show that for North American companies, it takes 1.39 liters to make one liter of water.

 That's less than the global averages of a liter of soda, which requires 2.02 liters of water. A liter of beer, meanwhile, needs 4 liters of water, wine demands 4.74 liters. Hard alcohol, it turns out, is the greediest, guzzling 34.55 liters of water for every liter.

 This, the bottled water industry says, is evidence that its product isn't so bad. "Bottled water products are extremely efficient in terms of water use compared to some other packaged beverages," says Chris Hogan, spokesman for the International Bottled Water Association.

 But water activists say the IBWA study highlights a problem throughout the beverage industry: Few companies take the whole water-use picture into account when calculating their water use. Just as companies are beginning to calculate their carbon footprint, they also need to analyze their water footprints to find opportunities for conservation.

 Bottled water companies (along with many other beverage companies) should include the water in their supply chain, says Ertug Ercin with the Water Footprint Network. Ercin says a true water footprint includes all freshwater used in production, including the water used for packaging.

 "Packaging makes a significant footprint," he says, adding that three liters of water might be used to make a half-liter bottle. In other words, the amount of water going into making the bottle could be up to six or seven times what's inside the bottle.

 Drilling for oil to make plastic, Ercin says, uses a substantial amount of groundwater. And you need water to make the paper, too, he adds.

 Still, Ercin notes, bottled water packaging uses far less water than soda, which needs extra water to grow sugar and make dyes.

 Hogan says that one reason why the IBWA didnt look at these issues is that it's hard to know where to stop. "You could extrapolate that ad infinitum," he says.

 Hogan says some companies say they don't think they can get any more efficient, but they're trying. "Water," Hogan says," is the lifeblood of the industry and they want to be as efficient as possible." ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. |||||

– If you think it takes a liter of water to fill a liter water bottle, the International Bottled Water Association has news for you: It takes more than that. NPR reports on the group's first look at the topic, which found that 1.39 liters (or 47 ounces) are needed to make a one-liter bottle (that's about 34 ounces of water); this includes product water and the water needed for things like cleaning and bottling. It arrived at that figure by asking its members to submit three years of detailed data, touching on factors like total water use and the type of treatment used. Writes IBWA, "The study represents 14.5 million liters of bottled water production, an impressive 43% of total 2011 United States bottled water consumption." That figure applies to US and Canadian companies, and a rep for the group actually calls that "extremely efficient." NPR explains why: A liter of soda demands 2.02 liters of water, while the same quantity of wine requires 4.74 liters. The IBWA chose to stop there in its calculations, but the truth is that the actual "water footprint" is much larger: For instance, oil is needed to make plastic, and drilling for it requires, yep, water—in some cases as much as seven times what the plastic bottle ultimately contains.


Disclosures show how havens such as British Virgin Islands hide links between big business and relatives of top politicians

 The eight members of China’s Communist party elite whose family members used offshore companies are revealed in the Panama Papers.

 The documents show the granddaughter of a powerful Chinese leader became the sole shareholder in two British Virgin Islands companies while still a teenager. Jasmine Li had just begun studying at Stanford University in the US when the companies were registered in her name in December 2010. Her grandfather Jia Qinglin was at that time the fourth-ranked politician in China.

 Other prominent figures who have taken advantage of offshore companies include the brother-in-law of the president, Xi Jinping, and the son-in-law of Zhang Gaoli, another member of China’s top political body, the politburo standing committee.

 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jasmine Li (centre) at the Crillon debutante ball for Vanity Fair magazine in Paris, France. Photograph: Jonathan Becker/Contour by Getty Images

 They are part of the “red nobility”, whose influence extends well beyond politics. Others include the daughter of Li Peng, who oversaw the brutal retaliation against Tiananmen Square protesters; and Gu Kailai, wife of Bo Xilai, the ex-politburo member jailed for life for corruption and power abuses.

 The French villa at the heart of a Chinese scandal Read more

 The relatives had companies that were clients of the offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca. There is nothing in the documents to suggest that the politicians in question had any beneficial interest in the companies connected to their family members.

 Since Monday, China’s censors have been blocking access to the unfolding revelations about its most senior political families. There are now reports of censors deleting hundreds of posts on the social networks Sina Weibo and Wechat, and some media organisations including CNN say parts of their websites have been blocked.

 The disclosures come amid Xi Jinping’s crackdown on behaviour that could embarrass the Communist party.

 Two more well-connected figures – the brother of former vice-president Zeng Qinghong and the son of former politburo member Tian Jiyun – are directors of a single offshore company. They have previously been linked in a court case that highlighted how some Chinese “princelings” have used political connections for financial gain.

 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jia Qinglin is Jasmine Li’s grandfather. Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty Images

 They have emerged from the internal data of the offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca, obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in Washington with the Guardian, the BBC and other media.

 China and Hong Kong were Mossack Fonseca’s biggest sources of business, with clients from these jurisdictions linked to a total of 40,000 companies past and present. About a quarter of these are thought to be live: in 2015, records show the firm was collecting fees for nearly 10,000 companies linked to Hong Kong and China. The Mossack Fonseca franchise now has offices in eight Chinese cities, according to its website.

 There are many legitimate reasons to use offshore companies. Individuals living in multiple jurisdictions find them convenient, and in China they are often used as a way to attract and safeguard investment from overseas. While there is no indication of any wrongdoing, the leaks draw unwelcome attention to the wealth of leaders’ families. In some cases, they show how secrecy havens are being used to create and hide potentially lucrative connections between big business and politics in the world’s second-largest economy.

 Even as officials advertise their zeal in targeting corruption by hunting assets overseas and checking on the relatives of officials, they remain highly sensitive to the disclosure of the business interests of top leaders’ families.

 In 2014, the websites of the Guardian and several other media outlets were blocked for several months after revealing such offshore holdings. Xi’s brother-in-law Deng Jiagui and Li’s daughter Li Xiaolin were named in those leaks, too. The new documents therefore indicate multiple offshore holdings.

 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tian Jiyun is a former politburo member whose son is linked to an offshore company. Photograph: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

 Xi’s harsh anti-corruption drive has brought down a host of high-ranking figures. In December, he urged politburo members “to strictly educate and supervise their children and other family members as well as subordinates, and to rectify their problems in a timely manner”. He urged members of the 25-strong body to not only have integrity but “stay away from vulgar taste and set good examples for other cadres and the general public”. In other words, avoiding wrongdoing is not enough, impressions count, too.

 A world of hidden wealth: why we are shining a light offshore Read more

 Xi’s daughter, Xi Mingze, studied at Harvard but kept a low profile, living under an assumed name. In contrast, Jasmine Li came to public attention when Vogue featured her in a floor-length Carolina Herrera gown at the Hotel de Crillon’s annual debutante ball in Paris in 2009. She was presented alongside Lady Kitty Spencer, niece of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the daughter of Clint Eastwood.

 The following year, shortly after beginning a course in international relations at Stanford, she was recorded as the sole shareholder of two entities registered in the British Virgin Islands, Harvest Sun Trading Limited and Xin Sheng Investments Limited. These companies established at least two businesses in Beijing, with a combined registered capital of £200,000, described on the register as specialising in “investment and consulting”.

 The leaked data reveals Harvest Sun was incorporated in July 2009 and that its first shareholder was someone apparently unconnected to Li: a 57-year-old Hong Kong entrepreneur known as the King of Watches.

 Cheung Yu Ping’s firm, Hengdeli, is valued at $470m on the Hong Kong stock exchange and is one of the world’s biggest sellers of Swiss watches by volume. It supplies pieces by Cartier and TAG Heuer to China’s new rich.

 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Li Peng, the father of Li Xiaolin. Photograph: Sportsphoto/Allstar

 In December 2010, Cheung passed his shares in Harvest Sun to Li for just $1. A lawyer for Cheung said the company had contained no assets at the time of transfer. He explained: “Our client had no relationship with Ms Li, who was introduced to our client by some business partners for taking up the company without the need to set up another shell company herself. Our client considered the consideration of the transfer reasonable as the company was only a shell company with no assets inside.”

 Li did not respond to requests for comment.

 Politically exposed persons – or PEPs, public officials, their families and known associates – are considered high risk clients by those providing offshore services. Mossack Fonseca said: “We have duly established policies and procedures to identify and handle those cases where individuals either qualify as PEPs or are related to them … Enhanced due diligence procedures apply in these cases.”

 The president’s brother-in-law

 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Xi Jinping attends a meeting with foreign experts at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Photograph: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images

 Xi Jinping’s brother-in-law Deng Jiagui was a shareholder in two BVI companies, Wealth Ming International and Best Effect Enterprises.

 Deng appeared on the shareholder registers of both companies in September 2009. They both existed for roughly 18 months before being closed in April 2011 and October 2010 respectively.

 The previous leak of offshore documents revealed Deng owned a 50% stake in the BVI-incorporated Excellence Effort Property Development. Ownership of the remainder of the company has been traced back to two Chinese property tycoons.

 Deng is married to Xi’s older sister, and together they built a fortune through investments in property and natural resources. In 2012, they were reported to hold stakes in companies with total assets of $376m, and an indirect 18% share in a minerals company worth $2bn. Since Xi became president, they have pulled out of many of their investments.

 Thanks to his close connection to the centre of Chinese power, Deng qualifies as a PEP. Banks, registered agents and professionals such as lawyers are obliged to carry out detailed checks on the source of funds when managing money for politicians, public officials, their families and close associates.

 Deng was the named shareholder and had given the firm his Hong Kong identity papers. But Mossack Fonseca’s files did not list him as a PEP, raising questions about whether detailed checks were made on what his offshore vehicles were used for. Deng did not respond to requests for comment.

 The power queen

 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Li Xiaolin in March 2011 in Beijing. Photograph: Feng Li/Getty Images

 Former premier Li Peng is known by his detractors as the “butcher of Beijing” for his part in the bloody crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. In 1994, a BVI company called Cofic Investments Limited, ultimately owned by his daughter Li Xiaolin, was incorporated.

 Her fortune has been estimated at $550m, and she has made a name as China’s “power queen” after a career spent running electricity-generating businesses. She is vice-president of state-owned power group China Datang Corporation.

 Li is noted in China for conspicuous consumption – her appearance in a pink Pucci trouser suit at the annual meeting of a top government advisory body prompted a widely shared social media post that suggested the 12,000 yuan (£1,300) price tag was equivalent to warm clothes for 200 poor children.

 All mention of Panama Papers banned from Chinese websites Read more

 Previous ICIJ investigations have linked her to two other BVI companies, and to Swiss bank accounts. Li and her husband, Liu Zhiyuan, were revealed as the beneficiaries of five bank accounts that together held as much as $2.48m in 2006-07.

 Li’s identity became known to Mossack Fonseca when BVI regulators asked for information about Cofic in 2015, and inquiries were made with the Geneva law firm that represented it. Cofic’s directors at this time were two partners in the firm, Charles-André Junod and Alain Bruno Lévy. Its shareholder, however, was a secretive Liechtenstein entity called Fondation Silo, whose beneficial owners were named by Junod as Li and her husband.

 When asked about his clients, Junod sent their passports to Mossack Fonseca with the following explanation: “Regarding the source of funds, it is business profits: my clients have provided, through Cofic, services to other clients of my office who were exporting heavy industrial equipment from Europe to China.”

 Cofic held a Swiss bank account at UBS and another with the asset manager Mirelis InvesTrust, the files show. Junod said: “In our activity, we have always been acting in full compliance with laws and regulations governing our profession.”

 Li did not respond to requests for comment.

 The Hong Kong lobbyists

 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Zeng Qinghong, whose younger brother has been linked to tax havens. Photograph: Reuters/CORBIS

 Zeng Qinghong was China’s vice-president until 2008. His younger brother, Zeng Qinghuai, is well known in Hong Kong, having worked there as an envoy for the ministry of culture. He was a consultant to Beginning of the Great Revival, a state-produced propaganda movie which, according to the New York Times, “exemplified the hand-in-glove relationship between business and politics”. Government offices and schools were ordered to buy tickets and any criticism was censored. State support ensured it was one of 2011’s top grossing films.

 The Panama Papers reveal that Zeng Qinghuai is a director of a company called Chinese Cultural Exchange Association Ltd, registered first in the tiny South Pacific island of Niue, then in Samoa. He sits on the board alongside another princeling, Tian Chenggang, son of the former vice-premier and politburo member Tian Jiyun.

 A 2012 court case, in which Tian Chenggang unsuccessfully sued a developer called Beijing Henderson Properties, shed new light on the business dealings of the red nobility. The court in Hong Kong heard that Tian and a company linked to Zeng had been separately engaged to lobby regulators on behalf of Henderson when it was under investigation for breaching foreign exchange regulations in 2006. An exchange of letters disclosed in court suggested Tian’s father had written to the regulators to plead leniency. In the event, the fine imposed was smaller than expected.

 Companies linked to Zeng received fees of $2.1m and $650,000. Henderson rejected Tian’s demand for $5.5m, so Tian sued for the money but lost. The judge’s summing up said of him: “He tried to project an air of superiority … His attitude was contemptuous and disrespectful.”

 Zeng and Tian did not respond to requests for comment.

 The others

 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Zhang Gaoli is one of China’s seven most powerful politicians. Photograph: How Hwee Young/EPA

 Also in the data are Hu Dehua, the businessman son of Hu Yaobang, the Communist party’s general secretary ousted in 1987 because he was seen as too liberal – and, some sympathisers say, for his attempts to root out corruption among leaders’ families. Hu has interests in technology and energy, and is registered as sole shareholder of a BVI entity called Fortalent International Holdings. Hu did not respond to requests for comment.

 The Hong Kong businessman Lee Shing Put is married to the adoptive daughter of Zhang Gaoli, who is China’s senior vice-premier. As a member of the politburo standing committee, he is one of the seven most powerful politicians in China.

 His son-in-law Lee worked for Xinyi, a glass, plastics and solar power manufacturer founded by Lee’s father, but resigned in 2008, according to the company. He is listed as a shareholder in Sino Reliance Networks Corporation, now closed, Glory Top Investments and Zennon Capital Management.

 At the time of his father-in-law’s elevation to the politburo, Lee, who did not respond to requests for comment, was a director of 17 Hong Kong companies, the South China Morning Post reported.

 Panama Papers reporting team: Juliette Garside, Luke Harding, Holly Watt, David Pegg, Helena Bengtsson, Simon Bowers, Owen Gibson and Nick Hopkins ||||| Understanding this may help resolve the cognitive dissonance that arises from reading about the Panama Papers against the insistence by Mossack Fonseca that their hands are clean. When the firm writes that “we have a strong compliance record” and “we are responsible members of the global financial and business community,” they are not lying through their teeth, as some might suspect. Keeping clients out of legal trouble is a core element of their business model: that is how they earn their money. If they, or firms like them, were to lose their reputations for keeping clients on the right side of the law, the clients would take their business elsewhere.

 Some of the activity uncovered in the Panama Papers will turn out to be illegal. But if past is prologue, then the majority of what we learn from the leak will merely be embarrassing for those exposed—showing them to be opportunistic and perhaps unethical, but not criminal. And that is why many of the people named in the documents are unlikely to see the inside of a courtroom concerning the services that Mossack Fonseca provided to them: not because they have the power now to quash prosecutions (with some notable exceptions!), but because some time ago they had the power to hire expert advisers who carefully designed their tax-avoidance (or law-avoidance) strategies.

 This kind of expertise is expensive, and can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, depending on which laws one wants to avoid. But paying for secrecy is typically worth it: If it weren’t for leaks like the Panama Papers, most people would have no idea that so much law avoidance is possible, let alone legally permitted. Many governments know about it, and as the Panama Papers reveal, many public officials take advantage of the benefits these firms provide.

 That is one reason so many of their names appear in the leak: 140 politicians and officials from more than 50 countries. While some of those countries are known to have problems with fraud and crime by individuals in government, others are not. Iceland, France, Chile, and Botswana—all of which have officials listed as clients of Mossack Fonseca—are ranked highly on anti-corruption indexes such as the one from Transparency International. Use of offshore services by officials from those countries is unlikely to be connected to illegal activity, although it may well become a political liability for them.

 That is how things shaped up for Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, who resigned following revelations that he was once part-owner of an offshore company incorporated with the help of Mossack Fonseca. Although the firm has been wholly owned by his wife since 2009, it stands to reap millions from the deal Gunnlaugsson negotiated for claimants on Iceland’s bankrupt financial institutions. Although reports show “no evidence to suggest tax avoidance, evasion, or any dishonest financial gain on the part of Gunnlaugsson,” his mere association with Mossack Fonseca and an offshore firm was enough to cost him his job, and possibly his career. ||||| The provocative revelations coming out of the so-called Panama Papers are just a glimpse into the murky global network that's keeping "absolutely astonishing" amounts of money out of public coffers.

 The 11.5 million files taken from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca show how the financial elite exploit a secretive system to manoeuvre wealth anonymously and ensure the taxman doesn't take his cut.

 The firm is "the world's fourth biggest provider of offshore services," according to the Guardian, with about $42 million in yearly revenue. The documents contain information about more than 214,000 shell companies, trusts and foundations — usually used to hold or transfer financial assets while obfuscating the identity of their real owner — that were registered with the firm.

 "That gives a sense of the tremendous scope of this in terms of the flows of money into these largely mysterious companies, and this is only one firm," says Nicholas Shaxson, an investigative journalist and author of Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World.

 It's difficult to delineate what constitutes a tax haven but it's generally agreed that, depending on the criteria, there are between 70 and 92 of them worldwide. And there's an estimated two million shell companies registered with offshore firms in these states.

 (CBC)

 "For a long time, people thought of tax havens as an exotic sideshow of the world economy. Now it's clear they are absolutely central to it. We're talking about absolutely astonishing, mind-boggling amounts of money," Shaxson says.

 Estimates of how much wealth is currently stashed offshore vary considerably, a reflection of the opacity of an industry that some economists contend has grown exponentially in recent decades.

 Gabriel Zucman, author of The Hidden Wealth of Nations and a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, puts the figure at least $7.6 trillion.

 But the Tax Justice Network, an international research and advocacy organization, says the number is far greater. The group estimates that as of 2010, there was between $21 and $32 trillion kept in offshore holdings. That would represent between eight and 13 per cent of total global wealth.

 Resource drain

 Perhaps most troubling, according to one economist, is that somewhere in the ballpark of $1 trillion is illegally funneled out of developing nations each year into mysterious shell companies.

 It's a system that bolsters kleptocracy and corruption, says Matt Salomon, chief economist with Global Financial Integrity.

 "It's a real resource drain in countries where the money is needed most. At the same time, wealthier nations are standing by as this is happening, insisting that they support development in these places," he says.

 "It's possible that the $1-trillion figure only represents a drop in the bucket since the data is so murky."

 Many of the dealings facilitated by offshore firms are entirely legal and are encouraged by major financial institutions the world over. Canada's biggest lender, RBC, was named in the Panama Papers, having used Mossack Fonseca to set up at least 370 shell companies for clients.

 It's estimated that about $1 trillion is funnelled out of developing countries each year. Money generated from major natural resource extraction projects, for example, can be siphoned off and hidden in offshore accounts. (Thierry Gouegnon/Reuters)

 There's a searing public anger over a system that so blatantly favours the wealthy and operates with near impunity, says Shaxson. It's putting pressure on governments to finally crack down on tax dodgers that cost countries billions each year.

 Canada alone loses between $6 and $7.8 billion annually to offshore tax havens, according to a report in the Toronto Star. In response, the federal government dedicated $440 million over four years in the 2016 budget to probe tax evasion and what the Canada Revenue Agency called "aggressive tax avoidance."

 Even before the Panama Papers prompted public outrage though, more than 100 countries since 2014 had committed to increasing transparency around the financial holdings of foreign customers.

 The U.S. is among the countries resisting these changes. States like Delaware, Nevada and South Dakota allow for levels of anonymity and secrecy that "rival any of the countries we usually think of as tax havens," says James Henry, former chief economist at the consulting firm McKinsey.

 'The level of anger is higher than ever'

 "It's insufficient to just say 'offshore tax havens' because the industry has expanded so aggressively to countries around the globe," adds Henry, now a fellow at Columbia and Yale.

 Despite big promises from governments, real reform will not come easily. Tax havens and all the perks that come with them "are the projects of some of the world's wealthiest people," says Shaxson.

 'People are beginning to realize how extensive the offshore system is, and there is a rapidly rising public anger over that,' says Nicholas Shaxson. Protesters in Iceland called for the resignation of the country's prime minister after the Panama Papers revealed he had offshore accounts that he allegedly never disclosed. (Stigtryggur Johannsson/Reuters)

 There's a lot of money to be made by interests with considerable political clout, Henry notes, and the very nature of the business makes it difficult for so-called crackdowns to be effective. Financial institutions rarely face any significant consequences, and past investigations have ended up completely toothless.

 "Look, for decades, governments have known about this, law enforcement have known about this and the response has been pretty pathetic. I think the reasons for that are pretty clear at this point," Henry says.

 "But the level of anger is higher than ever, and it will probably only intensify as more stories come out of the leak." ||||| Image copyright AFP Image caption President Juan Carlos Varela is determined to ensure Panama's reputation is not besmirched by the scandal

 Panama is creating an international panel to help improve transparency in its offshore financial industry.

 The move follows the leak of millions of documents from law firm Mossack Fonseca, showing it helped some clients evade tax and avoid sanctions.

 Several countries are probing possible financial crimes by the rich and powerful in the aftermath of the leak.

 President Juan Carlos Varela said Panama would work with other countries over the revelations.

 "The Panamanian government, via our foreign ministry, will create an independent commission of domestic and international experts," he said in a televised address.

 Image copyright Reuters Image caption The leaks from Mossack Fonseca's offices in Panama have created a worldwide media storm

 The panel, he said, would examine working practices and propose measures that could be shared to strengthen the transparency of the financial and legal systems.

 Correspondents say the president is eager to defend his country against a "media attack" by wealthy countries that he says are unfairly stigmatising him following the leak.

 Are you in Panama? What is your reaction to the Panama Papers scandal? Send us your views and reaction. Email haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk

 Mossack Fonseca, for its part, says that it has been the victim of a hack.

 Mossack Fonseca partner Ramon Fonseca insisted the leak was not an "inside job" - the company had been hacked by servers based abroad.

 It has now filed a complaint with the Panamanian attorney general's office.

 Mr Fonseca served as a minister in the government of current President Juan Carlos Varela but stepped aside earlier this year after separate allegations linked the firm to the corruption scandal engulfing the Brazilian state oil company Petrobras.

 Mossack Fonseca's Brazilian arm was accused of helping several of those accused in the Petrobras case of opening offshore companies in Panama in order to launder money through property transactions.

 Mr Fonseca said he had stepped aside "to defend my honour and my firm" and denies any wrongdoing on the part of his firm in the Petrobras case.

 Mr Varela has been quoted in Panamanian media as saying that he is still in touch with Mr Fonseca, calling him a "friend".

 "At difficult times friends do not run away, they are there," Mr Varela said.

 Mossack Fonseca has accused media organisations reporting the leak of having "unauthorised access to proprietary documents and information taken from our company" and of presenting this information out of context.

 Image copyright Reuters Image caption Mossack Fonseca says it has never been charged with any wrong-doing

 Image copyright Reuters Image caption Mr Fonseca said the "only crime" that had been committed was the hack of his firm's servers

 The revelations have already sparked political reaction in several countries where high-profile figures have been implicated.

 On Tuesday Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson stepped down after the documents showed he owned an offshore company with his wife but had not declared it when he entered parliament.

 The ruling coalition has named Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson as the new prime minister, with early elections to be held in the autumn.

 Mr Gunnlaugsson says he sold his shares to his wife and denies any wrongdoing.

 More on the Panama Papers

 Panama Papers - tax havens of the rich and powerful exposed

 Eleven million documents held by the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca have been passed to German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, which then shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. BBC Panorama and UK newspaper The Guardian are among 107 media organisations in 76 countries which have been analysing the documents. The BBC does not know the identity of the source

 They show how the company has helped clients launder money, dodge sanctions and evade tax

 Mossack Fonseca says it has operated beyond reproach for 40 years and never been accused or charged with criminal wrongdoing

 Tricks of the trade: How assets are hidden and taxes evaded

 Panama Papers: Full coverage; follow reaction on Twitter using #PanamaPapers; in the BBC News app, follow the tag "Panama Papers"

 Watch Panorama on the BBC iPlayer (UK viewers only)

 Are you in Panama? What is your reaction to the Panama Papers scandal? Send us your views and reaction. Email haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.

 Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also contact us in the following ways: ||||| A man holds a banner which reads,"Panama Leaks, People Racketeer Enough"during a gathering on the Place de la Republique in Paris, France, Wednesday, April 6, 2016. A few hundred protesters have been... (Associated Press)

 A man holds a banner which reads,"Panama Leaks, People Racketeer Enough"during a gathering on the Place de la Republique in Paris, France, Wednesday, April 6, 2016. A few hundred protesters have been camping out, holding night-time demonstrations since last week at a symbolic rallying point on the Place... (Associated Press)

 BERLIN (AP) — The German newspaper that first obtained the so-called Panama Papers, a vast trove of documents on offshore companies, said Thursday that it won't publish all the files, arguing that not all are of public interest.

 Sueddeutsche Zeitung received the documents from an unidentified source more than a year ago and shared at least parts of them with dozens of other media outlets around the world. Since the first reports were published Sunday, prominent politicians, celebrities and businesspeople have had their offshore business dealings dragged into the spotlight, prompting a flurry of public outrage, official investigations and fierce denials from some of those named.

 Sueddeutsche Zeitung said the complete set of 11.5 million documents "won't be made available to the public or to law enforcement agencies. That's because the SZ isn't the extended arm of prosecutors or the tax investigators."

 Authorities have legal powers to obtain such documents from those suspected of wrongdoing, and in many cases there's no public interest in revealing companies' or individuals' offshore business dealings, the Munich-based paper said.

 The documents relate to Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which helps create shell companies for the world's rich and famous. The firm said it has filed a criminal complaint alleging that the data was stolen in a hacking attack.

 Sueddeutsche Zeitung said it didn't know how the anonymous source obtained the data, but that he or she had expressed "a very strong moral impulse" and wanted to make "these crimes public."

 Panama's government on Wednesday accused wealthy nations of unfairly attacking the Central American country while ignoring their own failings.

 President Juan Carlos Varela said an international committee of experts would be created to recommend ways to boost transparency in the Central American country's offshore financial industry. Experts say that while offshore companies can be used for tax evasion and money laundering, there are also legitimate and legal grounds for creating them.

 German lawmakers said Thursday they plan to hold an urgent debate on the offshore leaks next week.

 "The revelations in the Panama Papers have triggered a broad discussion among politicians and the public about necessary consequences," said Christine Lambrecht, a lawmaker for the Social Democratic Party that is part of Chancellor Angela Merkel's governing coalition.

 Responding to readers' queries about the absence of prominent German or American politicians in the reports, Sueddeutsche Zeitung said such names haven't yet been found in the documents.

 It said the documents include copies of the passports of 200 Americans, and about 3,500 shareholders in offshore companies listed addresses in the United States.

 "One possible reason why comparatively few Americans appear in the documents could be that U.S. citizens have no reason to contact a law firm in Panama," the paper said. "That's because offshore companies can easily be created in U.S. states such as Wyoming, Delaware or Nevada." |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– The newspaper that first received the Panama Papers says it isn't going to release all 11.5 million files it received from a whistleblower to the public or to law enforcement—because it "isn't the extended arm of prosecutors or the tax investigators." Sueddeutsche Zeitung has shared files relating to celebrities and politicians, but the German paper doesn't believe there's public interest in exposing all of the individuals and companies involved, the AP reports. The paper says it was contacted by a source at Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca who felt a "very strong moral impulse" to expose the tax evasion and money laundering the firm facilitated with its creation of thousands of offshore shell companies. In other coverage: Panama's President Juan Carlos Varela, apparently unhappy with his country's name appearing in headlines about financial crimes all over the world, has promised to boost transparency and clean up the industry, the BBC reports. He says the country will bring in international experts to recommend changes. The Guardian looks at how the scandal has exposed China's "red nobility"—wealthy families connected to the Communist Party. Prominent figures named in the papers include the brother-in-law of President Xi Jinping. Unsurprisingly, the scandal is not being reported in China, and censors have been trying to scrub every mention of it from social media. The CBC looks at how the wealth revealed in the leak is just a fraction of what an analyst calls "absolutely astonishing, mind-boggling amounts of money" tied up in offshore funds. Estimates run as high as $31 trillion, or 13% of global wealth, much of which is being kept in offshore funds to cheat governments out of tax revenue—or to hide the plunder of national resources. The New York Times looks at the history of the Mossack Fonseca firm and its role in Panama's economy. Co-founder Ramon Fonseca had been trying to expand his role in the country's government, claiming he wanted to improve the nation's human rights record. At the Atlantic, Brooke Harrington examines the legal issues involved and concludes that the real scandal isn't the law-breaking—it's that so much of what Mossack Fonseca did was perfectly legal.