According to German publication Süddeutsche Zeitung, they were contacted over a year ago by an anonymous source who wanted to unload a trove of stolen data from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that allegedly specializes in setting up tax shelters, shell companies and other possibly illegal financial tools for the rich and powerful.
So far, journalists parsing the 2.6 terabytes of data have pinned at least 70 highly-placed politicians to the company, with many more expected to come to light. The fallout has been immediate: there are calls for the prime minister of Iceland to resign over a secret account – and it appears a quarter of his cabinet had accounts in Panama. Also on the list: a prominent Russian cellist who’s a close friend of Vladimir Putin. Even soccer star Lionel Messi had dealings.
Mossack Fonseca said they’ve done nothing wrong and all their business dealings are on the up-and-up. Well, we’ll see. We’ve got an ever-expanding round-up of the Panama Papers story, and so far, the biggest question no one has an answer to is: who leaked the data? Stay tuned.
Speaking of rich people and big money, suffice to say it was a pretty good weekend for Tesla and CEO, Elon Musk.
As of this morning, pre-orders for it’s more-affordable Model 3 electric car – which won’t turn a tire on pavement for over a year from now – have almost hit 300,000 units. That’s far, far beyond what Tesla and Musk were anticipating, so here’s hoping they can come through on the delivery of all those cars. Tesla says the average pre-order was $42,000 a pop, with buyers putting up $1,000 to save a place in line. That’s three billion dollars in cash in a weekend.
It’s also a lot of people lining up for purely electric cars while gas prices remain super low – and if the trend continues with strong demand for the Model 3, the new Chevy Bolt and the upcoming extended-electric range Prius Prime, well, that’s not good news for oil producers, who are already feeling the squeeze. Can Musk and company come through on the numbers for the Model 3? If they can, it could mark a major turning point for the electric car market.
We review a lot of TVs here at Digital Trends, and so far, the very best TVs we’ve ever seen are LG’s OLED offerings. Yes, they’re expensive, but nothing else really comes close. DT’s AV editor Caleb Denison just paid LG a visit to see what’s next for OLED – and got blown away all over again. Their new 65-inch G6 Signature 4K OLED set takes things to a new level with both HDR 10 and Dolby Vision picture quality improvements.
They also brighter than previous OLED sets and the G6 includes a versatile 60-watt stand/soundbar that swivels up if you feel like wall mounting the TV. Plus, it’s has the signature svelte OLED thinness we all love since OLED doesn’t use a backlight like an LED or LCD TV. And as expected, the picture quality is the best you can get, and we still love LG’s easy-to-use and fast WebOS on-screen operating system.
Price? $8,000 on pre-order from Amazon, but considering early – and smaller – plasma flat-screens were $20,000, we’d say it’s almost a bargain.
