Vox Sentences: Why did Saudi Arabia give the Malaysian prime minister $680 million?

The end of Malaysia's corruption scandal raises more questions than answers; solitary confinement is torture, and now the US will do less of it; change afoot in Cuba.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

When "it was a gift from the Saudis" is your defense against corruption...

(Charles Pertwee/Getty Images)

• Malaysia's attorney general has moved to close a corruption investigation into Prime Minister Najib Razak — saying the $680 million in mysterious funds Najib received in 2013 came from the Saudi royal family and there wasn't anything wrong with that.

  [NYT / Thomas Fuller]

• Here's why this is weird: This is part of an ongoing investigation into a heavily indebted state-owned investment fund called 1MDB. Najib is the head of 1MDB's advisory board.

  [CNBC]

• Last summer, the Wall Street Journal reported that investigators had turned up evidence that hundreds of millions of dollars had been transferred from accounts tied to 1MDB into Najib's personal accounts.

  [WSJ / Yantoultra Ngui and Tom Wright]

• Shortly thereafter, Najib fired his deputy prime minister — who had been calling for him to cooperate more with investigators — and his attorney general. The attorney general Najib appointed instead is the one who's just cleared him of wrongdoing.

  [NYT / Austin Ramzy]

• The attorney general found that the money in question came from the personal accounts of members of the Saudi royal family, and that Najib returned most of it — minus about $60 million — several months later, after he won reelection.

  [WSJ / Yantoultra Ngui and Tom Wright]

• Suffice it to say that people are not persuaded.

  [The Guardian / Simon Tisdall]

• One remaining question: Why would Saudi Arabia just give someone hundreds of millions of dollars? One answer, as a Saudi source told the BBC: The Saudi royals were worried about the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Malaysia and wanted to make sure Najib's coalition beat the coalition with a Brotherhood-affiliated party.

  [BBC / Frank Gardner]

• Another remaining question: Can Najib really not have noticed, as the attorney general claims he didn't, that he'd also gotten $14 million transferred to his accounts from a government-owned company called SRC — which used to be owned by 1MDB?

  [Bloomberg / Manirajan Ramasamy ]

US decides torturing people is a bad way to protect them

(Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

• The federal government is making major reforms to restrict the use of solitary confinement in federal prisons. Vox's German Lopez explains.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• The reforms were announced by a Washington Post op-ed signed by President Obama himself.

  [Washington Post / Barack Obama]

• Solitary confinement is absolutely terrible. International human rights organizations refer to it as torture. And they mean that literally.

  [io9 / George Dvorsky]

• The change that has gotten the most attention is the end of solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons — but since there are only 26 juveniles in federal facilities right now (mostly Native American teenagers serving terms for sex offenses committed on reservations), that isn't a tremendous change.

  [Bureau of Prisons]

• The more substantial change to solitary confinement is that the government is requiring prison officials to think harder about when it can and should be used.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• For one thing, it's reducing the amount of time that people can be sent to solitary confinement for punishment and eliminating it as a punishment for low-level infractions — like some of the violations listed here.

  [Quartz / Annalisa Merelli]

• It's also trying to curb the use of solitary confinement to protect prisoners who are threatened by under prisoners — instructing prisons to build "reintegrative housing units," so those prisoners can be protected without having to undergo the torture of being alone for 23 hours a day.

  [ACLU]

More people coming to Cuba, more people leaving

(Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

• The US has announced new regulations that further loosen the trade embargo with Cuba. US exporters (in industries other than agriculture) will be allowed to finance exports themselves, rather than requiring payment from Cuban importers in advance.

  [Miami Herald / Mimi Whitefield]

• US companies will also be allowed to particiapte in certain Cuban infrastructure projects — and will have more opportunities to film movies and TV shows in Cuba.

  [Reuters / Arshad Mohammed and Daniel Trotta]

• Cuba is struggling to keep pace with the effects of warming relations. The tourism market is expanding rapidly — and the industry might not have the capacity to meet the demand.

  [Reuters / Jaime Hamre]

• Meanwhile, a wave of Cubans attempting to emigrate through Central America to the US — who had been held off for weeks when Nicaragua closed its border — have begun to fly into the US to resettle.

  [CNN / Mariano Castillo and Jose Manuel Rodriguez]

• The flights are part of a bigger surge of Cuban emigration to the US, which has been ongoing for the past year.

  [Pew Hispanic Trends Project / Jens Manuel Krogstad]

• US immigration policy makes it much easier for Cubans to immigrate legally to the US than people from other places. The surge — and the change in US/Cuba relations — is beginning to call into question whether that should still be the case, and, if not, how it should change.

  [Immigration Impact / Josh Breisblatt]

MISCELLANEOUS

In the early 1990s, Hillary Clinton tried to start a national conversation about being nice to one another. She was mocked for it, but it's crucial to understanding her politics today. [BuzzFeed / Ruby Cramer]

• Clinton offhandedly bashed Reconstruction last night. Ta-Nehisi Coates is not pleased.

  [The Atlantic / Ta-Nehisi Coates]

• American corporations are sitting on $1.9 trillion in cash, a truly unprecedented amount, earning barely enough interest to keep up with inflation. Why?

  [NYT / Adam Davidson]

• Sarah Palin's PAC spends a ton on posh hotels and private planes for Palin — but not a whole lot on conservative candidates.

  [The Daily Beast / Jackie Kucinich]

• In defense of The Happening, the M. Night Shyamalan movie where the trees are trying to kill mankind with neurotoxins and Mark Wahlberg talks to a plastic plant. Yes, really.

  [AV Club / Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]

VERBATIM

"The key to tackling extremism is despair. Rob them of the hope that their wild fantasies will win out the day." [Benjamin Netanyahu via World Economic Forum]

• "Unbeknownst to many outside the Midwest, over the past 15 years Des Moines has transformed into one of the richest, most vibrant, and, yes, hip cities in the country, where the local arts scene, entrepreneurial startups and established corporate employers are all thriving."

  [Politico Magazine / Colin Woodard]

• "Uber, the designated driver of the iPhone generation, thinks intoxicated adult passengers are a lot like restless kids: both can be pacified with a game. The on-demand ride app has been conducting an experiment in the North Carolina city of Charlotte in which drivers leave a Bop It – a noisy children’s sound game based around a plastic toy – in the back seat during rides."

  [The Guardian / Danny Yadron]

• "The city is lost. Since yesterday afternoon, nature has reasserted its hold over the world of man. In a neighborhood called Cleveland Park—for that is something that human civilization once did; we claimed lands and gave them titles, we called these lands home, we called these lands ours—the fauna have returned."

  [CityLab / Kriston Capps]

• "I do not play piano and I made this jazz album. Some tell me, 'Hey, Jon, tone it down.' Some even say, 'Really, Jon?' A few have said, 'Get the fuck away from me or I’ll fucking punch you in the face.' I know the risks in making this album. I know what it is like to do something that no one else would think to do. Most would call this reckless. I call it jazz."

  [Sub Pop / Jon Benjamin]

WATCH THIS

Why Yankee Doodle called it "macaroni" [YouTube / Phil Edwards]

(Getty Images)

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