Vox Sentences: The global rich hid billions of dollars from their governments using this one weird trick

The Panama Papers are one of the biggest leaks ever; the Supreme Court rules on who counts in drawing up legislative districts; a long-frozen conflict in the Caucasus turns hot.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

Panamania!

Mossack Fonseca

• In what appears to be the biggest data journalism leak ever, 2.6 terabytes of files from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca have been released to a group of journalists working with the International Center for Investigative Reporting. The cache is being called the Panama Papers.

  [International Consortium of Investigative Journalists]

• The docs that the journalists have released so far show how the world's financial elite used Mossack Fonseca to set up offshore shell companies to secretly protect their wealth. Vox's Matt Yglesias explains.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• In a Wired piece about how the Panama Papers investigation came together, the journalists clarify that they don't intend to release all the documents — just the ones they feel are of public benefit.

  [Wired / Andy Greenberg]

• There are plenty of those. The Panama Papers reveal that Vladimir Putin's inner circle holds about $2 billion in secret offshore accounts — putting a number to general assumptions about the corruption of Putin's Russia.

  [The Guardian / Luke Harding]

• And the prime minister of Iceland is facing mass protests and calls to step down, after a Panama Papers revelation that while in government, he was secretly holding shares of debt of some of the failed Icelandic banks the government was working to save.

  [CNN / Tim Hune]

• But despite these flare-ups — and even though Mossack Fonseca has been dogged by money-laundering allegations in the past — the real scandal of the Panama Papers, many say, is what's legal.

  [USA Today / Alan Gomez]

• Around the world, rich people are strategically manipulating their wealth so that it can't be touched by the government of their countries of residence. And governments have tacitly declared this okay.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• Want to go deeper? Vox's Tara Golshan has a reading list.

  [Vox / Tara Golshan]

"One person, one vote" versus ... "one person, one vote"

Alex Wong/Getty Images

• In a surprising 8-0 decision today, the Supreme Court ruled that states don't have to allocate legislative districts by the number of voters, rather than the number of all people, in them.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• The decision, in Evenwel v. Abbott, shut down a challenge from two conservative Texans who'd sued their state government to force it to stop counting non-eligible voters (including children, noncitizens, and the legally disenfranchised) when drawing up state Senate districts.

  [The Atlantic / Matt Ford]

• Unsurprisingly, this plan would have substantially reduced the political power of heavily Hispanic (and Asian-American) regions of the country, as well as urban areas on the whole.

  [Pew Research Center / Drew DeSilver]

• The decision is being described as a victory for "one person, one vote." But it was really a fight over what that term actually means. And at least two of the Court's conservatives think that meaning isn't actually settled.

  [BuzzFeed News / Chris Geidner]

• While the Court said that the state couldn't be forced to adopt a different method of counting people, it didn't say that states aren’t allowed to try alternative methods. If states do try to switch it up, expect more legal challenges.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• The effects of such a state effort would be similar to the plan the Court rejected today, and would likely hurt nonwhite voters the most. But that wouldn't keep state-led changes from being constitutional.

  [New Republic / Scott Lemieux]

Nagorno-Karabakh, explained

Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images

• The armies of Armenia and Azerbaijan are fighting in the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh, with 30 casualties on both sides over the past three days.

  [Wall Street Journal / Nathan Hodge]

• Nagorno-Karabakh — ethnically Armenian, but within the territory of Azerbaijan — has been in conflict for nearly 30 years. It first tried to secede before the fall of the Soviet Union, and it was the subject of a war between the two countries in 1994.

  [Council on Foreign Relations / Lionel Beehner]

• Since then, the region has been relatively self-governing, supported by Armenia, and surrounded by Azerbaijani territory. (The BBC has a helpful map.)

  [BBC ]

• Violence between Armenia and Azerbaijan has been relatively frequent, but no one was prepared for an outbreak this severe.

  [The Conversation / Kevork Osanian]

• Azerbaijan claims it's recaptured a couple of important towns, which could tip the balance of power in its direction — something that could help its government, which is suffering from the low price of oil. (Armenia's not doing too well either.)

  [International Crisis Group / Magdalena Grono]

• Azerbaijan also has the benefit of a powerful (if distracted) ally in the region: Turkey, whose prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is essentially cheering on Azerbaijan's military.

  [Financial Times / Jack Farchy]

• Russia is acting more diplomatically. It's condemned the violence and might be interested in sending peacekeepers. But many observers are skeptical, given that Russia has sold arms to both sides, that the country is all that interested in lasting peace.

  [International Crisis Group / Magdalena Grono]

MISCELLANEOUS

As many as a million American are set to lose their food stamps this year. This is the shitty reason why. [Washington Post / Max Ehrenfreund and Roberto Ferdman]

• Even as Brooklyn has undergone an incredible renaissance, its neighborhood of East New York remains the most crime-ridden, polluted, desperate place in all of New York City. Kevin Heldman investigates why.

  [Digg / Kevin Heldman]

• We usually conceptualize addiction as a disease. But what if it's more like a learning disorder?

  [Slate / Dana Goldstein]

• For decades, Soviets were the go-to villains in American films. But there was no Soviet equivalent of Red Dawn or Rocky IV with villainous Americans. Why?

  [AV Club / Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]

• In a criminal indictment, the US Department of Justice argues that retweets are, in fact, endorsements.

  [Seamus Hughes via Twitter]

VERBATIM

"She was insane, incurably insane, from reading novels." [Anonymous physician in 1864, via Clive Thompson]

• "Let’s have a second look. Here is Maryland. And here is Massachusetts. You will notice a few subtle differences, apparently indistinguishable to the naked eye."

  [Deadspin / Drew Magary]

• "Because I had been born into the British governing class, because I knew a lot of people of an influential standing, I knew that they would never get too tough with me. They’d never try to beat me up or knock me around, because if they had been proved wrong afterwards, I could have made a tremendous scandal."

  [Kim Philby via Washington Post / Ishaan Tharoor]

• "It’s the same look he sported at the Gigli premiere in 2004, laden with the realization that he’d done something horribly, irrevocably wrong."

  [BuzzFeed / Anne Helen Petersen]

• "Within hours after Linda was discharged, she broke into an abandoned farmhouse where she survived on apples while waiting for divine guidance. Alone, psychotic and slowly starving herself to death, Linda kept a diary up to within a few weeks before her death."

  [Pete Earley]

WATCH THIS

Why every picture of a black hole is an illustration [YouTube / Joss Fong and Brian Resnick]

NASA/ESA/STScI

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