From Panama to Paradise: as the latest leak of 13.4m files from an offshore financial services provider underlines, the world’s super-rich continue to benefit from ever-ingenious ways of sheltering their wealth from national taxation.
It has taken 381 reporters from 67 countries around a year to sift through this massive data haul, which was obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with 96 media partners, including the Guardian.
The results have generated more than enough material to fill this week’s Guardian Weekly in its entirety. But we have settled for two detailed examples: one relating to Queen Elizabeth II and the other to an adviser of the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau. The full trove of Paradise Papers stories, which are still being released, can be found here on the Guardian’s website.
Donald Trump began an extensive Asia-Pacific tour hoping to put his domestic woes behind him. However, a gun massacre in a smalltown Texas church, not long after a truck attack killed several cyclists in New York City, highlighted the US’s current vulnerabilities at the hands of violent extremists.
In Saudi Arabia, a purge of senior establishment figures by the young reformist crown prince Salman has sent shockwaves through the secretive kingdom and sent seasoned Middle East watchers scrambling to predict what comes next.
From east Asia comes a fascinating tale of wartime shipwreck salvage, desecrating the sea graves of many fallen soldiers and prompting much speculation about why such historic scrap metal should suddenly be of such international value.
In the UK, the news has been dominated by a deepening sexual abuse scandal engulfing Westminster MPs that has resulted in resignations, suspensions and investigations on all sides, and has brought much parliamentary business to a standstill. We bring you the background to a crisis that could change the way UK politics is done for good.
Last week saw the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, a statement that first offered Britain’s support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. Our Weekly Review long read takes a detailed look at the historical and present-day context to an anniversary that, not surprisingly, sharply divides opinion to this day.
Discovery takes a critical look at the rise of artificial intelligence and a worrying drain of academic experts in this field to the megabucks private-sector world of Silicon Valley.
As South Africa’s ANC approaches elections to decide its new leader – and by extension almost certainly the country’s next president – the Books reviews consider how the party has never fully filled the leadership void created when Nelson Mandela stepped down.
The Culture pages look into the interminably low-speed world of performance artist Tehching Hsieh, while the reviews pick up the Netflix TV series Stranger Things 2, currently the subject of an epic binge-watching marathon in the Snowdon household.
I have to admit part of the appeal of Stranger Things is the way it beautifully captures the low-tech, big hair innocence of my childhood (now long gone, as a quick glance at my Guardian profile picture will testify). But it also reminds me how much dark background politics were going on, of which we were only partly aware at the time. With a bit of luck today’s kids will be able to look back on the current era in similarly fond terms!
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