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Britain to clamp down on tax secrecy in UK havens
(CNS Business): The UK is planning to impose its own version of the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) on its Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories, according to a report published Friday by International Tax Review, which says the move will deal an almost-fatal blow to tax evasion through the UK’s tax havens. The UK plans were revealed in a leaked government document seen by ITR. The Tax Justice Network blog commented, “Britain's appalling track record in this general area constitutes grounds for severe caution. But that is not to take away from the fact that if this move is genuine, it represents genuine progress. And among other things … it does show that Britain remains in a position to require its satellite tax havens to submit to its authority? Read more on CNS Business
Cayman networks at China Offshore Summit
(CNS Business): At the Cayman Islands’ private session during last month’s China Offshore Summit, which was attended by more than 120 people representing top financial intermediaries and high net-worth individuals from mainland China, Premier McKeeva Bush said he was pleased with the overwhelmingly positive response. Government’s theme for the summit, according to officials, was Guanxi: The Cayman-China Connection, which “aimed to educate investment advisers, venture capitalists, private-equity firms and other financial institutions on the asset management and corporate products available in Cayman,” the finance ministry said. Guanxi is a Mandarin word meaning ‘networks’ or ‘connections’, inferring support and cooperation, particularly in the business and social contexts. Read more on CNS Business
Prison boss takes early retirement
(CNS): The director of prisons, Dwight Scott, is retiring from the Cayman Islands Prison Service,officials from the Portfolio of Internal & External Affairs confirmed Tuesday. Scott has already left service as a result of accrued annual leave that will continue until his official retirement date next February. In the interim, until a recruitment process is complete, Deputy Director Daniel Greaves is acting as director of prisons and Natalie Joseph-Caesar is the acting deputy director. Scott's retirement comes ahead of what the portfolio has said will be changes and improvements to the service based on reports carried out by international corrections experts.
Appointed director of prisons in 2004, Scott received the Colonial Prison Long Service Medal in 2010, and has worked in the local prisons system for 23 years. During that time he led the restoration of the prisons in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan, developed the Tilapia farm project; and introduced a City and Guilds examination centre within the prison system.
Chief Officer Eric Bush thanked Scott for his contributions to the Prison Service but made no comment regarding speculation that Scott had been asked to retire early.
Looking to the future Bush said the prison would be guided by the reports it had commissioned relating to corrections and rehabilitation.
The Institute of Public Administration of Canada (IPAC), Cambridge University’s Institute of Criminology, and most recently, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons have all reviewed and reported on the local prison systems and pointed out a number of areas where significant improvement is needed, in particular rehabilitation.
“We believe this information has an invaluable role to play in improving the overall quality of the corrections and rehabilitation product of the Cayman Islands,” Bush added.
Obama victory confirms old headaches for offshore
(CNS Business): President Barack Obama’s decisive win in the US Presidential elections yesterday ensures a continuation of the aggressive stance towards low- or no-tax jurisdictions that has been a marked strategy of his first administration. An early issue in the campaign and the subject of several attack ads had been Romney’s personal use of offshore accounts in jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, and the relatively low tax he pays as a result. Had he won, US policy towards offshore might have taken a new direction. “Obama's demagoguery is not good for Cayman's financial industry. It augments the image built up by popular culture that places such as Cayman and Switzerland somehow are rogue regimes,” Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute told CNS Business earlier this year. Read more and comment on CNS Business
Teen arrested for theft of car parts
(CNS): A 19-year-old man suspected of the theft of car parts has been arrested after he crashed into a lamppost while attempting to escape the police. Shortly after 4:30am this morning, Tuesday 30 October, the RCIPS received a report that two men were attempting to steal car parts from a garage premises in Seymour Drive, George Town. When police officers arrived at the scene they saw a Honda Civic speeding away. The officers signaled the driver of the Civic to stop but when he failed to do so they continued to follow the car. The Civic then drove into School Road where it crashed into a lamppost. The driver ran off from the scene but the teenage passenger was arrested on suspicious of theft.
A search of the vehicle uncovered a number of car parts, including a bumper, headlights and indicator. Police enquiries have confirmed that these items had been stolen from Outpost Street earlier in the night.
Chief Inspector Frank Owens is once again urging car owners to be vigilant following the recent spate of car part thefts, and asks that anyone who sees any suspicious vehicles or activity contacts the police.
Cayman and the 2012 apocalypse
The good news is that nobody will have to worry about conditions at the Turtle Farm. The high cost of living won’t be a burden anymore either. The bad news is that the Cayman Islands will be swept under the sea, everyone will die, and all of civilization will crumble in a fiery spasm of unprecedented chaos and destruction.
Here we go again. We are fast approaching yet another angry apocalypse and no one should be surprised. Throughout history, and probably deep into prehistory, a good number of us have always been obsessed with the end of the world and been willing to jump onboard whenever someone comes along with a firm date for doomsday. This time it’s the Maya 2012 prophecy. According to believers, the Maya calendar ends on December 21, 2012 so the world will too.
Poll results vary but about ten to 12 percent of American adults think the world is going to end this year. In China, 20 percent think it’s lights out on December 21. About 13 percent in Turkey, Russia, Mexico, and Japan believe it. Overall, one in ten people globally think the Maya doomsday prediction will come true. And don’t think that it’s all a big joke. NASA astronomer David Morrison says some people are so concerned about it that they are considering suicide.
Based on my encounters, with astrology fans in George Town, obeah practitioners in West Bay and rapture-ready folks in East End, I’m guessing that a significant percentage of people in the Cayman Islands are eyeing December 21 with concern. If you are one of these people, read on and allow me to ease your mind. If you know someone who thinks there is something to this Maya prophecy, please forward this commentary to them. Do it quickly. No one should suffer this much nonsense rattling around inside their skull.
What is going on? Why do hundreds of millions of people believe this extraordinary unproven claim? First of all, the Maya civilization existed from about 200 to 900 CE. They were in southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and parts of Honduras—very near the Cayman Islands. Maya still live in Central America today and very few of them pay any attention to this doomsday date, which is our first hint that something is very wrong.
So here is the key question: How did the Maya know centuries ago that the world would end on December 21, 2012? How did they figure out something today’s scientists couldn’t? Answer: They didn’t! They never made this prediction! It is the invention of very strange modern people. The Maya may have tracked the path of the Moon, built impressive pyramids, and ripped beating hearts out of people in the name of religion, but they never claimed to know when the world would end. Imagine that, millions of people believe in a Maya prediction that not only has no evidence to support it but was never made by the Maya in the first place.
The Maya had several calendars, one of which lasts 5,125 years. This “long-count calendar” ends this year. This is the basis of the idea that the world will end. It’s like a Maya expiration date for everything. But here’s the key: the end of a calendar does not mean the world ends too. If it did, our 12-month calendar would mark Earth’s destruction every December 31. But it doesn’t. When the calendar stuck on your refrigerator door reaches December 31 it doesn’t trigger earthquakes, plagues, and asteroid strikes. You just throw it away and buy a new one. Same with the Maya long-count calendar. This is not some wild hunch I am extracting from my nether regions. This is the conclusion of every credible Maya scholar. There are no artifacts discovered to date that show the Maya expected the world to end when their long-count calendar ended. In fact, inscriptions have been found that clearly show the Maya expected the world to be here after 2012 because they wrote about important events occurring after that date.
Another fatal problem with this prediction that the Maya never predicted is that it’s based on a bad date to begin with. It would be wrong even if it was right. The first long-count calendar begins on a creation date of 3,114 BCE. We know beyond any doubt that the world and/or humankind are much older than five thousand years. Therefore any predictions about future events that are calculated using this or any similar creation date are going to be wrong. It’s a mistake based on a mistake. This is why Rev. Harold Camping’s much-publicized rapture date in 2011 was so obviously silly. He based his calculations on the Earth being less than 10,000 years old. Anytime someone attempts to solve a mathematical problem and gets the first number in the equation wrong by more than four billion years errors are unavoidable.
The greater question in all of this is why so many of us keep falling for these hollow predictions. My hunch is that they are so tempting because we subconsciously fear a lonely death. Maybe this is what makes the idea of a global doomsday so irresistible. We are social creatures, after all. We need one another more than we realize. Is it any surprise, then, that many of us might feel the urge to all go down together? For many, a collective death is more appealing than dying alone in a car on the side of a road after a traffic accident or quietly expiring in some hospital bed.
It is important to understand that irrational beliefs about doomsday have little to do with intelligence or education. One can be very bright, but if she or he is a weak skeptic then bad ideas can easily creep in and take root. For example, no less than Isaac Newton, perhaps the greatest scientist of all time, was quite certain that the end of the world will occur in 2060. But that’s not going to happen either because, for one reason, he based his calculations on an incorrect creation date for the Earth. Bad input gets you every time. When it comes to irrational beliefs, anyone who is a human being with a human brain is vulnerable to stumbling. The best we can do is stay humble and stay skeptical.
I can tell you right now what will happen on December 22, the morning after the Maya doomsday. Because of hindsight bias, many 2012 believers will sincerely imagine that they knew it was nonsense all along. Some will say the numbers were a bit off and come up with a new date for the end. Others will say that it did happen but it was an invisible doomsday or a doomsday of the spirit—something that can’t be detected or disproved, of course. And then, before long, another irrational doomsday belief will come along and millions of innocent brains will once again be under assault.
This colossal waste of time and nervous energy doesn’t have to keep happening. People only have to commit themselves to being good skeptics. Do that and watch the bogus beliefs and crazy claims just melt away. It’s not so difficult. Demand evidence for weird ideas. Ask questions. Consider the source. Listen to contrary opinions. Learn how easily confirmation bias and other natural quirks of the mind betray us to make silly things that aren’t true seem reasonable. In short, think before you believe.
Guy P. Harrison is the author of three science-themed books: “50 Popular Beliefs That People Think are True”, “Race and Reality: What Everyone Should Know About Our Biological Diversity”, and “50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God”. His next book is scheduled for publication in March, 2013.
RCIPS officers chase down rape suspect
(CNS): Police officers chased and arrested a suspect who fled from the scene of a reported rape in the early hours of Saturday morning. Shortly after 4:00am on Saturday 20 October, police received a report that a man had raped a woman within a house in the Prospect area. A man fled from the scene in a car when the officers arrived but they followed the vehicle, signaling the driver to stop. The driver failed to stop and sped into the North Sound Estates, where the car drove off the road into bushes. The officers immediately arrestedthe suspect on suspicion of rape and he remains in police custody while enquiries continue.. Police enquiries have revealed that the suspect is known to the victim.
Police nab suspect after shot fired in West Bay
(CNS): A man has been arrested and is in police custody after a shot was discharged in the West Bay area early Saturday morning and a gun and ammunition were subsequently recovered. About 3:00am on Saturday, police received a report that a shot had been fired in the area of North West Point Road. A vehicle was seen speeding off from the location towards the Turtle Farm. No one was injured in the incident. A short time later, police officers spotted the vehicle at the George Town Hospital. The vehicle was searched and a firearm and a quantity of ammunition were recovered. A 20-year-old man who was arrested at the location on suspicion of possession of an unlicensed firearm remains in police custody while enquiries continue.
Man arrested for stabbing in George Town
(CNS): A 49-year-old man is in hospital and a 25-year-old man is in police custody following a stabbing on Friday morning. The RCIPS say that at about 10:15am on 19 October they received a report that a man had been stabbed in Kingbird Drive, George Town. The victim was taken to the Cayman Islands Hospital, where he is currently being treated. His condition is described as critical, but stable. The suspect was arrested at the scene on suspicion of attempted murder. He remains in police custody while enquiries continue.
FCU: Not enough suspicious activity reports filed
(CNS Business): The volume of suspicious activity reports (SARs) being filed in the Cayman Islands is far too low considering that the jurisdiction is the fifth largest in the world, according to Detective Superintendent Brian Donley, lead in the RCIPS Financial Crimes Unit. DS Donley said that there had to be more suspicious activity taking place in Cayman and compliance officers were either being prevented from reporting such suspicious activity or were just not seeing it. Better relations between the authorities and the private sector might improve the situation, he believed but thought the authorities were sometimes slow in responding back to the private sector once they had reported a SAR for many reasons, one of which was that sometimes people politically linked within the island might be involved in the suspicious activity report and such cases could take years to solve. Read more on CNS Business