Toronto Zoo consults Cayman experts

TORONTO, Canada: Toronto Star, May 13, 2008 – The Toronto Zoo is going ahead with the opening of its stingray exhibit on Friday, while officials at the Calgary Zoo are still trying to determine what killed 35 stingrays in their exhibit. “It’s a shocking event for the zoo community,” said Shanna Young, spokesperson for the Toronto Zoo. “This has caught everyone by surprise. We are a strong community and share how they (Calgary) feel.”

Zoo officials here have consulted with Calgary Zoo officials and have reviewed procedures here, which “have been months in development,” Young said. They have also talked with experts in the Cayman Islands, where the biggest tourist attraction is Stingray City, where the public is taken to an ocean sandbar to feed and touch the stingrays.


Pentagon contractors defend Cayman loopholes

WASHINGTON, USA: Dow Jones, May 13, 2008 – Pentagon contractors under scrutiny for setting up shell corporations in offshore tax havens are looking to the Senate as a line of defense against legislation that would curb such transactions. The House passed legislation in April that would treat the offshore companies as U.S. employers - effectively subjecting the contractors to Internal Revenue Service audit and enforcement if they continued to skirt payroll taxes.

Now, Sen. John Kerry wants to attach language cracking down on the practice, which he authored with Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama in the next tax bill that moves through the Senate. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, is reviewing the bill.

The Kerry-Obama bill seeks to prevent government contractors from avoiding paying employer taxes on wages by setting up shell corporations in Bermuda or in the Cayman Islands. The House action put the ball in the court of the Senate Finance panel’s Baucus - a fact that has not been lost on the firms that would be affected by the bill.

Senior employees of L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. - parent company to MPRI, a defense contractor that has been the focus of scrutiny - held a fundraiser for Baucus, a spokeswoman for the company confirmed. The donations came just days after a March Boston Globe report revealed that KBR pays thousands of its personnel through a Cayman Islands affiliate.