OUCH:

George Soros likes to say the rich should pay more taxes. A substantial part of his wealth, though, comes from delaying them. While building a record as one of the world’s greatest investors, the 84-year-old billionaire used a loophole that allowed him to defer taxes on fees paid by clients and reinvest them in his fund, where they continued to grow tax-free. At the end of 2013, Soros—through Soros Fund Management—had amassed $13.3 billion through the use of deferrals, according to Irish regulatory filings by Soros.

Congress closed the loophole in 2008 and ordered hedge fund managers who used it to pay the accumulated taxes by 2017. A New York-based money manager such as Soros would be subject to a federal rate of 39.6 percent, combined state and city levies totaling 12 percent, and an additional 3.8 percent tax on investment income to pay for Obamacare, according to Andrew Needham, a tax partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Applying those rates to Soros’s deferred income would create a tax bill of $6.7 billion.

UNITED ABOMINATIONS: UN aid worker suspended for leaking report on child abuse by French troops.

NOT RACISM: What you really need to know about Baltimore, from a reporter who’s lived there for over 30 years:

Baltimore is not Ferguson and its primary problems are not racial. The mayor, city council president, police chief, top prosecutor, and many other city leaders are black, as is half of Baltimore’s 3,000-person police force. The city has many prominent black churches and a line of black civic leadership extending back to Frederick Douglass.

Yet, the gaping disparities separating the haves and the have nots in Baltimore are as large as they are anywhere. And, as the boys on the street will tell you, black cops can be hell on them, too.

Keep reading.

SPANIARDS LIKE TO LAUGH AT AMERICANS for creationism and irrational thinking. Well:

Thirty percent of Spaniards think that humans once lived alongside the dinosaurs, like in The Flintstones, while 25 percent think the Sun revolves around the Earth, rather than the other way around.

The figures may be horrifying, but they are nevertheless an improvement: in 2006, the proportions were almost 50 and 40 percent, respectively.

WELCOME TO THE 21st CENTURY: Cops arrest robot after it buys Ecstasy tablets with Bitcoin.

FROM THE STUPID LEAP OF LOGIC DEPARTMENT: Newsweek: Austerity Drives Spain to Adultery:

The eurozone’s economic crisis is driving Spaniards who can’t afford expensive divorces to have affairs outside marriage, according to an extramarital dating website.

Noel Biderman, CEO of Ashley Madison – which hopes to float later this year on the London Stock Exchange – says that some 1.3 million Spaniards have signed up to the website in the past five years.

BE CAREFUL WITH WACKOS: Australian health blogger admits faking terminal cancer: An Australian "wellness" blogger who built a successful business on claims she survived terminal cancer has admitted she never had the disease.

She advocated the use of natural remedies; I hope not many people who really had the disease followed her advice.

THE LAST MAN to shoot an American president lives a shockingly normal life.

BIZARRE INDEED: “And you thought this whole story couldn’t get more bizarre. According to “Penn In Ink,” a collection of essays about the University of Pennsylvania by author Samuel Hughes, Sabrina Erdely (Sabrina Rubin at the time) got busted by her editor at the UPenn newspaper for submitting a story that she had completely made up. Who was the editor who disciplined her? Stephen Glass.”

THE GUARDIAN states this as a fact, but it's just a plan that won't go anywhere because the law needed for it can't be approved before the end of the legislature in the summer: Catalonia to say adéu to long working days.

More importantly, it's social engineering that goes against what people wants to do, otherwise we'd be doing it already.

I'M NOT FOR BANNING SPEECH, but if you do it makes sense banning both of them: Ukraine lawmakers ban 'Communist and Nazi propaganda'.

They are both terrible ideologies with horrific results, but for some reason it's only the latter which gets universal condemnation. It's about time they're put in equal footing — and in fact, as for the number of victims is concerned, it could be argued that Communism was way worse, and yet it usually gets a free pass.

UK: Oil discovery near Gatwick airport 'significant'. Significant indeed: up to 100 billion barrels, 5-15% of which is recoverable. Still, it's a huge amount. Peak oil shmeak oil.

ANOTHER SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS CRUMBLING DOWN: More scientists doubt salt is as bad for you as the government says.

IT'S HARD to argue with this brutal takedown of the 'Food Babe' blogger.

There was another one at Slate a few months ago.

MOISÉS NAÍM: The Hidden Effects of Cheap Oil.