David Cameron Profited From Father’s Offshore Fund

British Prime Minister David Cameron has admitted to having a stake in his father’s offshore trust fund after previously denying his involvement.

Speaking to the U.K.’s ITV News on Thursday, Cameron said he and his wife, Samantha Cameron, owned 5,000 units in Blairmore Investment Trust, the offshore trust fund established by his late father, Ian Cameron. Blairmore Investment Trust, a multimillion-pound offshore fund that never paid any taxes in Britain, was named earlier this week in the leak of millions of documents from the law firm Mossack Fonseca, known as the Panama Papers. 

The prime minister said he sold the units, which were worth £30,000, in January 2010 and paid income tax on the dividends from the units. He said there was a profit on the units, but it was worth less than the capital gains tax allowance. Cameron said he did not pay capital gains tax on the units.

“I sold them all in 2010 because I was going to become prime minister,” he said. “I didn’t want anyone to say you’ve got other agendas, other interests, all the rest of it.”

Cameron initially said his father’s trust was a “private matter” and said his family “do not benefit from any offshore funds.” When asked about the fund by a journalist in Birmingham, U.K. on Tuesday, the prime minister replied: “I own no shares, no offshore trusts, no offshore funds, nothing like that. And, so that, I think, is a very clear description.”

During the interview on Thursday, the prime minister also said he received a £300,000 inheritance when his father died, but added that criticism of his father is not justified.

“There are many other unit trusts like it, and I think it's being unfairly described and my father's name is being unfairly written about," he told ITV News.

Shortly before ITV News published its article, the hashtag #CurseDavidCameron emerged on Twitter. Below are some of the tamer offerings.

Syria civil war: ISIL kidnaps 300 factory workers

More than 300 staff at a cement factory near Damascus have been kidnapped after an attack earlier this week by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Syrian state TV said on Thursday.

Hundreds of employees at the Al Badia Cement company were taken by ISIL fighters from a factory 50km east of the Syrian capital, the report quoted the industry ministry as saying.

It added the workers' employer had lost all contact with them. 

READ MORE: Attack on Kurdish town in Syria kills 18

There were conflicting reports earlier on Thursday about the number of people missing.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "dozens" of staff had disappeared, while a plant administrator put the figure at 250. 

"There is information that the workers might have been kidnapped by Islamic State and taken to an unknown destination," Rami Abdel Rahman, the Observatory's head, told the DPA news agency. 

A resident of Dumeir, 50km east of the Syrian capital, told the AFP news agency that contact with family members had been lost "since noon on Monday".

READ MORE: Syrian army launches Aleppo counter-offensive

The cement factory lies outside Dumeir, which has seen fierce battles between government forces and ISIL fighters inside the town.

A Syrian security source told AFP that ISIL also tried to seize a nearby airbase and power plant from the government, without succeeding

Court hears case of teen who sent beau texts urging suicide

BOSTON — Dozen
s of text messages that a teenage girl sent to her boyfriend that encouraged him to kill himself were just words and do not constitute a crime, her lawyer told the state's highest court Thursday.

But a prosecutor argued that Michelle Carter pressured Conrad Roy III for weeks to end his life and engaged in "emotional manipulation" of a vulnerable teen who had struggled with depression and previously attempted suicide.

The Supreme Judicial Court heard arguments in Carter's appeal of a juvenile court judge's refusal to dismiss the manslaughter charge stemming from Roy's 2014 death.

The justices made it clear they were struggling with whether Carter's actions met the definition of manslaughter, peppering both side with questions about exactly what she did to encourage or assist Roy's suicide.

Justice Robert Cordy questioned Assistant District Attorney Shoshana Stern about what he called the "$100,000 question" in the case: "When did this cross the line — when did these words cross the line?"

In addition to the many text messages encouraging Roy to kill himself, Stern said, Carter also spoke on the phone with him while he was in his truck inhaling carbon monoxide fumes.

When Roy got out of his truck, she told him to "get back in," Stern said.

"I think what we can say that we know is that she was way over the line when she told him to get back in the truck," Stern said.

But Carter's attorney Dana Curhan said Roy was determined to take his own life. He said Carter repeatedly tried to talk him out of it but finally gave up about two weeks before his death.

"Even when she said, 'get back in the truck,' that was not the proximate event that resulted in his death," Curhan said.

Roy got back in his truck and waited until the fumes overcame him, Curhan said.

"The undisputed evidence is that Mr. Roy inflicted the harm," Curhan said.

Carter was 17 and Roy was 18 when he died in 2014. They had met in Florida two years earlier while visiting relatives. They kept in touch mostly through texts and emails when they both returned to their homes in Massachusetts — about 50 miles apart. They hadn't seen each other in more than a year before Roy's death.

"You can't think about it. You just have to do it. You said you were gonna do it. Like I don't get why you aren't," Carter wrote to Roy the day of his death.

Roy's body was found in his pickup truck in Fairhaven. Police found a gasoline-operated water pump in the back seat.

Carter was charged as a youthful offender, which makes her eligible for a sentence of up to 20 years in prison if convicted of manslaughter.

Attorney Joseph Cataldo, who also represents Carter, said after the hearing that prosecutors are attempting to criminalize Carter's free speech in the case when there is no law against encouraging or assisting suicide in Massachusetts. Thirty-nine states have such laws.

"It's not a case that should have even been brought," Cataldo said.

The court gave no indication on when it would rule.

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