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A homicide investigation has rocked the final days of Burning Man after a man was found dead “lying in a pool of blood” Saturday night at the Nevada desert festival, according to the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office. According to the New York Times, the grim discovery occurred around 9:14 p.m. just as the festival’s iconic wooden “Man” effigy began its traditional burn.

The victim, described as a white adult male whose identity remains unknown, was found by a festival participant who flagged down a deputy. Sheriff Jerry Allen confirmed that deputies, Bureau of Land Management rangers, and local rangers immediately secured a perimeter while the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office forensic team collected evidence.

The murder comes as Burning Man long ago evolved from a countercultural gathering into a networking hub for Silicon Valley’s tech elite. Tesla CEO Elon Musk once declared that “Burning Man is Silicon Valley,” and Mark Zuckerberg famously helicoptered in to serve grilled cheese sandwiches. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has also made the desert pilgrimage.

But perhaps no tech leaders have deeper ties to the festival than Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who have been devoted attendees for years. Their connection reportedly runs so deep that long before Google Doodles became known for celebrating holidays, the very first Google Doodle was launched on August 30, 1998 to tell users that Page and Brin were out of office at Burning Man.

This homicide investigation marks the latest in a series of bizarre incidents at the festival over its 38-year history. In 2017, a man died after throwing himself into the burning effigy, while deaths from motorcycle crashes and vehicle accidents have occurred since the 1990s. In another strange twist, last week, a baby named Aurora was born at the festival to parents who had no idea they were expecting.

The investigation faces unique challenges as Sheriff Allen noted it’s “a complicated investigation of a crime in a city which will be gone by the middle of the week.” With the festival scheduled to end Monday and the traditional exodus of 70,000 attendees beginning, authorities may face pressure to extend the timeline or restrict departures to preserve the crime scene and conduct interviews.

“Although this act appears to be a singular crime, all participants should always be vigilant of their surroundings and acquaintances,” the sheriff’s office warned, as the temporary desert metropolis prepares for its annual dismantling.

Throngs of wealthy newcomers have arrived in Milan including Nassef Sawiris, Egypt’s richest man, Richard Gnodde, vice-chair of Goldman Sachs and Yoël Zaoui, co-founder of advisory boutique Zaoui & Co. Rolly van Rappard, co-founder of private equity group CVC Capital Partners, is weighing a move. 

They are just the tip of the iceberg. Milan’s charm and a friendly tax regime have lured several thousand foreigners to Italy’s financial centre, write Harriet Agnew, Josh Spero, Ortenca Aliaj and Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli. 

New foreign residents — or a returning Italian who has lived abroad for at least nine years — can pay a flat tax of €200,000 a year on any foreign income and assets for up to 15 years and be fully exempt from inheritance tax on foreign assets during that period. What’s more, over 100,000 people have benefited from a scheme for those arriving from overseas that gives a 50 per cent reduction on taxable Italian income, with most moving to Milan.

Italy’s fiscal sweeteners come as the UK has abolished its 226-year-old rules for non-domiciled residents, exposing their overseas assets to a 40 per cent inheritance tax and their foreign income and gains to the wider British regime. Tax on carried interest — private equity managers’ profits on successful deals — has in effect also risen to 34 per cent in the UK, while Italy has a flat rate of 26 per cent.

Asset managers are moving too. As part of a wider European expansion, alternatives firms including CVC, Preservation Capital and Ares have been opening and expanding offices in Milan in recent years, joined by hedge funds, including Capstone Investment Advisors and Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management.

But it’s not all good news. The influx of wealthy foreigners has caused friction with locals as property and rental prices have soared, while a corruption probe is under way over some redevelopment in the city’s most exclusive neighbourhood.

Shock-and-awe ‘victory day’ military parade this week seeks to recast second world war narrative

Xi Jinping has called on Russia, India and other countries in the region to join China in leveraging their economic influence to challenge the west at a time of rising geopolitical and trade tensions.

The Chinese president, hosting a regional security forum, told more than 20 leaders that with the world undergoing “turbulence and change”, they needed to uphold an “orderly multipolar world”.

This included championing free trade and “a more just and reasonable global governance system”, in a clear challenge to the current US-led system.

“We should expand the scope of co-operation, make the most of each country’s unique strengths, and shoulder together the shared responsibility of promoting regional peace, stability and prosperity,” Xi told world leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday.

Beijing is using the two-day meeting in Tianjin, northern China, as a chance to showcase itself as a pillar of global governance in contrast to the administration of US President Donald Trump, whose tariffs have hit friends and foes alike in the region.

Xi has held multiple bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the summit, including with Modi, and will meet Putin on Tuesday.

The Chinese leader outlined plans loans and grants and reiterated China’s calls for a new regional development bank.

The meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization security group coincides with the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in the second world war, which China will mark on Wednesday, as Beijing seeks to recast history with itself in the role of guardian of the postwar international order.

Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and a score of leaders including those of Iran, Myanmar and Pakistan will also attend a lavish parade where China will show off military hardware.

While the weaponry and the presence of countries considered pariahs in the west will draw attention and concern, Beijing’s underlying goal is more subtle, analysts said.

Xi wants to amplify China’s role in the second world war and the ensuing peace, when the new global order was established under the auspices of the UN. He also wants to use the anniversary to reinforce China’s claims of sovereignty over Taiwan, and its standing among developing countries as an alternative leader to the US.

As Trump shakes up the multilateral system, Beijing sees an opportunity to reinterpret the international order and advance its ambition of a multi-polar world, analysts said.

The victory day anniversary is a vehicle for that narrative, with Xi on Monday Xi calling on countries to promote the “correct” perspective of the second world war.

“It’s a good global context for China to use this moment to say: ‘Hey, you know, here we are, the originator of multilateralism — now we’re taking multilateralism in a new inclusive direction’,” said David Bandurski, director of the China Media Project and an expert on Chinese propaganda.

For Beijing, an important first step is to reshape common narratives about China’s role in the Allied victory in the second world war and play down the US contribution, analysts said. China dates its “war of resistance against Japanese aggression” to 1931 — a decade before the US entered the conflict.

“China and the Soviet Union were the principal theatres of that war in Asia and Europe respectively,” Xi wrote ahead of a visit in May to Moscow, where he watched Russia’s Victory Day parade alongside Putin, who he has called his “old friend”. 

“The two countries served as the mainstay of resistance against Japanese militarism and German Nazism, making pivotal contributions to the victory of the World Anti-Fascist War,” Xi said.

For Beijing, part of its effort to shift the US-led “rules-based international order” is aimed at reinforcing its claims over Taiwan.

In Xi’s last second world war anniversary speech in 2015, he did not mention Taiwan. Communist party propaganda that year acknowledged the role of China’s wartime Kuomintang nationalist government.

That was due to improving relations at the time between Beijing and a KMT-led government in Taiwan, where the nationalists fled in 1949 after losing a civil war with the Communists. The nationalists had taken the main role in fighting Japan, and their government led the postwar negotiations.

This year, the Communist party is pushing hard on the narrative that they were the central pillar in the war of resistance against Japan

Since 2015, China has also become more aggressive towards Taiwan, holding extensive military exercises, particularly after last year’s election of Democratic Progressive party President Lai Ching-te, whom Beijing considers a dangerous separatist.

Beijing roots its claims over Taiwan in two Allied wartime arrangements — the Cairo and Potsdam declarations — that called for Taiwan to be returned from Japan to China after the conflict.

This year, it linked these pacts for the first time to the UN’s 1971 “derecognition” of Taiwan’s then-KMT government to support Beijing’s sovereignty claim over the island, said Chang Wu-Ueh, director of the Center for Cross-Strait Relations at Taiwan’s Tamkang University.

“China’s sovereignty claims . . . are profoundly connected to its support for the UN as the core organization of postwar global governance,” Kainan Gao and Margaret Pearson wrote in a paper for the Brookings Institution.

Such narratives are disputed in the west. The US, by contrast, cites the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco — in which the Allies formally ended the war with Japan — which left open the question of to whom Tokyo should cede control of Taiwan. Beijing rejects this treaty.

And while experts acknowledge China’s immense sacrifices, “you have to acknowledge that in the end, the Pacific war between the US and Japan is the one that’s decisive in terms of ending the war”, said China historian Rana Mitter. The Soviet Union also largely sat on the sidelines due to a non-aggression pact with Japan.

For many in the west, Wednesday’s victory day parade itself — and the attendance of leaders such as Putin amid Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine — will undercut Beijing’s message as champion of stability and multilateralism.

“Beijing’s attempts to take advantage of Trumpian chaos to shore up its international image has its limits,” said Amanda Hsiao, director for China at consultancy Eurasia Group.

“In this case, it will be undercut by a massive display of military hard power and its close ties and narrative alignment with Moscow.”

Ultimately, however, the parade and Xi’s efforts to change the narrative of the war are mainly aimed at a domestic audience and partners in the global south, not the US and its allies. 

“This is a good way to show the party domestically, internally, that Xi Jinping and the current leadership of the politburo standing committee is strong and globally respected,” said Bandurski.

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