Rip veil off corporate criminals

Charmian Gooch, co-founder of Global Witness, at TED2013 in Edinburgh.

• Charmian Gooch, co-founder of Global Witness, awarded $1 million TED Prize


• Her group campaigns for disclosure of true owners of corporations to fight corruption


• TED conference also features Edward Snowden, who assails NSA surveillance


• Snowden says some of his most important revelations have yet to be made

Editor's note: Richard Galant is senior editor of CNN.com's Opinion section. Follow him on Twitter.

Vancouver, British Columbia (CNN) -- Charmian Gooch, the anti-corruption crusader who co-founded Global Witness, called Tuesday night for action to lift the veil on who owns corporations around the world. She made that wish as she accepted the $1 million TED Prize at the TED2014 conference.

"My wish is for us to know who owns and controls companies so that they can no longer be used anonymously against the public good. Let's ignite world opinion, change the law, and together launch a new era of openness in business."

Her call to expose criminals and corrupt officials came at the end of the first full day of TED's 30th anniversary conference. Earlier, another speaker on transparency, Edward Snowden, argued his case that NSA surveillance programs infringe privacy for no real benefit.

In her TED Prize wish, Gooch made the case that the identity of corporate owners shouldn't be kept private.

She said the development of a public registry of corporate ownership would enable the exposure of tax evasion, terrorism, drug trafficking, conflict minerals, sanctions busting and political corruption. "This truly is a scandal of epic proportions hidden in plain sight," Gooch said. In states such as Delaware, she said, it's easier to set up a company than to get a library card, and in 10 minutes of online shopping you can have a corporation to shield your identity.

As examples of the need to ferret out the true ownership of companies, she cited the investigation of the assets owned by the ousted regime of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine and said the impoverished people of the Democratic Republic of Congo had been cheated of a billion dollars by anonymous companies. Gooch and her two Global Witness co-founders have also received the $1 million Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship.

Global Witness was founded 20 years ago and gained fame in part from its reporting on how the diamond trade was fueling conflict in Africa.

She says the UK government and the European Parliament are "on board" in support of the public registry, and that her group is working to get support from the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama. "America is the next big target," Gooch said. "It has to come on board." She said the United States and United Kingdom account for a majority of the cases in which shielded corporate ownership is used to hide crime.

Two U.S. senators, Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan and Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa have introduced a bill that would require states to ask people seeking to set up corporations to disclose their true owners. "Today, money launderers, arms dealers, drug lords, terrorists and tax evaders are too often able to conceal their misconduct behind a wall of corporate secrecy," Levin said in a statement.

The topics of secrecy and privacy came up in a different context when Snowden told the TED2014 conference from an undisclosed location in Russia on Tuesday that "we don't have to give up our liberty to have security."

Edward Snowden, on screen, talks from Russia with TED's Chris Anderson at the TED2014 conference.

Appearing on a small screen mounted on a rolling, swiveling robot that looked a bit like an upright vacuum cleaner, the former National Security Agency contractor said, "I am proof that you can go up against the most powerful intelligence agencies in the world and win."

Snowden said he doesn't think of himself as a hero, but TED curator Chris Anderson asked the audience of 1,200 whether he had performed a heroic act, and many agreed. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, was asked to come on stage and also said he would classify Snowden as a hero. A minority of those in the audience raised their hands to say they considered Snowden's release of classified government information a "reckless" act.

Snowden: 4th amendment changed in secret

Snowden endorsed Berners-Lee's argument that this year's 25th anniversary of the Web should be the occasion for a new "magna carta" establishing the right to online freedom.

He said people deserve a right to privacy when they order a book online, call their families or travel and shouldn't be subject to how the government will interpret their acts later. Snowden argued that surveillance hasn't prevented terrorist acts and that the fight against terrorism is a cover for intrusive government agencies.

The most important thing private companies can do to protect consumers is to encrypt their data, Snowden said. He said the action of someone ordering a copy of the book "1984" on Amazon can be discovered by intelligence agencies because the data is not encrypted.

Asked about criticism by former Vice President Dick Cheney that he has done enormous damage to America's national security, Snowden said that "going to war with people who are not our enemies, in places that aren't threats, doesn't make us safe."

Snowden, who has worked with journalists to reveal the secrets he obtained from his work with the NSA, said there will be more revelations. "Some of the most important reporting to be done is yet to come," he said.

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Breakthrough in Madeleine McCann Case

Police investigating the Madeleine McCann case are searching for a lone intruder who abused girls in the area prior to the disappearance of Madeleine.

The man sexually abused five girls at holiday homes in the Algarve before the British toddler went missing.

Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood said today that the man, who is tanned with dark-hair, is suspected of breaking in to 12 properties where British families were staying in the Portuguese holiday region between 2004 and 2010.

DCI Redwood said that tracing the man, who is said to have 'an unhealthy interest in young white female children', is one of his priority lines of inquiry.

DCI Redwood’s team currently have 38 people classed as 'persons of interest' to the inquiry. They are also sifting through details of 530 known sex offenders whose whereabouts they cannot account for.

Of this number 59 are classed as high priority, and some of those are British.

Student drops lawsuit against parents

• NEW: "The case is over. It's time to move on," parents' attorney says


• Rachel Canning, 18, had sued her mother and father for financial support, college tuition


• She had returned home last Wednesday


• She had alleged she was forced to leavehome; parents said she left on her own

(CNN) -- A high school senior who sued her mother and father for financial support and college tuition dropped the lawsuit Tuesday, according to a decision by a Superior Court judge in Morristown, New Jersey.

Rachel Canning, 18, who returned home and reunited with her parents in Lincoln Park a week ago, appeared in court and testified that she decided to dismiss her complaint.

Judge Peter A. Bogaard ruled that Canning's "decision to dismiss the litigation was a knowing and voluntary decision."

Canning's parents, Sean and Elizabeth, also were in court.

Critic on teen suing parents for tuition

Judge's hard words for teen suing parents

Canning alleged in her lawsuit that her parents forced her out of their home and that she was unable to support herself financially. The lawsuit asked that her parents pay the remaining tuition for her last semester at her private high school, pay her current living and transportation expenses, commit to paying her college tuition and reimburse her friend's parents for legal fees.

Her parents said Rachel left home because she didn't want to obey their rules.

A judge denied the teenager's request for high school tuition and current living expenses from her parents two weeks ago, and a date had been set for April on the other issues in the lawsuit.

Canning, an honor student and cheerleader at Morris Catholic High School in Denville, said in court documents that she had to leave her parents' home because of emotional and psychological mistreatment. She alleged, among other things, that her mother called her "fat" and "porky" and that her father threatened to beat her.

Canning was suspended from school for truancy in October, according to court documents filed by her parents' former attorney, Laurie Rush-Masuret. Her parents told the teen that she could no longer see her boyfriend, who was also suspended from school. Car and phone privileges were also taken away.

Once she learned of the punishment, Canning cut school again and then decided to run away, her father said in court documents.

After receiving allegations that Rachel was being abused, New Jersey's Division of Child Protection and Permanency interviewed the teen, her parents and her two younger sisters, but it ultimately "determined that allegation of emotional abuse was unfounded," a letter from the agency states.

CNN's requests for comment from Tanya Helfand, the attorney representing the younger Canning in the lawsuit, were not returned Tuesday. A request for comment from John Inglesino, whose family had been paying Rachel's legal fees and housing her for the past four months, also was unanswered.

Angelo Sarno, the attorney representing Canning's parents, said in a written statement Tuesday that some level of normalcy has returned to the family. "The case is over. It's time to move on. The Cannings want nothing more than to resume their lives as a family," Sarno said.

Neither Rachel nor her parents were at last week's news conference to announce that she had returned home. Her parents' attorney, Angelo Sarno, did not comment on what brought the reconciliation or whether Rachel was still in a relationship with her boyfriend.

Canning's case attracted national attention, which Sarno said would probably continue to affect Rachel.

"Nothing good could have come from this case. Absolutely nothing good. This kid is going to be affected long term from the attention," Sarno said last week.

CNN's Chris Welch contributed to this report.

Man dies in Grand Canyon fall

El Tovar Lodge is at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

• NEW: "It was just a freakish accident," sister-in-law says


• NEW: John N. Anderson, 53, falls about 350 feet off the South Rim


• He was visiting with his family from Texas


• The National Park Service and a medical examiner are investigating

(CNN) -- A Texas man died after falling off the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.

John N. Anderson of Grapevine was visiting the national park with family on Saturday morning when he fell about 350 feet near the El Tovar Lodge, officials said.

Park rangers were unable to resuscitate him.

Anderson was with his wife on an outing but was alone when the accident occurred, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

"He wasn't trying to shoot a photograph or anything like that," his sister-in-law, Suzy Naughalty, told the newspaper on Tuesday. "It was just a freakish accident."

Anderson, 53, was married with two sons and a daughter.

The National Park Service and the Coconino County, Arizona, medical examiner were investigating the incident.

Nearly 5 million people visit the Grand Canyon each year. Rangers respond to some 1,300 medical incidents and 300 search and rescue missions annually, according to park statistics.

Swimmer swept over Yosemite waterfall

Minnesota hiker falls to his death near Yosemite waterfall

CNN's Dana Ford and Tina Burnside contributed to this report.

Alicante spending more than most

Alicante is spending more on services than other large cities.

According to the study on Transparency of Public Accounts, relating to the budgets of 2010, 2011 and 20112, Alicante city spent an average €374 per inhabitant, whilst the average for large cities is €337 on basic public services.

However, spending on social protection was below the average for cities with over 100,000 inhabitants, registering an average €53.7 per person compared to €70 per person.

Regarding development projects, Alicante spent an average €28.6 with other large municipalities spending an average of €47 per inhabitant.

She lost 100 lbs to surprise Army hubby

• Misty Shaffer's husband was deployed to Afghanistan


• In May 2013 she met him at the airport, more than 100 pounds lighter


• She focused on healthy eating during her weight loss

Editor's note: Do you have a weight-loss success story to share? Tell us how you did it and you could be featured in our weekly weight-loss story on CNN.com.

(CNN) -- Misty and Larry Shaffer have been together since high school. She went to his senior prom; he went to her junior and senior proms. They got married in October 2008.

He never said anything about her being overweight.

When Larry, an Army specialist, was deployed to Afghanistan for a year in 2012, Misty decided she wanted to get in shape.

She weighed about 260 pounds when he left, and less than 155 pounds when he returned.

"I just sat in bed one night and was like, 'I can do this,'" she said. "'I need to do this.'"

Shaffer, now 25 and living in Leland, North Carolina, has struggled with her weight her whole life, even as a child.

Misty Shaffer has struggled with her weight her entire life, and got picked on because of her appearance.

Misty and Larry Shaffer met in high school and later married in 2008. They are seen here in 2009. At her heaviest, Misty Shaffer weighed about 300 pounds.

Before her husband,an Army specialist, left for Afghanistan in 2012, Misty weighed about 260 pounds.

Misty surprised her husband at the airport when he returned from his deployment in May 2013. She had lost more than 100 pounds since his departure.

Misty has been able to keep the weight off. She enjoys wearing smaller clothes, which she has found to be cheaper.

A smaller surprise

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Each time she had tried dieting in the past, she would relapse. Before she became pregnant with her daughter, Nevaeh, she took diet pills and lost 60 pounds. But all that -- and more -- came back after she stopped taking the pills. At her heaviest, she weighed around 300 pounds. She's 5 feet 6 inches tall.

"I would eat when I was bored. I'd eat three huge meals a day, and then snack in between. Sad or happy, I'd turn to food for everything."

Shaffer felt tired all the time. People picked on her. She wanted to surprise her husband, and work toward a better life for herself and her family.

Her primary mission: Cut out all the junk. She stopped drinking soda, and tried to limit her liquids to water and coffee.

upwave: Try it now! No fast food for a week

The first three to four months were the hardest, she said. Once she got past that, she started craving more healthy foods and water. It got to the point where, if she drank a diet soda, it made her so thirsty that she didn't even want it.

Shaffer's job presented its own challenges; she's a personal shopper at a supermarket. At lunch time, the hot fried chicken "just smells so good," she said. But the supermarket also offers a large, well-kept salad bar, as well as warm vegetables on the hot bar and oven-baked chicken.

A typical breakfast for Shaffer is oatmeal with fruit or a cereal bar. On her days off, she'll cook up sausage, eggs or pancakes, but she'll watch her portion size. Around 10 a.m. she has a snack, such as fruit or carrots.

Lunch is a salad or half a sandwich with some kind of vegetable or fruit. An afternoon snack might be yogurt.

For dinner, she eats a lean meat (like ground turkey or a boneless, skinless chicken breast), a vegetable and a very small portion of starch.

The big day, Larry Shaffer's return, was May 15, 2013. The soldier had never seen his wife weigh less than 220 pounds, even in high school.

When she saw him at the airport, Misty Shaffer didn't know what to say or do. She just ran and jumped into his arms.

Her husband was speechless, uttering only one word: "Wow."

It was the first time he had ever picked her up. Before, he hadn't been able to lift her off the ground even a little, she said.

That moment was worth everything.

"A lot of people look at it like, 'Why is that such a big deal?'" she said. "But (when) you never thought you'd see that moment, that somebody can pick you up ... it is a big deal."

The other big part of the surprise: She had bought a new house while he was away.

Since then, Shaffer has been able to keep the weight off.

When her husband left she was a size 22 to 24; now she can wear a women's size 6. She's especially loving how much money she saves on smaller clothes. Khakis, for example, used to cost $80, but she found a pair for her new physique for only $7.

She said her husband's eating habits haven't changed much; he likes her cooking, but he'll help himself to ice cream or cake afterward. Sometimes she will join him. But she's not too tempted to go back to her old ways of eating.

"I've seen how hard I worked, and what I had to go through to get to this point," she said.

She's still in disbelief when her husband picks her up.

Search widens, but time runs short

• The batteries the power pings from the data and voice recorders last for 30 days


• "The odds of finding the pinger are very slim," an ocean search specialist says


• Recent developments shed some light on early part of flight, but not where plane went next


• The total search area is roughly the size of the continental United States

(CNN) -- A ticking clock. A widening search.

The box containing the flight-data and cockpit-voice recorders of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has batteries designed to keep it sending out pings for 30 days.

The search is now in its 12th day, covering a total area roughly the size of the continental United States. That leaves 18 days until the batteries are expected to run out.

Investigators hope the recorders may reveal vital information about why the passenger jet carrying 239 people veered dramatically off course and disappeared from radar screens. But they have to find them first.

Searchers from at least 26 countries have a formidable task in pinpointing the plane's location somewhere along two vast arcs, one stretching deep into the Asian landmass, the other far out into the Indian Ocean.

"The odds of finding the pinger are very slim," said Rob McCallum, an ocean search specialist. "Even when you know roughly where the target is, it can be very tricky to find the pinger. They have a very limited range."

Some of the nations involved in the hunt are deploying an impressive array of technology, including satellites and high-tech submarine-hunting planes, as they try to narrow the search area.

They're also trawling through existing radar and satellite data for clues.

Small details emerge

Much of what has emerged in recent days has filled in a few more details about the early part of the missing Boeing 777-200's flight.

But clear information on what went on in the cockpit and where exactly the errant jet went after it vanished from Malaysian military radar remains frustratingly elusive.

On Tuesday, for example, a law enforcement official told CNN that the aircraft's first major change of course was almost certainly programmed by somebody in the cockpit. The change was entered into the plane's system at least 12 minutes before a person in the cockpit, believed to be the co-pilot, signed off to air traffic controllers.

But that disclosure only left more questions about the reason behind the reprogrammed flight path.

Some experts said the change in direction could have been part of an alternate flight plan programmed in advance in case of emergency; others suggested it could show something more nefarious was afoot.

The Thai military, meanwhile, said it had spotted the plane turning west toward the Strait of Malacca early on March 8. That supports the analysis of Malaysian military radar that has the plane flying out over the Strait of Malacca and into the Indian Ocean.

But it didn't make it any clearer where the plane went next. Authorities say information from satellites suggests the plane kept flying for about six hours after it was last detected by Malaysian military radar.

Who was at the controls?

Malaysian authorities, who are coordinating the search, say the available evidence suggests the missing plane flew off course in a deliberate act by someone who knew what they were doing.

Figuring out who that might be has so far left investigators stumped.

Particular attention has focused on the pilot and first officer on Flight 370, but authorities are yet to come up with any evidence explaining why either of them would have taken the jetliner off course.

And some experts have warned against hastily jumping to conclusions about the role of the pilots.

"I've worked on many cases were the pilots were suspect, and it turned out to be a mechanical and horrible problem," said Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation. "And I have a saying myself: Sometimes an erratic flight path is heroism, not terrorism

China says it has found nothing suspicious during background checks on its citizens on the flight -- a large majority of the plane's passengers.

Searchers face deep ocean

Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, the country's public face of the search efforts, has repeatedly said at news conferences that little is likely to be established about the mysterious flight until the plane is found.

But in the Indian Ocean, where Australia and Indonesia have taken the lead in the hunt, some of the depths searchers are dealing with are significant.

The Bay of Bengal, for example, which lies between Myanmar and India, has depths of between about 4,000 and 7,000 meters (13,000 feet and 23,000 feet), according to McCallum.

Wreckage and bodies of passengers from Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, were found at depths of around 12,000 feet by unmanned submarines.

It took four searches over the course of nearly two years to locate the bulk of the wreckage and the majority of the bodies of the 228 people on board Flight 447. It took even longer to establish the cause of the disaster.

Right now, authorities don't even know for sure if the missing Malaysian plane crashed or landed -- or where.

CNN has talked to more than half a dozen U.S. military and intelligence officials who emphasize that while no one knows what happened to the plane, it is more logical to conclude it crashed into the Indian Ocean.

The officials say there is no evidence that any U.S. satellite data registered an unknown aircraft in any of the Asian countries along the path the plane may have taken. According to these officials, it is overwhelmingly likely if the plane had crashed on land, there would be some evidence of that, and if it had landed, someone would have seen it.

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CNN's Evan Perez, Mariano Castillo and Catherine E. Shoichet contributed to this report.