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Spanish party treasurer grilled as corruption scandal grows

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By Alasdair Fotheringham - Feb. 06 (News Report) - Protesters booed the former treasurer of Spain’s Partido Popular (PP) party as he left the prosecutor’s office after being questioned over allegations of corruption that have rocked the country’s government. Luis Barcenas, a former banker, is accused of

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Spain's opposition tells PM to go

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

BBC News - Feb. 03 (News) - Spanish opposition leader Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba says PM Mariano Rajoy should resign, as his government is hit by corruption allegations.

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Oldest Swiss bank closes after US tax evasion guilty plea

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

rt.com - Jan. 04 (News) - Russia and the US are reportedly going to sign an account information sharing agreement by 2013. The step is expected to improve international tax compliance under the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). German prosecutors have launched an inv

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Mitt Romney Haunted By Tax Returns He Withheld

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Zach Carter, Jason Cherkis; Ryan Grim - Nov. 06 (News Analysis) - “The thing that bothered me the most about his offshoring investments was not that he or his partners at Bain avoided paying taxes, but that they made it really easy for investors to cheat on their taxes,” said Rebecca Wilkins, senior counsel for federal tax policy at Citizens for Tax Justice. “If you wanted to cheat, Bain Capital just made it really easy for you.” Both Bain and Romney flirted with the edge of legality by using sham derivative transactions to mask investments in U.S. stocks, lowering their American tax burden. The IRS has been cracking down on this activity since 2010

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Greece arrests editor for 'Lagarde list' leak

Sun, 28 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0700

aljazeera.com - Oct. 28 (News Report) - Greek police arrested the editor of a weekly magazine for publishing a list of more than 2,000 names of wealthy Greeks who have placed money in Swiss bank accounts, police said. The so-called "Lagarde List", which led to the arrest of editor Costas Vaxev

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Mitt Romney's 2010 Tax Disclosure Missing Key Documents

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Zach Carter, Ryan Grim - Jul. 18 (News Report) - Mitt Romney has not released his full tax records from 2010, including key documentation connected to his Swiss bank account. ... But people who own foreign bank accounts are required to file a separate document with the IRS that provides additional details on such overseas bank holdings, and Romney has not released that form to the public.

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Grieving Father Struggles to Pay Dead Son’s Student Loans

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Marian Wang - Jun. 18 (Investigative Report) - A few months after he buried his son, Francisco Reynoso began getting notices in the mail. Then the debt collectors came calling.

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Around the World on Solar Power

Thu, 03 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By By BETTINA WASSENER - May. 03 (News Report) - Turanor PlanetSolar is expected to dock on Friday in Monaco, ending its 19-month journey.

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Mitt Romney Tax Returns Released: Paid Just 13.9% Rate In 2010, Had Swiss Bank Account

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Steve Holland, Kim Dixon - Jan. 23 (News Report) - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney released tax records on Tuesday indicating he will pay $6.2 million in taxes on a total of $42.5 million in income over the years 2010 and 2011.

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Vienna has best living standard in the world, survey finds

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:07:00 -0800

The Independent - Nov. 30 - Vienna has the best living standard in the world - and Baghdad the worst, according to an annual survey. Mercer consulting group also gave German and Swiss cities top rankings, putting four of them among the first five, and says European cities represent

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Mind Your Manners: The Secrets of Switzerland's Last Traditional Finishing School

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Time - By William Lee Adams - Oct. 24 (Special Report) - If lunch at the Institut Villa Pierrefeu (IVP) often feels like a rehearsal, that's because it is. Under the watchful eye of Rosemary McCallum, a Cordon Bleu-trained chef and expert on table manners, 13 female students practice the skills they've studied in courses on European etiquette and table service. As the meal unfolds in a stately dining room with corniced ceilings, McCallum gently reminds the five student servers that they must pick up champagne glasses near the bottom of the stems and offer the pear-and-Roquefort tarts from the left. Back home, four of the five women serving have live-in staffs. But the program requires them to rotate through the service role anyway so they can better train and manage their employees. Vera, a 30-year-old playing the role of hostess, steers the conversation from her work with orphans back home in Lebanon to a Mexican guest's love of horseback riding. All goes well until Vera's fondness for Toblerone mousse leads her to commit a crucial error. "Your husband is still eating, and you've already finished," McCallum says. "Remember to pace yourself." Vera glares across the table at her husband, played by a female classmate from India. "Well," Vera says, "my husband should learn to eat faster."

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In Libya, Inaction Was Not an Option

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Real Clear Politics - By Richard Cohen - Mar. 29 (Opinion) - The Libyan intervention established a precedent: There is such a thing as the international community and, as inchoate as it may be, it will insist on certain minimum standards even for dictators: Your people are not yours to kill.

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In a Wikileaks Era, Balancing Public and Private

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Eric Pfanner - Jan. 25 (News Report) - At a meeting of the World Economic Forum in China last year, Adrian Monck, the group’s chief spokesman, moderated a panel on social networking. Because the Internet can be a sensitive topic in China, he asked the audience whether the discussion should be kept private, to promote a freer exchange. By a show of hands, the camera-wielding journalists, BlackBerry-equipped executives and laptop-bearing bloggers agreed to turn off their gadgets. “It was an entertaining and relaxed discussion,” Mr. Monck said.

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Swiss on hand to ease separation of Sudan

Sat, 08 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

SwissInfo.ch - By Frederic Burnand, Clare O'Dea - Jan. 08 (Interview) - Switzerland is poised to play a role in the discussions on the secession of Southern Sudan which is expected to be endorsed in Sunday’s independence referendum.

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Offshore bank account probe nets Canadians

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Canadian Broadcasting - By Joseph Loiero - Sep. 30 (News Report) - More than 1,700 private offshore bank accounts belonging to Canadians turned up on a list of secret accounts in Switzerland, a joint CBC News/Globe and Mail investigation into possible tax evasion has found.

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Key leukemia defense mechanism discovered

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 17:25:37 -0700

PhysOrg.com - Sep. 30 - Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center researcher Steven Grant, M.D., and a team of VCU Massey researchers have uncovered the mechanism by which leukemia cells trigger a protective response when exposed to a class of cancer-killing agents

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Women take control of Swiss government

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Tony Paterson - Sep. 23 (News) - Women gained a majority in Switzerland's cabinet for the first time yesterday – less than 40 years after the country became one of the last in Europe to allow them to vote in national elections .

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Climate change legislation benefits the elite, not the people

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Natural News - By Jonathan Benson - Sep. 10 (News) - The National Forestry Commission of Mexico in conjunction with the Swiss government recently held a conference to discuss the possibility of new, centralized climate change legislation. If enacted, the legislation will change the way Latin America governs its forests, and potentially set a precedent for how governments around the world manage their resources. But many at the conference expressed concerns that such legislation will end up benefiting a few wealthy elite while depriving local communities of their natural resources–all in the name of protecting the climate.

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Telling Swiss secrets: A banker's betrayal

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

GlobalPost - By Michael Bronner - Aug. 05 (Investigative Report) - It’s the inner sanctum of Swiss banking — the heavily-guarded nexus between numbered Swiss bank accounts and their owner’s good names — and it’s the rare American that is allowed entry. Bradley Birkenfeld was one of the few Americans who held the keys to the kingdom. A Boston-born, high-flying, cross-border banker at Switzerland’s premier financial institution, UBS, he had access to the kind of secret account information that American law enforcement had only dreamed of through all the decades that terrorists, dictators, arms dealers, mafia dons and wealthy tax cheats had hidden behind the fortress of secrecy that Swiss banking promised.

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'Angels and Demons' journey: Traveling to see the Large Hadron Collider

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

minnpost.com - By Shawn Lawrence Otto - Jul. 14 (Opinion) - In Italy they like to eat late. Most people don’t even head out to the restaurants until about 9. And in Torino there are many of them, mostly spilling out onto the sidewalks. In the old town center, an area of winding streets and tall brick and stone buildings, it’s sometimes hard to tell what is restaurant and what is street - tables are placed out onto the pavement and cars wind between them. They seem to all merge into an outdoor party full of a pleasing mix of wood smoke from the grills, fresh and delicious seafood, Fiat exhaust and wine. Which explains why this morning came especially early. We had to be at the old Fiat plant, now a huge shopping, hotel, and conference complex, at 6:45 a.m. to catch a bus to CERN — the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The Fiat plant is about a two mile walk from the hotel. It was still that sort of liquid cool before what you could just tell was going to be a hot summer morning.

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Libya's efforts to build economy, tourism snagged by its own capriciousness

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Sudarsan Raghavan - Apr. 14 (Comment) - A Swiss businessman has been jailed in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, on immigration violation charges, an action widely seen as retaliation for the arrest of Gaddafi's son. Switzerland, in turn, has barred Libyan officials. In February, Gaddafi banned visas for citizens from 20 European countries in an order that was not lifted until late last month. His call for jihad, or holy war, against Switzerland came after a Swiss referendum prohibited the construction of new minarets. Since then, Libyan officials have said that Gaddafi meant an economic boycott and not an armed struggle. Last month, Libya imposed a trade and economic embargo on Switzerland that stopped flights and halted oil exports. Libya has also withdrawn billions from Swiss banks. Ordinary Libyans have loyally applauded Gaddafi's actions. But they have also felt the brunt of the diplomatic fallout.

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Swiss Sharply Criticized After Vote to Ban New Minarets

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Nick Cumming Bruce - Dec. 01 (News Report) - Switzerland’s political leaders on Monday faced a chorus of criticism at home and abroad over an overwhelming popular vote to ban construction of minarets.

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My compatriots' vote to ban minarets is fuelled by fear

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Tariq Ramadan - Nov. 30 (Opinion) - The Swiss have voted not against towers, but Muslims. Across Europe, we must stand up to the flame-fanning populists It wasn?t meant to go this way. For months we had been told that the efforts to ban the construction of minarets in Switzerland were doomed. The last surveys suggested around 34% of the Swiss population would vote for this shocking initiative. Last Friday, in a meeting organised in Lausanne, more than 800 students, professors and citizens were in no doubt that the referendum would see the motion rejected, and instead were focused on how to turn this silly initiative into a more positive future. Today that confidence was shattered, as 57% of the Swiss population did as the Union Démocratique du Centre (UDC) had urged them to – a worrying sign that this populist party may be closest to the people?s fears and expectations. For the first time since 1893 an initiative that singles out one community, with a clear discriminatory essence, has been approved in Switzerland. One can hope ...

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Swiss projected to OK minaret ban

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Associated Press - Nov. 29 (News Report) - Swiss voters approved a move to ban the construction of minarets in a Sunday vote on a right-wing initiative that labeled the mosque towers as symbols of militant Islam, projections by a widely respected polling institute showed.

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Swiss Model for Health Care Thrives Without Public Option

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ - Oct. 01 (Special Report) - Many academics who have studied the Swiss health care system suggest it would deliver much of what Washington is aiming to accomplish.

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