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As part of a voluntary program that ended on October 15, some 7,500 Americans with hidden offshore bank accounts ended the game of hide and seek with the IRS. They finally decided to tell the government where to find their assets. Some of these hidden accounts were pretty hard to lose track of --- one had more than $100 million in it.

Now that the "public option" health care proposal has become a political hazard, the far left and its water-carrying media are turning to other proposals. The New York Times recently produced a piece lauding the Swiss health care system as a model to emulate. It's all the rage amongst elitists and perhaps it can revive Mr. Obama's "plan" from life support. In the piece, "Swiss Health Care Thrives Without Public Option," the author notes that, "Like every country in Europe, Switzerland guarantees health care for all its citizens. But the system here does not remotely resemble the model of bureaucratic,...

A Swiss man has set a world record for the highest tightrope walk ever. He accomplished the feat in Germany with no harness or safety nets to catch him. Swiss tightrope walker Freddy Nock has walked along a tram cable in Germany's tallest mountain without a harness and safety nets that will catch him if he falls to set a new world record for the stunt. At 9,655 feet high in Zugspitze mountain, it was the highest tightrope walk ever made. Nock walked along 3,264 feet of inclined cable and reached the tram station in 50 minutes on Sunday. The...

Harry Lime gave a shout-out to the cuckoo clock but he might have mentioned Switzerland's other contribution to global culture, the secret numbered bank account, fortified by a 1934 law that made it a crime to betray an account holder. We do mean "contribution." By accident or design, customers at the time included German Jews hiding their money from Nazi predators. Of course the Swiss didn't ask questions. Customers included more than few Nazi predators too. That's the paradoxical virtue of Swiss banking secrecy, which has protected both greedy tax scofflaws and those merely trying to save something for next...

A landmark settlement that will spare UBS a lengthy and damaging U.S. tax trial is set to be signed next week and will involve the disclosure of the biggest holders of secret Swiss accounts. "The signing will most likely take place next week," a source familiar with the situation told Reuters on Friday. The source did not want to disclose any details from the settlement,but the New York Times said on Friday Swiss accounts in the name of U.S. residents over a certain dollar amount would be disclosed to U.S. tax authorities. Earlier this week,the U.S. and Swiss government initialed...

Swiss bank to name US tax evadersAP 13 August 2009, 01:31am IST MIAMI: The US government and Swiss banking giant UBS AG have reached an agreement in a case seeking names of some 52,000 suspected American tax evaders with billions in secret Swiss accounts, but details may remain under wraps until next week, officials said. Lawyers for the government and UBS told a federal judge in a brief conference call they had initialed a deal after a delay last week to settle undisclosed details. The Internal Revenue Service, which initiated the case against UBS earlier this year, said the deal...

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." The effect of the Second Amendment is counter to the liberal social contract that if someone comes to take something of yours, just give it to them. Since the right to life is spelled out in the Declaration of Independence, this give us the right to protect our lives from those who would do violence to us. The Second Amendment is much more basic than many are willing to admit. It is the...

Swiss bank UBS could escape a hefty fine from US authorities over allegations that Americans opened offshore bank accounts with the lender to evade taxes, a Swiss newspaper said Sunday. The bank may only be required to hand over several thousand names of account holders to the United States, newspaper NZZ am Sonntag reported. That would be a much lighter penalty than expected, with previous reports in Switzerland suggesting a fine of between three and five million dollars (2.0 to 3.5 billion euros) was on the cards. The NZZ am Sonntag quoted a source close to the case saying around...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The State Department says it's aware of Iranian media reports that three American citizens have been detained in Iran. Spokesman Robert Wood says the U.S. has asked the Swiss, who represent American interests in Iran, to confirm the reports with Iranian authorities and arrange for diplomatic access to the three, if the reports are true. The Americans reportedly were detained Friday after crossing into Iran's Kurdistan province—when they failed to heed warnings from Iranian border guards.

In Switzerland, there is a saying that every good Swiss citizen has one in his or her pocket. It is an object that is recognised all over the world, and it is globally popular. But the Swiss army knife had humble beginnings, and, at the start, it wasn't even red. In the late 19th Century, the Swiss army issued its soldiers with a gun which required a special screwdriver to dismantle and clean it...

July 17, 2009 Court Reverses Decision to Bar Swiss Muslim Scholar BENJAMIN WEISER A federal appeals court in Manhattan on Friday reversed a lower court ruling that had allowed the government to bar a prominent Muslim scholar from entering the United States in 2004 on grounds he had contributed to a charity that had connections to terrorism. The scholar, Tariq Ramadan, 46, a Swiss academic, had lined up a position to be a tenured professor at the University of Notre Dame, but the Bush administration revoked his visa. The government cited evidence that from 1998 to 2002, he donated about...

... Apart from the diplomatic ramifications, the government's request for so broad a swath of information could well run afoul of the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable search. The Obama Administration should use the court reprieve to rethink the whole case.

As the war over alleged U.S. tax evaders and Swiss banking secrecy laws heats up, UBS is at risk of losing both its banking license and U.S. assets, says Ken Rubinstein, senior partner at Rubinstein & Rubinstein, and a specialist in areas of estate and tax planning. This week, the Swiss government said it would seize UBS data in order to prevent the Justice Department from obtaining the identities of 52,000 American account holders. But Rubinstein doesn't believe that will shield UBS, since the bank earlier this year admitted it send private bankers to the U.S. with the express intent...

ZURICH -- Switzerland has vowed to prevent UBS from handing over client information to U.S. authorities, in an attempt to defend bank secrecy, saying a tax case targeting its main bank is souring diplomatic ties. Wealth management giant UBS is facing a court hearing in Miami next week after refusing to disclose data on 52,000 Americans holders of secret Swiss bank accounts to U.S. tax authorities. The Swiss Justice Ministry said on Wednesday that Swiss law prevents UBS from handing over client information and the government would seize UBS client data, if necessary, to stop that happening. The case, which...

An economic war has broken out between Switzerland and the rest of the world after the crackdown on Swiss banking secrecy,according to one of Geneva's leading private bankers. Yves Mirabaud, a managing partner at Swiss private bank Mirabaud, told the Financial Times that nothing was easier than dodging tax in the US and UK. In rare public comments, Mr Mirabaud said: "There is a feeling in the banking community, and also in the population . . that we are in an economic war.There is nothing easier than doing tax evasion in the US. Look at Delaware companies or trusts in...

Two Japanese citizens carrying $134 billion worth of U.S. bonds were detained last week by Italy's financial police at Chiasso (40km from Milan) on the border between Italy and Switzerland, an Italian daily said Wednesday. According to the report, they include 249 U.S. Treasury bonds each worth $500 million, plus 10 Kennedy bonds and other U.S. government securities worth a billion dollar each. The two unidentified Japanese citizen were searched on June 3 when they were in Chiasso. They were detained on suspicion of attempting to take a large amount of securities out of Italy without declaring it. The bonds...

After more than five centuries protecting popes, the Swiss Guard may consider opening the ranks of the world's smallest army to women, its commander said Tuesday. "I can imagine them for one role or another. Certainly we can think about this," Daniel Anrig, who took over the post late last year, told Italian television program "Studio Aperto." Anrig's remarks could represent a major change in position regarding the future of the elite corps composed entirely of 19- to 30-year-old Catholic men hailing from the Swiss Army. Anrig's predecessor argued that mixing the sexes could be more trouble than it was...

APPENZELL, Switzerland – Voters in the heart of the Swiss Alps on Sunday passed legislation banning naked hiking after dozens of mostly German nudists started rambling through their picturesque region. By a show of hands citizens of the tiny canton (state) of Appenzell Inner Rhodes voted overwhelmingly at their traditional open-air annual assembly to impose a 200 Swiss franc ($176) fine on violators. Only a scattering of people on Sunday opposed the ban on the back-to-nature activity that took off last autumn when naked hikers — primarily Germans — started showing up in eastern Switzerland.

MIAMI, April 2 (Reuters) - U.S. authorities on Thursday arrested and charged an accountant in Florida in the first of what they said could be a series of tax evasion prosecutions of American clients of Swiss bank UBS AG. Steven Michael Rubinstein, who worked for a company in the yacht-building business, was accused of filing at least one false tax return that failed to disclose he had an account with UBS or made any money from it, the Justice Department said.

<p>Some of Switzerland's private banks have banned their executives from traveling outside the country out of fear they could be nabbed by tax authorities as part of a global crackdown on bank secrecy, the Financial Times reported Friday.</p> <p>The travel bans are largely focused on executives visiting the United States after a senior private banker from UBS, Switzerland's biggest bank, was detained last year as part of a federal tax probe, the newspaper said.</p>

Leaders of the Jewish community of Switzerland are deeply concerned about the sharp rise in anti-Semitic acts there, with little reprieve from "unresponsive" Swiss authorities, according to the general secretary of the Swiss Anti-Defamation League (CICAD), Johanne Gurfinkiel.

The sanctity of the secret Swiss bank account -- an icon of global finance -- is under growing pressure in a tax investigation due to come into public view on Wednesday at a U.S. congressional hearing. Senator Carl Levin, a long-time foe of offshore tax havens estimated to deprive the U.S. government of $100 billion in annual revenues, will convene the hearing before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that he chairs. Levin will grill Mark Branson, a top officer at UBS AG, over a tax case in which the U.S. government wants the giant Swiss bank to disclose the...

Switzerland's part-time soldiers could lose their famous right to store their weapons at home. A coalition led by the country's Social Democrat party and the Greens has collected nearly 120,000 signatures to force a national referendum on whether the weapons should be stored at military bases. The coalition of 74 groups says the weapons are involved in too many suicides and murders in the country and tighter controls are needed. Switzerland's armed forces consist of just a few thousand permanent full-time staff, with the rest essentially a militia. Service in the militia is compulsory for men aged between 19 and...

ZURICH, Feb 21 (Reuters) - The right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP) called on Saturday for retaliation against the United States over a U.S. tax probe into the country's biggest bank UBS that threatens prized banking secrecy. The populist SVP, the country's biggest party, said Switzerland should not take in any detainees from the U.S. prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, which the Swiss government said last month it could consider to help shut the camp down.

How Many Democrats Evaded Taxes in Swiss Banks? RUSH: This just in. The Obama administration is now going after Swiss bank accounts. "The curtain is being peeled back on the infamous secrecy of Swiss banks. The largest bank in Switzerland, UBS, agreed Wednesday to reveal the names of wealthy Americans whom the authorities suspect of using offshore accounts to evade taxes. The change in policy is the result of UBS' admitted role in conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service. As part of the agreement, the bank will pay $780 million in damages, and also close all offshore accounts of...

FED seeks to remove anonimity of Swiss Bank Accounts In the hush-hush world of Swiss banking, the unthinkable is happening: Secrets are spilling into the open. UBS, the largest Swiss bank, agreed Wednesday to divulge the names of well-heeled Americans whom the authorities suspect of using offshore accounts at the bank to evade taxes. The bank admitted having conspired to defraud the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and agreed to pay $780 million to settle a sweeping U.S. investigation into its activities. It is unclear how many of its clients' names UBS will divulge. U.S. prosecutors have been examining about 19,000...

ZURICH (AFP) – The world's biggest reinsurer Swiss Re turned to Wall Street sage Warren Buffett for fresh funds Thursday after massive losses while Zurich Financial earnings plunged due to the global financial crisis . Swiss Re shares tumbled on the news, with the stock down 28.1 percent at 21.7 francs by close of trading while the overall Swiss Market Index fell by 2.3 percent. The insurance sector woes dealt another blow to Switzerland's prized status as a major world financial centre, already under pressure after colossal losses and writedowns incurred by the country's biggest banks, UBS and Credit Suisse....

GENEVA (AP) — A Swiss man suspected of being involved in the world's biggest nuclear smuggling ring claims he supplied the CIA with information that led to the breakup of the black market nuclear network led by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. In a documentary airing Thursday on Swiss TV station SF1, Urs Tinner says he tipped off U.S. intelligence about a delivery of centrifuge parts meant for Libya's nuclear weapons program. The shipment was seized at the Italian port of Taranto in 2003, forcing Libya to admit and eventually renounce its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. The 43-year-old Tinner...

More than a decade after holocaust survivors won compensation from Swiss banks for emptying Jewish accounts that had lain dormant since the war, the pressure is on again to dismantle Swiss banking secrecy. This time, the tax collector is leading the charge. With Washington joining Germany to press for an end to a code they believe helps tax dodgers, many see it as only a matter of time before the Swiss lift the cloak guarding the secrets of the world's wealthy. "The challenge to bank secrecy is a thunderstorm which has been brewing since the holocaust money," said Sebastian Dovey...

Switzerland is likely to come under further pressure from the United States over its prized system of banking secrecy after the election last week of Barack Obama, key sector players predicted. The newly-elected US president, who formally takes office in January, is known for his hard line on fiscal evasion, having jointly presented a "Tax Haven Abuse Act" to the Senate back in 2007. Switzerland was one of 34 countries listed as a potential site for tax evasion by US clients in the bill and observers said that while that particular piece of legislation is unlikely to see the light...

A Swiss gastronomist has stirred a controversy in the tranquil Alpine republic after announcing that he will serve meals cooked with human breast milk. "We have all been raised on it. Why should we not include it into our diet?" Hans Locher, who has become Switzerland most controversial restaurant owner, said.

Below are the headlines by German Language press on Palin's speech: ___________________________________________________ Sarah Palin - Pitbull mit Lippenstift Sarah Palin, Pitbull with lipstickUS-Wahlkampf Die kühle Sarah Palin schießt gegen Kritiker zurück US Elections Wars: The collected (cool) Sarah Palin fires back at critics Sarah Palin: Konservative Wunderwaffe mit Risikopotential Sarah Palin: Super weapon carries some riskUS-Wahl: “Vize” Palin elektrifiziert Republikaner US Elections: "Vice" Palin electrifies the RepublicansAngriff der Hockey Mom (Attack of the Hockey Mom) Eine "Super-Mom" will US-Vizepräsidentin werden A super-mom wants to become the US Vice-PresidentSarah Palin – Wunderfrau aus der Wildnis Sarah Palin: Wonder woman from the...

A GIANT inflatable dog turd by American artist Paul McCarthy blew away from an exhibition in the garden of a Swiss museum, bringing down a power line and breaking a window before it landed again. The art work, titled Complex Shit, is the size of a house. The wind carried it 200m from the Paul Klee Centre in Berne before it fell back to Earth in the grounds of a children's home, said museum director Juri Steiner. The inflatable turd broke the window at the children's home when it blew away on the night of July 31, Mr Steiner said....

Libya has imposed sanctions against Switzerland and Swiss interests following a son of President Muammar Gaddafi being arrested in Geneva. Motassim Gaddafi and his pregnant wife were held in custody following allegations that they ill-treated two members of staff at a luxury hotel in the city. They couple have complained of the treatment they received during the two nights they spent in the cells. Libya is demanding Switzerland apologise for the incident and on Wednesday closed down offices of the Swiss food giant Nestlé. Two of the company's staff in Libya have been arrested. The Libyan ambassador to Switzerland has...

A debate is raging over Switzerland's naturalisation rate in the run-up to a nationwide ballot on citizenship procedures early next month. Rightwingers argue no country in Europe approves more citizenship applications than Switzerland. But officials say the comparisons are misleading. Over the past few weeks the rightwing Swiss People's Party has been recycling arguments that proved successful four years ago when it challenged a proposal to facilitate the naturalisation of second- and third-generation foreigners in Switzerland. A large-scale poster campaign shows hands grabbing the coveted red passports with the white cross. The People's Party wants to give voters the final...

The government ordered the destruction of documents on an alleged international nuclear smuggling network involving three Swiss engineers, it has been confirmed. The head of a parliamentary control committee said the material was shredded last November. The father and sons – Friedrich, Marco and Urs Tinner - are suspected of helping to supply parts for Libya's nuclear weapons programme between 2001 and 2003 through a trafficking ring run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atom bomb. Reports say the three worked as undercover agents for the United States intelligence service. There is widespread media speculation that Washington asked...

Holes, Cheese, and Heads The Swiss, a few years ago, added a provision to their constitution that gives dignity to all living organisms using the term “Würde der Kreatur” (dignity of living beings) to apply to both plants and animals. To explain exactly what this means, the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology produced a report called "The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants." There is a reason the most famous invention of the Swiss is the cuckoo clock. There are obviously more holes in their heads than in their cheese. The report appears to be one...

GENEVA (AFP) — Switzerland said on Wednesday it had frozen the assets of a further 12 Iranian companies in accordance with new United Nations sanctions aimed at stopping Tehran's alleged nuclear programme. The 12 companies, and 13 individuals, have been added to an existing blacklist of 23 companies and 27 people. ] Five Iranian nationals are also banned from entering and passing through Switzerland, the country's Federal Council said in a statement. Switzerland will also ban the delivery of so-called "dual use" materials that could be used for the manufacture of nuclear plants, and the export of some drones and...

Carla del Ponte, the former chief prosecutor for war crimes in former Yugoslavia, has unleashed a storm of recrimination with allegations of a trade in human body parts in Kosovo and Albania after Nato bombed Serbia in 1999. Del Ponte claims, based on what she describes as credible reports and witnesses, that Kosovan Albanian guerrillas transported hundreds of Serbian prisoners into northern Albania where they were killed, and their organs "harvested" and trafficked out of Tirana airport. The Kosovan government, now headed by the former guerrilla leader Hashim Thaci, dismisses the claims as untrue, while Serbia and Russia are demanding...

Anti-Defamation League launches ad campaign against natural gas deal GENEVA - A major U.S. Jewish organization on Tuesday stepped up opposition to a multibillion-dollar Swiss-Iranian natural gas deal by claiming it makes Switzerland "the world's newest financier of terrorism." "When you finance a terrorist state, you finance terrorism," said the New York-based Anti-Defamation League in full-page advertisements in major Swiss newspapers and in similar ads in The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune and The Wall Street Journal. The U.S. government and the World Jewish Congress have criticized Switzerland for the deal, saying it gives encouragement to Tehran's hard-liners....

Swiss FM in Headscarf on Iran Visit Provokes Outcry at Home March 19, 2008 The Associated Press IHT.com GENEVA -- Switzerland's foreign minister, already under fire for a natural gas deal with Iran, also is provoking an outcry at home because she wore a headscarf at the meeting with Iran's hardline president when the accord was signed. "Like a submissive woman," the Lausanne daily tabloid Le Matin said Wednesday in a front-page story showing a photo of Micheline Calmy-Rey wearing a white, semitransparent headscarf. "Calmy-Rey wears the veil of discord," Tribune de Geneve said in its lead headline. Numerous members...

A Swiss company has created the world's fastest ever road vehicle - a 340mph bullet-shaped cross between a motorbike and a car.

AP News Alert ZURICH, Switzerland (AP) - Police say armed robbers steal art worth $100 million from a Zurich museum.

Inspired by a conversation with my best friend I wish to talk about cheese. Yummy, yummy cheese (for those of us not lactose intolerant)! What are your favorite cheeses? What is your favorite recipe with cheese. This thread is all cheese, all the time.

Over the course of several centuries, Switzerland's banks have become used to foreigners turning up with bags of loot. Not all arrive in Zurich to buy chocolates and cuckoo clocks. As a haven of choice for "nervous money", Swiss deposit-takers have welcomed customers who, with good reason, disliked scrutiny. In no particular order of shame, they included the Nazis, Ferdinand Marcos, Haiti's appalling Duvalier family, Joseph Mobutu, who plundered Zaire, Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha and the Argentine military junta. A tradition of financial discretion became formalised in 1934, when Switzerland introduced a banking secrecy law. That lasted until the mid-1980s,...

Swiss vote after ugly campaign By Imogen Foulkes BBC News, Bern Swiss voters go to the polls on Sunday after a general election campaign marred by riots and accusations of racism. Riot police were deployed when violence flared at a Bern poll rally The right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP), already the largest party in the parliament, is leading in the opinion polls and now expects at least 27% of the vote. But the party's campaign has focused almost entirely on immigrants. Its controversial poster, showing three white sheep kicking a black sheep out of Switzerland, brought sharp criticism from the...

ZURICH (Reuters) - The right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP) is set to consolidate its position as the alpine nation's most popular grouping in a parliamentary election on Sunday, outstripping its rivals after a provocative campaign. SNIP The SVP has again run a controversial campaign calling for the extradition of foreigners who commit serious crimes. It has been criticised by opponents and has ruffled the usually smooth waters of Switzerland's consensus-based politics. SNIP

Swiss election sparks riots and racism By Harry de Quetteville in Berne Last Updated: 1:30am BST 13/10/2007 The Swiss proudly call their country the world's most direct democracy.(We can't post Getty Images) Clashes erupted in the capital Berne after protesters tried to block a march by the SVP party But a week before a general election, the political battle has become all too direct — complete with tear gas, burning barricades and street battles between police and anti-racism campaigners. "It was extraordinary," said Dinu Gautier, one of the protesters. "There were thousands of people. Some were putting up barricades in...

'Swiss seize Iran nuke plant equipment' Aug. 3, 2007 Swiss customs authorities seized mechanical equipment weighing over two tons which they suspected was destined for an Iranian nuclear plant, Al Watan reported on Friday. The equipment's estimated value was 0.5 million euros. According to the report in the Saudi-based newspaper, a Swiss company was suspected to be involved in the deal. Swiss government officials and the Iranian embassy in Switzerland refused to comment on the report. On Monday, UN inspectors visited a nuclear reactor being built in central Iran that has been off-limits since April. Experts from the UN's nuclear...

Swiss Consul to St. Petersburg Madeleine Lüthy is coming to the city Tobolsk in the first decade of August in the framework of creation of Romanovs` Royal Family tourist route in Russia.