Canadians had own investigation, but Swiss reportedly asked for help over money laundering and corruption
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Riadh Ben Aissa was arrested in Switzerland sometime in the past few days, but it’s not yet clear what charges are faced by the former head of global construction SNC-Lavalin, a large Canadian company. The company has been in Canadian headlines for weeks over a scandal involving missing millions.
The Globe & Mail refers to Ben Aissa as Canada’s most mysterious businessman. It says it was told by Jacquelin Buhlmann, a spokeswoman for the Swiss Public Attorney’s Office that Switzerland in April asked Canada for assistance in its year-long investigation into possible money laundering, corruption and fraud. About that time, says the Canadian newspaper, Canadian police raided the offices of SNC.
“Ben Aissa was forced out of the Montreal-based company in February amid allegations he made $56-million in improper payments to unknown commercial agents,” reports the Globe & Mail. “The company has said it has no idea where the money went. Mr. Ben Aissa has denied any wrongdoing. A source familiar with the company’s investigation has said some of the payments went through banks in Switzerland and the Middle East.”
He had close ties to the two Qaddafi sons, Saadi and Saif, the Toronto Star reports. Their assets in Switzerland have been blocked since before the overthrow of their father’s regime.
The company’s major projects in Libya included, according to RTS, the Benghazi airport, the Gharyan prison and an artificial river that runs through the desert.
RTS notes that SNC has said it will cooperate fully with the Swiss investigation.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Thailand, called by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) a “migration hub in South East Asia and a key country of destination for migrant smuggling”, is entering agreements with Canada and the IOM to combat the problems of human smuggling and to improve border management.
Two separate agreements are being concluded this week. The Geneva-based IOM, together with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) announced 17 April that an agreement was signed in Vienna that will increase cooperation between the two agencies, which already work together in human trafficking in Colombia, southern and western Africa as well as in the Horn of Africa.
Canada funds US$7 million anti-smuggling campaign
Canada, Thailand and the IOM are expected to announce Friday 20 April a project to tackle human smuggling to and from Thailand.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A long-range rocket launched by North Korea Friday 13 April to mark the 100th anniversary of the regime’s founding leader exploded 90 seconds after taking off, nonetheless drawing condemnation from G-8 countries.
A joint statement from foreign ministers of the G-8, which comprises the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy, condemned the action, and said they may request an “appropriate response” from the United Nations Security Council.
Switzerland also condemned the North Korean move.
The launch, which North Korea said was intended to put a satellite into orbit, has been widely seen as an attempt to test long-range missile technology forbidden by UN resolutions.
The failure of the much-lauded Unha-3 rocket was reported on national television in North Korea, in a rare demonstration of candor. A statement said that it had failed to enter orbit.
The UN Security Council is scheduled to meet Friday to discuss the launch.
Links to other sources: BBC, The Guardian, MSNBC
BASEL, SWITZERLAND – 8-7 was the final score, Canada over Scotland, giving Canada team skip Glenn Howard his third consecutive World Championship in curling after an extra-end win over Scotland’s Tom Brewster.
Details: RTS Swiss public broadcasting (Fre), The Scotsman (final not yet listed, 23:00 Sunday), Toronto Sun
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A Montreal man who was among 1,700 whose names were provided to the Canadian revenue service after bank data was stolen by a Geneva HSBC computer employee is now suing his country’s tax department. The suit brought against the Canada Revenue Agency in March comes as a Zurich court has gone after German tax authorities for accepting stolen data.
The CBC broadcasting company reports that the “application seeks an injunction to prevent the government from continuing to use “stolen data” to find out more about Canadians with Swiss bank accounts.
It also suggests that because the Canada Revenue Agency may be conducting a clandestine criminal investigation, Canadians with offshore bank accounts should not have to give the CRA information that might lead to criminal charges.”
The case dates back to data stolen by Frenchman Herve Falciani, who called himself a whistleblower and who tried to sell the information, which was at least three years old, to a number of governments. A French high court ruled early in 2012 that the data could not be used.
BASEL, SWITZERLAND – The Canadian men’s team won the opening round of the eight-day world curling championship in Basel Sunday 1 April, defeating Germany 9-2, after neatly dispensing with the American team 8-7. Canada earlier defeated France.
The game is popular in Switzerland, notes Canada’s TheSpec/Canadian Press, with 160 clubs and 800 registered players, but Canadians on hand for the finals were puzzled by the quiet and relatively small crowd. “It was so quiet during the morning game that banter between curlers could easily be heard from the stands. The occasional cheer, the steady whir of stones sliding down the ice and buzz from the brushers were essentially the only sounds in the rather cavernous 9,000-seat venue. Official attendance figures weren’t released but organizers estimated that 800 spectators were on hand in the morning. A manual head count revealed less than half that number.” The evening match, says TheSpec, appeared to pull in about 1,800.
The crowds might just be warming up, with a cheering throng in the streets for the opening parade, reports the Winnipeg Free Press.
The medal game are 8 April in Basel.
Ed. note: tickets are available online from the Men’s World Curling Championship site; CHF30 for most matches and CHF50 for next weekend’s finals.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Tens of thousands of students protested in Montreal, Canada this week against a planned increase in tuition fees at Quebec universities, announced by the liberal government lead by Prime Minister Jean Charest. The city has seen daily marches since Monday 19 March.
Quebec’s tuition fees, which are by far the lowest in Canada, will increase by C$325 a year, for a five-year period, in order to improve university funding and reduce the province’s debt. Fees will thus rise to C$3,793 in 2017 from their current level at C$2,415.
While many students from other provinces as well as from overseas have been attracted to the province by the low tuition rates, administrators have long claimed that the universities are underfunded, and they welcome the hikes.
Daniel Zizian, head of the Conference of Rectors and Principals of Quebec Universities told The Canadian Press, “We can’t think that Quebec universities can continue to offer a quality education in the long term with a $600 million shortfall year after year.”
An 1978 agreement between Quebec and France allows French students to benefit from the same low tuition as Canadians. There are currently over 8,000 French students in the province.
Links to other sources: CBC, Montreal Openfile, The Globe and Mail
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A Canadian naval intelligence officer accused of counterespionage has inflicted “grave injury” on relations with the country’s allies, The Globe and Mail reports, citing anonymous government sources. They are quoted as saying that the full extent of the damage will be fully gauged only once the government determines the content of classified information he allegedly passed to a foreign power.
The case of sub-lieutenent Jeffrey Delisle, who worked at an intelligence hub in Halifax and who was arrested in January, has been very sensitive with few officials knowing the extent of the damage. No details about the case have been disclosed publicly.
Defense Minister Peter MacKay reacted by saying that the allies maintain “full confidence in Canada”.
The newspaper says that there has been concern among officials over the years that as a “net importer” of intelligence from allies, Canada may, as a result of the spy case, be excluded from receiving such information.
Delisle, the first person accused of violating the country’s post-9/11 Security of Information Act, allegedly began leaking material in July 2007.
Six Russian diplomats were expelled from Canada in January following Delisle’s arrest.
Links to other sites: The Globe and Mail, The Huffington Post
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Canada is declaring the end of winter, with most of the country now on summer time, as of the early hours of Sunday 11 March. The Globe & Mail offers Canadians a kindly reminder to check their digital world to make sure everything has moved, and in the right direction, noting that the average living room often houses televisions and PVRs that aren’t equipped for automatic updates. “‘Any devices not linked into a cable or other digital network are candidates for a manual adjustment,’” according to Sidneyeve Matrix, media professor at Queen’s University. “‘Even some devices that can usually be relied upon to get the time right occasionally miss the mark. Last time iPhones were scheduled to spring forward in March 2011, they wound up falling back and presenting befuddled users with a time that lagged reality by two hours.’”
There are a couple important exceptions to the time change: most of Saskatchewan and parts of British Columbia remain on standard time year-round.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Alberta, Canada is talking about rats again, a topic that comes up every now and again when the rat-free province finds another pet rat in someone’s home. The nub of the problem appears to be the fear of what can happen when two rats get chatting, or worse: “A pair of rats sheltered from weather and predators could produce as many as 15,000 more rats every year,” reports the Toronto Star. Three pet rats were recently reported and they face either euthanasia, says the Star, or deportation to another province, one such as British Columbia where rats are not banned.
A group that has undertaken rat removals to other provinces has had death threats in the past, and it is not yet clear if they will take on the current job.
National Geographic in 2003, looking up from the US at Alberta, which was celebrating 50 years of being rat-free, noted that there were probably 150 million or more rats in the US. The article pointed out that while attitudes had changed somewhat since 1919, when eminent specialists said rats served no useful purpose, about the only one the authors could come up with was this: “To be fair, rats have made an incomparable contribution to laboratory sciences.”
But banning them forever, it pointed out, would mean being forever vigilant in Alberta.
Canadians vs Americans, you 0, me 1 when it comes to the War of 1812
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Americans and Canadians have a new old bone of contention, reports The Globe and Mail: who won the War of 1812. We did! each side has been claiming for exactly 200 years, it appears, and the argument isn’t about to let up as bicentennial celebrations get underway.
More than 1,000 citizens of each country were surveyed at the end of January, reports the Canadian newspaper, and while Canadians felt strongly that the best outcome of the war was that the invaders were pushed back, Americans said it gave rise to the national anthem, “The Star-spangled Banner”. “Canadians see it as a war which saved them from American assimilation and preserved them from American politics, gun laws and shared citizenship with Snooki of the Jersey Shore,” notes The Globe & Mail, which adds that while Americans saw no significant outcome to the war, “given a list of things which might define Canadian identity, 53 per cent of respondents picked universal health care, but winning the War of 1812 and squelching the American invasion was ranked second, with 25 percent support.”
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A Canadian couple and their 19-year-old son were found guilty Monday 30 January of murdering the youth’s three sisters and his father’s first wife from a polygamous marriage, but the story is far from over. The young man’s lawyer says he is appealing the judgement, and the other two may also appeal.
The trio was found guilty of murder in what the court agreed was an honour killing because the girls had become too Westernized. But the Afghan community in Montreal, according to The Globe & Mail, is not convinced a crime took place, with questions raised about whether the deaths by drowning in a car could have been an accident. “Some in Montreal’s small Afghan community of about 5,000 people condemn the crime, while others have trouble with the verdict”, reports the newspaper.
The deaths came as the wedding of the oldest daughter, Zainab Shafia, was called off in a dispute between two families. Her father, found guilty of her murder, had not approved the marriage, but was ready to let it go ahead. When the family of her fiance failed to show up, her father reportedly said it brought shame on the family’s honour.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A Chinese real estate investor’s plans to build a luxury golf club in Iceland were turned down recently by the government there, which said Huang Nubo would own too large a percentage of the country’s land if he bought the Grímsstaðir á Fjöllum stretch in the northeast of the country.
Now the minister of the Industry, Energy and Tourism says she is in favour of leasing the land to him, since this would not fly in the face of ownership issues, and Huang Nubo says he is interested.
But the plans are causing concern over the water in Canada, where suspicions are being voiced that China is interested in the land because of the possibility of a polar water route some day.
Links to other sites: The Globe & Mail, Ice News
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Two men face fines of nearly $72,000 after they got drunk on a 28 November flight from Ontario Canada to Beijing, China. The plane had to land in Vancouver, where Royal Canadian Mounted Police escorted them off the plane. The two, George Campbell, 45, and Paul Alexander, 38, pleaded “guilty to mischief for consuming too much alcohol and disobeying the directions of the flight crew aboard an Air Canada flight”, according to the Globe & Mail. In a court appearance 29 November the pair received suspended sentences and probation for a year.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Chief Justice Robert Bauman of the British Columbian Supreme Court in Canada wrote a 335-page decision on the province’s ban on polygamy, saying it is indeed unconstitutional and goes against society’s efforts to promote monogamous marriage, but his ruling is not likely to put the issue to rest, reports The Globe & Mail. Bauman was asked by the province to rule on the question of the constitutionality of Canada’s 114-year-old law in the light of problems with a polygamous group in Bountiful, BC, near the US border.
He argued that the law is constitutional but flawed and changes are needed to avoid the prosecution of children in some circumstances.
The group is suspected of having close ties to a Texas group that was raided in 2008. The BC group openly practices polygamy, marrying very young girls to much older men. Law enforcement and child protection agencies suspect the group of moving children across the border illegally, among other problems.
Links to other sites: CBC, Edmunton Journal, photo gallery, Ian Smith/Vancouver Sun
Uganda landmine survivors met in March 2012 (photo ©2011 Landmine Monitor / D Osman)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – There is some good news on the landmine front, the “Landmine & Cluster Munitions Monitor 2011″ (full report online), issued 23 November reports, but it is dampened by news that three countries laid landmines this year, with two of them, Israel and Libya confirmed.
Myanmar is the third suspect, and four non-state armed groups laid mines as well.
Record ordnance cleared
On the brighter side:
- at least 200km2 of mined areas were cleared by 45 mine action programs in 2010, the highest annual total ever recorded by the Monitor; 198km2 in 2009, the previous record, and 160 km2 in 2008
- more than 388,000 antipersonnel mines and over 27,000 anti-vehicle mines were destroyed during this clearance
- programmes in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Croatia, Iraq, and Sri Lanka together accounted for more than 80% of recorded clearance
- an additional 460km2 of former battle area was reportedly cleared, destroying in the process more than 1.2 million items of unexploded ordnance; largest totals: Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and Lao PDR.
Eighty percent of the world’s nation, 158 countries, have now joined the Landmine Ban Treaty. Donor contributions for mine action rose to $637 million, a record high, with 31 countries contributing. Five main mine action donors—the US, European Commission, Japan, Norway, and Canada—accounted for 64% of all funding.
Eighty-seven states have completed the destruction of their stockpiles, including Iraq, who was added to the list in June 2011.
5% increase in new victims
From submarine cable laying to the satellite weather instruments, ABB expands R&D
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Swiss power and automation firm ABB announced two new ventures this week. The first is a $5.5 million deal awarded by the Canadian Space Agency for key applications for an instrument designed for meteorological observations on Polar Communications and Weather (PCW) mission satellites.
The R&D contract is for an imaging spectroradiometer, a device designed to measure the wavelengths of individual colors of light. “Currently there are limitations to the short-term weather forecasts, long-term climatological predictions, and other services offered in the high Arctic by existing satellites, particularly with respect to mobile communications for ships, planes and unmanned aerial vehicles,” ABB says in a statement.
“To help improve these services the PCW mission aims to place two satellites into a highly elliptical orbit approximately 39,900 km above the North Pole to provide reliable and continuous communication services and to monitor weather and climate changes throughout the Arctic region.”
The company also announced 23 November an agreement to buy Canadian transport company Envitech Energy “to expand its technology offering in the electrical equipment and solutions sector for rail infrastructure.” The Quebec firm, with 36 employees, is active mainly in urban public transport.
Palestinian envoy raises ire of Canadian gov’t
Egyptian TV’s interview with Shalit shocks some as exploitation
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – It is not being hailed as a gesture with implications for Middle East peace, but there is widespread relief over the release of Israeli prisoner Galid Shalit by Palestine’s Hamas after five years, and 477 Palestinians who have been held for different lengths of time.
Mid-morning Swiss time Shalit’s arrival in Egypt had been confirmed to Israeli authorities, who loaded 477 prisoners onto Red Cross buses, for release to the West Bank and Gaza, according to the Jerusalem Post. They will cross into Egypt, and from there bused to their homes, once Shalit is on Israeli territory. “Schalit will be guarded by soldiers of the Israel Air Force’s 669 unit, who will accompany him until he is home safe in Mitzpe Hila,” the Israeli newspaper reports.
Another 500 Palestinians are scheduled to be released at a later date.
Palestine remains in the news in Canada for an unrelated incident: “Linda Sobeh Ali, the chargé d’affaires of the Palestinian delegation in Ottawa, is just one cut above persona non grata,” reports the Globe & Mail. “The Canadian government called her in for a high-level dressing down, made a formal protest to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and has decided to ‘limit communication’ with her until a replacement arrives.” She upset Ottawa by tweeting a link to a YouTube video of a tearful Palestinian girl who is shouting “with passion, reciting a poem in Arabic, ‘I am Palestinian.’ The English subtitles on the video include a passage where millions are called ‘to a war that raze the injustice and oppression and destroy the Jews.’”
Shalit was interviewed by Egyptian TV before he was transferred to Israel. The 24-year-old appeared short of breath but otherwise healthy and he said he was nervous. Israeli media reported that several officials were shocked at what they saw as “exploitation” by media before he was released to his homeland.
TORONTO, CANADA – Tired but very happy after running the Toronto Waterfront Marathon in 8 hours, 25 minutes and 16 seconds, Fauja Singh was willing to share his secret for living to a ripe old age. He had just become the oldest person, at age 100, to run a marathon, a dream he realized after he took up running about 20 years ago, following the deaths of his wife and son.
The elderly sportsman trains by running 10km a day.
The secret? “The secret to a long and healthy life is to be stress-free. Be grateful for everything you have, stay away from people who are negative, stay smiling and keep running.”
Singh was born in the Punjab in India, and he moved to Britain, becoming a British citizen in the 1960s, He already held a world record for over-90 runners before this weekend’s feat, observed by a team from the Guinness World Records. He broke several sprint records for 100-year-old earlier last week.
Singh’s coach says he attributes his stamina to a light diet of curry, tea and toast.
Links to other sites: BBC, CBC, Toronto Star
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Canadian Justice Minister Rob Nicholson’s office has not publicly reacted to a call from Amnesty International 12 October to arrest former US President George W Bush when he visits Canada next week. The group filed what Alex Neve, its secretary-general, calls a lengthy brief with the justice ministry detailing Bush’s admissions of having authorized torture on terror suspects.
“Neve said many will argue that arresting Mr Bush is unrealistic because the United States is a close and powerful ally or that the crisis after 9/11 required extraordinary measures,” reports The Globe & Mail. “‘None of those arguments justify inaction under international law,’ he said.”
The Star reports that Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has accused Amnesty of “‘cherry picking’ its accusations against Bush, and mounting an ideologically motivated ‘stunt’ that ‘helps explain why so many respected human rights advocates have abandoned Amnesty International,’” but the Toronto paper goes on to list a number of other groups that are encouraging Canada to do what similar groups in the US have failed to do, to call Bush to account for torture. Canada has “ratified the United Nations Convention Against Torture, and the Canadian Criminal Code says that anyone suspected of torture can be arrested and subject to criminal investigation when he enters the country,” The Star points out.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Canada’s finance minister has come out loudly against new US tax laws that will increase reporting requirements to the IRS, the US tax arm, for dual citizens, as well as recently stepped-up efforts by the IRS to obtain tax information about Americans in Canada.
The IRS efforts to chase tax cheats are netting another group, he says, with “the threat of prohibitive fines for simply failing to file a return they were unaware they had to file is a frightening prospect that is causing unnecessary stress and fear among law abiding hardworking dual citizens,” he said in a letter sent to several major US publications 19 September.
He noted that “their only transgression is failure to file the IRS paperwork they were never aware they had to file.”
Canadian media have made their government’s resistance to the US moves headline news this weekend, as concern grows in Canada and elsewhere outside the US over the new Fatca (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) rules, expected to go into effect in 2014. Fatca will require financial institutions outside the US to provide information on accounts held by US citizens and green card holders.
CBC, Canadian public broadcasting, quote Flaherty as saying he shares the concerns of fellow citizens over the reach of the IRS beyond US borders (http://www.cbc.ca/fp/story/2011/09/16/5413714.html).
Swiss banks have reacted to the proposed Fatca rules by, in many cases, closing accounts of US citizens and refusing to open accounts for Americans resident in Switzerland because Fatca regulations will be at odds with Swiss banking laws.
US media, meanwhile, have been publishing the news that some 12000 taxpayers took advantage of the most recent tax amnesty by the IRS, which ended 9 September, noting that the IRS has so far collected $500 million in back taxes and interest.
An AP news agency article picked up by the CS Monitor, Yahoo news and scores of US newspapers, with a headline “12,000 tax cheats come clean under IRS program”, doesn’t mention that the amnesty encouraged many who were unaware of the FBAR reporting requirements to file forms that require taxpayers to show the largest amount in all financial accounts during every tax year. The fines for not reporting were as high as 50% of any unannounced holdings.
The Fbar requirement was designed as an anti-terrorism tool, to catch money launderers, and is not overseen by the IRS itself.
American Citizens Abroad has been actively working to inform taxpayers about these obligations, but discussions on their website and town hall meetings organized by ACA have made it clear that several IRS filing requirements have been little known and poorly understood by the public.
Controversial documentary to air on 16 September
CANADA – New allegations by Tom Juby an investigator who looked into the fatal crash of Swissair Flight 111 in the coast of Canada, argue that the fire in the doomed plane could have been caused by an incendiary device, and that a “homicide investigation should have taken place.”
The controversial allegations are made on the CBC program, The Fifth Estate which airs later tonight.
According to CBC News, magnesium and other elements found on some of the wires were first attributed to “long exposure to seawater” by Dr. Jim Brown who later changed his findings.
According to The Fifth Estate, a year into the investigation Dr. Brown, using “auger electron spectroscopy,” discovered “suspicious levels of magnesium — 10 times the anticipated amount — as well as other elements associated with arson in melted wiring from the section of the plane that suffered the greatest fire damage.”
Previously, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada concluded that the accident was “caused by a fire in the cockpit, likely sparked by an electrical fault,” and has refused to discuss any possible criminal acts.
On 2 September 1998, Swissair Flight 111 was on a flight from New York City to Geneva when it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Halifax International Airport, at the entrance to St. Margaret’s Bay, Nova Scotia.
The plane was carrying 215 passengers and 14 crew members, none survived.
A Saudi prince, a relative of the former shah of Iran, high profile UN officials and a half a billion dollars of diamonds and gems were on board.
World Radio Switzerland reported on 15 September that the Swiss public TV, SRG SSR, refused to broadcast the film “because it considers [it] mere speculation.”
The documentary however, can be viewed worldwide directly online on the CBC website.
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND – Canada produced the first shock of the Rugby World Cup as they ousted Tonga from the Cup, 25-20 during a game on 14 September.
Few had given the Canucks much of a chance against the Pacific islanders.
Tonga and Canada, ranked at 12 and 14 respectively, have a long World Cup rivalry dating back to their first match at the tournament in 1987, which the Maple Leafs won 37-4.
Links to: Australia’s Courier Mail and CBC.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Canada’s wilder side surfaced publicly over the weekend with a airplane crash at Nunavet Bay in the country’s Arctic region that killed 12 people and left 3 survivors. The survivors were promptly picked up because of what Forbes calls an “unlikely coincidence”, with “several hundred military personnel in the region preparing for a mock airliner crash training exercise [who] suddenly found themselves plunged into a real rescue mission.”
The Boeing 737-200 was preparing to land in Nunavut, a tiny base for explorers, military crews and political visitors, when it crashed. The prompt military intervention may have played a role in helping the three survivors, one of whom is a 7-year-old girl whose 6-year-old sister died in the crash. The two were inseparable, writes the Globe & Mail: “Fixtures at their grandfather’s hotel in Resolute Bay, their giggling faces could often be seen peeking out the front door as visitors lugged their bags up the stairs.”
New rules from Basel for banks worldwide
BASEL, SWITZERLAND – The word Basel means one thing to bankers this week: new capital requirements.
New regulations will mean that the world’s largest banks have to raise additional capital and Tuesday’s paper is designed in part to give investors guidelines for “calculating extra funds that the lenders must raise”, reports Bloomberg, which notes that “the Financial Stability Board also published separate plans to ensure the orderly winding down of failed banks and shield taxpayers from bailing them out”.
The Financial Stability Board and the Basel Committee on Banking, both of which are part of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) unveiled details 19 July of the additional capital requirements that could apply to 28 banks “globally systematically important banks” that have been identified, in a document put out for consultation until early August.
The new formula for determining which banks are at what level of risk was promptly questioned by some of the world’s leading banks, which argue that the tougher capital requirements would endanger economic recovery by restricting their lending. Switzerland plans to implement even tougher standards and Sweden says it wants to do the same.
Bankers, however, say even the Basel III stringent requirements will push up the cost of lending.
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Zurich’s legislators have decided to better organize the city’s legal prostitution system by tidying up where and how it can be done. One city lawmaker told Tages-Anzeiger that the new measures are not so much anti-prostitution as anti-human trafficking. Many of the prostitutes are not well-informed about their rights, according to the city, and a licensing system will help build lines of direct communication to keep them better informed.
The change that has drawn the most publicity is the creation of what are called “sex boxes” in the Altstatten neighbourhood, while prostitution will be banned in the city centre Sihlquai and Langstrasse neighbourhoods. It will be allowed in the hot night spots area of Niederdorf and Allmend Brunau, where prostitutes will be able to solicit clients in cars.
Prostitution has been legal in Switzerland since 1992, but street-walking is limited to small areas.
Zurich introduced a ban on “street windows” in 2003 in an effort to keep prostitutes from using windows to sell their goods and thus get around the street-walking limits. The number of prostitutes has grown, the city council reports, without giving a number, but there were reportedly 3,000 in 2003, swissinfo reported at the time.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A Canadian woman who has admitted helping her elderly and ailing mother to travel to Switzerland to commit suicide is asking her provincial court to challenge a Canadian law that penalizes people who assist suicides.
Kathleen Carter, from Langley, British Columbia, was 89 years old and suffering from a painful chronic disease, spinal stenosis, that left her unable to care for herself.
She asked her daughter Lee in 2009 to help her end her life. The two plus Lee’s husband travelled to Zurich in January 2010, where the elderly woman died.
The name of the Dignitas clinic is not specifically mentioned, but the clinic has developed notoriety as one of the few places in the world that accepts foreigners who want to end their lives. The clinic has come under increasing pressure in recent years (see GenevaLunch related stories).
The Langley Advance, a local paper, reports that “this week, Carter, Hollis Johnson, and Dr William Shoichet of Victoria along with the BC Civil Liberties Association are asking the BC Supreme Court to overturn the Criminal Code provisions against assisted suicide. Their legal challenge says the laws are unconstitutional.”
The newspaper says the five-day trip cost the family $30,000 and that Kathleen Carter, according to her daughter, very much regretted the need for secrecy, which did not allow her to say goodbye to her fellow nursing home residents. Her children were told ahead but not the grandchildren.
In another case which is raising questions about laws covering the right of the elderly and unwell to commit suicide with assistance, the Sydney Morning Herald this week carries the story of a couple who decided to die together, after 60 years of marriage.
A group of recent Chinese immigrants working for relatively low wages in a Montreal backpacking manufacturing plant in Canada walked off the job after being harangued by their employer about hygiene, but the story didn’t end there and what appears to have been a large cultural gap between employer and employees has ended up in Quebec’s Human Rights Tribunal. The employer has been told to pay 15 Chinese workers $10,000 each for moral and punitive abuse, but his lawyer argues that the case should never had landed in a human rights court.
Links to other sites: The Globe & Mail, Montreal Gazette
Basel’s stinky flower, Geneva’s sexiest fingers study, Cern’s rumoured Higgs particles, US women skate to gold in Zurich
Cern's Alice experiment, particle collisions
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A giant stinky flower in Basel, ring fingers that mean true love, thrilling women’s ice hockey world finals – the international population in the Lake Geneva region disappears during the spring holidays, heading off on travels near and far, but the news doesn’t stop.
Here’s a brief roundup of what you might have missed:
Phew! but beautiful to behold, Basel’s corpse flower
Switzerland was on the world news map, with hundreds of articles about the amophophallus titanium, aka the “corpse flower” that pulled in an estimated 25,000 visitors to Basel. Key facts: it is one of the world’s largest flowers (technically: “largest unbranched inflorescence in the world” according to wikipedia), it smells of rotting flesh, and it grows in the wild only in Sumatra, Indonesia. The first cultivated flowering was at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London in 1889 and since then there have been few sightings of the rarely-blooming flower. Basel’s Botanical Gardens‘ two-metre high plant bloomed this weekend, for the first time in its 17 years, and the first such plant to flower in Switzerland in 75 years.
Check out his length, dear
A man’s ring finger length gives clues to his masculinity, researcher Camille Ferdenzi at the University of Geneva in Switzerland shows in her research on 2D:4D, the name for the ratio comparing second and fourth digits. Her work was published 19 April in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biology Letters. For an easier explanation, LiveScience unravels the mysteries of sex and the ring finger.
God or no god particles, Cern is intense
The city of Vancouver, Canada, is likely to have a “shortfall” of C$40-50 out of the $578m it loaned to the company that built the Olympic Village for the Winter Games held in British Columbia in 2010. The money was loaned to Millennium Developments to buy land from the city and build the village. The company has been in receivership since November 2010 following the sharp fall in the real estate market left the company with unsold apartments.
The amount owed and that the city will be able to collect was an election issue during recent municipal voting, and it now appears that the shortfall for total repayment will be considerably less than the $1 billion Vancouver’s then-new mayor, Gregor Robertson, suggested in 2008, according to the Vancouver Sun, or the $150m sum recently suggested by other politicians.
The condo units’ prices were cut by one-third in March 2011, to encourage sales, but shortly afterwards a group of owners who bought into the village before it was built sued the city to get their money back, citing a list of problems.
Links to other sites: The Province, The Globe & Mail
