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
The role of social networking and Hollywood fantasies in a gruesome first-degree murder trial in Canada became apparent 30 and 31 March. Renee Waring, a personal dog trainer from Ohio in the US, testified by video conference on Wednesday March 30, 2011 that she had evidence on the accused, Mark Twitchell, from their Facebook correspondence, in which he told her he had “crossed the line… and liked it.”
Twitchell, from Canada, is on trial for having killed and dismembered Johnny Altinger in a rented garage 10 October 2008, after using an Internet dating service to set up a meeting. He is accused of then disposing of Altinger’s remains by burning them and throwing them into the sewers.
The trial opened 16 March.
Waring became Facebook friends with Twitchell, whose profile boasted the name “Dexter Morgan”, in September 2008. Dexter Morgan is the main character of the television show “Dexter”, a series about a serial killer named Dexter who kills other serial killers.
Waring and Twitchell corresponded via Facebook throughout the fall of 2008, during which time they shared “dark fantasies”. Waring told the accused that she wanted to kill her ex-husband’s new wife and he wrote back disapproving of her chosen methods.
“Although I appreciate your dark fantasy about skeletor, it is impractical,” Twitchell responded to Waring 3 October 2008. “It leaves behind way too much forensic evidence.”
Twitchell explained to Waring that she needed to “prepare a kill room, the same way Dex does”. He proceeded to give her detailed explanations on how to properly disable, kill, dismember, and dispose of a victim.
Soon after Twitchell was charged with Altinger’s murder, Waring turned in the written evidence to Edmonton police.
Twitchell’s lawyer confirmed to the jury that his client was the author of these emails.
Links to other sites: CTV, Toronto Sun, The Globe & Mail
Source: UNHCR, Geneva, 28 March 2011 (click on image to view larger)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The number of asylum seekers in the world has been halved in the past 10 years, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees says in its 2010 annual asylum report issued early Monday 27 March. Whether this is good news or bad is difficult to judge, concedes the Geneva-based organization’s head.
“The global dynamics of asylum are changing. Asylum claims in the industrialized world are much lower than a decade ago while year-on-year levels are up in only a handful of countries,” notes High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres. “We need to study the root causes to see if the decline is because of fewer push factors in areas of origin, or tighter migration control in countries of asylum.”
He notes that developing countries still host the lion’s share of applications, and asks that other countries continue to support countries like Liberia, Tunisia and Egypt who are hosting large numbers of asylum seekers due to conflicts in neighbouring countries.
The report covers 44 countries that are destinations for asylum seekers.
US remains most popular host country
Switzerland was the 8th most popular country, with 13,800 applicants.
The report states that 358,800 asylum applications were made to industrialized countries last year, a 5 percent fall from 2009, and some 42 percent lower than the decade’s peak in 2001, when almost 620,000 asylum applications were made.
The US is the top destination for asylum seekers, for the fifth year in a row, followed by France, Germany, Sweden and Canada. These five countries accounted for 56 percent of all applications.
US numbers of new applicants were boosted by requests for asylum by more Chinese and Mexicans, while France saw an increase in applicants from Serbia, Russia and Congo. Germany saw an influx from Serbia, notably Kosovo, and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The UNHCR says the “development is widely attributed to the introduction of visa-free entry to the European Union for nationals of these two countries since December 2009.”
Serbia has highest number of applicants
Serbia was the country with the highest number of applicants, 28,900, which the UNHCR says is almost as high as in 2001, “soon after teh Kosovo crisis”.
Several changes have taken place, including:
- the number of applications from Afghans fell by 9 percent and whereas in the past Norway and the UK were the main destinations, Germany and Sweden have become the top hosts
- Chinese asylum-seekers made up the third-largest asylum group in 2010, partly due to a substantial drop in the number of new applications from Iraq and Somalia
- for the first time since 2005, Iraq was not one of the top two countries of origin of asylum-seekers. It dropped to fourth place, followed by the Russian Federation
- Somalia, which occupied the third spot in 2009, fell to sixth in 2010.
Nations Brands Index: Swiss hold onto 8th place
US still number one, UK, Canada, Australia in top 10
When it comes to tourism, Switzerland is ranked 11th by the NBI (photo, Verbier)
Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland is still viewed by most of the world in a positive light, says the newly published 2010 Nations Brands Index, NBI, which evaluates the strength and attractiveness of 50 countries. Several countries use it to create public relations campaigns.
The United States continues to have “the world’s most valuable country brand, a top spot it obtained in 2009 after [Barack] Obama’s election,” the index shows.
The annual NBI study bases its result on six categories: governance, investments and immigration, exports, tourism, cultural heritage and population. Switzerland ranks in the top 12 in 5 of these categories.
The study shows mixed results for Switzerland.
Generally speaking, Switzerland enjoys a better image outside Europe than with its neighbours, Germany being the exception. It ranks Switzerland second.
When it comes to the category “Population”, Switzerland is viewed less than favourably by Egypt and Turkey. Turkey places Switzerland 12th.
The Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs notes that in the 2010 index, Switzerland’s “commitment to the environment and its excellent quality of life were once again regarded as [its] greatest strengths. It also received top marks for [respecting] the political rights of its citizens,” it ranked second only to Canada.
An Ontario company that will soon become the world’s largest salt mine, according to the Toronto Sun, is beaming over the heavy snowfalls of recent days. About 80 percent of the salt mined by Sifto Salt Mine goes to salt winter roads, and the end of 2010 has given the company such a bonus of snowstorms that it has taken back 65 of the 80 employees it let go after a less snowy 2009-2010 winter. The company recently invested $75 million in storage facilities and a newer system for bringing salt to the surface, a “skipping system”. It supplies a large part of Canada and the Midwest in the US with road salt.
The British government is considering a radical move to discourage young people from taking up smoking: obliging tobacco companies to drop their logos and other branding from cigarette packages. The proposal, which expected to be part of a white paper on health to be made public within days, is being welcomed by medical groups, reports the Guardian. The idea is to take the glamour out of smoking by giving cigarettes plain wrappers. The proposal was put forth early in 2010, but the new coalition government now appears to be ready to move on it. Tobacco companies are firmly opposed to any such change.
Australia is scheduled to change to plain wrappers in 2012, but the government is facing legal battles, while Canada, like the UK, is considering making the change. The US will begin to show graphic descriptions of diseases related to smoking, on packages, starting in 2012, the government announced last week.
Links to other sites: BBC, Packaging News, UK, Wall St Journal
Nigerian military forces say they freed 19 hostages in an operation in the country’s main oil-producing region.
One French national, a Canadian and 17 Nigerians were freed 17 November by the country’s security forces.
The victims were all taken hostage in recent raids on facilities in the country’s Niger Delta region, the heart of one of the world’s largest oil industries.
The Canadian government says it is “relieved” the hostages were freed.
Omar Khadr, a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, has pleaded guilty to charges of murder, terrorism and war crimes in exchange for serving out the rest of his sentence in Canada, in one year’s time. The youngest Guantanamo inmate, Khadr was detained in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old after killing a US soldier.
Long a thorn in the side of the Bush Administration which refused to grant a minor the treatment accorded them under international law, the military commission trial will sentence Khadr, now 24, to one more year in prison. Then he will be sent back to Canada, his country of origin.
Links to other sites: Christian Science Monitor, Globe and Mail, Miami Herald
Tax cuts due for Canadian pensioners in Switzerland
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Canada and Switzerland Friday 22 October signed an amended double taxation treaty that is expected to go into effect in 2012 as well as an expanded version of their 1975 bilateral aviation agreement. The accords were signed as part of the official visit by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to Swiss President Doris Leuthard Friday, near Bern.
Harper is one of nearly 70 top officials and heads of state visiting Switzerland for the Francophonie Summit that officially starts Saturday 23 October. Canada has chaired the summit and tomorrow it hands that role over to Switzerland.
The amended double taxation agreement, like others that Switzerland has signed in recent months, contains provisions for the exchange of information that are in line with OECD standards laid out in 2009 and affect primarily requests for judicial assistance in suspected tax fraud cases.
But for anyone living in Switzerland who receives a Canadian pension, whether they are Canadian, Swiss who worked in Canada or other citizens who at some point earned a Canadian pension, the revised treaty brings a tax cut.
An informant who in 1999 told Vancouver police a second-hand story about Robert Pickton butchering a woman and storing body parts at his pig farm in western Canada recounted the story publicly for the first time Monday 23 August on CTV News. Pickton was convicted in 2007 of murdering six women, a grisly saga that gripped the nation during his trial. Leah Best, in her 50s, heard the story from a close friend who said she witnessed Pickton cutting body parts. The friend, who received money from Pickton for drugs, refused to acknowledge the story to police and she was not initially considered a reliable witness. Once Pickton was arrested, in 2002, she gave police details and became a star witness in his mass murder trial.
Best, on television Monday, said she believes some of the women could have been spared had Vancouver police acted on the information she gave them. Pickton, age 61, told an undercover police agent he had killed 49 women, and he was charged with the deaths of 20 women in addition to the six murder convictions for which he is spending life in prison, with no possibility of parole for 25 years (Canada’s harshest sentence).
Links to other sites: CTV News, The Globe & Mail
Toronto, Canada (GenevaLunch) – Swiss tennis ace Roger Federer is back in the game and in top shape. Federer beat Juan Ignacio Chela of Argentina 7-6(7), 6-3 at the Rogers Cup in Toronto.
Federer, currently the world’s number three, became the all-time leader at the ATP World Tour Masters 1000. Andre Agassi had held the record from 1990 to 2006 with a 209-73 mark.
“I felt like I had to win the game three times” said Federer who considers normal being a bit “rusty.” This was his first game after a month-long break. “It was a bit of a dog fight,” he added.
The youngest Guantanamo detainee is to go on trial today 10 August. Omar Khadr was arrested when he was fifteen years-old in an Afghanistan battlefield.
Khadr is a Canadian citizen, now 23, who according to his defense attorneys, was forced into war by a family with close ties to Osama bin Laden.
According to reports, his father, an Egyptian-born Canadian is an alleged terrorist financier.
Also in: The Vancouver Sun, Al Jazeera English
