GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – George Zimmerman, the self-confessed killer of an un-armed Florida Afro-American, was charged Wednesday evening 11 April with second-degree murder, six weeks after the incident.
The murder of 17 year-old Trayvon Martin by Zimmerman, who admits to have acted in self-defense in his role as a neighborhood watch volunteer, sparked a nationwide debate about racial profiling and general outrage at how the killer could remain free. US President Barack Obama had added to the discourse last month, saying “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon”.
Zimmerman is expected to plead not guilty. His lawyer will request his release on bail when he appears before the magistrate Thursday.
Links to other sources: NPR, Reuters, The Telegraph, Miami Herald
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Students who were born, raised and educated in Florida but whose parents were illegal immigrants are fighting a state rule that consider them out of state students. As a result they pay far higher tuition fees and don’t qualify for scholarships open to state residents. Five students have banded together to file a class action suit saying their rights as citizens are being violated, reports National Public Radio.
With luck, Irene is a name that will be used again
Hurricane Irene, 25 August - click on image to view larger (photo, Nasa/Goes)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – This is the moment to hope that Irene doesn’t join retirees Katrina, Mitch and Tracy, storms that were so violent their names were taken off the Atlantic hurricanes list, according to Geneva-based WMO (World Meteorological Organization). Irene is currently battering the northern Bahamas as a category 3 hurricane and it is expected to move towards North Carolina by Saturday, after dumping 150-300mm of rain in the Bahamas, says to the US National Hurricane Center in Miami.
The storm centre is, for now, expected to miss Florida and Georgia.
Irene is the first storm of the season, which is expected to have 7 to 10 hurricanes. Three to five of those, says meteorologists in Geneva, are likely to be major hurricanes.
Irene’s name was selected from one of six lists used to name Atlantic tropical storms. The lists were created in 1953 and are managed by a WMO committee. Only women’s names appeared until 1979, when men’s names were added. The names are used on a rotating basis, unless a storm is so deadly that it must be retired, the case with Katrina, which caused enormous damage in New Orelans in the US in 2005 and killed nearly 2,000 people.
Igor and Thomas were retired in 2010 after they caused deaths and heavy damage. They will be replaced on the official lists by Ian and Tobias, available in 2016.
Nasa called Irene a major storm Thursday 25 August, saying its length is about one-third the length of the US coastline.
Beach-lovers in Florida are watching warily as the Gulf oil spill and debris move towards them, BP shares appear to have stabilized after a slide and the US government is keen to put legislation in place to prevent another such disaster. Wednesday the British company was using submarine robots to free a trapped pipe saw, in its latest efforts to plug the underwater oil gusher that continues to send oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
Links to other sites: Financial Times, Reuters
Video, Reuters
Miami, Florida (GenevaLunch) – Some said it was a ragtag team of losers, but those voices died down when New Orleans won the Super Bowl for the first time in the US football game’s history. The Saints defeated the Indianapolis Colts for the National Football League (NFL) title, 31-17. Drew Brees was named Most Valuable Player. The Shreveport Times celebrated with a “Won dat Supa Beauxl” headline and Ad Age celebrated by offering the public all the ads from the game as videos online.
Links to other sites: Ad Age, Super Bowl ads, Reuters, Shreveport Times,
A Florida man who won $31 million in 2006 in the state lottery was found buried under an addition to a house and a friend was arrested for his murder Tuesday 2 February, nearly a year after Abraham Shakespeare went missing. Police say Dorice Donegan Moore used his cell phone in December 2009, pretending to be him and telling his family he was safe. She denies the charges.
Links to other sites: CNN, Miami Herald
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Miami offshoot of the Basel Art fair has since 2002 been a place where wealthy clients and would-be customers of Swiss bank UBS could expect to be lavishly wined and dined in carpeted tents. The bank is the main sponsor of the US version of the contemporary art show in Switzerland, of which it is the sole sponsor. This year UBS has canceled what Bloomberg regards as its signature extravaganza event.
Jose Manuel Zelaya, who was deposed as president of Honduras in a coup 28 June, says he will not participate in a presidential election slated for 29 November and that he has asked his supporters to renounce it. His announcement came in a published letter explaining his case to US President Barack Obama. His decision is a blow to hopes for a negotiated settlement that arose when he and Roberto Micheletti, who pushed him from power, signed a US-brokered agreement in October that called for a unity government until the election. It also called for Congress to decide if Zelaya should be returned to power, but Congress has opted to hand that decision to the country’s highest court. The elections are causing problems for Honduran citizens outside the country, who are unsure where and how to vote: in Florida the Honduran consulate says citizens should vote there, but the Honduran government says the consulate no longer has the authority to authorize this.
The dispute is the latest in a series of diplomatic tussles involving Hondurans. The Honduran ambassador to the UN was expelled from the UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva 14 September after the group’s president, Alex van Meeuwen of Belgium, decided that Delmer Urbizo, the Honduran ambassador, was not the legitimate representative of the government of Honduras. Van Meeuwen made his decision after various points of order called by a group of Latin American countries who questioned the Honduran’s credentials and the legitimacy of the government he represents. Argentina, Brazil, Cuba and Mexico argued that the UN General Assembly had called on organizations not to recognize the interim government of Honduras. But Urbizo has told GenevaLunch there is no Honduran government in exile under former President Zelaya, and therefore the Honduran people is being deprived of its legitimate right to be represented in international forums.
Links to other sites: CNN, Miami Herald
Zurich, Switzerland and Miami, Florida (GenevaLunch) – Bradley Birkenfeld was sentenced Friday in Miami, Florida, USA to three years and four months in prison plus a $30,000 fine and three years on probation following his prison term. He is the former UBS banker whose revelations to the IRS, the US tax authority, set off an investigation that led to bank UBS being taken to court and the US and Switzerland negotiating a treaty whereby the Swiss government will authorize the bank to release details of more than 4,000 client accounts. Full story
A Miami, Florida man and two unnamed other men were indicted by US federal authorities in what is being called the largest case of credit card theft ever. Albert Gonzalez and the two other men, said to be Russians, allegedly hacked into computers at Heartland Payment Systems, a credit card payment processor, and stole credit and debit card details from 130 million customers. They also obtained information from 7-Eleven stores and another supermarket chain, Hannaford Bros. Gonzalez is in prison on other, related charges. Last year, Gonzalez was recruited as an informant by the US Secret Service which was investigating an international hacker gang called the Shadowcrew. Authorities subsequently realized that Gonzalez was involved in the criminal activity. Bloomberg, Miami Herald, Reuters
Update 15:40 Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss authorities are investigating charges by a US man, who has pleaded guilty to tax evasion in the US, that a Swiss government official was bribed to provide his lawyer with information on the UBS court case. The information purportedly indicated, incorrectly, that his name was not among the 250 that UBS would eventually gave to IRS tax authorities in the US.
Reuters notes that bribery is extremely rare in Switzerland and the accusations have prompted concern in Bern, the capital, and among banking circles. Transparency International in its latest (2008) bribe payers’ index, puts Switzerland near the top of the list of relatively corruption-clean countries.
Earlier in the day 29 July Swiss media carried a report from wire service ATS that Alan Gold, the judge in the UBS bank case in the US, has scheduled a meeting by telephone Wednesday with the US Justice Department and Switzerland, to clarify progress being made towards an out of court settlement. The two parties to the case were encouraged by the judge 13 July to explore a settlement in the case where the IRS tax authority is demanding the names of 52,000 holders of UBS bank accounts.
In related news:
- a UBS client in the US, Jeffrey Chernick of New York, Tuesday 28 July pleaded guilty to fiscal fraud, saying that a Swiss lawyer had talked him out of turning himself in and paying back taxes in October 2008. The lawyer, according to Chernick’s court statement, assured him that a Swiss government official said his name was not on a list that would be given by the bank to the IRS. The attorney told Chernick the government official was paid CHF45,000 for the information. Chernick is the third person to plead guilty to tax evasion charges, from the group of 250 whose names were given to the IRS in February. Chicago Tribune and RSR, Fre
- former head of the UBS wealth management unit in the US, Joseph Grano, says that in early 2008, before the bank’s problems with the IRS were public, he wrote to the bank’s then-chairman and president, Marcel Ospel and Marcel Rohner, suggesting they spin off the unit, but they never replied. Bloomberg
Update 2, 23:15 Zurich, Switzerland and Miami, Florida, USA (GenevaLunch) – News agency AWP mistakenly published a report Sunday, which was then widely circulated by world media, saying that UBS has been informed by US district court judge Alan Gold in Miami that he will delay hearings scheduled to start tomorrow morning in Miami. The judge is presiding over the case brought by the IRS against the Swiss bank to obtain the names of 52,000 bank clients.
The bank has clarified that a letter written to the judge jointly by the bank and the US government, asking for a delay, will be presented to the judge Monday when the hearing is scheduled to open. The two parties in the case have agreed to ask for the delay to allow the US Justice Department and UBS more time to try to negotiate an out-of-court settlement. Late Sunday night Swiss time the Swiss Foreign Affairs Department confirmed that it supports the request to delay but notes that the negotiations are confidential and no other information will be forthcoming.
Media reports initially noted that the request was filed today, Sunday, which is not correct. AWP/TSR.
Washington, DC and Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - US federal district court judge Alan Gold, who is handling the case of the US Justice Department against Swiss bank UBS, has asked the American government to clarify its position, reports Swiss financial news agency AWP.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss government Wednesday 8 July issued a terse statement saying it replied to a US federal court in Miami, Florida that UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank, cannot under Swiss privacy laws share client data. The statement adds that “the government of Switzerland also points out that the necessary measures to implement Swiss law have been prepared”, without providing details.
A man went on a shooting spree in two towns, Geneva and Samson in Geneva County, Alabama, USA and killed 10 people as he sprayed a series of targets with semi-automatic fire, including his mother, whose house he burned, his grandmother and an aunt and uncle, according to the BBC. CNN
Marcus Schrenker, an investment advisor accused of scamming his clients through three companies he set up, has been found after an apparent suicide attempt in Florida. Schrenker has been in the headlines in the US for the past few days because of his bizarre attempt to stage his own death by parachuting out of an airplane that he put on autopilot. It crashed and he was found by police to whom he explained he’d had a canoeing accident; they were unaware of his connection to the plane. Schrenker then disappeared but was found again, with cut wrists in a tent in Florida. CNN
Bernard Madoff, former lifeguard turned fraudster, is himself the victim of a theft, this time of a statue of two lifeguards, normally kept by the pool at his Palm Beach, Florida home. It was stoleneight days after he was arrested, according to CNN, which quotes police as saying that they have no leads, not even a clue.
