GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Eat forms! Stay thin! Whittle down those calories through worry! Americans abroad may have some sage advice for fellow citizens. A survey headline that is being picked up by media because it is catchy and touches a subject near and dear to Americans, food, states that “Americans Find Doing Their Own Taxes Simpler Than Improving Diet and Health”.

US citizens abroad struggle to convince fellow Americans that the tax-filing burden is onerous for those living outside the US, but getting the folks back home to digest that information looks unlikely, if the new survey is right. Taxes aren’t as sweet as food, and sadly, the survey report lacks any meat on tax filing problems to back up the story.

The US-based International Food Information Council (IFIC) Foundation’s 2012 Food & Health Survey shows that “Six out of 10 Americans have given a lot of thought to the foods and beverages they consume (58 percent) and the amount of physical activity they get (61 percent). Yet, only 20 percent say their diet is very healthful and 23 percent describe their diet as extremely or very unhealthful; less than 20 percent meet the national Physical Activity Guidelines.”

A worrisome detail is that “Fewer than one in 10 Americans correctly estimate the number of calories they need to maintain their weight and only three in 10 believe that all sources of calories play an equal role in weight gain. Calories from sugar, carbohydrates and fats are believed more likely to cause weight gain.”

Marianne Smith Edge, senior vice president for nutrition and food safety at the foundation, says “Clearly, there is a disconnect for many Americans.” The survey shows that “76 percent agree that ever-changing nutritional guidance makes it hard to know what to believe.”

That point eerily echoes one often made by US citizens living overseas, that the ever-changing IRS guidelines and rules make it hard to know how to file.

The tax part of the survey is thin, to say the least. The catchy headline is not backed up in either the press release or the executive summary with even a hint of what questions people were asked about filing taxes. A comparitive survey with Americans abroad could be interesting.

Silent march to honour those who died, Tuesday evening 20 March in Sierre

Police officer whose unit was first on the scene dies of acute leukemia; police in mourning again

Canton Valais police carry the coffins of those who died in the Sierre bus crash 13 March onto a Belgian airplane that would fly the bodies home (photo ©2012 Keystone)

SION, SWITZERLAND – Most of the injured children have gone home to Belgium and the bodies of those killed have returned home following the bus crash one week ago, 13 March, in Sierre. The 250-plus journalists from around the world who abruptly descended on the central Valais region with cameras, radio mikes and TV film crews just as abruptly disappeared over the weekend. They arrived by air, road and train in Sion, the capital and nearby Sierre, where the autoroute tunnel accident occurred, within a few short hours of the news of the crash.

For five days the canton Valais Police did an extraordinary job, and it’s time to give them their due, now that media attention is pointed elsewhere. A contingent is heading today to Belgium, to be with the families of those killed in the crash, to offer their support for the next two days. The funerals take place Thursday.

An additional heartbreak this week

The police are carrying an additional burden this week, with the very sad news Tuesday morning that Jacques-André Barras, a 38-year-old police sergeant, has just died of acute leukemia. Barras was the leader of the unit that responded first to last week’s crash, immediately putting in place an extraordinary rescue and medical operation.

He is survived by his wife and two young daughters.

Barras died proud, I hope, of his colleagues and his own work, for they deserve our recognition for this. The job of the police is to keep order and this they did with truly remarkable organizational skills last week. That alone is noteworthy, but during a week of incredible, non-stop stress for them I also saw compassion, sadness, kindness and helpfulness that went far beyond the call of duty.

Clearly, they were not the only heroes: the medical teams were nothing short of extraordinary. Their fellow disaster workers in the fire department and medical services were remarkable, and all the unsung heroes who came out in the middle of the night to translate or help with other tasks. But the police work, separating those who were helping and those who needed help from the rest of us who were just upset and concerned, was crucial to making the best of a very bad situation.

A surprising patience with the media

I’ve covered bombings, celebrity and royalty visits and a number of other mega-media events and I have never before seen the police make such an effort to help journalists do their job, while ensuring that obnoxious reporters (and there are always some) did not cross the line of what could be allowed under the circumstances.

The police communications team provided good access to medical, hospital and political leaders while doing an excellent  job of protecting the privacy of the families from Belgium and Holland.

They kept the children who were injured safe from public curiosity as well as legitimate public worry, not necessarily easy in small cities when a mass of journalists arrives.

The police officers worked flat out to provide this level of protection just after the horror of the crash itself, where scores of officers were involved.

They saw to it that hospital transfers were done discreetly and smoothly, that the bodies were loaded onto the planes without obtrusive cameras (Keystone for images and RTS for television were the only ones given access, on condition that they provide photos for the rest of the media).

They provided an honour guard. They looked exhausted all week but I never saw a single police officer become impatient with media people and while a heavy sadness cloaked them, I never saw anyone break down or do less than his or her duty.

A very heartfelt thank you to the entire police corps.

Pay her a visit in the name of love: Lady of Galera, in alabaster, Greece

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – It’s St Valentine’s Day, so let’s aim high for marriage and partnerships. I’ve just seen a truly optimistic web site in French that offers suggestions for your “noces d’albâtre” which I had to look up since I didn’t remember that particular anniversary.

The suggestions include admiring alabaster statues by visiting the Rodin Museum in Paris or going to Greece. You can check out, online, what animal passions bond the two of you. You can also find suggestions for the perfect gift, which include, for example, a necklace of precious stones for her and a fine watch for him, to mark those happy years together.

And don’t forget to send a card saying “I love you.” (ok, the French is more romantic sounding, so go for “Je t’aime.”

In English, alabaster is apparently your 37th anniversary, in some countries.

But in French, your noces d’albâtre is your 75th wedding anniversary. So if any of you old folks out there are reading this, online, trying to work out the perfect gift to mark the day I sincerely wish  you the best of luck and another 75 years of shared bliss!

A Canadian and a Swiss: getting the work life balance right

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Switzerland comes in sixth, behind three Nordic countries, The Netherlands and Belgium (not having a leader doesn’t count against you, it appears), for work life balance, according to the Paris-based OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development).

The report was published in October 2011 but unlike quality of life rankings for countries and cities, designed by for-profit groups, it received relatively little publicity.

The OECD report uses three key indicators to compare countries for work-life balance, but the ratings are based on this plus 10 other criteria, which together make up its better life initiative. Here, Switzerland ranks 7th. Canada, which suffers on the work life balance ratings, holds 4th place overall.

Two interesting tidbits of information form part of the Swiss report page: there are more visitors, 8.6 million a year, than the resident population of 7.6m, and renewable energy now accounts for 20.42 percent of energy used.

What we do right: income, jobs, education, health and life satisfaction

What we do wrong: governance (OECD’s lowest turnout for voters)

One statistic will surprise many readers, given the paucity of child-care facilities in Switzerland and the fact that women earn 20 percent less than men, according to the federal government: “In Switzerland, 79 percent of mothers are employed after their children begin school; this figure is higher than the OECD average of 66 percent and suggests that mothers are able to successfully balance family and career.”

Germany comes in for a tough review despite 8th place in the work life balance ratings, notes the Atlantic, which carries a nice set of slides on the top 23 countries. The odd cutoff number of 23 is due to the US coming in at 23.

I have a niggling complaint with the Atlantic article, for a sentence that could leave you thinking Europe’s oldest country is 30 years old: “The average first-time mother is as old as any country in the OECD (30), and the career costs of having a child are sky-high.”

Rain in St Prex 14 December: the flowers love it

LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Get your Christmas shopping in this week, before the weather turns a little chillier and weekend snow flurries arrive, for the Lake Geneva region’s weather this week doesn’t qualify as wintry yet.

Temperatures of 8-10C along the lake and thunderstorms have been followed by sunshine and more thunderstorms.

The safest bet for clothing today is a scarf around your neck.

Poor Santa, at a bit of a loss in his sunny warm window

St Prex, like other villages in the region has had unseasonable and unstable weather 14 December, with rainstorms and five minutes later sunshine; the neighbour’s flowers love it, Santa at another neighbour’s looks lost.

The good news, for skiers, is that it is snowing in the mountains (Crans-Montana’s webcams at 16:oo are grayed out from the snow).

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Am I the only one who wonders why someone would park their car next to a penitentiary and leave the keys in the ignition? It’s Saturday, so I can’t easily check on details for press releases that come in the door. And will Valais police even have the answer? People in Valais do sometimes leave their keys in their cars, rural-fashion, but next to a prison?

The car in question was used in a high speed chase after an escaped prisoner stole the car (he must have thought it was put there just for him), and it can’t be in good shape after flipping over, although the prisoner is all right.

Wonder what the insurance company will have to say about this one.

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A friend, Mary, in New York shared this with me and all I can say is that no matter what you think of animal testing, if you love dogs you’ll love watching these beagles take their first steps outside their lives in a lab. They’re in Santa Monica or I’d consider adopting one in a flash!

20 years later, have we learned anything from that other famous crook, Maxwell?

Robert Maxwell, media mogul, British MP, self-made man and notable crook, died in 1991

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND - Plus ça change . . . Why is my first reaction skepticism, I wonder, when I see the headline that Irving Picard has done a deal with the IRS and is expected to get back $326 million for Bernard Madoff’s former clients? Picard is the lawyer assigned to get back some of the money stolen by Bernard Madoff. He has asked a court in the US to approve the deal whereby the IRS will pay back 98 percent of the money it collected from Madoff as 30 percent withholding tax on fictional transactions, part of the airy-fairy deals and probably, says Picard, designed to make him look legitimate.

I hope the day some of these people get some of their money back they stand up and let the rest of us know because I, for one, have trouble believing they will ever see a penny, based on personal experience with another crook, this one in his grave. Robert Maxwell published The European, a newspaper I wrote for regularly as a freelance journalist in 1990. Europe’s first national newspaper, Maxwell liked to boast of his baby.

Maxwell died 20 years ago, in November 1991, presumably by falling overboard his luxury yacht in the Atlantic, but rumours have swirled since then about suicide and murder. The rumours are unlikely to die down because of the number of people who never saw a penny he owed them, as his various scams caught up with him and he took his secrets to a soggy grave.

Maxwell also owned the Daily Mirror and he had illegally borrowed the staff’s pension fund. I was only owed £1,000, so perhaps I shouldn’t complain; others fared far worse. I was broke at the time, had a baby, a new mortgage and interest rates had skyrocketed. I really, really was counting on that money.

In fact, most of my anger over the 10 years of correspondence that followed his death was aimed at Arthur Anderson’s accountants, who sent me letters once a month, detailing over several pages, the work they were doing to extract some cash from the Maxwell mess to let little guys like me be paid at least a portion of what we were owed. At one point it looked like I might receive £200. Then that dropped to £120, a fact explained somewhere in the hundreds of pages I received; it was clear that Arthur Anderson was working hard on the case. And getting paid to do so.

The letters suddenly came less often, like the boyfriend who’s gone to see and found someone more interesting in another port.

It seems that was indeed the case, for in 2002 Arthur Anderson, the accounting and not consulting part of the business, was busy with Enron’s problems. Enron, an energy company, went famously bust in 2001 and in 2002 AA was found guilty by a US court of not auditing Enron correctly. That verdict was later overturned, but AA had meanwhile handed in its license to operate, and it shut down.

If it ever came close to finding some money to pay me a fraction of what Maxwell owed me I’m pretty sure it disappeared in the AA budget for writing, copying and mailing thousands upon thousands of useless pages to small creditors.

Good luck, Madoff clients.

Sri Lanka also claims to have a Buddha Sacred Tooth, specifically his left canine tooth (photo, Sri Lanka tooth sanctuary, Wikipedia)

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Is it just me, or is it a little odd to keep finding teeth in the news this week?

Tooth number one: John Lennon

First, John Lennon’s rotting molar up for auction (sweet: it sold for $31,000). I’m not sure which worries me more, that someone kept that tooth all these years, or that someone wanted to buy it. A dentist,  not surprisingly.

Tooth number 2, Lord Buddha

Then there’s the “enshrinement visit” of the Sacred Tooth of Lord Buddha, heading from Beijing to Myanmar for its fourth-ever visit.

The good thing about teeth is that most of us have more than one, for those who want to treasure them after we depart this world. In the case of Buddha, at least five sites in Asia have a sacred tooth of his, according to Wikipedia.

Tooth number 3, Italian baby, age 41,000 years old

Ancient Europeans were formally identified as the very oldest people here this week, and I give you one guess how we know: their teeth! Baby teeth from Italy and others from Britain are the subject of a paper in the revue Nature.

Tooth number 4, Vancouver kid at Halloween

Halloween, ok we expect it, but Canada’s The Globe and Mail puts a new twist on scary teeth, quoting one Vancouver orthodontist who says there’s a 70 percent spike in visits, mainly from kids, in the three weeks following Halloween. Parents, be warned: candy is not cheap!

Tooth number 5, homo sapiens tourist, Bangkok

Last but not least comes a forlorn call on Facebook from GenevaLunch’s tech man, Claude, asking if anyone knows of a dentist in Bangkok. He broke a tooth eating popcorn last week and needs a crown. Names are quickly provided, phone number found but ah, this tale has a bite to it. The dentist is working, but his assistants are unable to get to the office due to flooding.

Take that and chew on it. At least you’re in illustrious company, Claude.

China's changing household wealth: a main boulevard in Shanghai, 1985 (photo, ©2011 Ellen Wallace)

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – I haven’t stopped looking at international comparisons for cost of living and wealthy individuals, but I have stopped paying attention to them if they’re dollar-based. They’re mostly nonsense.

Looking at media reports about Credit Suisse’s new “Global Wealth Report” I almost dismissed it, thinking it would be just another list, until I took the time to look at the report itself.

We learn that the number of extremely wealthy Chinese is growing rapidly. And we learn, as TSR points out in its story about this, that household wealth in Switzerland has grown far faster than anywhere else – in dollar terms. The only real purpose that information will serve is to add to the jealousy of Switzerland that is already a small feature of life in Europe.

What matters in this report, is the groundshift it lays out clearly.

“The global wealth currently held by 4.4 billion adults has increased 72% since 2000 to reach USD 195 trillion. Driven by robust economic expansion in the emerging markets, the Credit Suisse Research Institute estimates that global wealth will grow 61% to USD 315 trillion by 2015. The middle segment of the wealth pyramid is composed of one billion individuals who are located in the fastest-growing economies of the world and who hold one-sixth or USD 32 trillion of global wealth.”

Move over USA, make way for Asia

This middle segment is composed of people whose average wealth per adult is $10,000 to $100,000, and 60 percent of them are in Asia.

The report underscores a shift that anyone who has recently spent time in the US will have felt, that this powerhouse of consumers is losing its strength to move the world’s economies. The introduction to the report states it baldly. “The Credit Suisse Research Institute believes that wealth provides people in the middle segment with the financial security they need to become the world’s emerging consumers and that the middle segment will replace indebted US households as the global economic growth locomotive.”

Switzerland and Norway, the report shows, are currently, in dollar terms, “the richest nations in the world in terms of average wealth per adult, which stands at USD 372,692 and USD, 326,530 respectively. They are followed by Australia, which is in third place with average wealth per adult of USD 320,909 and Singapore with average wealth per adult of USD 255,488. Figures for Australia and Singapore have both doubled in the last decade.”

Where there is wealth, there is often poverty

Growing wealth has not meant the disappearance of poverty, no real surprise, but the numbers are sobering. “At the base of the wealth pyramid there are three billion people with average wealth per adult of below USD 10,000, of which 1.1 billion own less than USD 1,000 and 307 million are in India.”

The report is, after all, published by a group backed by a bank, and one curious detail is tucked in here. “Some 2.5 billion people are as yet unbanked. As the wealth of this significant group grows, it will both require and fuel the creation of new financial services.”