Free Republic

The president of the self-declared pro-Russian People's Republic of Donetsk claimed on Sunday French military "experts" were joining separatist forces battling government troops in eastern Ukraine. "Tomorrow, we will receive officers from France. They are specialists ready to fight with us," Alexandre Zakhartchenko said at a Sunday press conference. However, he gave no details on the French servicemen, nor did he specify their numbers. There are also "Serbs and Swiss" among the pro-Moscow militants who are fighting for "European and socialist ideals", Zakhartchenko claimed.

The number of people traveling to Switzerland to commit suicide has doubled since 2009, a new study shows. These "suicide tourists" are largely from Germany and the United Kingdom, although they also come from other countries including the United States and Canada, and nearly half suffer from nonfatal neurological conditions, such as paralysis, motor neurone disease, Parkinson's disease, and multiple sclerosis, the study suggests. Saskia Gauthier, MD, from the Institute of Legal Medicine, University of Zurich, and colleagues report their findings in an article published online August 20 in the Journal of Medical Ethics. Assisted suicide is restricted in many countries, but in...

Muslim anti-Israel demonstrators attempted to force their way into a synagogue in Switzerland, the latest in a string of attacks on synagogues in Europe. The protest took place on Saturday, during the Jewish Sabbath, in front of the Beth Yaakov, or Grande, Synagogue in Geneva, according to JTA. The Intercommunity Coordination Against Anti-Semitism and Defamation watchdog organization (CICAD) reported that a Muslim woman wearing a niqab (veil) first attempted to enter the place of worship while waving a PLO flag and holding a placard saying "Every synagogue is an Israeli embassy" on Saturday morning but was prevented from doing so....

Two base jumpers, including an Australian, were killed in separate accidents in the French Alps on Sunday (local time) after parachuting off mountains in their wingsuits. Their deaths bring to four the number of people killed taking part in the extreme sport in France this month. ... On August 6, two base jumpers, one from Switzerland, the other from France, died in similar accidents in the Alps and French Pyrenees. ... Unlike skydiving, which involves leaping from an aircraft, base jumpers take off with a parachute from a fixed point, usually a cliff or a bridge. The sport carries high...

Switzerland is not perfect, but as countries go, it is hard to find one that is much better. The more people know about Switzerland, the higher regard they tend to have for it. By almost any measure of human accomplishment, and particularly in creating a most successful country governance model, the Swiss are clearly No. 1 in the world. Switzerland is a small, landlocked nation without much in the way of natural resources. It has managed to stay out of wars for two centuries and developed a long-term multilingual and multireligious democracy without strife. There is a rule of law...

<p>U.S. markets have been remarkably calm in the wake of escalating violence around the world, whether between Israel and Hamas, or Russian proxies and Ukraine, to name but two of the planet's hottest spots.</p> <p>And with every ill wind that blows, money appears to be blowing westward with ever greater frequency.</p>

One of the top 10 employers in Flagstaff, Walgreens, announced Friday that it was closing its distribution center by April and laying off all 345 employees. ... Walgreens recently announced it was seeking to relocate its corporate headquarters overseas to lower its income tax bill. One estimate put first-year tax savings for the country’s largest drugstore chain at more than $700 million. The Wall Street Journal reported July 15 that Walgreens is considering buying the rest of Alliance Boots, a drugstore chain that operates in the United Kingdom but is headquartered in Switzerland. If Walgreens does purchase the rest of...

Ukrainians are learning the advantages of an armed citizenry the hard way.  An organization in Kiev, Київський Легіон,  (Kyiv Legion) is calling for citizens to become armed on the Swiss model.   They even suggest that it might make sense to have those who do not serve be taxed to make up for their lack of service.   This is not an uncommon concept in history, and was used in the American civil war.   I am told that this is a Google translation.   What little Russian I had is long gone, and the original is probably in Ukranian.   Russian and Ukrainian...

A little less than two years ago, Gregory D. Wasson, the chief executive of Walgreen, sought a series of tax breaks from Illinois, where his company is based. “We are proud of our Illinois heritage,” he said at the time. “Just as our stores and pharmacies are health and daily living anchors for the communities we serve, we as a company are now recommitted to serving as an economic anchor for northeastern Illinois.” The state gave Walgreen $46 million in corporate income tax credits over 10 years in exchange for a pledge to create 500 jobs and invest in upgrading...

The Dahlholzli Zoo in the Swiss city of Bern has caused a public outcry by killing a healthy baby brown bear because it was being bullied by its father and neglected by its mother. The zoo has said it will stuff and display it to teach children that "nature can be cruel." Details of the fate of the baby brown bear, known only as Cub 4, come on the heels of outrage over the killing by Denmark's Copenhagen Zoo of a young male giraffe named Marius and four lions. But criticism of the zoo's actions has focused on the fact...

According to the wire service, Monsanto mulled a takeover of its $34 billion seed and herbicide rival, in part, to move its legal headquarters to Switzerland. It’s a move known as corporate inversion and it has the power to shield money held overseas from Uncle Sam’s tax collectors.

The Swiss town that ordered Europe's last execution for witchcraft will unveil a memorial on Friday for the woman beheaded more than 200 years ago, accused of bewitching a child. Servant Anna Goeldi was denounced as a witch after her employer's eight-year-old daughter fell ill and began spitting up pins during fits of coughing, according to documents in the local archives. Authorities in Glarus, central Switzerland, became convinced Goeldi was a witch after she later appeared to cure the child using supernatural powers.

American company Textron Airland is bidding to sell its “budget” Scorpion jets to the Swiss government at one-seventh the cost of Swedish Gripen fighter planes turned down by voters in Switzerland this month. “The Scorpion is ideally suited to Switzerland’s circumstances,” Textron Airland president Bill Anderson is quoted as telling Tages Anzeiger in a report this week. “It is cheaper than the Gripen and still meets 90 percent of the tasks at hand,” Anderson said. “We could offer the jet to Switzerland for less than $20 million.” Swiss voters on May 18th shot down a deal approved by the government...

It would have been the highest minimum wage in the world, but Swiss voters have rejected a proposal to pay workers the equivalent of $25 an hour. Early polling results showed about 77 percent of Swiss voters rejected the wage hike. Switzerland currently has no minimum wage, and this measure would have affected about 10 percent of the population. (Via Euronews) When adjusted for spending power, the Swiss minimum wage proposal would have amounted to about $14 an hour — that's more than the minimum hourly wages in other Western nations with high pay floors — according to data from...

NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Former Credit Suisse First Boston star banker Frank Quattrone surrendered to federal authorities Wednesday morning and will face criminal charges, prosecutors said. James Comey, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, will unveil the charges at a 1 p.m. ET press conference. Quattrone, a former star banker for CSFB, allegedly advised his colleagues in late 2000 to destroy documents while regulators were investigating the ways Wall Street investment banks were doling out shares of lucrative initial public offerings. The former banker is charged in a three-count criminal complaint with obstruction of justice, document destruction...

Assyrians Return to Turkey Anatolian Agency (Diyarbakir - Mardin) 14 Turkish Assyrian families that had immigrated to Switzerland and Germany from the Elebegendi Village of Midyat, Mardin 20 years ago are coming back. The villagers are building villas with swimming pools and a sports centre with tennis courts and will also build high quality infrastructure to the village. The villas ranging between 140 to 250 m2 in size , whose foundations have already been layed, will cost between £60-100,000 each. Yusuf Begtas, General Secretary of the Turabdin Metropolitan, has stated that the villas will be made from Midyat stine and...

The Senate confirmed four of President Obama’s executive and judicial nominees Thursday. Theodore Chuang and George Hazel will serve as U.S. district judges for Maryland. The Senate voted 53-42 on Chuang’s nomination and 95-0 on Hazel’s. Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said he couldn’t support Chuang’s nomination because he helped the Obama administration “stonewall” Congress on the investigation of the death of four Americans at the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya. “I can’t support his nomination because of the central role Mr. Chuang played in the administration’s efforts to stonewall an investigation into the situation in Benghazi,”...

What happens when you mix something good with something bad? To be more specific, what happens when you have a big success story, like the spending cap in Switzerland that has dramatically slowed the growth of government, and then expect intelligent and coherent coverage by a government-run media outfit that presumably wants a bigger public sector? Well, the answer is that you get a very muddled story. Here’s some of what Swiss Info, which is part of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, wrote about that nation’s “debt brake.” The mind-boggling…debt racked up by governments…has turned some heads towards Switzerland’s successful track...

COLOGNE, Germany -- German authorities won't take action against Don Johnson, star of television shows Miami Vice and Nash Bridges, who was stopped last year by German customs officers as he was traveling in a car carrying credit notes and other securities worth as much as $8 billion. The documents, meant to serve as a security for a business deal, belonged to one of Johnson's fellow passengers and not to Johnson, Leonhard Bierl, spokesman for Germany's Customs Crime Office in Cologne, said Tuesday. "The whole thing is off the burner as far as we're concerned," Bierl said. "We're very sorry...

<p>The Swiss cuckoo clock is ticking for Congress and White House to give tax reform more than lip service.</p> <p>The Walgreen Co. drugstore chain got its start nearly a century ago in downstate Dixon, Ill., before moving its corporate headquarters to Chicago and eventually to north suburban Deerfield.</p>