Free Republic

Switzerland has put together a plan to reconstruct the Gaza Strip which includes paying the salaries of Hamas operatives, according to Palestinian officials interviewed by Israel’s NRG website. The plan would also reestablish the status of the Hamas terrorist organization as the only authority in the Gaza Strip. In recent months, according to the report, Hamas has been faced with the danger of collapsing in Gaza, and turned to Swiss officials for help. Its relations with Egypt are at their worst ever, and funds intended to rehabilitate the coastal enclave after Israel’s Operation Protective Edge last summer have run out....

New Zealand is frequently mentioned as an emigration destination by American freedomistas* fearful of being trapped between our burgeoning federal police state, and the intertwining forces of social disintegration. Locations from the Bahamas to Patagonia are named, but I hear New Zealand in everybody’s top three. And in the present era, New Zealand does indeed have many desirable qualities. But what will keep New Zealand both safe and free when global conditions turn Macro Mad Max, or World War Three breaks out? Certainly not its own military forces, which independent of outside help, could not repel an invasion from Liechtenstein....

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, rides a bike after holding meetings with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif over Iran's nuclear program, in Lausanne, Switzerland, Monday, March 16, 2015.

My Fractal Symmetry balances The Father's Heart for He is the source of Love and I AM the Avenue to His Heart therein if you have seen Me, heard Me,listened and obeyed Me as your Shepherd then we are already one and the Kingdom is yours for in your obedience to Me "THE WORD" you dissolve into balance and I AM , therefore your quotient becomes Eternal and "We are one" . . . John 14:3 If I go and prepare a place for you , I will come again and will take you to myself , that where I...

Unearthed, the prince of Stonehenge By Roger Highfield (Filed: 21/08/2002) A prehistoric prince with gold ear-rings has been found near Stonehenge a few yards away from the richest early Bronze Age burial in Britain. Earlier this year, archaeologists found an aristocratic warrior, also with gold ear-rings, on Salisbury Plain and speculated that he may have been an ancient king of Stonehenge. The body was laid to rest 4,300 years ago during the construction of the monument, along with stone arrow heads and slate wristguards that protected the arm from the recoil of the bow. Archaeologists named him the Amesbury Archer....

Tests reveal Amesbury Archer ‘King of Stonehenge’ was a settler from the Alps The man who may have helped organise the building of Stonehenge was a settler from continental Europe, archaeologists say. The latest tests on the Amesbury Archer, whose grave astonished archaeologists last year with the richness of its contents, show he was originally from the Alps region, probably Switzerland, Austria or Germany. The tests also show that the gold hair tresses found in the grave are the earliest gold objects found in Britain. The grave of the Archer, who lived around 2,300BC, contained about 100 items, more than...

By MARGARET BRENNAN CBS NEWSMarch 14, 2015 Kerry: Last Chance For Iran Nuclear DealComment Shares 7 Tweets Stumble Email More + SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt -- Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to Switzerland Sunday for a marathon round of talks with Iran about freezing its nuclear program. Almost sure to come up: The letter 47 Republican senators sent this week to Iran, warning that any deal will not last beyond President Obama's term. With the clock ticking, Kerry said that this is the last chance. He has until the end of March to hammer out a deal with Iran....

The Russian leader has been missing, prompting speculation he’s deathly ill—but Italian and Swiss media says he’s just been in Lugano for the birth of his baby. Russian president Vladimir Putin appears to be back at the Kremlin after a mysterious disappearance that had people wondering if the Russian leader might be seriously ill or at risk of a coup. But a Swiss newspaper says the Russian playboy was just in Lugano for the birth of his lovechild. In an article titled Es ist ein Mädchen! or “It’s a Girl,” the paper Bilk claims that Putin and his alleged 32-year-old...

Link to Bloomberg: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-03-13/being-a-daddy-might-be-good-for-putin

From Russia, with love child. Vladimir Putin hasn’t been seen in public for more than a week — and rampant speculation over the Russian president’s whereabouts took a wild turn on Friday with reports he was in Switzerland for the birth of his secret daughter. “Es ist ein Madchen!” or “It’s a Girl!” screamed a headline from the Swiss newspaper Blick, which had him in Lugano to witness the arrival of his child with Alina Kabaeva, 31, a retired Olympic gymnast who served in the Russian parliament and now works for a media company. The paper reported that Putin’s daughter...

President Barack Obama is nominating a major fundraiser for his presidential campaign to be the next U.S. ambassador to Sweden. The White House says Azita Raji is Obama’s pick for the job. She’s a former investment banker who served as national vice-chair of finance for Obama’s 2012 campaign. She helped raise more than $500,000 for Obama’s campaign as a “bundler” in 2012. …

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt on Thursday predicted the end of the Internet as we know it. At the end of a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland where his comments were webcast, he was asked for his prediction on the future of the Web. “I will answer very simply that the Internet will disappear,” Schmidt said.

Swiss voters Sunday overwhelmingly rejected an initiative that would have scrapped the Alpine country’s value-added-tax system and replaced it with a carbon tax. Roughly 92% of voters opposed the initiative while 8% supported the measure. The initiative would have encouraged Swiss households to use renewable energy sources, including solar and wind, which would have been exempt from taxes. The initiative, which was introduced by the Green Liberal Party of Switzerland, was designed to help lower carbon emissions and reduce global warming. A proposal replacing the main consumer tax with a new levy on non-renewable energy has suffered a blistering defeat...

For six years, President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been on a collision course over how to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions, a high-stakes endeavor both men see as a centerpiece of their legacies. The coming weeks will put the relationship between their countries, which otherwise remain stalwart allies, to one of its toughest tests. Netanyahu is bound for Washington for an address to Congress on Tuesday aimed squarely at derailing Obama's cherished bid for a diplomatic deal with Tehran. At the same time, Secretary of State John Kerry and other international negotiators will be in Switzerland...

US Secretary of State John Kerry arrives at Geneva International airport, Sunday, March 1, 2015. (photo credit: AP/Evan Vucci, Pool) Top US diplomat John Kerry arrived in Switzerland late Sunday for tough talks on Iran and Ukraine, and to push Moscow’s foreign minister to ensure a “credible” probe into the shooting of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov

A long-lost painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci was confiscated from a bank vault in Switzerland after Italian police said it had been exported illegally and was in danger of being sold for up to £90 million. Swiss police, acting on a request by their Italian counterparts, seized the portrait of Isabella d’Este, a Renaissance noblewoman, from a private bank vault in Lugano on Tuesday. After being lost for centuries, the painting was rediscovered in 2013 in a collection of 400 artworks kept in a Swiss vault. The authorities then were alerted to the existence of the painting, but it...

The Swiss arm of HSBC Holdings Plc private banking division has been accused of helping wealthy international customers avoid taxes and conceal millions of dollars from local revenuers… So, when I make my millions, remind me to bank with HSBC.Information leaked (read: stolen) by a former IT employee of HSBC’s private banking division in Switzerland has already been used by authorities to track down potential tax dodgers; and now it is being used to cast partial blame on the financial giant. France is anxiously combing through the illegally obtained information, and has even forwarded the information on to other countries… The...

The European Commission is hoping that a new global reporting standard will eradicate tax evasion and tax fraud in the wake of the latest revelations in Switzerland. “We are hoping that the coming into force of this new agreement at the very latest by 2018 will put an end to tax evasion and fraud by the use of secret bank accounts,” European Commission spokesperson Vanessa Mock told reporters in Brussels on Monday (9 February). The EU and Switzerland negotiated an agreement on the taxation of savings back in 2014. The plan is to unravel the Swiss tradition of banking secrecy...

A sensuous Paul Gauguin painting of two Tahitian girls has been sold from a Swiss private collection for close to $300 million, one of the highest prices believed to have been paid for an artwork, according to European and American art world insiders with knowledge of the matter. The sale of the 1892 oil painting, “Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry?),” was confirmed by the seller, Rudolf Staechelin, 62, a retired Sotheby’s executive living in Basel, Switzerland, who through a family trust owns more than 20 works in a valuable collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, including the Gauguin,...

credit the world’s various political leftists for being brilliant at one thing. They have managed to assemble a coalition of interest groups whose vested interests should probably cause them to chase each other around in the street armed with shotguns. Nowhere is that awesome class divide among the left on greater display than in Europe where the Parlor Pinks infest Davos and the Street Marxians have taken electoral power in Greece. If you were to ask both Jeffrey Greene and newly-minted Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras whether they felt society should be unfettered by larger government or directed for its...