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As part of just-inaugurated President Obama’s new foreign policy to improve relations between the United States and Russia, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in March 2009. Meeting in her hotel’s Salon Panorama in Geneva, she presented him with a small gift box containing a bright red button symbolizing the Obama administration’s desire to “reset” the relationship between the two governments. Thus began an effort to transfer American technology to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s own “Silicon Valley,” called Skolkovo. In a report released in late July by the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) entitled From...

A 27-year-old Nigerian migrant has been arrested in Switzerland after murdering a 22-year-old asylum home worker in Germany and then fleeing the country.

In a setback for government efforts to abolish low tax rates for thousands of multinational firms while encouraging them to stay, the Swiss voted overwhelmingly against an overhaul the country's corporate tax system. Swiss broadcaster SRF said voters rejected the tax plans by about 60% to 40%. As Reuters notes, Switzerland has been in the European Union's firing line for years because Swiss cantons have a special tax status for foreign companies that means some pay virtually no tax other than an effective federal tax of 7.8%, an incentive to incorporate and stay on Swiss soil. In 2014, the...

Switzerland voted Sunday on whether to make it easier for third generation immigrants to become citizens, after a campaign tainted by anti-Muslim messages and charges of religious prejudice. Preliminary results pointed to the measure being approved, in what would be a defeat for the far right nationalist Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which put issues of Islam and national identity at the center of the debate. The government as well as most lawmakers and political parties supported the proposal that would allow the grandchildren of immigrants to skip several steps in the lengthy process of securing a Swiss passport. According to...

Geneva (AFP) - The woman's shadowed eyes stare out from a black niqab with the poster's tagline urging Swiss voters to reject "uncontrolled naturalisation." But critics of the campaign image distributed across the country ahead of Sunday's referendum say the poster is really just a brazen appeal to those worried about more Muslims becoming Swiss. "That is exactly what they are trying to (do)", said Pius Walker, who heads the Zurich-based advertising agency Walker AG. "It is a very, very frightening thing that is going on here." The issue in Sunday's vote, the latest in Switzerland's direct democracy system, is...

From July 1st it will no longer be forbidden for men who have had sex with men to give blood — provided they have been celibate for the past 12 months. Medical watchdog Swissmedic has approved the request, lodged by blood donor service Swiss Transfusion SRC last June, reported news agencies on Tuesday. Currently, all men in Switzerland who have had sex with another man since 1977 are barred from donating blood — a rule brought in during the 1980s to stop the spread of AIDS. However, medical groups have argued that the presence of new diagnostic tools that can...

Thousands of refugees are taken in by Switzerland on an annual basis, granted asylum in the country due to war-torn conditions in their home countries. But while Swiss residents may be okay with their government taking in the tired and poor, they may not be too happy about a recent report in the Basler Zeitung. According to the Swiss newspaper, thousands of refugees head back to the African nation of Eritrea every year, despite the fact that it is supposedly too dangerous for them to live there. The paper reports that many of these refugees have been rejected for asylum...

China’s President Xi Jinping warned on Tuesday against scapegoating globalization for the world’s ills or retreating behind protectionist walls, staking out an alternative vision for the international economy days before Donald Trump takes office. The global economic order has been led for decades by the United States, but the president-elect is threatening to tear up the rule book, and Xi used his debut appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos to insist that globalization was irreversible. “Pursuing protectionism is like locking oneself in a dark room. Wind and rain may be kept outside, but so is light and air,”...

DAVOS, Switzerland - The global economy is in better shape than it's been in years. Stock markets are booming, oil prices are on the rise again and the risks of a rapid economic slowdown in China, a major source of concern a year ago, have eased. And yet, as political leaders, CEOs and top bankers make their annual trek up the Swiss Alps to the World Economic Forum in Davos, the mood is anything but celebratory.

dead men don't... the source.

The World Economic Forum recently published its annual Global Competiveness Report. Our continual slide from first in 2008 to fifth worldwide has received some coverage by the press, but no one has written about the underlying causes for the drop or given any meaningful insight into who the WEF is and how the rankings are compiled. The mainstream press has completely missed the story. The WEF describes itself as an independent international organization committed to “improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.” The rankings...

The World Economic Forum recently published its annual Global Competiveness Report. Our continual slide from first in 2008 to fifth worldwide has received some coverage by the press, but no one has written about the underlying causes for the drop or given any meaningful insight into who the WEF is and how the rankings are compiled. The mainstream press has completely missed the story. The WEF describes itself as an independent international organization committed to “improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.” The rankings...

The World Economic Forum says the gap between the rich and the poor is the most likely risk to the global economy in coming years. In its annual risk assessment ahead of next week's gathering of political and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland, the World Economic Forum says income disparity in the wake of the global financial crisis is the "most likely risk to cause an impact on a global scale in the next decade." It warns of a "lost generation" of young people coming of age in the current decade that could hamper the global economic recovery and stoke...

With a new wave of terrorism, mass shootings and unprecedented social violence around the globe now a part of the daily routine for billions of people across both developed and developing nations, one group wants to be certain there is no chance of "close encounters", violent or otherwise, with the peasantry during its upcoming annual boondoggle at the World Economic Forum in Davos. According to Swiss info, when the world's billionaires land their private jets in the gorgeous Swiss town (which at 1,560 m is also the highest town in Europe) on January 20, they will have up to 5,000...

The World Economic Forum’s annual gathering of globalist political, financial and cultural elitists is underway in Davos, Switzerland, but the organization’s founder is planning an emergency Washington, D.C., meeting in 2017 for worried elites worldwide to discuss how to deal with President-elect Donald J. Trump. “The World Economic Forum is listening to Donald Trump,” Bloomberg’s Stephen Morris and Erik Schatzker wrote on Sunday. “The organization will convene a special meeting in Washington this year to discuss issues raised during the president-elect’s campaign and the populist wave that swept him to victory, WEF founder Klaus Schwab told Bloomberg Television on Sunday....

Members of the public are calling on Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) to remove controversial posters from its railway stations just days after right-wing campaigners launched their provocative publicity campaign. The poster, unveiled in railway stations on Monday, shows a woman wearing a burqa with the strapline “Uncontrolled naturalization? No to facilitated naturalization”. It was commissioned by a committee co-led by Swiss People’s Party (SVP) MP Andreas Glarner to oppose the forthcoming referendum on facilitated naturalization for third generation immigrants, which goes to the polls on February 12th. Opponents of the bill — which would make it easier for third generation...

A left-wing Dutch vegan who campaigned against cowbells in the Swiss village where she lives has had a request for a Swiss passport thrown out after annoying the locals. Nancy Holten, who was born in the Netherlands but moved to Switzerland at the age of eight, is a fluent speaker of Swiss German and has children who are Swiss nationals.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that Muslim parents in Switzerland will have to send their children to attend mixed-gender swimming lessons, despite conceding that religious freedoms were being interfered with, on the grounds that mixed-gender swimming lessons were part of a ‘full school curriculum’ and the children’s ‘successful integration’ into society. According to the BBC, the case was initiated by two Swiss nationals of Turkish origin from Basel who wouldn’t send their teenage daughters to compulsory mixed-gender lessons. Swiss education officials, however, said that exemptions were available only for girls who had reached the age of...

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US President-elect Donald Trump expressed his “respect” for Switzerland to Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann in a phone call on Wednesday. The Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research (WBF) confirmed the anticipated phone call took place, saying in a statement that Schneider-Ammann “congratulated the future US president on the election and reaffirmed the strong economic and political partnership between the ‘sister republics’.” The Swiss president “spoke of Switzerland’s strengths and its unique dual-track education system — which meets with great interest in the US — and its strong capacity for innovation,” said the WBF. …