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As this administration draws to a close, Audrey Edwards is packing as fast as the Obamas. By January 20, Inauguration Day, she'll be nearly 6,000 miles away from Brooklyn not watching the festivities in Paris. A journalist and real estate agent, she first got the idea to leave the US when former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani ran for president in 2008. But when Trump rode down that gilded escalator, called Mexicans rapists, and announced his candidacy for Commander-in-Chief, Edwards put friends on notice: "If somebody as crazy as this guy gets in, I'm out of here." She plans to...

Goal: 100% of Eligible US Voters in Israel

Chris Rock summed up the black experience in the United States kind of perfectly during his HBO special Never Scared more than a decade ago: “If you’re black, you got to look at America a little bit different,” he joked, stone-faced. “You got to look at America like the uncle who paid for you to go to college but who molested you.” Since then, that “generous” uncle has moved from molesting to killing, with the list of victims growing by the day: the Charleston 9. Freddie Gray. Michael Brown. Rekia Boyd. Eric Garner. Tamir Rice. John Crawford III. Yuvette Henderson....

If you want to leave your home country behind, move to Ecuador. That's according to the largest survey of expatriates in the world. Nine out of 10 respondents from the South American country reported being satisfied with their lives there, making it the No. 1 destination. The data comes from the 2014 Expat Insider, administered by InterNations. It includes responses from nearly 14,000 expats from more than 160 countries. The questions touched on general quality of life, working abroad, family life, leisure and making friends abroad, international romance and expat relationships, and personal finances. 

Two data points for your consideration. One, via CNS News: The latest Monthly Treasury Statement, which was released on Wednesday afternoon, relies on the estimate made by the White House Office of Management and Budget to say that federal tax revenues will top $3 trillion for the first time in the nation’s history in fiscal 2014. …If the White House is correct that total federal tax receipts will hit $3,023,004,000,000 in fiscal 2014, that would represent an increase of $123,359,620,000 in constant 2013 dollars over fiscal 2007′s record tax haul of $2,899,644,380,000. Real tax revenues this year, according to the...

How Can You Retire in the Philippines Like a King on US$1,000 per month? What is Living Like A King to me? What a king is to one man is like a pauper to another. I feel like I am living like a king here in the Philippines and have been since I came here because of the kindness of the people. And my small income seem like a kingly fortune too. In the States at fifty years old I was treated like an old man and I guess I was. I felt like one. No one smiled at me,...

When Julie Veilleux discovered she was American, she went to the nearest U.S. embassy to renounce her citizenship. Having lived in Canada since she was a young child, the 48-year-old had no idea she carried the burden of dual citizenship. But the renunciation will not clear away the past 10 years of penalties with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).Born to American parents living in Canada, Kerry Knoll’s two teenaged daughters had no clue they became dual citizens at birth. (An American parent confers such status on Canadian-born children.) Now the IRS wants to grab at money they earned in Canada...

I've been looking at the possibility of retirement abroad for some time, so I'm on several e-mailing lists. I've been struck by how quickly a couple of these international agencies have pointed to the financial crisis as a marketing pitch. They're focusing on retirees and near-retirees hit hard by the crisis and encouraging us to consider a much more affordable retirement abroad. Here's the most interesting I've found so far (they even have a price list of common items): http://serenity21.com/ http://serenity21.typepad.com/serenity_real_estate/2008/10/to-north-americ.html http://serenity21.com/why_nicaragua.html http://serenity21.com/pricelist.html Very intriguing. I think there's going to be a big and growing market for them to cater...

LONDON - Karla Keating and her husband had retirement on their minds in May when they got what they considered an offer too good to refuse: a three-year stint in London. Coming from North Carolina, they knew it was going to be a bit of a financial leap. But the major US bank where her husband is an executive lured him with a 33 percent increase in pay. Within weeks, they had crossed the ocean and found a nice flat near Marylebone for 1,820 pounds - about $3,750. "The estate agent told me the price, and I said OK, I...

The papers today ask why 400,000 left the Uk last year to live and work somewhere else. I would have thought the answer was obvious. They’ve had enough. We live in a country where anyone who has gained some qualifications, who tries to pay their own way and to live a decent life feels targetted by this government. We have our identity assaulted, our democratic views ignored, our pockets and purses rifled by the state, our opinions criticised or banned and the public services we do wish to use run incompetently or rationed for us.

Foreigners are slowly making a small coastal village in this town their second home. These days, it will not be a surprise to find nationals from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, England, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Hungary, Holland, Korea, China, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Canada and the United States living or vacationing in Dancalan, according to 50-year-old Chris Bech, a Norwegian married to a Filipina. A former exporter of Philippine furniture, Chris and his young wife Maria Teresa “Tess” Fajilan Bech bought and developed a beachfront property in Dancalan and built residential buildings that they sell or lease to foreigners. Tess,...

If you were to live outside of the US, what country would you pick to be an ex-pat in? Why?

PARIS: She is a former U.S. Marine, a native Californian and, now, a former American who prefers to remain discreet about abandoning her citizenship. After 10 years of warily considering options, she turned in her U.S. passport last month without ceremony, becoming an alien in the view of her homeland. "It's a really hard thing to do," said the woman, a 16-year resident of Geneva who had tired of the cost and time of filing yearly U.S. tax returns on top of her Swiss taxes. "I just kept putting this off. But it's my kids and the estate tax. I...

Washington, D.C., November 29, 2003 It is not so easy to know when you’re deluding yourself and when you are finally seeing the light. When I look back at my reasons for leaving the United States for France in 1972, some seem to me as outmoded—and, in retrospect, as endearing—as Beatles haircuts and Vietnam-war protests. Others stubbornly persist. In any event, my career as a serious American novelist having been short-circuited, I opted for the improbable exploit of becoming a writer in French and a professional translator, and I succeeded. I am long settled in Paris; the three youngsters I...

Toronto-- Long harboured Canadian resentment of Canada being annexed by the United States took a 90-degree angle on July 1 with Frank McKenna, Canada’s Ambassador to the United States, turning the tables. McKenna says he will organize the more than 1 million Canadians in the United States to lecture Americans. McKenna, who’s already sent messages to 6,000 expatriates, intends to get in touch with 100,000 of them by week’s end. The rookie ambassador is pressing the "Canadian diaspora" to arm themselves with facts, to debate Americans and to get out and lobby when Washington makes decisions that can hurt Canadians,...

New Delhi: In a decision of far-reaching significance for Indians settled abroad, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) today redeemed its pledge to confer dual citizenship on them. A meeting of the Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, also decided to issue 'smart cards' to registered Overseas Citizens of India, Finance Minister P Chidambaram told media persons. The cabinet gave its approval for amendment of relevant acts to provide for giving benefit to all people of India origin, and their children and grandchildren, who migrated from India to countries other than Pakistan and Bangladesh after January 26, 1950...

MEXICO CITY - (KRT) - The day after the U.S. presidential election, Jim and Joan Marker left for a scheduled vacation in San Miguel de Allende, central Mexico. Now they've decided they'd like to live there permanently. The Alabama couple are among the many United States citizens who have been going south, for adventure or a new life. The decades-long trend has gathered steam in recent years, statistics show, and Mexico is undergoing a sustained Americanization, with Americans buying more property, seeking permanent residency and congregating in enclaves that seem like home abroad. The U.S. State Department estimates that the...

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Selected exerpts. Professor Fahmy says the people of Iraq are suffering after 35 years of brutal dictatorship. He says the interim government should work to address the pain of the Iraqi people by promoting the establishment of a multi-party system that does not include, what he calls, the 'expatriates' currently in power. He says the government must provide job opportunities for the impoverished people of Iraq. And, he says the interim government must learn to listen to the views of all Iraqis, even those who have engaged in acts of resistance. But, Baghdad University professor of international studies Abjed Abah...

Israel, the ultimate swing state? In Election 2004, true battlegrounds may be across the seaBy RANDALL RICHARD AP National Writer NEW YORK (AP) -- When decision time comes this fall, the real swing votes in the 2004 presidential election may not come from Pennsylvania, Ohio or even the notorious Florida. The ultimate Bush-Kerry battleground may turn out to be somewhere more far-flung and unexpected -- Israel, Britain, even Indonesia. And both political camps say they are getting ready for the fight, courting American voters who are living overseas and taking no chances that the expatriate vote will undermine them at...