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Most of you are likely familiar with the city of Geneva, Switzerland. It’s famous for being the home of the United Nations and some of the world’s most lucrative (and secretive) banks, as well as the birthplace of the Geneva Convention. One other fact is that it’s among the most expensive places to live on the planet. As a result, it’s rather hard to get along there if you’re not part of the fabulously wealthy set. But now they’ve come up with a solution to that issue and it’s one that was probably predictable given Switzerland’s socialist leanings. They’re...

One of the world’s richest cities is instituting a minimum wage which proponents say is only relatively sumptuous. Geneva, which by most metrics ranks in the top five for the globe’s priciest places to live, has approved a minimum wage which would be considered lavish elsewhere but is intended to just get food on the table for its poorest workers. The Swiss city voted in a two-thirds majority Sunday to introduce a minimum wage of 23 Swiss francs ($25) an hour for a 41-hour workweek, CNBC reported. That adds up to somewhere in the range of $4,100 a month, or...

Five Iowa cities have imposed face mask-muzzle orders in the last ten days..... A protest in Moscow, Idaho this weekend following arrests at a worship service there over wearing masks and social distancing...... "scared" and "confused" Thousands of university students locked down in their residence halls in the UK...... Meanwhile in Ireland Professor Dolores Cahill says that a positive COVID-19 test may mean the presence of the common cold..... After yesterday's show of strength by the "Proud Boys" of the "Right" in Portland who were opposed by the "Left" the "Left" took its protest into downtown Portland Saturday night. Police...

<p>Parts of Switzerland, Austria and Germany were surprised by unseasonably early snowfall overnight, after a sharp drop in temperatures and heavy precipitation.</p> <p>The Swiss meteorological agency said Saturday that the town of Montana, in the southern canton (state) of Valais, experienced 10 inches of snowfall — a new record for this time of year.</p>

As rich nations corner more than half the doses, they must realise that vaccinated pockets don’t lead to stable economies Vaccine nationalism is rearing its ugly head again even as the Coronavirus pandemic rages on. The implications of manipulating access to essential drugs, particularly HIV-AIDS ones in developing countries, due to bulk purchasing power of richer nations and honouring of pharmaceutical patents, are already known. That crisis worsened. Sadly, the trend continues as the race to develop a vaccine for COVID-19 intensifies with five leading candidates currently in phase three clinical trials. Who gets hold of the vaccine and when...

As an economist, I have written extensively about the Swiss debt brake as a potential solution to the U.S. debt crisis. The United States is experiencing debt fatigue and must enact new fiscal rules to restore sustainable debt levels at both the national and subnational levels. The Swiss debt brake has proven to be the most effective set of fiscal rules in accomplishing this objective, cutting debt burdens in that country by half. The Swiss debt brake has been the model for more effective fiscal rules, adopted by European nations and the European Union. The Swiss debt brake, whcih assures a...

From the Editor’s Desk, Michael Matt takes a look at some good news regarding the Covid recovery rate before exploring what’s really going on with the global pandemic. To understand this, he takes us to Switzerland—to the World Economic Forum—where the movers and shakers of the world have been meeting on a regular basis, especially since January 2020, to plan ‘The Great Reset’ at the Davos 2021 Summit in January. Using multiple video clips, Michael shows how everyone from Soros, to Gates, to Schwab, to Al Gore and the Secretary-General of the United Nations are only too eager to admit...

A disturbing movement to reform capitalism is gaining traction by those using the coronavirus tragedy to call for “The Great Reset”. These are not the ramblings of a few disgruntled teenagers or a wacky sociology professor from inner-city Sydney. The body pushing The Great Reset happens to be the World Economic Forum and its charismatic German leader Klaus Schwab who is calling for a return to Marxist principles, claiming that capitalism has empirically failed. Professor Schwab has just released a book titled The Great Reset and has dedicated a large portion of the official WEF website to such articles as...

Israel paid Assad’s grand-uncle $100 million for the Golan Heights before the Six-Day War in 1967, says a former close friend of Sadat. Israel paid Syrian President Bashar Assad’s grand-uncle $100 million for the Golan Heights before the Six-Day War in 1967, says a former close friend to assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. Dr. Mahmoud Jame’ said Sadat was briefed on the deal, according to the Jordanian-based Albawaba website. Jame’, a member of the first Consultative Council in Egypt, said, “One morning Sadat took me with him in private and without a guard to the (Syrian part of the) Golan...

by Richard Lawrence Poe Monday, November 5, 2007 Permanent LinkMore Columns FOUR YEARS ago, leftist billionaire George Soros vowed to bring down President Bush, but failed. Now he is making another power play, this time in Europe. Soros knows Europe better than he does America. He may get what he wants this time; a reversal of his 2002 criminal conviction for insider trading. On January 29, 2002, a French court convicted Soros of illegal trades in connection with a takeover attempt on a French bank. Soros appealed his conviction twice without success. Now he awaits his fourth trial at...

Europe’s preeminent particle-physics organization will need global help to fund the project, which is expected to cost at least €21 billion and would be a follow-up to the lab’s famed Large Hadron Collider. The new machine would collide electrons with their antimatter partners, positrons, by the middle of the century. The design—to be built in an underground tunnel near CERN’s location in Geneva, Switzerland—will enable physicists to study the properties of the Higgs boson and, later, to host an even more powerful machine that will collide protons well into the second half of the century. The approval is not yet...

Swiss police are looking for a forgetful individual who left something rather important on a train -- a package full of gold bars, worth more than $190,000. The parcel containing the gold bars was found in the carriage of a Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) train traveling from the northeastern Swiss town of St Gallen to Lucerne, a city in the center of the country, in October last year, authorities said. Despite "extensive investigations," the owner of the high-value package had not been tracked down, officials said in a statement published in the local government Lucerne Canton gazette.

Iran has released U.S. Navy veteran Michael White, who had been detained for nearly two years, his family confirmed Thursday. “I am blessed to announce that the nightmare is over, and my son is safely in American custody and on his way home,” White’s mother, Joanne White, said in a statement shared by a family spokesman on Twitter. Joanne White thanked the State Department, Swiss diplomats and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) in her statement. U.S. special envoy for Iran Brian Hook flew to Zurich with a doctor to meet...

Microscopic signatures of malting could help reveal which prehistoric people had a taste for beer. Ancient beer is difficult to trace, because many of beer’s chemical ingredients, like alcohol, don’t preserve well (SN: 9/28/04). But a new analysis of modern and ancient malted grain indicates that malting’s effects on grain cell structure can last millennia. This microscopic evidence could help fill in the archaeological record of beer consumption, providing insight into the social, ritual and dietary roles this drink played in prehistoric cultures, researchers report online May 7 in PLOS ONE. Malting, the first step in brewing beer, erodes cell...

"We won't be staying in our cars and you don't have to wear a mask. There may be a lot of people giving hugs and lots of hand shaking going on. Doing our part to strengthen the herd immunity against Covid-19" Libertarian activist Ammon Bundy announcing a worship service..... Meanwhile the federal Bureau of Land Management is investigating after a complaint from hikers about Ryan Bundy building irrigation infrastructure on land traditionally used by rancher Cliven Bundy but claimed as federal land now designated as the Gold Butte National Monument..... Also in the linked story the US Ninth Circuit Court...

"Wear your mouth cover, Its a sign of your surrender" Gavin Seim For Liberty Facebook Post 5/12/2020 "Under instructions to enforce social distancing, maintain proper hygiene and have children grade four and up wear face masks, it was up to municipalities to decide when each school in its jurisdiction was full prepared to open, Netanyahu said" In Israel children are allowed to go back to school at all grade levels starting Sunday the details of restrictions remind us that masks prevent complete breathing and cut off air from people of all ages. Small children will not be required to wear...

Councillors from the city of Basel, as well as representatives from the National Council, have spoken out against the Federal Council for its refusal to put in place laws that would restrict “gay conversion therapy”. Despite gay conversion therapy being heavily criticized by advocacy groups and outlawed in some parts of the world, the LGBTIQ Pink Cross Switzerland organization says that it is “common” in Switzerland. The Federal Council has however stated that it opposes a ban, arguing that the current laws are sufficient to protect people from all types of alternate therapies. Lucas Ott, a representative in the City...

Switzerland removed restrictions for grandparents this week in hugging their young grandchildren after studies found that young grandchildren do not transmit the disease and are at less risk for serious health issues due to the coronavirus. A new study from Australia found that children are unlikely to transmit Covid-19 between each other or to adults.Via Dr. Andrew Bostom. Data (& sanity)-inspired covid19 social policy from Switzerland: Swiss grandparents told they “can now hug their (young, <10 y/o) grandkids… many grandparents “live to see their grandkids, it’s important for their mental well-being” https://t.co/BWJaQ6G22R pic.twitter.com/dMze6O6aAV— Andrew Bostom (@andrewbostom) April 28, 2020 The...

 Kim Jong-nam Says N.Korean Regime Won't Last Long Kim Jong-nam Former North Korean Leader Kim Jong-il's eldest son Jong-nam has said the isolated regime will eventually fail with or without reforms. The comment appears in e-mail conversations exchanged over seven years between Kim Jong-nam and a Japanese journalist and obtained by the Monthly Chosun. The nearly 100 e-mails were sent from 2004 until December last year to Yoji Komi, an editor at the Tokyo Shimbun daily. The two also spoke in person in January and May last year. ◆ Oppostion to Dynastic Succession Kim Jong-nam, who was passed over...

As we, in the land of the free and the home of the brave, respond to the Wuhan pandemic by hunkering down, whimpering at the thought of society reopening and search in vain for a new set of brown trousers to wear with our fashionable face mask, an interesting experiment is underway in Europe. In Sweden, which has done basically nothing at all in response to the virus, the death rate per one million of population remains significantly lower than American states that have instituted the most draconian regulations. https://twitter.com/RencapMan/status/1252897000812613632/photo/1 That’s right, you can actually have your economy and a...