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After months of behind-the-scenes wrangling that threatened to strain relations between Switzerland and the U.S., the fate of secret Swiss bank accounts reportedly holding billions of dollars in undeclared assets is finally resolved...
...Under an agreement announced by Swiss and U.S. authorities on Aug. 19, Switzerland's second largest bank, UBS, will disclose the names of approximately 4,450 American account holders suspected by the IRS of evading taxes. In return, the U.S. Justice Department will withdraw its lawsuit against the banking giant and stop demanding the names of 52,000 Americans accused of hiding assets in offshore accounts. (See pictures of tea-party tax protests...
...Citing the bank-client confidentiality that is guaranteed by the Swiss constitution, the Swiss government had forbidden UBS from complying with the Justice Department's demands and had threatened to seize UBS data to prevent the bank from handing accounts over to the Americans. Earlier this year, UBS had already released to the IRS the names of 250 suspected tax cheats and paid the U.S. government $780 million to avoid criminal prosecution for helping wealthy Americans hide $20 billion in undisclosed offshore accounts...
Huckabee was certainly unwelcome in the eyes of Palestinians. Dimitri Diliani, a newly elected member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, said the former governor was "stupid" and "un-American." "He is damaging to the official U.S. policy regarding illegal settlement activities in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem," Diliani told TIME. "He represents a petty politician looking for petty support from the American right, whose heydays are far behind us. Settlement activity is criminal in nature. In being the icing on the cake in the eyes of the fanatics in the Israeli settlement movement, he is an example...
Besides the President, there are 40 candidates on the ballot, but only two are contenders: Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, a onetime Foreign Minister, and Ashraf Ghani, Karzai's former Finance Minister, who used to be an analyst with the World Bank. In a recently released poll conducted by U.S. pollsters Glevum Associates in July, Ghani was considered a long shot - garnering only a 4% rating, compared with Abdullah's 25% and Karzai's 31%. But in recent weeks, the relentlessly pragmatic Ghani has steadily gained ground, according to private polls conducted by nonpartisan groups. Those polls also indicate that Karzai...