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...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...
...Swiss government, which yesterday put its 332.2 million UBS shares, valued at $5.6 billion, up for sale - a sign, market analysts say, that the government's trust in the bank's ability to raise capital has been restored - also expressed its satisfaction with the settlement. "We have managed to avoid a conflict between the sovereignty of two states," Swiss Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf told the press, while Finance Minister Hans-Rudolf Merz urged the country's banks to respect the law. "It's the least they can do," he said...
Unfortunately, less than a third of the U.S.'s main antidrug aid program for Mexico - the three-year, $1.4 billion Mérida Initiative - focuses on repairing that nation's law-enforcement and judicial systems. A chunk of this year's Mérida installment (the second) has been held up in Congress because of Senate concerns about human-rights abuses by the Mexican military - the 40,000 soldiers Calderón has had to rely on in his offensive against the drug cartels precisely because Mexico's cops are too corrupt and ill trained to do the job. That...
Khan, whose worldwide fan base has been estimated at 3.5 billion people, later suggested the U.S. acts as if it existed in a "parallel universe" with the misconception that only foreigners are responsible for terrorism. But he toned down his comments afterward, calling the exam "an unfortunate procedure." America's ambassador to India, Timothy Roemer, has also sought to smooth feathers over the incident, calling Khan "a very welcome guest in the United States" and even added some flattery: "Many Americans love his films." Khan, ironically, had been traveling to promote his next project, My Name is Khan - a movie...
...Still, for the country it was a tumultuous time. The Asian financial crisis had devastated what had once been one of East Asia's fastest-growing economies. Kim privatized state-owned companies and jump-started South Korea's IT sector. After getting $60 billion in loans from the IMF in 1997, South Korea became the first East Asian country to, in effect, graduate from its oversight, paying its IMF loans back faster than any other East Asian country, in 2001. (See lessons from Asia's financial crisis...