Swiss urge global rethink of nuclear power

Swiss urge global rethink of nuclear power - SiwssInfo

President and Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey has urged the international community to set new priorities for the use of nuclear energy.

Addressing a summit in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, to mark the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Calmy-Rey recalled the “unspeakable suffering” at Pripyat – the town near the destroyed power plant – and parts of Belarus and Russia.

She also called on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to reconsider its role following the accident at a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan, earlier this year.

Calmy-Rey was among government representatives from 50 nations discussing the safe use of nuclear power.

New questions raised about Switzerland’s energy strategy.

Switzerland is committed to increasing its financial aid for the victims of Chernobyl – in line with pledges by other countries according to an economics ministry spokeswoman. The Swiss contribution to an international programme is set at 1.15 per cent of the total.

To date, Switzerland has paid €27 million to projects, including the Chernobyl Shelter Fund, according to the foreign ministry.

Ukraine was hoping to raise €740 million (SFr952 million) in funds for new safety measures at the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster.

swissinfo.ch and agencies

Internet Linked to Health in Adolescents

Internet Linked to Health in Adolescents - MedPage Today

Teenagers who are heavy users of the Internet -- spending more than two hours a day online -- appear to have an increased risk of depression as well as some somatic complaints, Swiss researchers reported. On the other hand, they found a similar association with an apparent increased risk of depression among teens who didn't use the Net at all, according to Pierre-André Michaud, MD, of the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine in Lausanne, Switzerland, and colleagues. The finding suggests that regular Internet use is now "normative behavior without major health consequence" but that physicians should be alert for extremely high or low levels of use, Michaud and colleagues argued online in Pediatrics. Using the Internet is now a commonplace activity among young people, the researchers noted, raising health concerns that have primarily focused on heavy users. To examine the issue, Michaud and colleagues turned to the 2002 Swiss Multicenter Adolescent Survey on Health, a nationally-representative survey of teens ages 16 to 20 years in either high school or vocational school. More than 7,200 participants -- 3,906 boys and 3,305 girls -- were divided into four categories according to the intensity of their Internet use. Heavy Internet users were defined at those who were online two or more hours a day, regular Internet users were online several days a week for less than two hours a day, and occasional users logged in no more than an hour a week. The fourth category was Internet nonusers -- teens who reported no Internet use at all in the month before the survey. For multivariate analyses, the regular users were regarded as the reference group. Michaud and colleagues also asked about participants' perceived health, depression, overweight, and somatic complaints like headaches, back pain, and insufficient sleep. The researchers found there were more heavy Internet users among the boys -- 7.3% versus 2.2% among girls -- but a similar proportion of nonusers, at 16.4% among both sexes. Most boys and girls were either regular or occasional users -- 44.9% and 31.4%, respectively, for boys and 41.5% and 39.8%, respectively, for girls. Multivariate analysis showed a U-shaped relationship between Internet use and some health issues, the researchers reported. Specifically: Male heavy users and nonusers both were significantly more likely to report depression, with relative risk ratios of 1.36 and 1.31, respectively. Girls at all levels of use reported significantly more depression than regular users, but the heavy users had the highest relative risk ratio, at 1.86. Nonusers and occasional users had relative risk ratios of 1.46 and 1.24, respectively. Male heavy users were 78% more likely to report being overweight than regular users. The relative risk ratio was 1.78, with a 95% confidence interval from 1.07 to 2.95. Male nonusers were significantly more likely to report frequent back pain, with a relative risk ratio of 1.87. Female heavy users were significantly more likely to report insufficient sleep, with a relative risk ratio of 1.91. Michaud and colleagues cited some limitations to their study, noting that young people not attending school were not assessed, which may limit that applicability of the study results. The authors also cautioned that the data were collected in 2002 -- before the explosion of multimedia technologies that have made Internet access easier. The study also did not look at the effects of specific activities online, they reported. Its generalizability was also limited by the data being collected only among adolescents in Switzerland. The study had support from the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health, Université Laval, the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Québec and its foundation, and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. The authors said they had no relevant financial relationships to disclose.

Primary source: Pediatrics

Swiss net international investment position nears 2007 high

Tax privileges

Foreign companies moving head offices to Switzerland inflate figures

The Lake Geneva region is drawing a growing number of foreign companies for their head offices

Switzerland, which has one of the world’s highest net international investment positions (IIP) in relation to GDP, saw this climb back nearly to 2007 levels in 2009. Its net position rose by CHF95 billion to CHF764b in 2009. Foreign assets climbed by CHF95b to CHF 3,177b. Assets “were still considerably below the level of 2007″, says the Swiss National Bank (SNB).

The figures were released Tuesday morning 14 December by the SNB.

Net IIP is the difference between a country’s external financial assets and liabilities. IIP equals domestically owned foreign assets and foreign owned domestic assets.

“In relation to GDP, the 2009 net investment position increased from 123 percent to 143 percent year-on- year—a very high figure by international standards. At the end of 2007, this key figure was 149 percent,” the SNB notes in its press release. Hong Kong traditionally has a very high figure, above 300 percent, while the United States, for example, was -24 percent, Ireland -58 percent and Greece -75 percent in 2008.

Foreign companies account for nearly half of direct investment

Foreign assets include direct investment, portfolio investment and reserve assets. Direct investment alone rose by CHF85b, with foreign companies moving to Switzerland, included for the first time in these figures, accounting for nearly half that amount, CHF38b. Direct investment rose for two reasons, says the SNB: Swiss companies invested in subsidiaries abroad and foreign companies moved their headquarters to Switzerland.

The growing number of foreign companies moving to Switzerland, many of them from the UK, has drawn fire from British media, most notably with the planned move of Cadbury’s, for tax reasons, in 2011.

The number of employees of Swiss subsidiaries abroad fell by 28,000 in 2009, for a total of 2.63 million, the first such decline since 2003.

The SNB notes that

“by comparison with other countries, Switzerland has relatively high levels of direct investment abroad. This is evident from the ratio of Swiss direct investment abroad to nominal gross domestic product (GDP), which amounted to 164 percent at the end of 2009. In the Netherlands this ratio amounted to 107 percent, while in Ireland it was 85 percent. As recently as 1990, Switzerland had a ratio of 28 prcent and lagged behind both the Netherlands (36 percent) and Ireland (31 percent) (source: Unctad, World Investment Report 2010).”

Income from direct investment abroad rose to CHF53b, up sharply from the 2008 figure of CHF8b, thanks in large part to the banking industry’s recovery.

Derivatives out of favour, high Swiss share prices find investors

Swiss shares held by investors abroad jumped by CHF82b to CHF555b as a result of higher share prices. By contrast, foreign investors scaled back their holdings of Swiss debt securities, notes the SNB. Derivatives and structured products lost favour, and their fall nearly offset the rise in foreign assets.

Swissinfo video on foreign companies moving to Switzerland for tax purposes

Nissan, Yahoo, Chiquita – many multinational companies are moving their European headquarters to Switzerland. Here they pay much lower corporate taxes than in other countries. The international holdings have privileges that not even Swiss firms enjoy. (SF Eco - swissinfo.ch)

Google offers new tools to grow businesses globally

New tools to grow your business globally - Google Blog

Srinidhi Viswanatha from Global Advertisers team has posted a really interesting blog that has attracted my whole attention because it offers you to better understand Merton's Matthew effect, a particular explanation of the law of success!

Imagine you're a men's tailor in Bangkok, and you sell custom suits to travelers passing through Thailand. You start a website to sell your suits online and begin to notice that the majority of your website traffic comes from overseas. How do you respond to this international demand?

Businesses of all sizes face a number of obstacles when they want to expand internationally. First, they must identify the right market to sell their products or services, such as custom men's suits. Then they have to create versions of their website and ad campaigns in the language of the market they want to reach. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, they need to reach new customers who may be interested in their products and services.


Starting today, businesses can access a number of new resources from Google to help them overcome these obstacles and start growing internationally. We're launching a new website, calledGoogle Ads for Global Advertisers, which will serve as a central hub for Google's tools and tips for businesses looking to expand to foreign markets. This website pulls together resources for businesses to find the right market for their products and services, translate their websites and ad text, find new customers with relevant online ads, and understand options for international payment, shipping and customer service.


We're also introducing Global Market Finder, a new free tool to help businesses identify markets with high demand for their products or services. The Global Market Finder automatically translates your keyword—for example, [business suit]—into 56 languages and then uses Google search trends data to see where in the world people search for your product or service. It helps businesses evaluate new markets by showing the volume of local searches, estimated price for keywords and competition for each keyword in each market. With this tool, businesses can answer questions like "how competitive is this market?", "how does demand in one country compare to demand elsewhere in the world?" and "how much would it cost to start advertising in this new market?" You can read more about these new tools on the Inside AdWords blog.


Google has already helped hundreds of thousands of businesses reach customers in foreign markets. From a mosaic company in Lebanon to a bespoke shoe retailer in Sydney, a tech support company in India and a bed and breakfast in Poland, tools like AdWords have helped businesses reach new customers and drive traffic to their websites. We think our new website and tools will encourage even more businesses to expand internationally, whether you're a small business testing a single market for the first time or a mid-size company advertising your products to an entire region.

After all, there are more than 1.9 billion consumers online. Wouldn't you like to add some of them as customers?

For all micro-bloggers who are using twitter, Sponsored Tweets and MyLikes are great ad tools as well, I recommend to all of you!

Mark Zuckerberg to Donate Most of His Wealth to Charity

Mark Zuckerberg to Donate Most of His Wealth to Charity - Wall Street Journal

At only 26 years of age, Mark Zuckerberg is one of the world’s youngest billionaires, but he’s not keeping it all for himself. By signing onto Bill Gates and Warren Buffet’s initiative called the “Giving Pledge,” Mark agreed to give most of his wealth to charity.

This is not Zuckerberg’s first foray into philanthropy; he had donated an undisclosed amount to the open social network project Diaspora as well as $100 million to Newark Public Schools. He spoke about the Newark donation on Oprah, explaining his dedication to help fix the public school system.

The Giving Pledge, however, is a completely different ball game. Along with 57 other multi-millionaire and billionaire families and individuals, including Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Carl Icahn, by signing the pledge Mark Zuckerberg promised to give more than half of his wealth to charity, either during his lifetime or after his death.

“People wait until late in their career to give back. But why wait when there is so much to be done? With a generation of younger folks who have thrived on the success of their companies, there is a big opportunity for many of us to give back earlier in our lifetime and see the impact of our philanthropic efforts,” said Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a statement.

According to Forbes’ estimate, Mark Zuckerberg is worth $6.9 billion, which puts him on the 35th position on the list of wealthy Americans. Although many consider him to be the world’s youngest billionaire, he recently lost that title to Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, who’s only 8 days younger than him and whose worth is currently estimated at $1.4 billion.

Wikileaks sites pop up over Europe

Wikileaks sites pop up over Europe - ZDNet

Wikileaks emerged on a Swiss internet domain as well as on domains in Germany, Finland, and the Netherlands, sidestepping a move that had in effect taken the controversial site off the internet.

The group, under heavy criticism in some quarters for publishing US diplomats' classified cables, has been working hard to keep operating amid distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks over the internet and Amazon's decision to stop hosting Wikileaks' website.

Meanwhile, Swedish authorities said they had re-submitted an international arrest warrant asking UK police to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange following sex crime allegations, according to the BBC. Assange, who is staying in a hidden location in England, has denied the allegations. The original arrest warrant issued last month was rejected on legal grounds.

A new problem with the Wikileaks site arose when EveryDNS.net stopped providing Wikileaks with Domain Name System (DNS) services. The DNS translates the web addresses that people type into the numeric Internet Protocol addresses that actually get the job done delivering data from one computer to another. When EveryDNS.net stopped the service, typing "Wikileaks.org" into a browser led nowhere.

In a statement on its website, EveryDNS.net said it terminated WikiLeaks' service to protect others using the service while Wikileaks was under the DDoS attack.

Anyone with Wikileaks's numeric internet address can get to the site without using the DNS, and Wikileaks offered instructions in a tweet: "WIKILEAKS: Free speech has a number: http://88.80.13.160".

Later, it re-emerged with a more human-friendly internet address, also broadcast over Twitter: "Wikileaks moves to Switzerland http://wikileaks.ch/" although that site remained inaccessible to some people who tried to view it, and EveryDNS.net said on its site that it had also cancelled Domain Name System services for the page.

The Swiss and German Pirate Party chapters purchased a host of alternative addresses for Wikileaks after Swiss services were terminated.

The Pirate Party of Germany said it purchased alternative service space to "ensure that press freedom in the form of Wikileaks maintained".

Wikileaks is available at http://wikileaks.piratenpartei.de and the Swiss Pirate Party has listed a further 21 additional alternative websites.

"About two hours after the deactivation of wikileaks.ch by EveryDNS.net we acquired a heap of redundant DNS servers … access should be possible from most places again," the party said in a statement.

Wikileaks announced on its Twitter page that the cables were accessible at http://wikileaks.de, which is a German internet domain, wikileaks.fi in Finland and wikileaks.nl in The Netherlands.

You might be interested in:

• Wikileaks site down ... but not out
• Members' members and the Wikileaks dump
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Several groups not affiliated with Wikileaks also created mirrors of the site on their servers, which means copies of the site would remain up even if Wikileaks loses its domain name and hosting service. The hacker group 2600 created a mirror site at "http://wikileaks.2600.com/" and another one is here. The 2600 Twitter account explained: "#wikileaks website stolen by authorities. we will point wikileaks.2600.com to backups and mirrors in solidarity for as long as necessary."

Meanwhile a group of Dutch journalists launched CableSearch.org, a searchable index of all the cables that have been published.

After getting dumped by Amazon, Wikileaks took issue with the company's explanation that it terminated Wikileaks' service for violating Amazon's terms of service. Amazon said of its decision: "It's clear that Wikileaks doesn't own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content. Further, it is not credible that the extraordinary volume of 250,000 classified documents that Wikileaks is publishing could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren't putting innocent people in jeopardy."

Wikileaks doesn't buy it. "Amazon's press release does not accord with the facts on public record. It is one thing to be cowardly. Another to lie about it," Wikileaks tweeted.

Since Amazon dropped Wikileaks, a French company, OVH, has picked up some of the slack, much to the dismay of a French official, according to Reuters. The French Industry Minister wants to ban OVH from hosting the site, but OVH is seeking a court opinion arguing that it is legally a provider of technical services and not a host.

Wikileaks returns to web on Swiss domain

Wikileaks returns to web on Swiss domain - ZDNet UK

Wikileaks re-emerged on Friday on a Swiss internet domain, sidestepping a move that had in effect taken the whistleblowing site off the internet.

On Friday, the Wikileaks group said in a post on Twitter: "Wikileaks moves to Switzerland http://wikileaks.ch/".

The group, which has come under criticism for publishing US diplomats' classified cables, has been working hard to keep operating amid distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks over the internet and Amazon's decision to stop hosting Wikileaks's website.

A new problem arose early on Friday, when EveryDNS.net stopped providing Wikileaks with DNS services. The DNS translates the web addresses that people type, such as 'ZDNet.co.uk', into the numeric Internet Protocol addresses that underpin the delivery of data from one computer to another. Now that EveryDNS.net has stopped the service, typing 'wikileaks.org' into a browser results in a blank page.

WikiLeaks' tweet about losing its Internet address service yesterday

(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

WikiLeaks re-emerged today on a Swiss Internet domain, sidestepping a move that had in effect taken the controversial site off the Internet.

The group, under heavy criticism in some quarters for publishing U.S. diplomats' classified cables, has been working hard to keep operating amid distributed-denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks over the Internet andAmazon's decision to stop hosting WikiLeaks' Web site.

A new problem arose at 7 p.m. PT Thursday, when EveryDNS.net stopped providing WikiLeaks with Domain Name System (DNS) services. The DNS translates the Web addresses that people type, such as CNET.com, into the numeric Internet Protocol addresses that actually get the job done delivering data from one computer to another. When EveryDNS.net stopped the service, typing "WikiLeaks.org" into a browser led nowhere.

In a statement on its Web site, EveryDNS.net said it terminated WikiLeaks' service to protect others using the service while WikiLeaks was under the DDOS attack.

The services were terminated for violation of the provision which states that "Member shall not interfere with another Member's use and enjoyment of the Service or another entity's use and enjoyment of similar services." The interference at issues arises from the fact that wikileaks.org has become the target of multiple distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks. These attacks have, and future attacks would, threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure, which enables access to almost 500,000 other websites.

Thus, last night, at approximately 10PM EST, December 1, 2010 a 24 hour termination notification email was sent to the email address associated with the wikileaks.org account. In addition to this email, notices were sent to Wikileaks via Twitter and the chat function available through the wikileaks.org website. Any downtime of the wikileaks.org website has resulted from its failure to use another hosted DNS service provider.

As it did when tweeting about the Amazon termination, WikiLeaks mentioned the EveryDNS.net's United States connection.

"WikiLeaks,org domain killed by US everydns.net after claimed mass attacks," WikiLeaks said in its tweet.

Anyone with WikiLeaks's numeric Internet address can get to the site without using DNS, and WikiLeaks offered instructions in a follow-up tweet today: "WIKILEAKS: Free speech has a number: http://88.80.13.160"

And later, it re-emerged with a more human-friendly Internet address, also broadcast over Twitter: "WikiLeaks moves to Switzerland http://wikileaks.ch/"

WikiLeaks also took issue with Amazon's explanation that it terminated WikiLeaks' service for violating Amazon's terms of service. "It's clear that WikiLeaks doesn't own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content. Further, it is not credible that the extraordinary volume of 250,000 classified documents that WikiLeaks is publishing could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren't putting innocent people in jeopardy," Amazon said of its decision.

WikiLeaks doesn't buy it. "Amazon's press release does not accord with the facts on public record. It is one thing to be cowardly. Another to lie about it," WikiLeaks tweeted.

The DNS, centrally administered by a non-profit group called ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is a critical service when it comes to publishing and finding information on the Internet. Rerouting addresses through the DNS is how the U.S. government seized 82 domains associated with copyright infringement.

One response to this situation involves a new effort to create a decentralized DNS, also using peer-to-peer technology. Peter Sunde--one founder of a site called The Pirate Bay that indexes content shared with the peer-to-peer BitTorrent technology--is involved in the project, called P2P-DNS.

"Alternative DNS system based on P2P," Sunde said about the effort in a tweet, though he later took pains to say he was only interested, not the person behind the effort. He added that the "core of the DNS problem is not ICANN. It's that governments and companies can control ICANN (i.e. it's centralised)."