Word: switzerland
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...important as her age. As a vigorous 50-year-old replacing her political mentor, 69-year-old President Oscar Arias, the center-right Chinchilla (pronounced cheen-chee-ya) is ushering in a new generation of leadership at a moment when Costa Rica's stature as the Switzerland of Central America is in decline. Its democracy remains the region's strongest, but it has been rocked in recent years by a spate of high-level government corruption scandals, a spike in drug-trafficking violence and a widening gap between rich and poor. Costa Rica's image as Central America's moral...
...SCHWYZ, SWITZERLAND...
...Since his election last April, Zuma has made short shrift of objections to his expansive appetite for women, calling his accusers culturally blinkered and claiming that, in a country of millions of single mothers, polygamy is actually responsible. When asked at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last weekend if he believed in equality for women - and whether that meant he loved all his wives equally - he replied, to laughter from the audience, "Absolutely. That's my culture. It does not take anything from me, from my political beliefs, including the belief in the equality of women." Then...
...evading German taxes by stashing their money in Swiss bank accounts. The decision wasn't made easily: the deal prompted a weeklong bout of soul-searching in Germany, with critics accusing the government of playing into the hands of a common criminal. It also caused a spat with Switzerland, which has stood firmly behind its banking-secrecy laws and is keen to protect its shining image in the financial world. (Watch a video on global business tips from Germany...
...Switzerland was vehemently opposed to the deal. "Here we have a new form of bank robbery," Swiss lawmaker Pirmin Bischof said in an interview with Germany's Deutschlandfunk radio on Tuesday. "Before, you had to go to the bank and get hold of the money with a weapon. Today you can do it electronically by stealing data." Swiss Finance Minister Hans-Rudolf Merz went a step further, saying his country would refuse to help the German authorities on tax issues involving the stolen data. Lehner however, says this may just be bluster on Merz's part. "Under the double taxation...