Roman Polanski Arrested in Switzerland

The long arm of the law finally caught up to this bum after 31 years. A shame they didn't pick up fugitive Clinton pal Marc Rich while they were at it.

Roman Polanski was arrested by Swiss police at the request of U.S. authorities as the director arrived in the country to receive an award at the Zurich Film Festival.

Polanski was held yesterday on a 1978 U.S. arrest warrant, the festival organizers said today in an e-mailed statement. The arrest was confirmed by Zurich Cantonal Police spokesman Stefan Oberlin in a telephone interview.

Oberlin wouldn’t comment further on the arrest, referring questions to the Justice Ministry in the capital, Bern. The ministry couldn’t be reached immediately for comment.

Polanski, 76, left the U.S. in 1978 prior to being sentenced for having sex with a 13-year-old girl. He hasn’t returned since and is considered a fugitive in the country. The director, a French citizen, asked a Los Angeles court in December to dismiss the 1977 case because of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct.

California Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza, who said in February that Polanski would have to come to the U.S. to get a hearing on his request, invoked the fugitive disentitlement doctrine to avoid any consideration of the facts and circumstances that forced the director to leave the country, Polanski’s lawyers said July 7 in a court filing.

A special ceremony will be held at the Zurich festival tonight “to allow everyone to express their solidarity for Roman Polanski and their admiration for his work,” the festival management said in their e-mail.

Figures these twits would admire a child molester.

Nutty Khadafy Asks UN to Abolish Switzerland

You have to admit that for a psychotic greaseball the dude is pretty amusing.

What I need to know is who'll get dibs on the chocolate?

Libya's Col. Moammar Khadafy has a beef with Switzerland and plans to ask the United Nations to abolish the tiny Alpine home of milk chocolate, cuckoo clocks and yodeling.

According to Swiss minister Christa Markwalder, Khadafy will demand that Switzerland be wiped off the map when he comes to New York Sept. 23. He apparently wants the country to be dismembered and the land parceled out among neighbouring France, Germany and Italy.

The Libya-Swiss kerfuffle began a year ago, when Khadafy's youngest son, Hannibal Khadafy, and his pregnant wife were arrested in a Geneva luxury hotel for beating two servants with a belt and a coat-hanger.

Hannibal Khadafy had previously been busted in both France and Italy for beating a woman and fighting a cop, and once for driving drunk down Paris' Champs Elysee at 90 mph - the wrong way.

Libya retaliated with fury, recalling some diplomats, suspending visas for Swiss citizens, withdrawing funds from Swiss banks, shuttering the Tripoli office of Nestle and threatening to cut off oil deliveries to Switzerland.

Two Swiss businessmen were barred from leaving the country until Libya received an apology for Hannibal's arrest.

A Mooving Experience

You just never know what those zany Swiss will do for entertainment.

Furie and Cigale eye each other warily, take a step forward and lock horns.

It's an ancient ritual, one that plays out each summer high in the Swiss Alps, as cows battle to be queen and villagers come to watch.

Judges record every fight as spectators sit on the surrounding mountainside, sipping local wines and cheering their family herd. But it is the cows who choose who to fight and who will reign supreme at the end of the season.

"They've been doing this ever since my grandparents were young, and even before that," says Marthe Vianin, once the proud owner of several fighting cows. "It's hundreds of years old."

Vianin, in her sixties, has come to watch her son's two cows — Tzardon and Bamby — take on champions from other herds.

Down in the corral, Bergamote faces off a challenge from Berkane with a fierce stare and a tussle of horns. No harm done. Still, there are clearly some seasoned fighters in this contest, judging from the scars they bear from past battles.

Locals insist the bovine power-struggle is both humane and irrepressible.

Just wait until the kooks from PETA get wind of this.

There is no prize money for the winner, but owners can fetch a handsome price — up to $30,000 (euro21,000) — if they choose to sell a queen.

Most important, says local Albert Salamin, is the respect.

The winner's owner is "king of the village for the year. He's more respected than the mayor," Salamin says to laughs from bystanders.

The Salamin brothers have several cows in competition, but Albert admits only his brother Armand's prize heifer Bolero stands a real chance this year.

Cow fighting is still taken seriously, but it's largely a hobby and a cherished tradition for most villagers, who have long since stopped living off the land.

'Thoroughly Disturbing and Irritating'

What's so thoroughly disturbing and irritating? Wacky Germans hiking around with their junk hanging out.

Voters in the heart of the Swiss Alps have banned naked hiking after dozens of mostly German nudists started rambling through their picturesque region.

By a show of hands citizens of the tiny canton (state) of Appenzell Inner Rhodes voted overwhelmingly at their traditional open-air annual assembly to impose a 200 Swiss franc ($176) fine on violators.

Only a scattering of people on Sunday opposed the ban on the back-to-nature activity that took off last autumn.

The cantonal government recommended the ban after determining that citizens had found nude hiking to be "thoroughly disturbing and irritating."

A similar legal move is expected in neighboring Appenzell Outer Rhodes with legislation being prepared against "this shameless behavior."

AP Calls Switzerland and France for Obama

How inane can you get?

If the world beyond America's shores had a say, it seems clear that Barack Obama would win the presidential election by something approaching a landslide.

That is the key finding of a coordinated series of newspaper polls conducted in eight countries and published Friday in Britain's Guardian and other papers.

It is no surprise Obama, the Democratic nominee, is popular in Europe—that was clear when he drew tumultuous crowds to his open-air speech in Berlin this summer—but the scope of the lead suggested by the polls is startling.

In Switzerland, for example, Obama has 83 percent support to John McCain's 7 percent; in Britain, 64 percent to McCain's 15 percent, and in France, 69 percent to McCain's 5 percent. The closest they get is in Poland, where Obama has 43 percent and McCain 26 percent.

Keep it up, please. Reminding people how loved Obama is in France and Switzerland is sure to backfire. Seems to me if the AP needs to shore up Obama's European flank, there must be problems.

Which leads us to this breathtaking bias, they add this.

McCain's support in the United States also seems to be fading. A new AP-Yahoo News poll of likely voters, conducted this month by Knowledge Networks, shows that only 5 percent more people view him favorably compared with unfavorably, a 16-point drop from polls take in mid-September.

Just one little problem with that poll. It's of 873 Democrats and 650 Republicans and shows Obama leading only 44-42%.

Meanwhile, Gallup's likely voters numbers are 49-47%. So how exactly is McCain fading while he's gaining? This they do not explain.

Nuke Blueprints for Sale

Gives you a very comforting feeling, doesn't it?

Nuclear bomb blueprints and manuals on how to manufacture weapons-grade uranium for warheads are feared to be circulating on the international black market, according to investigators tracking the world's most infamous nuclear smuggling racket.

Alarm about the sale of nuclear know-how follows the disclosure that the Swiss government, allegedly acting under US pressure, secretly destroyed tens of thousands of documents from a massive nuclear smuggling investigation.

The information was seized from the home and computers of Urs Tinner, a 43-year-old Swiss engineer who has been in custody for almost four years as a key suspect in the nuclear smuggling ring run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani metallurgist who in 2004 admitted leaking nuclear secrets and is under house arrest in Islamabad.

The Khan network trafficked nuclear materials, equipment and knowhow to at least three countries: Iran, Libya, and North Korea.

President Pascal Couchepin stunned his Swiss compatriots last week by announcing that the Tinner files, believed to number around 30,000 documents, had been shredded. The extraordinary move, prompting demands for a parliamentary inquiry, was warranted to prevent the documents "getting into the hands of a terrorist organisation or an unauthorised state", according to Couchepin.

Of course, thanks to Khan and Tinner, that's probably too late.

However, there are widespread fears this has already happened or still could. "We know that copies were made," said Mark Fitzpatrick, an expert on the illicit networks at the British-based International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS). "Both US intelligence and the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog] had been pursuing this with great urgency and diligence. But what happened to the other copies that [Tinner] made? It is worrisome that there are other plans floating around somewhere out there."

At some point could the media stop referring to the IAEA as a "watchdog"? The only thing they've been watching is a number of countries going nuclear under their watch.

Swiss Deporting Black Sheep

Oh, the insensitivity of it all.

Swiss deportation policy draws criticism

GENEVA - The campaign poster was blatant in its xenophobic symbolism: Three white sheep kicking out a black sheep over a caption that read "for more security." The message was not from a fringe force in Switzerland's political scene but from its largest party.

The nationalist Swiss People's Party is proposing a deportation policy that anti-racism campaigners say evokes Nazi-era practices. Under the plan, entire families would be expelled if their children are convicted of a violent crime, drug offenses or benefits fraud.

The party is trying to collect the 100,000 signatures needed to force a referendum on the issue. If approved in a referendum, the law would be the only one of its kind in Europe.

"We believe that parents are responsible for bringing up their children. If they can't do it properly, they will have to bear the consequences," Ueli Maurer, president of the People's Party, told The Associated Press.

Ronnie Bernheim of the Swiss Foundation against Racism and Anti-Semitism said the proposal was similar to the Nazi practice of "Sippenhaft" — or kin liability — whereby relatives of criminals were held responsible for his or her crimes and punished equally.

Similar practices occurred during Stalin's purges in the early days of the Soviet Union and the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution in China, when millions were persecuted for their alleged ideological failings.

"As soon as the first 10 families and their children have been expelled from the country, then things will get better at a stroke," said Maurer, whose party controls the Justice Ministry and shares power in an unwieldy coalition that includes all major parties.

Sure, this might be wacky, but comparing it to the Nazis, Stalin or Maoist purges is a bit overblown.

Peaceful Progressives

They're probably just misguided youths.

Militant opponents of this week's Group of Eight summit claimed responsibility Tuesday for a firebomb attack on a Mercedes car dealership in Zurich.

An anonymous fax sent to The Associated Press and other media organizations also demanded the release of G-8 opponents arrested by German police. The overnight attack caused about 200,000 Swiss francs (US$160,000; 120,000 euros) in damage.

Swiss Tolerance Dissipates

Even the Swiss are tiring of the Islamists.

Swiss reputation for tolerance under threat

ZURICH (Reuters) - Switzerland's reputation as a haven of tolerance for immigrants has been undermined in recent weeks by calls for a ban on new minarets, a mysterious synagogue blaze and neo-Nazi threats to disrupt national day celebrations.

Switzerland is known for public order and efficiency. Its neutral status and high living standards, as well as its need for lower cost workers, have historically attracted refugees from conflicts around Europe and the world.

But with rising immigration -- and lack of integration caused partly by tight laws on handing out Swiss passports -- religious and ethnic tension has been on the rise, particularly focusing on Muslims.

"There is always this feeling that Switzerland is a little island and you daren't let anything in because it will destabilize it," said Clive Church, an expert on Swiss politics, recently retired from the University of Kent.

By the end of 2005, more than a fifth of Switzerland's 7.5 million residents were foreigners, a higher proportion than in any other European country except Liechtenstein and Luxembourg, according to the Federal Statistics Office.

Most of those are from Europe, with large communities from Turkey and the former Yugoslavia, many of those Muslims who fled the conflicts there.

"Radical Islam is a huge foreign political factor," said Swiss culture and politics expert Jonathan Steinberg of the University of Pennsylvania. "None of the immigration before constituted an international threat. Now they do."

Oooh. Seething to follow.

Switzerland Invades Liechtenstein

Out of Liechtenstein now! This sounds like a Monty Python sketch.

What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein.

According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers wandered just over a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.

A spokesman for the Swiss army confirmed the story but said that there were unlikely to be any serious repercussions for the mistaken invasion.

"We've spoken to the authorities in Liechtenstein and it's not a problem," Daniel Reist told The Associated Press.