France to mandate turning lights off at night to save energy. March 12, 2009 - FILE of the Eiffel Tower seen from the Trocadero in Paris, France.AP September 11, 2001 - FILE of Arc de Triomphe illuminated at night, Champs Elysees, Paris, France.AP Paris is famous for its bright lights, but French President Francois Hollande and his energy minister plan to extinguish the city’s trademark glow during overnight hours, in an effort to save money and energy -- putting many business owners and tourists in a dark mood. According to a recent Bloomberg.com report, by summer of 2013, tourists looking to stroll down the renowned Champs Elysees will need a flashlight between the hours of 1 a.m. and 7 a.m. French energy and environment minister Delphine Batho said the proposal to turn out the lights in and outside public buildings, offices and shops will apply to all French cities, villages, and towns.
The purpose is to save energy and money, and show “sobriety,” Batho said. The move is part of efforts to boost France's energy efficiency by 20 percent by 2020. French court rejects 75 percent millionaires' tax. Immigrants protest loss of free health care in Spain. Hundreds of people protested in downtown Madrid Saturday against a measure that will leave undocumented immigrants without access to free health care, saying the decision by Spain's governing Popular Party amounts to "health apartheid. " The demonstrators cried out against Saturday's enactment of a measure that will strip the more than 150,000 illegal immigrants in Spain of their national health cards. It was included in a government decree imposing urgent savings measures to safeguard the future of public health care amid a severe financial crisis and an unemployment rate of nearly 25 percent. Some 30 organizations and civil society groups, immigrant and refugee associations and defenders of human rights, grouped as the Network for the Right to Have Rights, rallied in front of Madrid's Gregorio Marañon Hospital.
"We'll die if they don't treat us; the government has to correct what it did, it can't leave us to our fate because we have no money to pay for treatment," the young man told Efe. Nazi Olympic Village Remains Abandoned 76 Years Later (PHOTOS) The London Olympics begin in just under a month and city officials already have a detailed plan for what will become of the new stadiums and villages post-Games. This stress on responsible development has been a hallmark of the modern games, but wasn't always the prevailing mindset.
On the western edge of Berlin sits the remains of the 1936 Olympic site, where Jesse Owens won four gold medals to the chagrin of noted race theorist, maniac and dictator Adolf Hitler. Though it was once the pride of Germany, the site has since fallen into disrepair. One man is trying to save this piece of his country's fraught Olympic past from the historical scrapheap. Sven Voege plans to rent out some of the former Village sites as exhibition spaces. "It is a shame," says Voege. These images, showing what remains of the 1936 Olympic site, including Jesse Owens' room, make a strong argument not only for planning ahead London-style, but for confronting the past in service of the future. Merkel tells Greece to back cuts or face euro exit. Sweden’s secret recipe. When Europe’s finance ministers meet for a group photo, it’s easy to spot the rebel — Anders Borg has a ponytail and earring.
What actually marks him out, though, is how he responded to the crash. While most countries in Europe borrowed massively, Borg did not. Since becoming Sweden’s finance minister, his mission has been to pare back government. His ‘stimulus’ was a permanent tax cut. To critics, this was fiscal lunacy — the so-called ‘punk tax cutting’ agenda. Three years on, it’s pretty clear who was right. All this has taken Borg from curiosity to celebrity.
‘Everybody was told “stimulus, stimulus, stimulus”,’ he says — referring to the EU, IMF and the alphabet soup of agencies urging a global, debt-fuelled spending splurge. He continued to cut taxes and cut welfare-spending to pay for it; he even cut property taxes for the rich to lure entrepreneurs back to Sweden. But they were not rich, I say, when they were starting out. What can we learn from .. Sweden? | Nealz Nuze. If you listen to the Democrats and Caesar Obammus, more government spending seems to be their only solution to our economic woes. We need to spend more! This Keynesian economic theory is similar to what European welfare countries have been saying. Most of them took a similar route to the United States in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis: They spent spent spent in order to “stimulate,” and all they ended up doing what racking up more debt with little “stimulation” to show for it.
But there was one country that decided to take the opposite route: Sweden. While most countries in Europe borrowed massively, Anders Borg did not. Imagine that! He continued to cut taxes and cut welfare-spending to pay for it; he even cut property taxes for the rich to lure entrepreneurs back to Sweden. Isn’t it nice to have a leader who understands the driving force behind a growing economy? Here’s what happens when you have an economist, or someone who knows what drives an economy, running a nation. Greek exit. Spain is Downgraded. Austerity is not bad. Greek government odyssey: Leftists reject coalition. World News: Greek election: Conservatives win election, vow to keep Greece in the eurozone. ATHENS—Greece’s conservative party will get another chance to form a government after a narrow election victory Sunday over the anti-austerity leftist coalition that had spooked world leaders and financial markets. New Democracy’s win will reassure investors, and Greeks, who worried that a government headed by the Coalition of the Radical Left would force Greece out of the European common currency and set off a chain reaction that would devastate other vulnerable countries on the debt-ridden continent.
The New Democracy leader, Antonis Samaras, has promised to negotiate a friendlier bailout agreement but not to unilaterally annul the current harsh terms — as the left had pledged. He ran a largely negative campaign that successfully played on fears of the consequences of a victory for the inexperienced and hard-line leftists. “We have to abide by European principles. “Now they cannot go on with (bailout) memoranda and they know it, both in Greece and Brussels.
“We didn’t want to. 'Pro-bailout parties win majority in Gre... JPost - International. Political parties supporting austerity measures will be able to form a slim coalition government in Greece, according to early exit polls from the elections released on Sunday night. Several polls predicted New Democracy, a center-right party, won the election, receiving between 28.6 to 30 percent of the vote, while SYRIZA, a far-left coalition, came a close second garnering between 27-29%. PASOK, the center-left party expected to be New Democracy’s ally in implementing austerity measures imposed by the European Union, received between 11- 12.5% of the popular vote. Golden Dawn, a far-right party whose leader denied the Holocaust, received around 7%, roughly the same as the last elections in May. Because of a 50-seat bonus given to the party which comes in first, that predicted result would give New Democracy and PASOK a projected 159 seats in the 300- seat parliament, in an alliance committed to a 130 billion euro ($164 billion) EU/IMF bailout keeping the country from bankruptcy.
How a Greek politician’s $25,000 curtain rods has fuelled voter anger. ATHENS- Scandalous details of the lavish life of a former minister who spent 20,000 euros on curtain rods while cash-strapped Greeks buckled under tax hikes and wage cuts have driven anger against the establishment to boiling point before Sunday’s election. Akis Tsohatzopoulos, 72, a once-powerful Socialist arrested on charges of taking bribes and evading taxes, has become a symbol of the corruption that has bedevilled Greece in the 38 years of rule by the Socialist PASOK and the conservative New Democracy, the two parties backing the country’s bailout by international lenders. The affair has become a symbol of the injustice felt by ordinary Greeks, who have seen pensions cut and wages plunge by a quarter last year while their wealthy compatriots still enjoy their yachts and fancy restaurants, seemingly immune to the cuts that have pushed many into poverty and even suicide.
“There’s no way I will vote for either New Democracy or PASOK.” “I only see poorer Greeks struggling ... While the G20 leaders fiddle, Greece burns. Who works the longest hours in all of Europe? According to the latest survey from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, it’s the workers of Greece. Let’s remember that as we reflect on the momentous Greek elections on Sunday. As uncertain as those election results may be, we can be certain it will be the workers of Greece — not the country’s corrupt political and business elites — who will be most painfully affected as Greece’s political turmoil turns into a full-scale humanitarian crisis. First Greece, then Spain, perhaps Italy next — the deepening European disarray is gradually shredding the credibility and popularity of the world’s leaders.
Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose tough stand against Greece was initially lauded by the German public, is the target of increasing criticism. As Germany’s influential Der Spiegel news magazine put it this week in a commentary: “Is it one minute to midnight in Europe?. . . Hollande’s victory in France is a vote for growth. BRUSSELS—Rarely has an election resonated so widely across the European Union as the French presidential ballot has done. Rarely has a leadership change in one EU member state created expectations of a real policy shift. François Hollande’s victory is a fresh chance for Europe. It should spell the end of a policy oriented exclusively toward austerity, which has paralyzed our economies and divided the EU. The new French president’s commitment to a European growth policy has brought hope to citizens, and should not alarm anyone — certainly not the financial markets.
Hollande’s plans for a growth initiative fall on fertile ground, especially in the European Parliament, which has repeatedly called for such measures. I am delighted that this message is increasingly echoed by the political mainstream, including most recently by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi.
Likewise, the European Commission is working on a “growth pact” to be discussed by EU leaders in June. Socialists win French parliament race. PARIS—French President Francois Hollande’s Socialist Party won a solid majority in parliamentary elections Sunday, polling agencies projected, fortifying Hollande in his push for governments to spend money — not cut budgets — to tackle Europe’s economic crisis. Former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservatives, who dominated the outgoing National Assembly, suffered a stinging loss, according to all estimations.
Meanwhile, the far-right National Front party was on track to win a small but symbolically important presence in parliament for the first time in years. “This new, solid and large majority will allow us now to pass laws for change, and gives us great responsibilities in France and in Europe,” Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on France-2 television as the results started coming in. Elections in France and Greece on Sunday will weigh on Europe’s future and whether its debt troubles will hobble markets and economies across the globe. Greek Elections May Force Euro Withdrawal. Come with me through 117 pages of euphemisms, bureaucracy, and mayhem. Oops, April 15th… Why do they call it a tax “return”? The cable company doesn’t call its bill a “waste-of-time return.” Or is the IRS saying that, since government prints the money, we’re supposed to return it to where it came from?
Anyway… Got up bright and early this morning—by freelance-writer standards—around 10:30 AM. Freelance Writer, Let Me Point Out Some Further IRS Abuses of the English Language… I have a file cabinet. At least no tipping is expected. Googled “File Income Tax”… Found a lot of ads offering to do this for free. Scrolled Down… Until I came to irs.gov/Filing, which I take to be the real thing. Clicked… And got a page with the IRS logo. I’m easily distracted when doing my taxes, aren’t you? Page with Crest Was Titled… “Do I Need to File a Tax Return?” Had thought there was a law about that. The IRS wanted me to answer some questions. Clicked Some More… Got “Your Rights as a Taxpayer.” Address Is Requested…