Geneva - The United Nations top rights official, Navi Pillay, issued a call Friday denouncing racial discrimination, ahead of an event marking the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa nearly five decades ago.
"Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance are insidious, corrosive and sometimes explosive forces that devastate the lives of many individuals and, if left to fester, can undermine societies as a whole," said Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Right.
Geneva - Switzerland saw double-digit drops last month in its exports, a backbone of the economy, statistics released Thursday showed.
Exports declined to just over 14 billion Swiss francs (12.5 billion dollars), a 16.3 per cent drop in real terms, while imports fell 6.7 per cent, bringing the trade surplus to 731 million francs.
While all sectors saw declines, the metals industry was hit hardest and its exports fell over 36 per cent while textiles experienced a drop of 30 per cent.
Zurich - The Swiss bank UBS said Thursday it has made a tender offer worth up to 1 billion euros (1.34 billion dollars) to buy back bonds in an attempt to raise its Tier 1 regulatory capital ratio.
The offer pertains to four lower tier 2 bonds with maturity dates between November 2015 and September 2019 and a notional value of around 7 billion Swiss francs (6.15 billion dollars).
The bank said in a statement that the bonds were currently trading at a significant discount to their original issuance price.
Tier 1 capital ratio is a regulatory measure of a bank's financial stamina.
Geneva - A new shortened draft declaration for an upcoming UN conference on racism which deletes direct references to Israel may be enough to woo back countries threatening to boycott the summit, officials hoped on Wednesday.
Both Israel and the US left the previous summit, in Durban in 2001, over criticisms of Israel, and Israel and Canada were threatening to boycott the upcoming conference in Geneva over the same issue.
Bern - Revised government figures for 2009 released Tuesday showed that Switzerland's economy would shrink by 2.2 per cent and the recession would be significantly worse than had been envisaged.
Previous statistics by the Swiss Economic Ministry had predicted a contraction of 0.8 per cent.
The latest forecast said that if there was an easing of the global financial crisis, Switzerland could see slightly positive growth of 0.1 per cent in 2010, even as the labour market would continue to deteriorate.
Zurich - During 2008, 240,500 people were killed by natural and man-made disasters and it one of the "costliest catastrophe years" ever for insurance companies, a study showed Tuesday.
The research done for Swiss Re, the re-insurer, said there were 311 "catastrophic events" last year, of which 137 were considered natural disasters. The total direct damage to the world economy was estimated to stand at 269 billion dollars.
Geneva - The United Nations top rights official, Navi Pillay, issued a call Friday denouncing racial discrimination, ahead of an event marking the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa nearly five decades ago.
Geneva - Switzerland saw double-digit drops last month in its exports, a backbone of the economy, statistics released Thursday showed.
Zurich - The Swiss bank UBS said Thursday it has made a tender offer worth up to 1 billion euros (1.34 billion dollars) to buy back bonds in an attempt to raise its Tier 1 regulatory capital ratio.
Geneva - A new shortened draft declaration for an upcoming UN conference on racism which deletes direct references to Israel may be enough to woo back countries threatening to boycott the summit, officials hoped on Wednesday.
Bern - Revised government figures for 2009 released Tuesday showed that Switzerland's economy would shrink by 2.2 per cent and the recession would be significantly worse than had been envisaged.
