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That standard calls on jurisdictions to obtain information from their financial institutions and automatically exchange that information with other jurisdictions on an annual basis.
Apart from sticks, European countries must also use carrots in a co-ordinated manner.
They should offer a time limited tax amnesty to all funds repatriated to its member states from tax havens.
Overseas countries that drop their tax evading regimes should be rewarded through preferential trade and investment terms. Whistle blowers and all parties revealing off-shore fraud should also be rewarded in a generous manner.
The actions proposed above might seem politically difficult, but might also prove a boon for the ones who would realise them.
They could appeal to voters on the left, who are appalled by corporate greed, and also voters on the right who wish a stronger reaction against crime and corruption.
They could further ensure additional public revenues to be allocated for social policies and public investments. In the bigger picture, they could help to reverse the tide of populism, anti-elitism and euroscepticism which has swept our continent.
Are art 'freeports' tip of EU tax avoidance iceberg?
The EU's tax haven blacklist - impressive or impotent?
MEPs have raised concerns about the risks presented by Le Freeport, a 22,000 square meter high-security facility located near Luxembourg airport, where goods can be stored with confidentiality - and without being taxed.
One year ago, the European Union published its first ever blacklist of tax havens. It is crucial that EU governments help end the era of tax havens to ensure the billions currently hidden from public coffers.
Del. Heather Mizeur's decision to accept public financing for her gubernatorial campaign may be a transparent attempt to turn what is likely to be a massive fundraising deficit into some shred of advantage. So what? By being the first candidate since 1994 to do so, she breathes some life into a system that had seemed all but dead and gives some real momentum to efforts to make public financing more broadly available state-wide.
Ms. Mizeur has styled her campaign as something of a giant public service project, and this may be the ultimate manifestation of that. If she can make a decent showing in the Democratic primary — much less win — while likely being outspent by as much as 4-1 by each of her two main rivals, the entire conversation around public campaign financing in Maryland will change.
Delegate Mizeur made the announcement as part of her roll-out of a broader set of proposals for campaign finance reform. The most important of them is extending the public financing system, which is now only available to gubernatorial candidates, to all those who seek state offices. The rest of her proposals are intriguing, but they may be obviated to some degree by existing reforms the General Assembly passed this year.
Among the most important reforms was the tightening of a loophole that allowed the owners of related limited liability corporations (mostly developers) to give separately from each entity, thus avoiding donation caps. The legislation limited the activities of campaign slates, which had allowed some politicians to play kingmaker, and required heightened disclosure of contributions by companies that do business with the state. The new laws go into effect after the 2014 election.
Ms. Mizeur wants to go farther by banning donations altogether from corporations and from the top executives of companies that do business with the state. Determining whether that step will be necessary will have to wait until the existing reforms have had a chance to work. Ultimately, it will likely depend on how well the state Board of Elections wields the enhanced enforcement powers the new law gives it.
But her proposal to expand Maryland's public campaign financing system to cover all state-wide candidates is unquestionably an advance. Public financing was part of the discussion during the crafting of this year's reform legislation, but there wasn't sufficient support for it in the legislature. Rather than give up the idea entirely, proponents — including Delegate George — pushed for the law to give local jurisdictions the authority to establish their own public financing systems as a sort of a pilot project. So far, Montgomery and Howard counties are pursuing the idea.
Delegate Mizeur's plan is similar to ones that have been proposed in recent years by Sen. Paul Pinsky and others. Candidates who agree to certain conditions, such as limiting the contributions they receive to $250, would get matching funds from the state. Gubernatorial candidates would be eligible to receive up to $4 million, and candidates for attorney general, comptroller, state Senate and House of Delegates would be eligible for less. Ms. Mizeur estimates that such a system would cost about $10 million a year, which she proposes to finance through a new surcharge on district court fines.
Discomfort at the idea of spending taxpayers money to fund election campaigns has been one of the chief stumbling blocks for public financing legislation in the past. But taxpayers would certainly consider it a small price to pay to ensure that elected officials are not beholden, consciously or subconsciously, to those who fund their campaigns. The legislature's new reforms are a major advance, but without giving candidates the option of public financing, they fall short of securing the public's trust.
94 percent in the same week last year. Attendance in the first week of the month was 92.4 percent, which is lower than the 94.5 percent in the comparable week of 2008.
About 20 to 30 students districtwide have been sent home each day in the past two weeks with flu-like symptoms, he said. That number appears to have leveled off and remains a relatively small percentage in the 19,000-student district.
Fiedler said the district is hearing about students and staff members suffering from cold symptoms, as well.
The absentee rate at Poudre School District in Fort Collins was greater than 20 percent earlier this week and more than 500 people with flu symptoms visited the Colorado State University health center on Wednesday, according to published reports. The University of Colorado-Boulder, meanwhile, reports seeing 446 cases of suspected H1N1 flu since Aug. 1.
Gaye Morrison, spokeswoman for the Weld County Department of Public Health and Environment, said Weld has had 15 hospitalized cases of flu since Aug. 1. Because it is not time for the seasonal flu, the cases have been presumed to be H1N1. The illnesses have been spread around the county and have affected people between the ages of 1 to 58.
Morrison said county officials have heard the vaccine for H1N1 could arrive around mid-October. Once the availability is known – determined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the state health department – vaccination clinics will be announced, prioritizing pregnant women, elementary schoolchildren and day care providers since they are among the most vulnerable groups to the flu.
Health officials say the best way to respond to H1N1 flu is the same as seasonal flu: Stay home, rest, hydrate and wash hands frequently and cover coughs so as not to spread the virus. People with existing health problems or chronic conditions such as heart and lung disease or a compromised immune system, and pregnant women should pay particular attention to their symptoms.
Sara Quale, spokeswoman for North Colorado Medical Center in Greeley, said the hospital is seeing 15 to 30 people a day with flu-like symptoms. A dozen people are hospitalized at NCMC with probable H1N1 flu.
The hospital is not setting up any alternative care site for people with flu symptoms, Quale said. However, in the emergency department waiting room, people with flu-like symptoms are being asked to sit in an area separate from other ER visitors.
“The bottom line is to make sure that patients aren’t exposed to flu-like symptoms, but also to make sure that people that have flu-like symptoms get the treatment that they need,” Quale said.
Kroger is looking to work with more local brands.
Under Amazon, Whole Foods is scaling back a similar initiative.
Beginning next year, Whole Foods will reportedly no longer allow brand representatives to promote their products in its stores, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Shoppers at a Kroger supermarket in Peoria, Ill.
Kroger is now making it a priority to partner with local brands at its supermarket stores across the U.S., right as Amazon-owned Whole Foods prepares to step back similar efforts.
Just last week, Kroger announced plans to roll out a website aimed at luring more local brands to its stores.
Currently, Kroger sources from thousands of local suppliers, but it's looking to grow that number, according to Mike Donnelly, Kroger's executive vice president of merchandising and procurement.
Kroger, which owns other supermarkets including Ralphs and Harris Teeter, is now inviting local vendors to join its team. Kroger's new website reads: "Kroger Loves Local" and "We Are Local."
Food sampling and in-store education about local brands will continue to be a part of the Kroger shopping experience, a Kroger spokeswoman told CNBC. The chain also wants to grow the dialogue around shopping and eating local.
Retail rival Whole Foods is meantime looking to follow a different strategy, simplifying operations and cutting back on some local initiatives. Beginning next year, the organic supermarket chain will reportedly no longer allow brand representatives to promote their products, nor can they check stores to make sure items are stocked and displayed correctly, according to The Wall Street Journal.
It's long been the norm for local brands to set up tables throughout Whole Foods stores during peak selling hours, offering samples and educating shoppers on niche items. It's served as a way for smaller brand names to market themselves, when they might not be noticed on a shelf at first glance.
"Whole Foods once found a way for local brands to have a great American story come to life ... [they] allowed brands to come into aisles, to tell their stories," Mike McDevitt, CEO of Baltimore-based meal-kit company Terra's Kitchen, told CNBC.
"While it's great to hear that the doors of Kroger are being open [to local brands] now, they're probably going to be cracked open, not wide open," McDevitt said. Whole Foods, he said, was becoming too difficult to manage from a national, profit-driven perspective.
"All Whole Foods Market stores will continue to sell local products, and our buyers remain committed to discovering and incubating local and innovative brands," Whole Foods spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan told CNBC in a statement.
Whole Foods will also begin to centralize its decision-making regarding brands' product assortment, the Journal reported.
Instead of allowing brands to pitch their products on a local scale, for example, Whole Foods' top executives will choose a higher percentage of the inventory moving forward, the publication said, citing conversations between Whole Foods and third-party brand representatives during a series of recent closed-door meetings.
A Whole Foods spokeswoman had told the Journal that "having brand advocates in stores is distracting to employees and inefficient." The new system, she told the publication, aims to cut costs and take a "national approach."
Time will tell if Whole Foods shoppers agree — or even notice — Amazon's push to nationalize the chain.
A study by location intelligence company Foursquare found a 25 percent increase in foot traffic at Whole Foods stores over the first two days, Aug. 28 and 29, that the company was owned by Amazon.
Since then, though, traffic has dropped off, Foursquare told CNBC in a follow-up study. In its second week under Amazon's wings, from Sept. 4 to Sept. 10, traffic was only up about 8 percent when compared with an "average" week in August 2017.
To be sure, Kroger has taken a beating ever since the Amazon-Whole Foods deal was announced in mid-June. Its stock is down more than 40 percent in 2017 alone.
Yet, Kroger isn't giving up without a fight, recently announcing new initiatives like its plans to open a "comfort food" restaurant, called Kitchen 1883, at a store near its corporate headquarters in Cincinnati.
Kroger is also growing its meal kits business, which it calls Prep+Pared. The company has been adding the kits to additional Kroger stores this month. Just last week, grocery chain Albertsons announced it would acquire meal kits business Plated, sending Blue Apron shares higher on speculation that there's hope for that sector after all.
"Kroger is making a wise move strategically in reaching out to local and emerging brands as the number of such brands are growing, and consumers are interested in having access to such brands," Brittain Ladd, a retail strategy, supply chain and logistics consultant, told CNBC.
"Kroger continues to prove they're the best grocery retailer in the United States, and they will continue to fight for their customers and brands," Ladd added. "Amazon has no choice but to implement strategies that will increase operational efficiencies."
JPMorgan Chase is considering relaunching its blockchain tech Quorum project as as a standalone company, according to sources interviewed by the Financial Times and Reuters.
Quorum is an Ethereum-based, private, and permissioned blockchain platform developed by JPMorgan in 2016, and was designed both to streamline the bank's internal operations (such as clearing and settlement and cross-border payments), and for interbank use on Wall Street and beyond. The plans are still in very early stages, the sources stated, and the bank hasn't confirmed the news.
It now seems that Quorum has hit a wall regarding interbank adoption. The bank wanted Quorum to become the blockchain "standard of Wall Street," the sources said, but low adoption by other institutions has foiled the project's ambitions of forming a network effect, or adoption among a wide network of industry participants, which is essential for a distributed ledger to be useful. Now, the bank is considering relaunching the platform as an independent company with the belief that, if a powerful competitor's brand isn't attached to the solution, other banks will be more willing to use the technology, according to the sources.
This is the latest manifestation of a broader tension between the need for network effects and competition between big banks. We have already seen a group of Europe's biggest banks, including Deutsche Bank, HSBC, and Societe Generale, relaunch their distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform for cross-border trade as we.trade, an independent company, to make it easier to sell to third parties. Another incumbent pursuing a similar rebranding strategy highlights the conflict the world's biggest banks face in generating a network effect for their DLT products in a competitive and secretive industry.
This suggests that we may see more of banks' independent and collaborative blockchain and DLT offerings undergoing similar transformations.
LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) - A former Social Security Administration judge has pleaded guilty to taking more than $600,000 in bribes in cases involving clients of a Kentucky lawyer who is facing prison time for a scheme to defraud the government of nearly $600 million in disability payments.
The Lexington Herald-Leader (https://bit.ly/2ptTcjO ) reports 81-year-old David Black Daugherty pleaded guilty Friday in federal court in Lexington to two counts of taking illegal gratuities. Daugherty agreed to pay the government $609,000 as part of his plea.
Daugherty faces a maximum sentence of four years. Sentencing is scheduled for August.
The case involved thousands of clients of Eric C. Conn, who has also pleaded guilty. He is scheduled to be sentenced in July and faces 12 years in prison. Conn has agreed to pay $5.7 million to the government and pay $46.5 million to the Social Security Administration.
Is it safe for Iraqi refugees to go home and if not, who should be offering them shelter?
"Leave or face destitution and deportation." That is the message being given to more than 1,400 Iraqi asylum seekers residing in the UK.
On Friday, the UK tried to forcibly repatriate about 40 of those Iraqis but after landing in Baghdad, the Iraqi government sent around 30 of them back.
This latest incident highlights the increasingly precarious position of Iraqi refugees in Europe.
Earlier this summer, Iraqi asylum seekers in Copenhagen were violently removed from a church and placed in detention.
In Greece, Iraqi refugees are routinely rounded up and secretly pushed back across the Greek border.
Sweden, which used to be the most generous country towards asylum seekers, is now beginning to deport its Iraqi refugees.
For the Iraqis, the majority of which come from minority groups, they say going back to Iraq is a certain death sentence.
On Monday's Riz Khan we ask: Is it safe for Iraqi refugees to return to their home country and if not, who should be offering them shelter?
To discuss this, Kirk Johnson, the founder and director of The List: Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies and Dashty Jamal, the secretary of the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees join the programme.
This episode of the Riz Khan show aired on Monday, October 19, 2009.
Ten girls' basketball teams will play over the next four days aiming to win the title of the 2013 Larry Doyle Orange County Championships tournament.
The annual late-December event is co-hosted by Marina and Edison. Thursday and Friday pool-play games will be held at the Marina gym. The tournament shifts to Edison for games Saturday and placement games next Monday .
"I'm excited about the upcoming Larry Doyle O.C. Championships," Marina Coach Carol Osbrink said. "This year's lineup is very competitive and the tournament promises to showcase some excellent match-ups."
The tournament is named in honor of the former Marina boys' and girls' athletic director who also was game announcer, timer and statistician, at Vikings basketball games. Doyle died of cancer in the spring of 1999.
Pool A: Orange Lutheran, San Ramon, Marina, Yorba Linda.
Pool B: Clovis, Edison, Aliso Niguel.
Pool C: Redondo Union, Warren, North Torrance.
The Oilers completed play Saturday at the Arizona Nike Tournament Saturday, and finished in fourth place at the four-day event.
Huntington opened the tournament Dec. 18 and defeated Boulder Creek (Ariz.), 44-25, behind senior guard Paola Roa's 14 points. The Oilers dropped their final two games at the tourney, losing close games to Colorado Castle View (45-41), and Sacramento West Campus (44-41).
The Oilers, tied for No. 4 in the CIF Southern Section Division 1A poll, take on Mission Viejo in a first-round game Thursday (7:30 p.m.) at the Costa Mesa Tournament. The tournament continues Friday and Saturday, and concludes Monday.
The Chargers, in Hawaii for the Maui Invitational, reached the tourney's title game. The score from Monday's final wasn't available at press time.
Edison is ranked No. 8 in CIF Southern Section Division 1A.
The Barons were in Orlando, Fla., last week for the KSA Tournament. They finished 2-2 and completed play at the Walt Disney World Sports Complex Saturday by defeating Pennsylvania Fleetwood, 68-49. Senior guard Jordan Venters had a game-high 20 points and senior guard Richard Le had 15 in the win.
"The tournament was a good experience for us, playing teams from Pennsylvania, New York, Florida and Oklahoma," Fountain Valley Coach Roger Holmes said. "We are a work in progress, gaining experience with each game."
The Barons, 6-8 overall, have lost four games by a total of 11 points.
Fountain Valley played a nonleague game Tuesday against Westminster. The score wasn't available at press time. The Barons return to play Jan. 6, hosting Segerstrom in a 7 p.m nonleague game.
The Vikings completed a week of action Saturday at the La Canada Holiday Classic, where they dropped their final game, 55-49, to West Covina South Hills. Junior guard Greg Fronek scored 13 points and senior forward Matt Dispenza and sophomore guard Braden Meyers had nine and eight points, respectively.
Marina (3-7) previously defeated Glendale, 67-57, in tourney action Friday. Fronek hit all five of his three-point shots and finished with 19 points. Junior guard Jeff Feit and senior guard Derek Mallard each scored 10 points.
"I like that we are playing good teams in the preseason," Marina Coach Nick Racklin said. "We are in every game, just giving away one bad quarter, or half of a quarter, and that's it. We have to find ways to close out games and realize how important the little things are to winning.
The Vikings take on Burbank on the opening day Thursday of the Orange Holiday Classic which runs through next Monday.
The Seahawks took fifth place at the Loatella Tournament and capped their tourney run with a 59-53 win Saturday over Anaheim. Senior guard Alex Merdjanian scored 19 points to go with 12 rebounds and went on to be named all-tournament.
Ocean View advanced to the fifth-place game by defeating Westminster La Quinta, 63-40, Friday. Senior guard Evan Bunin poured in 18 points and grabbed 17 rebounds in the win.
"Top to bottom, we are getting better, and it is really showing in our guard play," said Ocean View Coach Tim Walsh whose team improved to 4-5 overall. "Angel Nieves continues to play well, and Alex [Merdjanian] and Evan [Bunin] are learning from their experiences and taking big steps forward."
Ocean View, ranked No. 9 in CIF Southern Section Division 3A, will play in the 24th annual Torrey Pines Holiday Classic, which starts Thursday and runs through Monday. The Seahawks open at 2:15 p.m. Thursday against South Gate.
The Warriors came away with a third-place finish at the Loatella Tournament Saturday after turning back co-host Katella, 64-55.
In the finale, sophomore forward Cameron Griffin led the way with 27 points. Senior guard Caleb Keller scored 15 points and junior guard Brandon Bryson had nine points, eight assists, and four steals.

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