Extensively refurbished by its UK-based Irish owner, this home had been on the market last year priced at just over €1m.

Some 21 of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram Islamic extremists more than two years ago have been freed in negotiations, officials said.

No country that wants to benefit from the European project has been able to have its cake and eat it, as the examples of Norway and Switzerland show, writes Daniel Gros

Trafigura disclosed $4.3bn (€3.98bn) in oil-related payments to governments in 2013, as part of increased transparency by the third-largest independent oil trader.

THE suggestion that the EU might introduce tougher car emissions tests in the wake of the Volkswagen rigging scandal will undoubtedly provoke the usual protests from the usual free-market interest groups. 

While various organisations such as the US Department of Justice and the Swiss government launch investigations into financial irregularities in FIFA, the true cost of football corruption should be measured not in dollars but in dead bodies.

SOME people talk to their house plants and, even if you don’t, you would probably describe a geranium that’s wilting as ‘not looking happy’. 

Switzerland has proposed two draft laws that would effectively get rid of bank secrecy for offshore accounts and allow the automatic exchange of an account-holder’s information with foreign tax authorities.

A Swiss hostage has escaped from Abu Sayyaf extremists after more than two years of jungle captivity in the southern Philippines, officials have said.

Monaco, the tax haven on the French Riviera, is experiencing a luxury-housing boom that includes the world’s most expensive penthouse, as developers prepare for an influx of millionaires and billionaires escaping higher taxes or a loss of banking privacy.

Fugitive Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych is pledging to fight on for his country’s future.

Switzerland’s defence minister said it was “unthinkable” that his country’s accords with the EU would be terminated as result of a referendum to curb immigration, saying threats of retaliation by the bloc were overblown.

Shock new Swiss laws that target immigration are a cause for concern, writes Kyran Fitzgerald.

Governments would automatically share information on taxpayers’ offshore bank and brokerage accounts with foreign tax authorities, under a draft agreement published yesterday by the OECD.

Voters in Switzerland have narrowly backed a proposal to limit immigration to the country.

A 65-year-old woman and her son have been arrested after police suspected they were planning to take her husband to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland to commit suicide, sources said.

The Swiss government has decided to reimpose quotas on immigrants from Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and five other Central and Eastern European nations.

IF European leaders cannot find agreement in the discord, the euro will not have a future.

Two years ago, police in Zurich, Switzerland, led Roman Polanski away to prison - but the Oscar-winning director returned last night to a very different reception in the city.

The Swiss government says it has extended an asset freeze for senior Syrian officials to include the country’s president Bashar Assad.

DOMINIQUE Strauss-Kahn has been released from a New York City jail. The former head of the International Monetary Fund posted $1 million cash and a $5m bond yesterday.

Syria’s president has said his security forces made mistakes during the uprising against his regime, blaming poorly-trained police officers for a crackdown that has killed more than 850 people in two months.

Two people have been injured when a letter bomb exploded at an office of the Swiss nuclear power industry in the northern city of Olten.

The Swiss government has frozen any assets belonging to former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak or his family in Switzerland.

President George W Bush has cancelled a visit to Switzerland amid concerns he could be arrested.

A SMALL blast shattered two windows but caused no injuries at a hotel used by top business and political leaders attending the World Economic Forum, Swiss police said yesterday.

The return of exiled dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier to Haiti increases the chance of his being charged with atrocities during his rule, UN human rights officials said today.

Three Swiss engineers suspected of giving nuclear weapons technology to a rogue network in Pakistan should face smuggling charges, a magistrate said today.

The Swiss government has rejected calls to ban assisted suicide groups such as Dignitas but will propose rules to restrict their work.

Roman Polanski made his first public appearance since being released this week from house arrest, attending the Montreux Jazz Festival to watch his wife perform on stage.

The district attorney prosecuting Roman Polanski in Los Angeles has blasted the Swiss government’s refusal to extradite the director.

THE Swiss government declared renowned film director Roman Polanski a free man yesterday after rejecting a US request to extradite him on a charge of having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl.

Los Angeles prosecutors have met a British actress who claims she was sexually abused by director Roman Polanski when she was 16 - years before she appeared in one of his films.

Roman Polanski's attorneys argued in US court filings that the Swiss government should not automatically assume an extradition request by Los Angeles prosecutors is accurate.

BACK during the Cold War period, senior members of the Swiss government bought a west Cork bolt-hole at Liss Ard, near Tragumna.

The UN today attacked Switzerland’s ban on building minarets as “clearly discriminatory” and deeply divisive.

Switzerland was at the forefront of a European backlash against a growing Muslim population today after voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional ban on minarets.

Swiss voters are deciding in a referendum today whether to accept a ban on the construction of minarets, which right-wing parties regard as symbols of militant Islam.

A SWISS court granted Roman Polanski bail yesterday, accepting $4.5 million (€3m) to allow him remain under house arrest at his chalet. The director will stay in prison for up to 10 days while the Swiss government decides whether to appeal.

The US has formally requested the extradition of imprisoned director Roman Polanski for having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl, the Swiss government said today.

Switzerland has expanded its borders at Italy’s expense because of melting glaciers in the high Alps.

AN Australian judge ruled yesterday that a quadriplegic man who says he cannot “undertake any basic human functions” has the right to direct a nursing home to stop feeding him and allow him to die.