In Greece, hiding a little from the taxman is considered good sport, so the government, struggling with a debt crisis is shaking international markets, is firing every weapon in its arsenal to crack down on rampant tax evasion.

A snapshot of the Greek capital’s northern suburbs, where the Athenian nouveau riche have built big swimming pools as status symbols, revealed about half of them had not been declared to tax authorities.

View Larger MapSuch luxuries, along with big cars and yachts, are considered “objective criteria” of high income and authorities tax accordingly regardless of declared income. But tax dodgers quickly fought back. On the Trelo Kouneli blog, visitors exchanged advice on how to dodge the tax man. They included “Put an army net over it”, “Paint the tiles green so it looks like grass” and “Hack Google maps”.

The Socialist government faces an admittedly tough task. To climb out of the debt crisis, it must impose tough belt-tightening measures on a public that has seen politicians and businessmen get rich off the state for decades. It was no wonder that Prime Minister George Papandreou sacked his tourism minister this week after press
revelations her singer husband owed 5.5 million euros in taxes and penalties. Blogs went wild with calls to stop paying taxes unless authorities stepped in.

Opinion polls and street violence indicate people will resist austerity unless social justice is done, until blatant tax evaders and those involved in a long string of scandals are thrown in jail.

Given the widespread impression that the big fish never get caught, many Greeks don’t think it’s unethical to hide a little income from a state which gives very little back. At most state hospitals and other public services, citizens regularly get unsmiling, slow service and bureaucracy for their money. Most Greeks pay a “tip”, also known as “fast-stamp” and “little envelope” to get things done.

Doctors, plumbers and electricians are notorious for not giving receipts. In an recent crackdown, the government published this month the names of 69 tax-cheating doctors in the upscale Kolonaki area, saying they face fines and prosecution.

To propel tax payers to demand receipts, the finance ministry has given tax incentives to those submitting stacks of the little pieces of paper to authorities.

The ministry says the measure is already paying off, boosting central government revenues in the first months of the year. But perhaps not as much as it could. Ingenious Greeks may have found a way around that as well. Those who don’t need a big pile, offer them to others and some shops collect those left behind by clients to give as a bonus to regular customers.
“Here’s some extra receipts,” my regular hair dresser told me after a haircut last week, extending a handful. “I put them together for you so it looks like you come here once a week.”

Solicitors Griffin Law sought the injunction against the micro-blog page www.twitter.com/blaneysblarney arguing it was impersonating right-wing blogger Donal Blaney, the owner of Griffin Law.

The legal first could have widespread implications for the blogosphere.

“I think this is a landmark decision to issue a writ via Twitter,” said Dr Konstantinos Komaitis of Strathclyde University’s law faculty. “You are creating a precedent that people will be able to refer to. It only takes one litigant to open the path for others to follow,” Komaitis, a lecturer in IT and Telecommunications told Reuters.

“The law tends to be quite cumbersome and slow, so to have a court deliberate on something like Twitter — so hot, so relevant — it shows quite impressive engagement.

Andre Walker at Griffin Law said the anonymous Tweeter targeted by the writ will get a message from the High Court the next time they open their online account.

“Whoever they are, they will be told to stop posting, to remove previous posts and to identify themselves to the High Court via a web link form,” he said.

Matthew Richardson, the barrister who won the injunction, said the ruling was a huge step forward in preventing anonymous abuse of the Internet.

“People have to learn that they can no longer hide behind the cloak of anonymity the Internet provides and break the law with impunity,” he said in a statement.

Online impersonations have become increasingly prevalent following the success of the Twitter website. Leading Tweeters like celebrities Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears have hundreds of Twitter impersonators.

The problem has grown so large that Twitter earlier this year launched a system to verify the authenticity of Tweets. A seal, which appears on the top right of profile pages, is aimed for use on high profile Twitter accounts.

Impersonating people or organizations is contrary to Twitter’s terms of service and Tweeters who do not wish to take out a legal writ over the problem can contact Twitter.

(Editing by Steve Addison)

Natalie Morton, 14, fell ill on Monday after being vaccinated at her school under a national immunization program against the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus (HPV).

She died a few hours later after being admitted to hospital.

“The pathologist has confirmed today at the opening of the inquest into the death of Natalie Morton that she died from a large malignant tumor of unknown origin in the heart and lungs,” said Dr Caron Grainger, joint director of public health for the Coventry area where Natalie died.

“There is no indication that the HPV vaccine, which she had received shortly before her death, was a contributing factor to the death, which could have arisen at any point,” Grainger said in a statement.

In paying tribute to Natalie, her stepfather Andrew Bullock said she was “kind, fun-loving and had a beautiful smile.”

“We will miss her very much,” he told reporters.

The Department of Health said the immunization program was continuing and that to date more than 1.4 million doses of Cervarix have been administered.

Manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline had recalled the batch of vaccine used at the school pending an investigation.

“GSK’s deepest sympathies lie with the parents at this very sad time,” said a spokeswoman on Thursday, adding that she did not want to comment further.

The program to vaccinate girls aged 12 to 13 began in September 2008 to fight cervical cancer, which is the 12th most common women’s cancer in Britain, killing more than 1,000 each year.

News of Morton’s death came shortly before U.S. health regulators again delayed a decision on whether to allow Glaxo to sell Cervarix in the United States where a panel of specialists has recommended its use.

An advisory panel to Japan’s Health Ministry backed the vaccine earlier this week.

Natalie Morton, 14, fell ill on Monday after being
vaccinated at her school under a national immunisation programme
against the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus (HPV).

She died a few hours later after being admitted to hospital.

“The pathologist has confirmed today at the opening of the
inquest into the death of Natalie Morton that she died from a
large malignant tumour of unknown origin in the heart and
lungs,” said Dr Caron Grainger, joint director of public health
for the Coventry area where Natalie died.

“There is no indication that the HPV vaccine, which she had
received shortly before her death, was a contributing factor to
the death, which could have arisen at any point,” Grainger said
in a statement.

In paying tribute to Natalie, her stepfather Andrew Bullock
said she was “kind, fun-loving and had a beautiful smile.”

“We will miss her very much”, he told reporters.

The Department of Health said the immunisation programme
was continuing and that to date more than 1.4 million doses of
Cervarix have been administered.

Manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline <GSK.L> had recalled the batch
of vaccine used at the school pending an investigation.

“GSK’s deepest sympathies lie with the parents at this very
sad time,” said a spokeswoman on Thursday, adding that she did
not want to comment further.

The programme to vaccinate girls aged 12 to 13 began in
September 2008 to fight cervical cancer, which is the 12th most
common women’s cancer in Britain, killing more than 1,000 each
year.

News of Morton’s death came shortly before U.S. health
regulators again delayed a decision on whether to allow Glaxo
to sell Cervarix in the United States where a panel of
specialists has recommended its use. [ID:nN29150932]

An advisory panel to Japan’s Health Ministry backed the
vaccine earlier this week. [ID:nT327756]

(Editing by Steve Addison)

“I think it is unlikely that will be the case … I think once we get into the investigation … we may discover there is another cause of her death,” Dr Caron Grainger, joint director of public health in the area where the 14-year-old girl died, said in an interview with the BBC.

GSK said in a statement that it had voluntarily recalled the batch of vaccine that was used, pending the result of an investigation.

“At this stage the cause of this tragic death is unknown,” the company said.

Police are treating the girl’s death as “unexplained” and said a post-mortem was taking place on Tuesday.

The teenager, named by a police source as Natalie Morton, fell ill on Monday after being vaccinated at her school under a national immunization program against the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus (HPV).

A small number of other girls at the Blue Coat Church of England School reported suffering from dizziness and nausea but were not admitted to hospital, health officials said.

“The message for parents at this moment in time and for young girls receiving this vaccine is that you should go ahead with the vaccination,” said Grainger, who works for the National Health Service in the central English city of Coventry.

News of the death came shortly before U.S. health regulators shelved a bid by Glaxo to sell Cervarix in the United States.

NO PLANS TO HALT PROGRAM

Britain’s Department of Health said there were no plans to halt the program under which more than 1.4 million doses of Cervarix have been administered.

“The vaccine has a strong safety record so precautionary measures are focused on the batch,” it said in a statement.

Grainger said only about 2,000 people had suffered any adverse reactions to the immunization program and that these were mostly minor. GlaxoSmithKline said on Monday it was working with regulators to understand the case better.

Sudden teenage deaths, in general, are not unknown. “Unfortunately, some young people do die suddenly for a variety of reasons, including cardiac causes. Sometimes they have been entirely well before their death,” said Dr David Elliman of London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.

The drug is given in three shots over six months.

The program to vaccinate girls aged 12 to 13 began in September 2008. Cervical cancer is the 12th most common women’s cancer in Britain, killing more than 1,000 women each year.

Should Cervarix gain U.S. approval it would compete with Merck & Co’s Gardasil, which has been on the U.S. market since 2006 and had sales of $268 million in the second quarter.

GlaxoSmithKline won support for its cervical cancer vaccine from an advisory panel to Japan’s Health Ministry on Tuesday, putting it on track to be the first company to offer such a vaccine in the world’s second-biggest drug market.

(Editing by David Stamp and Matthew Lewis)

The flow of foreign militants to Pakistan worries Western governments, which fear the south Asian country has replaced Iraq as the place to go for aspiring Islamists planning attacks on the West.

The camps will probably be smaller and the skills on offer less photogenic to al Qaeda’s online video audience, but that is no deterrent to Arabs, Central Asians and Europeans making their way to the turbulent northwestern tribal areas.

Those arrivals are in addition to a steady flow of Britons of Pakistani descent who have visited the area for many years, security sources say. The assumption among many Western officials is that U.S. success in Iraq since 2006 has diverted some recruits for the anti-Western cause to the Pakistan-Afghan theatre.

While Iraq rarely provided the range of commando-style training available in the 1990s at sprawling al Qaeda camps on the border with Afghanistan, Iraq’s draw as a battlefield in 2003-2006 diverted potential jihadi trainees away from Pakistan.

The goal today for these young men is to fight U.S. forces in neighbouring Afghanistan or to gain the skills to carry out attacks back home in the Middle East, Africa or the West.

Now, porous borders, corrupt officials and inventive smugglers mean a determined foreigner has little problem simply entering Pakistan, experts say, although reaching a camp in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas can be harder due to U.S. drone attacks and tougher security checks by militant groups.

Counter-terrorism experts also say that Somalia and Yemen are also emerging as destinations for aspiring al Qaeda fighters.

The following are a selection of quotes on this topic from security officials and analysts.

Rob Wainwright, Director of the European Union police agency Europol

“We see a pattern which shows Afghanistan and Pakistan seem to have replaced Iraq as preferred destinations for volunteers wishing to engage in armed conflict … We still see that recruits travel to training camps as part of their radicalisation process.

“Those who get training on the Pakistani-Afghan border are from various backgrounds — for example European converts and persons with Arab, North African and Turkish backgrounds.”

“Some of these persons who have been trained in Pakistan were arrested in Europe in connection with cases of attempt of terrorist attacks.”

Brynjar Lia, research professor, Norwegian Defence Research Establishment.

“There is an increased emphasis on Afghanistan and Pakistan as a jihadi arena in al Qaeda’s online propaganda … The appearance of European jihadis in al Qaeda propaganda material, for example martyrdom videos, suggests the numbers are increasing.”

But Pakistan’s “distance from the heart of the Arab world in general, and from Palestine in particular, is a big minus compared to the Iraqi battlefield, according to al Qaeda ideologues.”

Richard Barrett, coordinator of the U.N.’s al Qaeda-Taliban monitoring team.

“Training over the last couple of years has typically taken place in small compounds which you find throughout the area of northwest Pakistan, rather than in large purpose-built camps. I have also heard of it taking place in apartments or houses in places like Karachi. It is hard to spot and quantify.”

Senior Belgian police officer Alain Grignard, quoted by U.S.-based counter-terrorism publication CTC Sentinel.

“Not since before 9/11 have we seen as many people travel towards the Afghanistan-Pakistan conflict region.”

Brian Glyn Williams, Associate Professor of Islamic History at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.

“I’ve seen epitaphs of Kazakhs, Turks, Azerbaijanis, and Uzbekistanis on recent jihadi websites (related to the Afghanistan-Pakistan conflict zone).

British counter-terrorism source

“People are still continuing to go (from Britain). Numbers are hard to judge but it remains a matter of concern.

Drone attacks have had a suppressant effect, making training and communication harder for al Qaeda and linked groups.”

Raphael Perl, Head of the Action Against Terrorism Unit at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

“There’s no question that people are still going and the campaign to recruit people has intensified greatly.

“A small percentage go into active operations immediately. Some are just used for cannon fodder, in that part of Asia. And some of the very capable ones are sent back and told blend into society.”

Jean-Pierre Filiu, associate professor at the Paris Institute of Political Studies.

“The Iraq war bred a new generation of (French-based) jihadis who weren’t involved in violent extremism before … There was the fear of a backlash from people coming back from Iraq, battle-hardened and with new techniques. So the backlash was handled, those people were monitored closely, several networks were dismantled.
“French militants don’t go to Pakistan or Yemen.”

Noman Benotman, Libyan former anti-Soviet fighter in Afghanistan.

“I think the message many Arabs receive from al Qaeda leaders nowadays is – don’t come here (to Pakistan). We don’t need you here: Go to Yemen’.”

“And we have seen a move to Yemen, mainly by Saudis, to strengthen the al Qaeda base there. It represents a big danger.”

Anne Stenersen, the Terrorism Research Group of the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment.

“My general impression is the flow of fighters is definitely not as big as it was in the 1980s, since the situation today is completely different — in the 1980s the jihad against the USSR was more widely accepted, travel was less restricted, etc…

“Today’s fighters who wish to go … would face a number of additional challenges — security services are more alert, drone attacks in the tribal areas, etc.. Also, the groups operating in this region are not a united front, but divided on vital issues such as who to fight — the ‘occupation’ of Afghanistan, or the Pakistani government. (There is) anecdotal evidence of foreign fighters who get caught up in tribal conflicts or end up fighting the Pakistani security forces for self-defence, rather than entering into Afghanistan.”

Mustafa Alani, Gulf Research Centre

(Whether in Pakistan or Yemen), the major al Qaeda investment is in recruitment, not training. Most action now involves suicide bombers or exploding a car by remote control. This mainly requires influencing the mind of the subject, while most of the physical training can be done in a room. The old-style camps we saw on the publicity videos, where fighters climb over obstacles or go across fires, are mostly in the past. The groups have passed this stage. Now it is about how to evade things like monitoring in an airport. And that is a response to the new technology of counter-terrorism.”  

Saman Zarifi, Amnesty International Asia-Pacific Director
“The madrassas are training people, taking over abandoned buildings and schools. Everyone has anecdotal evidence of Arabs and Central Asians. But it’s not the same volume as the past, as the Pakistani state is no longer in that business.”

Pakistani High Commissioner to Britain Wajid Shamsul Hasan

“The foreign militants are there … and with due assistance from our friends in the West, hopefully we can overcome them.”

By Edmund Blair

It was a simple question but it touched a raw nerve.

Mohamed, my 46-year-old taxi driver, had been wondering where I learnt Arabic. So I explained that I had been based in Egypt a few years ago and had now returned to take up a new post in the Reuters bureau. So, I asked, how’s life these days?

And then it began. He launched into a tirade about an economy where the rich were getting richer and the poor poorer,a government that only seemed concerned about staying in power and the difficulty of paying for the education of his four sons — the eldest of whom he is now supporting through university.

Taxi drivers are an all-too-common sounding ground for foreign journalists and the kind of rant I listened to is probably not so unusual the world over. But what made Mohamed’s comments striking is that taxi drivers in other countries probably aren’t, like him, fully qualified accountants.

“There are doctors, engineers, teachers, all of them driving taxis. They just don’t earn enough otherwise,” he told me, grinding to a halt as a pick-up tried to do a U-turn in the middle of a narrow road. “This government doesn’t even provide order.” It’s hard to argue with that point on the streets of the capital where even the newest cars have scratches and dents, testimony to traffic rules that seem to be regarded — at least to any visitor — as optional.

Mohamed quit accountancy 15 years ago when he realised it couldn’t pay the bills. Now he earns about 50 to 60 Egyptian pounds, $9 to $11, for each 10-hour day. That’s what he takes home after paying for fuel and keeping his car on the road, giving him about 1,200 to 1,400 pounds a month. He might earn just half that as an accountant for the government, which still dominates the job market despite a raft of liberalising reforms introduced by a cabinet appointed in 2004.

Since those reforms were implemented, the economy has grown at quite a clip. Growth hit 7 percent last year, the level economists had long said Egypt needed to finally start creating enough jobs to cut unemployment rather than simply keep pace with population growth in this country of 80 million (The global crisis has taken its toll on the export and tourist-oriented economy, however, and depressed growth to 4 percent this year).

Despite a strong performance that has drawn praise from the World Bank and international investors, most ordinary Egyptians say the only thing that has changed for them are prices — food and other goods have become more expensive. Inflation and subsidised bread shortages sparked public protests and violence last year — the height of the boom — and prompted the government to order a 30 percent hike in some state wages. The debate filling newspapers now is whether the government will deliver an adequate rise in this year’s budget starting in July.

It’s not just workers who are struggling. Middle class Egyptians are feeling the squeeze. Mohamed pays for extra private tuition for his kids because he says the state system is inadequate. It is a story you hear from many middle class households. As if to prove Mohamed’s point, the independent Al-Masry Al-Youm daily, on the day he spoke, carried a frontpage article describing a school in south Egypt with 952 children,educated in two shifts a day, but only 100 chairs. Girls have seats and boys sit on the floor, it said with an accompanying photograph.

When I could get a word in edgeways, I asked Mohamed why there weren’t more protests like last year. “I’ll tell you,” he explained. “The people are not united, they are afraid to go out and protest. And, of course, most people are too busy trying to feed and educate their families.”

That’s also a common refrain. The Egyptian authorities tend to send heavy security to head off protests and only allow regular demonstrations in a few specific spots in the capital.
Even when demonstrations against President Hosni Mubarak, in power since 1981, and his government hit the streets of the capital more broadly around 2005, they rarely gathered more than a few hundred activists. The argument then, as now, was people just have too many other concerns.

“I’m sorry to have spoken to you like this. But I have so much frustration inside. It’s a beautiful country but it is run badly,” he said. Appropriately, we were running alongside an attractive stretch of the Nile by then.

At the end of the drive, I asked him if I could use his name but he said he’d probably end up in jail if I did. So I’ve changed it though I am not sure he would have been locked up. I also tipped him $5 on top of the $5 fare (you can go a long way rather cheaply in Egypt). Most of my taxi drivers aren’t so lucky with my tips but I’m still not sure I offered him enough after he gave me such insight.