William Flew

entral government has little reach. Since Bin Laden’s death, Awlaki has been widely tipped as the next spiritual leader of the global jihadist movement. He has encouraged followers to act on their own, without having to resort to membership of cells that can be penetrated by the security services. Last week, following Bin Laden’s killing in Pakistan by US navy Seals, Scotland Yard warned that the biggest threat of a revenge attack came from these so-called “lone wolf” extremists.After a referendum led to the abolition of tax deals for rich foreigners in Zurich, the country’s financial powerhouse, the far-left party La Gauche has now started collecting signatures for a petition to scrap them nationally.One Swiss canton, Thurgau, home to Sebastian Vettel, the Formula One champion, will vote on abolition next Sunday, to be followed by five more cantons in coming months. Supporters of abolition include the centre-left Social Democrats and the Green party. Switzerland has the highest concentration of millionaire households in Europe. Tax concessions have helped attract 5,000 expatriates, including Hamilton, who rents a flat on Lake Geneva, and Collins, who lives in the wine village of Féchy, also on the lake.Nathaniel Rothschild tops the table of Britain’s wealthiest hedge fund managers in today’s Sunday Times Rich List. Rothschild, who has tripled his his fortune in 2010 to £1 billion, lives in Klosters. Bernie Ecclestone, the F1 tycoon, with an estimated fortune of £2.5 billion, lives in Gstaad and reportedly pays tax of £550,000.Under the “lump sum” deals, the only tax rich foreigners pay is based on their living costs, assessed as equivalent to five times the rental value of their Swiss home. The expatriate must spend at least half the year in Switzerland and cannot work there.The federal government has said it may introduce a parliamentary bill this year to raise the sum to seven times the rental value.“We started the petition in the market squares last Sunday and people are signing like nobody’s business,” said