Poisoned Agent\'s Wife Faces Financial Duress

LONDON - Since the moment of her husband's death, Marina Litvinenko has seemed to blend discomfort at her presence in the glare of media coverage with a fierce determination to use her prominence there to push for justice and closure.

Finally, though, more than six years after the former KGB agent Alexander V. Litvinenko died in a still mysterious poisoning in November, 2006, an inquest is to be held next May that could throw light into the whole episode.

In London last week, as I discuss in my latest Page Two column in The International Herald Tribune, new assertions emerged reinforcing Ms. Litvinenko's belief that her husband was the target of a state killing by the Kremlin. Coincidentally it emerged that, according to her lawyers, he was also a paid and registered agent of the British MI6 and the Spanish security services.

British news coverage of those disclosur es, according to her associate Alex Goldfarb, pained her with the suggestion that had been a double, or triple agent.

‘‘The reality is that he was never a double agent'' in the years before he fled Russia for Britain in 2000, with the help of Mr. Goldfarb and the oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who acted for many years as the sponsor and mentor of the Litvinenko family in Britain.

‘‘He was a cop, an FBI-type guy,'' Mr. Goldfarb said. ‘‘He was selling his expertise to the market and the market happened to be MI6.''

But there has been another concern for Ms. Litvinenko â€" her legal bill, according to Mr. Goldfarb, with whom she co-authored a book about her husband, ‘‘Death of a Dissident,'' in 2007.

Just as her long campaign to secure a hearing for her husband seems to be nearing a climax, thus, her funding has dried up and ‘‘she is in dire need of money to pay her lawyers,'' Mr. Goldfarb said.

She is looking for £300,000, or about $486,000, he said, and has set up a Web page to seek donations. So far, she has received just over £4,000.

As journalist Luke Harding, the author of critical book about the Kremlin, wrote in The Guardian, the decline of Ms. Litvinenko's previous funding followed Mr. Berezovsky's defeat in a court case with another Russian tycoon, Roman Abramovich.

The huge expense of the case has forced Mr. Berezovky, a self-exiled foe of the Kremlin who has lived in Britain since 2000, to scale back his long-standing campaign against the Russian President, Vladimir V. Putin.

‘‘Ironically,'' Mr. Harding wrote, quoting an unidentified friend of Mr. Berezovsky, ‘‘what the Kremlin could not do in a decade - shutting down Boris's anti-Putin London operation - was done by a decision of an English court.''

Would You Leave Your Country Over Taxes?

Gérard Depardieu, one of the most recognizable faces of French cinema, after more than forty years playing French historical figures, has bought a new house in Belgium, for "800,000 according to Le Monde, or a little more than $1 million. It's only 2 kilometers, a little less than a mile and a quarter, over the border from his beloved France.

The announcement of Mr. Depardieu's move has provoked an unprecedented reaction, with politicians on both the left and the right saying that it either underlines the need for - or the dangers of - President François Hollande's tax reforms, which include a marginal tax rate of 75 percent on the portion of a taxpayer's income above "1 million, or $1.3 million.

Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called Mr. Depardieu out in a highly public manner, saying his move was “minable,” widely translated as “pathetic.” Mr. Depardieu responded with a bracingly personal letter, addressed to Mr. Ayrault, but clearly meant for his countrymen:

I have never shirked my responsibilities. The historic films that I played in attest to my love of France and her history.
People more illustrious than me have gone into [tax] exile or left our country.
I unfortunately have nothing else to do here. But I will continue to love the French and this viewing public with whom I have shared so much emotion! I am leaving because you believe success, creativity, anything different, to be grounds for sanction.
I don't seek approval, but I expect at least to be respected.
No one who has left France has been insulted in the manner I have.
….
I am keeping the spirit of this France that was so beautiful and that I hope will always be.
I relinquish my passport and my Social Security, which I have never claimed. We no longer share a homeland. I am a true European, a citizen of the world, as my father always instilled in me.
…
I am to be neither pitied nor praised, but I reject the term “pathetic.”
Who are you to so judge me, I ask you Mr. Ayrault, prime minister of Mr. Hollande. I ask, who are you? In spite of my excesses, my appetites and my love of life, I am a free man.

Read Rendezvous's translation of the letter in its entirety.

Mr. Depardieu is not alone.

There does not seem to be a significant increase in French citizens emigrating to avoid taxes since Mr. Hollande came to office this year, promising to raise the top tax rate to 75 percent. But one reason may be that there has been a steady movement of the rich out of France since 2001. That year, 384 wealthy French left. In 2011, 717 did.

(Data show that 30 to 40 percent of these migrants have returned.)

Music stars such as Johnny Halliday and actors such as Isabelle Adjani and Alain Delon didn't wait for Mr. Hollande's tax i ncrease to flee the country.

The 75 percent tax will only directly affect an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 workers. But the ISF, the wealth tax, has started to impact many more Frenchmen: an estimated 600,000 in 2012, up from 281,000 in 2001.

The Daily Mail in London, recently reported that recruiters in London are seeing a jump in French candidates for banking and other high-paying jobs.

In the meantime, the battle over Mr. Depardieu continues in France and on the Web.

The left-leaning daily, Libération (the paper that wrote the headline “Beat it, rich jerk!” when industrialist Bernard Arnault left the country) put Mr. Depardieu on its front page Tuesday with the headline “The Manneken Fisc”; a pun on the Manneken Pis, the landmark Brussels sculpture of a boy urinating into a fountain (Mr. Depardieu was arrested last year for urinating on an Air France plane carpet).

A column on Mr. Depardieu in Le Monde opened with a comparison between tax exiles and French aristocrats who fled during the French Revolution.

A piece in Quartz, the digital magazine, on Mr. Depardieu - “Adieu: Gerard Depardieu is leaving France to flee an enemy he can't conquer - Taxes” - reminded readers that Mr. Depardieu had acted as French conquerors and heroes, Napoleon Bonaparte, Danton, the Count of Montecristo or more recently, Obelix.

Culture and Communication Minister Aurélie Filipetti used the same metaphor in her reply to Mr. Depardieu: “We shouldn't be getting lectured on morals by those who abandon the battlefield when we need everyone to be mobilized,” she said in a phone interview with I-Tele.

National Assembly President and Socialist Claude Bartolone sai d, “Depardieu should remember one thing, that whatever his talent, he never would have become who he is without French cinema.”

While President Hollande said today that no one should be “blamed” for fleeing France because of taxes, those who stay should be praised for the “patriotism” and solidarity.

The political right was quick to use Mr. Depardieu as an example of the wages of Mr. Hollande's policies: Luc Chatel, education minister under former president Nicolas Sarkozy, tweeted: “Industrials, Investors, Artists: this government really doesn't like creators.”

Opposition party politician Jean-François Copé of the UMP said on I-Tele today that the controversy shows how “François Hollande is driving our country into the ground through a fiscal mugging.”

The right-leaning daily, Le Figaro, conducted an onli ne poll asking, “Do you understand Depardieu's anger?” Of the more than 100,000 respondents, 80 percent said they did.

Some papers took a more objective approach: Les Echos published a piece explaining “why did Depardieu pay 85 percent in taxes?”

“With the 15% remaining, Depardieu can still build a second 8000 square feet villa…” tweeted Le Monde journalist Samuel Laurent ironically. (Mr. Depardieu just start building a second villa in the village of Trouville in Normandy.)

Since the news of his departure, #Depardieu has been one of the trending subjects on Twitter. To the point that French twitter user Anne Jocteur Monrozier wrote: “Seriously, is all we are going to hear about this week Depardieu and the world ending?”

On one of his visits to France, Will Smith, the American actor, was asked on French television about paying taxes. “I have no issue with paying taxes and whatever needs to be done for my country to grow,” he said.

But his stunned response when told of Mr. Hollande's proposed millionaires tax?

“75?! Yeah, that's different. That's different. Yeah, 75. Well, you know, God bless America!”

Depardieu\'s Cri de Coeur, Translated into English

Pathetic. “Pathetic,” you say? It is, indeed, pathetic.

I was born in 1948. I began working at 14 as a printer, a warehouse worker and then as a dramatic artist. I always paid my taxes, whatever the rate, under whatever government was in place.

I have never shirked my responsibilities. The historic films that I played in attest to my love of France and her history.

People more illustrious than me have gone into [tax] exile or left our country.

I unfortunately have nothing else to do here. But I will continue to love the French and this viewing public with whom I have shared so much emotion! I am leaving because you believe success, creativity, anything different, to be grounds for sanction.

I don't seek approval, but I wish, at least, to be respected.

No one who has left France has been insulted in the manner I have.

I do not have to justify my choice. My reasons are plentiful and personal.

I am leaving, after paying a ta x rate of 85 percent on my 2012 income. But I am keeping the spirit of this France that was so beautiful and that I hope will always be.

I relinquish my passport and my Social Security, which I have never claimed. We no longer share a homeland. I am a true European, a citizen of the world, as my father always instilled in me.

What I call pathetic are the judicial excesses leveled at my son Guillaume â€" sentenced as a mere boy to three years of hard time for two grams of heroin, when so many others did no time for crimes far more serious.

I don't condemn those who have high cholesterol or high blood pressure or diabetes or drink too much or those who fall asleep on their scooter. I am one of them, as your cherished media so love to remind us.

I have never killed anyone. I do not believe I have been demeritorious. I paid 145 million euros in taxes over 45 years. I employed 80 people in companies that were created for them and that are managed by them.< /p>

I am to be neither pitied nor praised, but I reject the term “pathetic.”

Who are you to so judge me, I ask you Mr. Ayrault, prime minister of Mr. Hollande. I ask, who are you? In spite of my excesses, my appetites and my love of life, I am a free man, Sir. And I shall remain respectful.

Gérard Depardieu

Translated from the French in the Journal de Dimanche.

Amid Global Trade Fight, a Bright Year for Solar Use in the U.S.

The United States installed more solar panels in 2012 than in any previous year, according to a new report, with residential use of solar power up 70 percent over 2011.

By the end of this year, homeowners, businesses and utility companies will have installed enough photovoltaic cells to produce 3.2 gigawatts (or GW) of electricity in the United States, up from 1.9 GW last year, according to the U.S. Solar Market Insight Report.

The report was produced by GTM Research Solar and a trade association, the Solar Energy Industries Association.

California led the charge this year with new installations of residential and commercial panels and facilities for utility companies. Next was Arizona, where utility companies installed the majority of new facilities.

In an op-ed piece in The New York Times last week, two alternative-energy advocates, David Crane and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., called for “Solar Panels for Every Home,” arguing that a move toward grid independence would reduce the risk of blackouts like the one that affected thousands of people in the Northeast after Hurricane Sandy. (The majority of residential solar panels are third-party-owned, meaning that many users don't own the panels on their own roofs.)

But the growth of solar in the United States comes amid something of a global trade war.

In May, the United States imposed a 31 percent tariff on Chinese-manufactured solar panels. The step was taken after some $3.1 billion worth of Chinese-made solar p anels were sold in the United States in 2011, according to U.S. Department of Commerce figures cited by Keith Bradsher and Diane Cardwell of The Times.

In August, Rendezvous reported on the difficulties that some European solar manufacturers were having in competing with inexpensive Chinese products.

Both Europe and the United States charge that China has been selling solar panels overseas for less than their manufacturing cost and effectively subsidizing the industry. Although solar panels are included in China's five-year economic plan - which ends in 2015 - Beijing has denied the dumping charges.

After the European Uni on finally decided to open its own anti-dumping investigation in September, the Chinese government took its case to the World Trade Organization, as Keith reported.

“Developing solar photovoltaic renewable energy is conducive to resolving the serious challenges of energy security and climate change facing humanity, in line with the common interests of all countries,” sadi Shen Danyang, a spokesman for China's Commerce Ministry.

Despite an increasing market for panels in the United States and elsewhere, all sides acknowledge that the market is oversaturated. China's solar industry - at risk of losing its huge export market because of the recently imposed tariffs - was described as an “abandoned baby” by the president of the Chinese Renewable Energy Industry Association, Li Junfeng, according to the state-run newspaper China Daily.

“It was everyone's favorite when it could make money,” he said, “but now, it has lost favor with media and investors.”

The new report puts global solar manufacturing capacity at 70 GW while an estimated 31 GW are currently needed. But China recently announced that it would increase its own production goals to 40 GW from 21 GW.

Prices in the United States are still on the decline. For residential users, for example, the price of installing solar has decreased in the past year by 15.3 percent, the report found.

Do you care how the electricity you use is generated? Do you have solar panels on the roof of your home? If yes, do you care where those solar panels are manufactured? 

Samford or Stanford? Agent or Con Artist?

HONG KONG - The first question some Chinese students ask when they see a sign for Samford University is, “Is it in the top 10? Why is its mascot not the Stanford tree?”

The mix-up is between a Baptist college in Birmingham, Alabama, and the world-renowned research university in Silicon Valley. (Arguably, students who can't spot the difference probably aren't going to Stanford anyway).

Hunter Denson, a Samford representative, laughed it off during an interview with my colleague Lara Farrar. “It's a good conversation starter,” he said.

Lara traveled to college fairs in Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing to check out some of the booths run by lesser-known American schools trying to recruit students in China.

The reality is that the grand majority of students, both domestic and foreign, are not going to get into the elite universities that everyone has heard of. Community colleges and small-town Christian schools, in particular, are appealing to ordi nary students who still want an overseas experience. Their efforts to reach out in countries like China are fueled partly by a desire to develop more culturally diverse campuses, and partly by a desire to fill their coffers. Lara's full report is here.

Warning signs that your agent is a con artist

Telling the difference between Samford and Stanford is relatively easy. But it can be difficult for foreign students to judge whom to trust for information on Western universities. The most spectacular recent case is that of a Hong Kong-based couple who sued a U.S. education agent after they paid him $2.2 million in an attempt to get their sons into Harvard.

Charles Anderson reports on the growing industry of counselors and agents who charge students and parents for education advice.

Here are a few warning signs that your agent is not to be trusted, according to the Independent Educational Consultants Association:

* They guarantee acceptance at a chosen school.
* They do not detail what services will be provided for a certain fee.
* They do not provide details about their background, training or experience.
* They offer to write an admissions essay or significantly alter an admissions essay.
* They have not been vetted by any outside association.

For the Chinese-language versions of these articles, go to cn.nytimes.com

Do Lower Taxes Create Jobs? Look at Clinton and Bush.

For Republican supply-siders, denying that marginal tax rates are the sole way to induce or impede economic growth is equivalent to apostasy.

In the 1980's, under President Ronald Reagan, the supply-side tax cutters were in their element. As the debate over marginal tax rates rages anew - President Barack Obama wants to raise the top rate to 39.6 percent from 35 percent - the records of the incumbent president's two predecessors give supply-siders political heartburn.

As I write in my latest Letter From Washington, “As many Republicans reject higher tax rates for wealthier Americans, Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, urges them to continue to resist, claiming that the economic boom of the 1990's and the resulting budget surplus were due to his leadership in Congress and not to President Bill Clinton's early tax increases.”

Bill Clinton raised m arginal tax rates in 1993. Over the next few years and beyond, economic growth flourished, unemployment plummeted and the budget picture brightened.

In 2001 and 2003, President George W. Bush cut marginal tax rates. Over the next few years and beyond, the economy stagnated, unemployment rose and the deficit ballooned.

Clearly, there were other important factors than taxes: the technology boom of the 1990s benefited Mr. Clinton; terrorism and wars hindered Mr. Bush.

Both sides know that isn't a sufficient explanation. Daniel Mitchell, of the Cato Institute, asserts that Mr. Clinton's record of surpluses was a result of spending restraint. There are numbers to support that; it's also true that federal revenue increased 37 percent in the four years after the 1993 tax increase.

The 2012 Republican vice-presidential nominee, Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, insists that the Clinton and Bush comparison on taxes is unfair. Mr. Clinton, he argues, ha d the tech boom and the peace dividend resulting from the end of the Cold War; Mr. Bush had to cope with the end of the technology bubble, terrorism, a couple wars and the financial crisis.

The crisis didn't occur until the end of Bush's administration and he chose to wage those wars.

Fleeing Taxes and \'Insult,\' Gerard Depardieu Says Au Revoir, La France

PARIS - The actor Gérard Depardieu, who was best known until recently as a pillar of French cinema with an occasionally embarrassing tendency to over-imbibe, this week made an ignominious name for himself as a tax evader, drawing the ire of the government, the news media, and a good number of his fellow French citizens.

Fellow French citizens for now, at least.

Mr. Depardieu has taken up residence in the Belgian town of Néchin, just over the French border but somewhat farther from France with regards to fiscal policy: the maximum marginal income tax rate is not 75 percent in Belgium, as it now is in France, and there is no wealth tax.

France's prime minister, the Socialist Jean-Marc Ayrault, has called Mr. Depardieu's departure unpatriotic and “pathetic” at a time of economic belt-tightening. The assessments of most politicians and c ommentators have been the same, if somewhat less harsh.

On Sunday, in an angry open letter to Mr. Ayrault, Mr. Depardieu said he would renounce his French citizenship and that he was moving to Belgium not solely for tax reasons but because he feels the government believes “success, creation, talent - difference, in fact - must be punished.”

“I am neither to be pitied nor to be praised, but I refuse the word ‘pathetic,'” he wrote in his letter, published in the newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, noting that he had paid an 85 percent tax rate on his income this year and 145 million euros, or more than $190 million, over 45 years.

He also noted - correctly - that a number of other French celebrities have long been based outside France for tax reasons, but that not all of them have come in for such approbation from the government or news media. And he r ejected the notion that patriotism would require him to submit to whatever fiscal regime the government might cook up.

“We don't have the same homeland anymore,” he wrote in his open letter to Mr. Ayrault. “I am a true European, a citizen of the world, as my father always taught me.”

Rendezvous wrote last week about increasing efforts to find and tax billions of dollars earned by individuals and companies.

Teachers Being Targeted and Murdered in Thailand

HONG KONG - In Thailand, it's the teachers who are being targeted and killed - in their schools, during the day, in front of their students, with assault weapons.

Attacks on schoolteachers by Muslim insurgents in southern Thailand have escalated terribly in recent days, like last week, when men with M-16s walked into a school cafeteria in Pattani Province, separated out two Buddhist instructors and killed them on the spot. One of them, the school principal, was shot in the head at point-blank range.

Khru Ya, a retired teacher in Pattani, and a Muslim, told The Bangkok Post: “There is a saying among insurgents: ‘Get Buddhists, gain merit.' They believe that if they kill Buddhists, they will go to heaven.”

An investigative report released Monday by Human Rights Watch demanded that the insurgents end their school attacks and called for added s ecurity measures by the Thai government.

“Insurgents in southern Thailand who execute teachers show utter depravity and disregard for humanity,” said Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “These attacks harm not only teachers and schools, but the Muslim students, their families, and the broader Muslim community the insurgents claim to represent.”

Car bombs, homemade grenades, assassinations and arson have become part of daily life in southern Thailand since a wave of separatist and sectarian violence began there in 2004. More than 5,000 people have been killed in the ongoing strife.

But now teachers - like police officers and army soldiers - have become “targets of opportunity.”

“Since the attacks on teachers began,” according to a Post investigation, “157 have been murdered. Most of the victims were Buddhist.”

The most recent killings caused the southern teachers' union to stage a two-day strike last week, shutt ing 1,300 public schools. Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and the head of the Thai Army visited the area on Thursday, although Human Rights Watch said insurgents circulated leaflets during their visit that promised further school attacks.

“Whatever happens,” Ms. Yingluck told reporters, “children need to have a safe place to learn. I thank teachers for having the courage to teach, and I will ask for reinforcements and extra troops to ensure their security.”

“They go after the teachers for a few reasons,” said Zachary Abuza, a professor of political science at Simmons College in Boston and an expert on security issues, terrorism and insurgencies in Southeast Asia. “Out in the countryside, teachers are the agents of the Thai state. The schools are one of the only social services that most people get from the government.

“They're als o vulnerable/easy targets, and most of the teachers are Buddhists, sent from other parts of the country,” Mr. Abuza said in an e-mail interview with Rendezvous. “If the teachers go on prolonged strike and the schools shut down it leads to more Buddhists fleeing the region, while the Muslims put their kids into madrasas.”

Mr. Abuza noted that teachers have become “high-impact targets” whose murders get the attention of the central government. “Yingluck made her first visit to the south after four teachers were killed,” he said. “Until then she'd barely touched the south.”

Teachers in the south are now driven to school each morning in army trucks. If they drive their own cars, they must join a military convoy.

“After we arrive at school, the soldiers stick around for a while until the morning flag-raising ceremony is over and the students are in their classrooms,” said Mr. Khru Ya, the former teacher. “At lunchtime, the soldiers retur n to protect us inside the school grounds. Then the same thing happens in the afternoon when class is over. The soldiers escort us back home.”

Some of Mr. Khru Ya's other remarks to The Post:

Instead of soldiers, these [insurgents] seem to target only teachers because they are unarmed and easy to kill. That is why we call them jone gra jork [cowardly bandits], because they choose to attack people who have no way to fight back.

I know what they really want is to drive the military out of the area, so that they can trade and traffic drugs more easily. Pattani is located in a very advantageous area for drug trafficking since it is connected to Malaysia.

They are trying to create a religious war in the area, but Buddhists and Muslims are peaceful people. We have lived happily together before in the past, and we intend to remain that way.

Teachers in the Thai-Malaysian border areas have asked for security cameras to be ins talled at their schools, the H.R.W. report said, along with increased hazard pay for educators and government compensation for the relatives of victimized teachers.

The Post reported that teachers get monthly bonuses between $82 and $115 for working in the south. The families of murdered teachers are eligible for death benefits of $32,600.

“Teachers are courageously risking their lives to ensure children's access to education in southern Thailand,” Mr. Adams said. “But the government is still stuck in a cycle of ineffectual responses to the deadly threats teachers and students are facing every day.”

IHT Quick Read: Dec. 17

NEWS President Obama vowed on Sunday to “use whatever power this office holds” to stop massacres like the slaughter at the school in Connecticut that shocked the U.S., hinting at a fresh effort to curb the spread of guns as he declared that there was no “excuse for inaction.” Mark Landler reports from Newtown, Connecticut, and Peter Baker from Washington.

Japan's voters handed a landslide victory to the Liberal Democratic Party in national parliamentary elections on Sunday, giving power back to the conservative party that had governed Japan for decades until a historic defeat three years ago. Martin F ackler reports from Tokyo.

Congo has become a never-ending nightmare, one of the bloodiest conflicts since World War II, with more than five million dead. Jeffrey Gettleman reports.

A mining company is proceeding with a project that could help revive Brazil's economy, but it would also destroy caves treasured by scholars of Amazonian prehistoric human history. Simon Romero reports from Carajás National Forest, Brazil.

To encourage more investment in high-speed networks, regulators are considering changes that could raise fees for consumers, especially in Eastern Europe. Kevin J. O'Brien reports from Berlin.

Growers of Darjeeling tea have followed the example of Scottish whisky distillers and French wineries, winning legal protection for the Darjeeling label under laws that limit the use of certain geographic names to products that come from those places. Jim Yardley reports from Darjeeling, India.

EDUCATION China is a hot market for U.S. institutions looking for international students, and community and faith-based colleges are looking abroad for students who can pay full tuition and diversify their campuses. Lara Farrar reports from Beijing.

ARTS Dom Sylvester Houédard, who was a pioneer of concrete poetry, has been an enigmatic figure in accounts of 1960s counter culture, until the publication of a new book. Alice Rawsthorn writes from London.

SPORTS It isn't always the finesse that gives the English Premier League a hold on television audiences across the globe. Instead it is the physical element, the combative streak that, often, the English condone more than most. Rob Hughes reports from London.