Villiger was reacting to a ruling by the Federal Administrative Court last week that the transfer of customer data broke the law. His comments were published by the German-language Tages-Anzeiger newspaper on Wednesday.

The court decision has cast doubt on the agreement reached between the authorities in the US and Switzerland last year under which the Swiss agreed to hand over data on an estimated 4,450 bank customers.

Villiger said in the newspaper interview that the ruling had placed the bank and the country in a “extremely difficult situation”.

There have been calls within Switzerland for UBS to take responsibility for its past actions, which encouraged US tax payers to transfer funds to Switzerland in order to avoid paying taxes, something Villiger rejected.

“There can be no solution without an agreement between states,” he said. He further pointed out that those at the bank who had been responsible for the crisis had now left.

He added that it was difficult to draw up a sustainable strategy for the bank when there was so much uncertainty about many aspects of its work, including the future of bank secrecy.

A millionaire motorist clocked up a record fine of 299,000 Swiss francs ($290,000) after Swiss police caught him racing through a village at 100 km per hour in his red Ferrari Testarossa, Swiss media reported on Thursday.
A court in the northeastern Swiss canton of St Gallen gave the millionaire the hefty penalty, which outstripped the previous record of 111,000 francs handed a Porsche driver in 2008 in Zurich, after a string of previous traffic offences.

"The accused ignored elementary traffic rules with a powerful vehicle out of a pure desire for speed," the court said in its judgement of the motorist, who clocked speeds of up to 137 km per hour on country roads, said daily Blick.

The St Gallen Cantonal Court ordered the man to dip into his 23.3 million franc fortune, which included a villa with a garage containing five luxury cars.

Court officials said they could not immediately confirm details of the case.

In October, St Gallen police pulled over another speeding motorist after he committed 15 traffic offences in 10 minutes, including driving on the hard shoulder, jumping a red light and failing to stop for police.

The First Penal Transitory Hall of the Peruvian Supreme Court of Justice ratified on Sunday the sentence of 25-year imprisonment against former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimory, for qualified homicide, killing and grave injuries.

The trial was carried by Judge of the Supreme Tribunal Duberli Rodriguez, as well as by judges Julio Biaggi, Elvia Barros, Roberto Barandiaran and Jose Neyra.

According to a statement of the Tribunal, by unanimity the judges ratified that Fujimori (1990-2000) was the "mediate author of the crimes of qualified homicide and grave injuries."

During the trial, the judges also determined that Fujimori has to pay 62,400 soles (22,285 U.S. dollars) to Marcelino Marcos Pablo Meza and Carmen Juana Marinos Figueroa, each, who are direct relatives of the victims.

The 57-year-old was arrested after gunning down the 42-year-old mother of two young children at the district courthouse in Hollabrunn, a town about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northwest of Vienna, Austria's capital, said Leopold Etz of the Lower Austrian criminal police force.

Wilhelm Tschugguel, an official who oversees the Hollabrunn court, told The Associated Press that the alleged killer was unhappy with the outcome of his divorce proceedings and had entered the court in Hollabrunn to find the judge who had handled the case.

Tschugguel said the man started screaming when he couldn't find the judge and shot the victim when she tried to calm him down.

The gunman had repeatedly complained about his divorce case, and on Tuesday had called the Justice Ministry to complain about it but "at no point in time were there any indications of a threat," Tschugguel said.

Franz Polzer, head of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs, said the man was drunk at the time of the shooting and admitted to police that he wanted to kill the judge. He shot the victim in the head and then fled, losing his pistol on the way out, Polzer said. Police arrested him when he returned to the courthouse several minutes later.

Electricite de France SA could potentially recover some euro1.2 billion after it won a European Union court challenge Tuesday that said EU regulators were wrong to order the company to repay tax relief to the French government.

The ruling from the EU's general court can still be appealed to the EU's highest legal authority, the court of justice — or EU regulators can also come to a new decision on the subsidy that would address the court's criticisms.

The court said Monday that the European Commission had failed to check if the French government had acted like a private investor when it decided that the company had effectively received an illegal subsidy by reclassifying money saved from a 1997 tax break as a capital injection.

The court said regulators had violated EU state aid law by failing "to apply the private investor test" to the terms of the capital injection — even if the money had come from a fiscal debt.

In 2003, commission ordered the company to repay the euro888.89 million tax concession to the government, saying it was a state subsidy that gave the business — then state-owned — an unfair advantage over rivals.

At the time, it was the highest subsidy that the EU had ever ordered to be repaid. With interest, the full amount was euro1.2 billion — which EDF has now paid to the French state.

Police say a court in Thailand has approved a 12-day detention for the crew of a seized plane carrying 35 tons of weapons from North Korea.

Police spokesman Pongsapat Pongjaren said Monday that the Bangkok Criminal Court approved a request by authorities to keep the five-man crew detained for further investigation.

The crew includes four men from Kazakhstan and one from Belarus. They were arrested Saturday when their plane was impounded in Bangkok during a reported refueling stop.

Investigators found 35 tons of war weaponry apparently loaded in North Korea in violation of U.N. sanctions.

Thailand has not disclosed where the plane was headed. Local media has reported it was bound for Sri Lanka or Pakistan.

Many Romanians had hoped this election would lift the country out of political crisis, help it shake its reputation for corruption, and allow it to climb out of its worst recession in 20 years.

Instead, it has plunged the country into even deeper turmoil.

The opposition is charging the presidency has been stolen by fraud. A euro1.5 billion ($2 billion) international loan probably won't be delivered. And some in the business community fear the scandal will scare off the foreign investment the country so badly needs.

Results in Sunday's presidential runoff election showed that the incumbent, Traian Basescu, eked out the slimmest of victories: The Central Electoral Bureau said he took 50.33 percent of the vote to 49.66 percent for his challenger, former Foreign Minister Mircea Geoana.

Three exit polls had forecast a victory for Geoana, albeit a narrow one.

Geoana has charged he was robbed of the presidency by "deliberately organized massive fraud." He said his Social Democratic Party has evidence of ballot stuffing and multiple voting — both inside Romania and abroad, where he lost heavily to Basescu.

Thousands of fictitious personal identity numbers were created, Geoana said. He said his party has evidence that, in one instance, hundreds of voters shared one address — that of a small house in Bucharest.