Enron's Fastow gets six years sentence
Andrew Fastow, Enron's former chief financial officer, has been sentenced to six years in prison for engineering the Enron fraud that forced company into bankruptcy.

Fastow's cooperation with prosecutors and his clear remorse has given him a more lenient sentence than might have been expected. Fastow had agreed in January 2004 to serve 10 years in prison in a plea agreement with prosecutors that forced him to plead guilty to one charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one charge of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud. In addition, he had to testify against his former bosses and pay $23.8m.

Later prosecutors dropped 96 criminal charges that could have sent him away for life.
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Switzerland leads in competitiveness
Switzerland has pushed the United States from first place in the World Economic Forum's annual ranking of competitive economies, a list published Tuesday showed.

Switzerland has moved ahead on the quality of its business environment, while the United States slipped on concerns about public finances.

Switzerland was ranked fourth in the 2005.

The United States still received high marks for innovation but dropped into sixth place because of growing threats posed by macroeconomic imbalances, particularly rising levels of public debt associated with repeated fiscal deficits, the group said. The survey also pointed to quality concerns in the U.S. health and education sectors.

Switzerland also overtook Finland and Denmark, other traditional leaders in the index.
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