Emergency telephone numbers are working again in Switzerland after a technical failure caused a nationwide outage late Thursday, the national operator Swisscom said on Friday morning. This is the second such national breakdown in 18 months. Emergenc...

Spectators have been banned from most Olympic events at the Tokyo Games after a fourth Covid state of emergency was declared in the Japanese capital on Thursday. Participating athletes will meanwhile face drastic safety measures, says Olympic Games E...

At the 2021 edition of the conference in Vilnius, Swiss foreign minister Ignazio Cassis officially accepted the handover of the 2022 chair from Latvia. The end of this year's Ukraine Reform Conference (URC) also marked the end of Cassis’ five-day ...

French comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala has been fined by a Geneva court for racist content during performances in Switzerland, including denying the existence of Nazi gas chambers. Having found the comedian guilty of the charges on Thursday, t...

A popular Swiss price comparison website has been shut down by ransomware attackers demanding $400,000 (CHF370,000) in cryptocurrencies to put it back online. Comparis.ch, which racks up around 80 million visits a year, is used by consumers to compa...

Opponents have handed in signatures to force another vote challenging the law underpinning many of the government’s coronavirus measures. Less than a month ago, 60.2% of the population approved the Covid-19 law, which politicians adopted last Sept...

An organisation set up in Switzerland to prevent sport from harming society and athletes has been granted full association status in Geneva. The Centre for Sport and Human Rights was awarded the status of an independent non-profit association under ...

The continued use of restraints during forced deportations from Switzerland has again been criticised by a monitoring body. The rebuke coincides with government attempts to force Covid-19 tests for deportees and an ongoing probe into alleged violence...

From Friday July 9, the Swiss Covid Certificate will be valid in EU countries, Iceland and Norway. On Thursday, the EU Commission confirmed that the Swiss certificate – which shows if the holder has been vaccinated, tested, or recovered from Covid...

COMCO has concluded a major investigation of nine car-leasing firms for rate-fixing and fined Ford Credit Switzerland some CHF7.7 million ($8.39 million). The ruling on Thursday comes two years after COMCO fined the other eight companies around CHF3...

Switzerland and Ghana want to jointly promote the issue of electronic waste internationally, saying e-waste should be among the exports subject to authorisation worldwide. Environment Minister Simonetta Sommaruga signed a letter to this effect in Acc...

A former local official in Switzerland has been found guilty of election fraud in parliamentary elections in canton Thurgau. A district court on Wednesday handed the former secretary-general of the town of Frauenfeld a suspended prison sentence of 1...

The number of participants in the Swiss “bike to work” challenge has increased, recovering from the slump experienced during the first wave of Covid-19 in 2020, a report said. Between May and June over 60,000 people took part in the “bike to w...

Switzerland has widened its sanctions against Belarus, joining other countries in acting after Belarusian authorities triggered outrage by intercepting a passenger flight in May and arresting a dissident blogger on board. The Swiss government has ad...

Switzerland has again failed to meet its goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, prompting a rise in CO2 taxes. Last year emissions from fuel, including heating oil and gas, were 31% lower than 1990 levels, according to data released by the Fed...

Environment Minister Simonetta Sommaruga has signed a climate agreement with Senegal, the third such agreement to compensate for CO2 emissions under the Paris Agreement. Switzerland signed corresponding international agreements with Peru and Ghana a...

The Covid Delta variant is progressing in the country and currently accounts for some 30% of new cases, the Federal Office for Public Health (FOPH) said on Tuesday. Virginie Masserey, head of the FOPH’s infectious diseases section, told a news bri...

Up to a quarter fewer people in Switzerland were enrolled in further education courses in 2020 than in previous years. However, the numbers graduating from university continued to rise. The sharp dip in further education last year comes after a deca...

Four out of ten people still report symptoms of Covid-19 more than seven months after infection, according to a study by the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG) and the University of Geneva (UNIGE). The study, published on Tuesday, was conducted am...

Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis has begun his trip to the Baltic States with an official visit to Latvia. European policy was at the heart of the talks with Latvian President Egils Levits and Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs in the capital, ...

The government has launched a detailed testing procedure to determine whether the latest Swiss Post e-voting system is fit to be rolled out by cantons. Two years ago Swiss Post shelved its e-voting system when bugs were found in the source code. At ...

Getting a place in a Swiss day care centre is harder for children from disadvantaged and migrant backgrounds, finds a study calling for more, and cheaper, crèches. There are a few factors behind the discrepancies, including employment rates, irregu...

A ban on cigarette sales in Switzerland has not prevented people under the age of 21 from smoking, a new study has found. Researchers at the universities of Basel and Lausanne found that young people are not deterred by bans put in place in Switzerl...

Statistics show television viewing increased slightly in Switzerland during the Covid-19 pandemic last year – the first time in more than a decade. Researchers found that notably the over 60 age group contributed to the hike. Overall Swiss consum...

A former Syrian army chief has alleged that a 2014 shipment of chemicals from a factory in the Swiss city of Basel, intended for medical purposes, was used to make chemical weapons. The SonntagsZeitung newspaper quoted on Sunday ex-brigadier general...

The unilateral decision to call off negotiations with the European Union (EU) was beyond the government’s remit, legal expert Thomas Cottier has said in the Sunday press. Cottier, a professor emeritus of international economic law at the Universit...

Urs Karrer, Vice-President of Switzerland’s scientific coronavirus taskforce, reckons that the “uncontrolled” football fever in stadiums around Europe will lead to further breakouts of the virus. “It astonishes me how nonchalantly we continu...

Switzerland’s health minster told the Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper he would prefer to see more over-80-year-olds and more healthcare workers getting vaccinated. While he told the newspaper he was more or less happy with the “positively develo...

After a spirited Euro 2020 quarter-final defeat to Spain, praise has been pouring in for the Swiss national football team from supporters, newspapers, and ministers. “Heroic to the end,” wrote the Tribune de Genève newspaper, summing up much of...

Switzerland crashed out of the European football championship by losing their quarterfinal match against Spain on penalties on Friday. The match ended 1-1 after extra-time but Spain scored three penalties to Switzerland’s one in the Euro 2020 knoc...