Areas of the Swiss capital Bern and some Alpine region lakes are still alert for possible flooding after Switzerland after heavy rainfall overnight. Central Switzerland was also hit by strong storms late Saturday evening, leading to the evacuation o...

The Swiss Gian Franco Kasper, recently retired after 23 years as president of the International Ski Federation (FIS), has died, the governing body said on Saturday. He was 77. The cause of Kasper’s death was not given. He had not taken part in the...

The interests of small innovative countries must be taken into account in international corporate tax measures, says Swiss Finance Minister Ueli Maurer, who has been attending the G20 meeting in Italy. Tax was a key issue at the two-day meeting of f...

Environment Minister Simonetta Sommaruga has welcomed progress on environmental protection following a visit to Ghana and Senegal. She is now looking ahead to the COP26 global environmental meeting in Glasgow later this year. “Ghana and Senegal h...

People in Switzerland have been looking for bigger or second homes during the coronavirus pandemic, fuelling housing shortages and pushing prices up. This is despite a more modest growth in the population, which is one of the main drivers of demand...

The morale of the Swiss population seems to have improved due to better management of the pandemic, a new Covid-related survey finds. The mood of the Swiss population has ebbed and flowed over the past 15 months. Like last summer, optimism now seems...

The western Swiss city of Lausanne has been chosen to set up an international observatory for the promotion of gender equality in sport, host canton Vaud said on Friday. This is in line with the Kazan Action Plan adopted by an intergovernmental con...

The pace of vaccination in Switzerland has dropped sharply since mid-June, and the pool of people willing to be vaccinated may soon be exhausted, according to Swiss public broadcaster RTS. Unless the trend is reversed, this means the percentage of t...

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...