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Swiss Info

Mon, 2 Aug 2021 16:07:41 GMT
Switzerland and Thailand seek to boost business ties
Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis concluded on Monday a two-day visit to Thailand. High-level talks focused on boosting bilateral cooperation and the possibility of a free trade agreement. Both nations have expressed interest in starting negotia...

Mon, 2 Aug 2021 13:46:00 GMT
Journalist wins appeal to clarify travel security alert
A Swiss-Bulgarian journalist denied information about his inclusion on the Schengen Information System (SIS) has been partially vindicated by a Federal Court decision. According to the decision published on Monday, the journalist’s query over his ...

Mon, 2 Aug 2021 12:40:00 GMT
Climate activists stage sit-in protest in Zurich’s financial heart
Some 200 climate activists blocked the entrances to major UBS and Credit Suisse branches in central Zurich on Monday morning, protesting the banks' investments in fossil fuel projects. The activists occupied the front of the Credit Suisse headquarte...

Mon, 2 Aug 2021 12:18:08 GMT
Swiss public sector scandal reaches court room  
A former Swiss government official is facing trial in connection with one of the biggest corruption scandals to have hit the public sector in recent years. The trial of the former civil servant accused of corruption in the purchase of computer equi...

Mon, 2 Aug 2021 09:46:11 GMT
Switzerland and Iceland join forces to ‘capture’ CO2 
The Swiss government hopes to meet part of its climate goals by burying CO2 in Iceland, according to a report on Monday by Swiss public broadcaster RTS. A driver of climate change, CO2 is the primary greenhouse gas emitted through human activities. ...

Sun, 1 Aug 2021 09:25:54 GMT
Swiss president is not in favour of compulsory Covid-19 vaccination
Guy Parmelin is against coercing Swiss residents to get vaccinated against Covid-19 but warns they will face restrictions and costs. In an interview with the NZZ am Sonntag paper published on Sunday, Parmelin said that he respected the decision of ...

Sat, 31 Jul 2021 16:49:00 GMT
Thousands demonstrate against Covid-19 restrictions in Lucerne
A demonstration against the restrictions linked to the coronavirus saw almost 5,000 people gather in central Swiss city of Lucerne. A counter-demonstration also took place. On Saturday, critics of the government’s coronavirus policy marched throug...

Sat, 31 Jul 2021 11:01:17 GMT
Swiss hospitals will reveal proportion of vaccinated personnel
For the first time, data on the percentage of vaccinated health personnel in a hospital or medical facility will be made publicly available. The figures will be shared from Sunday in an anonymised manner in the southern Swiss canton of Ticino follow...

Sat, 31 Jul 2021 09:07:15 GMT
Swiss canines deployed in Germany to find bodies of flood victims
A Swiss dog team specialised in searching for cadavers will be deployed in Germany following the devastating floods. On Saturday, a dog team left for the German town of Dernau in the Ahr Valley, where floods caused enormous devastation two weeks ag...

Fri, 30 Jul 2021 15:49:44 GMT
Drones and thermal cameras save more fawns
The Swiss Fawn Rescue organisation has saved 2,569 baby deer from being killed by mowers this year, almost twice as many as last year. This was made possible by drones and thermal-imaging cameras, which helped not only to track down baby deer, but a...

Fri, 30 Jul 2021 13:16:51 GMT
Online sales continue their Covid climb in Switzerland
Fuelled by the Covid-19 pandemic, online commerce in Switzerland has continued to grow steadily in the first six months of the year. Teleshopping grew by 15% in the first half of 2021 after already gaining 30% in 2020, says a report published on Fri...

Fri, 30 Jul 2021 10:58:58 GMT
Strong turnout influenced rejection of key environmental law
Strong mobilisation against agricultural initiatives contributed to Swiss voters’ narrow rejection last month of a CO2 law central to government environmental policy, according to an analysis. Those who voted against the law also thought its cost-...

Fri, 30 Jul 2021 09:06:44 GMT
Swiss National Bank posts strong first-half profit
The Swiss National Bank (SNB) has announced a profit of CHF43.5 billion ($48 billion) for the first half of 2021, representing a record 55.6% increase on the same period last year. This came mostly from gains (CHF44.5 billion) on its foreign currenc...

Thu, 29 Jul 2021 16:01:00 GMT
Ex-head of UN refugee agency dies at 83
Jean-Pierre Hocké, a Swiss humanitarian official who headed the United Nations’ refugee agency in the late 1980s, has died. He was 83. Hocké died in Lausanne on Monday, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Thursday. The current ...

Thu, 29 Jul 2021 12:12:00 GMT
Legal victory for Lindt in German chocolate bunny case
A German court has ruled that the golden colour of the foil wrap on Swiss firm Lindt & Sprüngli’s popular chocolate Easter Bunny enjoys protected status. The Federal Court of Justice delivered its verdict on Thursday in a battle between Lindt and...

Thu, 29 Jul 2021 10:19:40 GMT
FIFA loses court bid to revive probe of Blatter over media rights deal
A Swiss court has rejected world football body FIFA’s bid to revive a criminal probe against its former president, Sepp Blatter, over a 2005 deal with the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) to sell World Cup broadcasting rights. The Swiss Office of th...

Thu, 29 Jul 2021 09:55:04 GMT
Swiss beech forests added to World Heritage List
The ancient beech forests on the Bettlachstock in the Solothurn Jura and in the Val di Lodano in Ticino are now World Heritage sites. UNESCO, the UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, included them along with nine other forests i...

Thu, 29 Jul 2021 09:18:00 GMT
Government postpones Covid decision by two weeks
The Swiss government has put on ice any further loosening of Covid-19 restrictions, preferring to wait until after the summer holidays to make a decision on next steps. The government was due on Thursday to send to cantons its proposed steps for the...

Wed, 28 Jul 2021 16:37:00 GMT
US and Russia hold discreet Geneva talks on nuclear stability
After the fanfare of the Biden-Putin summit in Geneva in June, discreet follow-up talks between high-level officials have been taking place in the Swiss city. The US State department described Wednesday's talks at the US diplomatic mission in Geneva...

Wed, 28 Jul 2021 16:00:08 GMT
Swiss send aid to Covid-hit Thailand ahead of minister’s visit
Switzerland has sent around CHF9 million ($9.8 million) worth of anti-Covid-19 equipment to Thailand, which is facing its worst wave yet of the pandemic. The aid includes around 100 respirators and more than one million antigen tests, according to t...

Wed, 28 Jul 2021 14:39:44 GMT
Election candidates with ‘foreign’ names face discrimination, says study
People with foreign-sounding names are less likely to be elected in Switzerland, according to a study by the universities of Lucerne and Geneva. The authors of the study analysed 600,000 ballots from the 2015 federal parliament elections. These cont...

Wed, 28 Jul 2021 14:38:00 GMT
Sprinter Alex Wilson out of Olympics due to doping case
Wilson’s provisional ban for an anti-doping violation, which had been suspended by Swiss Olympic, has been reinstated with immediate effect, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) said on Wednesday. Jamaica-born Wilson, who is registered to comp...

Wed, 28 Jul 2021 14:04:00 GMT
Covid certificate not as simple as it seems for Swiss abroad
Swiss living in non-EU countries who have received a Covid vaccine not approved in Switzerland – that of AstraZeneca, for example – are not eligible for a valid Covid Certificate here. The Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) confirmed on Wedn...

Wed, 28 Jul 2021 08:00:00 GMT
Petkovic steps down as Swiss coach after seven years
Vladimir Petkovic has left the national football team to join French club Bordeaux. Petkovic was the most successful coach in the country’s history. Following a few days of media speculation, the Swiss Football Association confirmed the departure ...

Tue, 27 Jul 2021 14:56:46 GMT
Reasons to get vaccinated differ with age, survey says 
Older people who decide to get vaccinated against Covid-19 mainly want to protect their own health, while younger ones want to travel and live again, as well as protecting the more vulnerable in society. That is according to an online survey of som...

Tue, 27 Jul 2021 13:58:29 GMT
Switzerland drops Russia graft probe triggered by Magnitsky case 
Swiss federal prosecutors have dropped a controversial decade-long investigation into alleged Russian money-laundering in a case that has been linked to the 2009 death in jail of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. The Office of the Attorney General ...

Tue, 27 Jul 2021 12:07:06 GMT
Ex-Glencore trader pleads guilty in oil bribery case 
A former trader with Swiss commodity and mining giant Glencore pleaded guilty in the United States to charges arising from the role he played in a Nigeria bribery scheme to get favourable oil contracts from the African Nation. US prosecutors accus...

Tue, 27 Jul 2021 09:41:04 GMT
Top health official defends Swiss record on fair vaccine access 
Switzerland has invested a lot of resources to promote fairer vaccine access across the world, says Virginie Masserey, head of infections control at the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH). Speaking with Swiss public broadcaster RTS on Monday ev...

Mon, 26 Jul 2021 16:36:56 GMT
Over 1% of recent Swiss Covid-19 fatalities were fully vaccinated
Of the 1,100 people killed by the coronavirus in Switzerland since the end of January, 18 had received both doses of the vaccine. The numbers, that were first published in 20 Minuten, were confirmed by the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) on ...

Mon, 26 Jul 2021 13:05:00 GMT
Covid precautions led to a drop in other infectious diseases
Switzerland saw a 20% drop in known cases of highly infectious diseases in 2020 as a result of government and individual measures taken to contain the spread of Covid-19. On Monday, the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) revealed that around 65...



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