Tunnellers digging from two ends of a new tunnel in Geneva met up on Friday as part of an ambitious project to improve transport. Some 60 workers have been relaying each other since September 2017 to dig the 500-metre tunnel for an underground road ...

Participants in often violent, unauthorised weekly protests in Bern against Covid measures will now have to pay for the cost of police operations, Swiss broadcaster SRF reported on Friday. "We have now had almost a dozen unauthorised rallies in the ...

Swiss hoteliers and restaurateurs have seen turnover drop by an average of 27.6% since the introduction of the Covid certificate in mid-September, according to a survey of the sector. Some 81.3% of surveyed establishments reported a downturn in busi...

Salome Zourabichvili met Swiss President Guy Parmelin and Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis on Friday to talk about climate change, economic ties and security in the Caucasus. The visit to Bern was the first by a Georgian president since the country b...

The Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) says a cooperation agreement on wood research with Canada’s University of British Columbia will help promote new, sustainable bioproducts. The Canadian university’s BioPr...

Researchers behind an algorithm to measure how scenic a region is say it could have benefits for environmental and conservation efforts. The research by the Swiss Federal Technology Institute Lausanne EPFL and Wageningen University in the Netherland...

Swiss private banks managed to increase their assets under management to CHF2.9 trillion ($3.15 trillion) last year, an increase of 2.8% on 2019. “The year 2020 was dominated by the Covid-19 pandemic, yet the Swiss private banking sector still got...

Switzerland will need at least a year to gain domestic approval for new tax measures to conform with a 15% global minimum corporate tax rate, according to Guy Parmelin, who holds the rotating Swiss presidency this year. The Swiss finance ministry ca...

The number of cancer patients in Switzerland is increasing, mainly due to the ageing population. But the risk of dying from the disease has decreased for both men and women. Some 23,100 men and 19,650 women were diagnosed with cancer every year betw...

World Cup events for snow sports will again be open to spectators in Switzerland. Access for the 2021-2022 season will be restricted to people with a Covid certificate. “The primary objective of Swiss-Ski and the Swiss World Cup organisers – in ...

The Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB) has launched a centralised platform to collect genetic sequences of the new coronavirus in Switzerland to ensure better monitoring of variants and boost international research efforts. The Swiss Pathogen S...

Switzerland will host two of the 21 stages of the 2022 Tour de France, it has been confirmed. At a presentation of the route for the 2022 edition, officials said on Thursday that stage eight (July 9) would see riders leave Dole in the French Jura re...

The Covid-19 pandemic is affecting the mood of people in Switzerland: only 30% are still unconditionally optimistic about the future, a third less than last year, according to a survey by insurer Swiss Life. The proportion of people who often feel s...

Kathrin Summermatter, head of the Biosafety Centre at the Institute of Infectious Diseases at the University of Bern, is one of 26 experts chosen to be part of a World Health Organization (WHO) panel on the origins of new pathogens. The Geneva-based...

The Swiss government is stepping up efforts to convince residents to get vaccinated against the Covid-19 virus. It has decided to launch a week-long information campaign in several languages across the country next month in a bid to speed up vaccina...

René Langel, cofounder of the Montreux Jazz Festival, died on Tuesday in Lausanne. The former jazz journalist would have turned 97 next month, his family said. Born in Neuchâtel, Langel worked for various media in French-speaking Switzerland, in p...

Every year road accidents involving wild animals cause around CHF50 million ($54 million) in damage throughout Switzerland. What’s more, thousands of animals are injured, according to insurer Axa Winterthur. Axa itself is notified of more than 3,0...

Switzerland’s highest court has found guilty a climate activist who was caught painting a bank building in the city of Geneva three years ago. The judges said the defendant had no right to justify his action by citing a climate emergency as the th...

If progress is not made on an electricity agreement with the European Union, at least at a technical level, Switzerland is likely to face a significant problem guaranteeing electricity in the short and medium term, especially in winter. This is the ...

While most Swiss hotels and restaurants are critical of the need to show a Covid certificate, overall small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) do not perceive it as a disadvantage. A survey of 201 SMEs in German-speaking Switzerland found that 58% ...

Quintet Private Bank says it is closing its Swiss arm just 16 months after opening. The Qatari-owned private bank took over Bank am Bellevue last year. The Luxembourg-based private bank is closing its Swiss business, which employs 87 people, accordi...

Swiss health officials say new Covid-19 infections, hospital admissions and deaths are all expected to stabilise, but the situation in hospitals remains tense. Patrick Mathys of the Federal Office for Public Health said the data showed that the late...

Most Swiss residents would be in favour of a 30 kilometre (18 miles) per hour speed limit in urban areas, a survey has found. A poll by the Swiss Council for Accident Prevention (BPA), published on Tuesday, found that 52% of respondents support a 30...

Care home staff have criticised the labour conditions in Switzerland’s old people’s homes. In a survey published on Tuesday, half of the respondents said salaries were too low and up to 40% complained about stress at work. The Swiss Health Obse...

The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) has assisted in the evacuation of 165 refugees from Afghanistan, including female cyclists. Some 38 are being resettled in Switzerland. In addition to cyclists, artists, journalists, a judge and human rights c...

Much of the soil in the centre of Lausanne is contaminated with dioxin, it was announced on Monday. Residents have been advised to avoid local free-range eggs and certain vegetables. Canton Vaud councillor Béatrice Métraux said 126 sites were stud...

The Federal Tax Administration (FTA) has exchanged information on financial accounts with 96 countries this year. The exchange took place within the framework of the global standard on the automatic exchange of information. The FTA sent information ...

Syngenta Group’s planned $10 billion (CHF9.3 billion) initial public offering (IPO) in China has been temporarily suspended due to missing financial information from the agrichemical giant, the Shanghai Stock Exchange said on Monday. State-owned C...

Hackers have carried out a cyber attack against databases belonging to the Montreux authorities in southwestern Switzerland. This follows a similar hack earlier this year against the Rolle municipal authorities, also in canton Vaud. It is unclear wh...

Swiss Environment Minister Simonetta Sommaruga wants to simplify the approval of dams and wind turbines by putting an end to the flood of appeals. In future, only one appeal should be possible per project. By 2050 the government wants to further inc...