Researchers at the Swiss Federal Technology Institute in Lausanne (EFPL) have used high-performance electron microscopes to examine the spike protein of the Omicron Covid-19 variant for a better understanding of why it is resistant to certain Covid v...

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and the United States Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman will meet in Geneva on January 10 to discuss Ukraine and the security situation in Europe. The Russian foreign ministry revealed the head...

The outgoing head of Switzerland’s migration secretariat says the country should see around 15,000 applications for asylum next year, up from 14,500 lodged in 2021, as more migrants attempt to cross the Mediterranean between North Africa and Italy....

The Alpine nation raised concerns about the dissolution of Russian human rights NGO Memorial International by the Supreme Court. On Tuesday, Russia’s Supreme Court dissolved Memorial International for distorting history in its compilation of Sovie...

A pioneer of post-war photography and one of the last members of the French Humanist school died on Tuesday at the age of 97. Her family and staff announced the news in a statement on Wednesday. Weiss had lived in Paris since 1946. Born in 1924 in ...

An additional contribution of CHF900,000 (around $979,000) has been made to the World Food Programme to help Madagascar cope with its food crisis. It is estimated that around one million people require emergency food assistance. The country is reeli...

According to a survey, 99.6% of people in Switzerland see themselves clearly as a man or a woman. The survey published on Tuesday by the Sotomo research institute on behalf of the "Gender Fairer" initiative polled nearly 2,700 Swiss residents. De...

Representing 55% of cases, the Omicron variant now accounts for the majority of Covid-19 infections in Switzerland. Canton Ticino, that borders Italy, is particularly affected, but the variant is also spreading rapidly to other cantons, public heal...

The French ambassador to Switzerland warns that the Alpine nation risks being left behind if it does not compromise with the European Union. In an interview published in the Le Temps paper on Tuesday, Frédéric Journès said that the framework agr...

Medicines regulator Swissmedic has approved the booster of the single-dose vaccine from Johnson & Johnson. “The second dose of the vaccine can be administered, at the earliest, two months after the first dose,” wrote Swissmedic in a statement o...

E-voting has the support of 84% of the population, according to a survey of Swiss residents by consultancy firm Deloitte. The coronavirus pandemic is increasingly seen as a catalyst for digitalisation, Deloitte wrote in a survey on Tuesday. A clear ...

The Swiss medicines agency, Swissmedic, has given the green light to the monoclonal antibody cocktail Ronapreve developed by Roche and Regeneron for use in the treatment and prevention of Covid-19. Ronapreve, a combination of two monoclonal antibodi...

The annual census of the Swiss watch industry labour force found that partial unemployment helped the industry weather the pandemic over the last year. The number of employees in the industry remained stable in 2021 while the share of high skilled st...

Vladimir Putin said the US and Russia have agreed to meet in January in Geneva for security talks that are expected to include Ukraine. In statements aired on Russian state television on Sunday, President Putin said that he would consider a range of...

Swiss biopharma firm Roche has been granted emergency approval by US authorities to sell its at-home rapid Covid-19 test starting in January. On Friday, Basel-based Roche announced that the US Food and Drug Administration has granted Emergency Use A...

Amid travel worries and heightened entry requirements, SWISS has said it expects to cut back on about 8% of flights over the winter period. In an article in the German-language media SonntagsBlick, and confirmed to SWI swissinfo.ch by email, SWISS I...

The traditional international ice-hockey tournament in the Swiss resort of Davos has been cancelled at short notice. The organisers said on Saturday that most players of the host team Davos had tested positive for Covid-19 and as a result, the canto...

The renowned Swiss composer, pianist and conductor, Jürg Wyttenbach, has died at the age of 86. He passed away earlier this week, his family confirmed on Friday. Wyttenbach is considered a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans contemporary cla...

President Guy Parmelin has called for solidarity during the festive season as the Omicron coronavirus variant continues to spread in Switzerland. In a Christmas message, the outgoing president called on people to respect the health precautions – t...

Amid flight cancellations and coronavirus related travel restrictions, Swiss airports are expecting half the number of passengers over the holidays than before the pandemic. This is still more traffic than in 2020. Flight hubs of Geneva, Zurich and ...

Swiss army general Patrick Gauchat has taken command of the UN operation set up to monitor the ceasefire in the Middle East. This is the first time a Swiss leads a UN peacekeeping operation. In October, UN Secretary-General António Guterres announc...

Criminal proceedings have been launched in Switzerland following the discovery of around 8,000 fake Covid-19 vaccination certificates that were issued in the eastern canton of St Gallen. Police believe the forged documents were handed out by people ...

A man has been jailed for 74 months for blowing up an ATM - the first such sentence handed out in Switzerland amid a growing trend of cash machine robberies. The 31-year-old Romanian was extradited from Austria to Switzerland after police found his ...

The Federal Criminal Court has ordered the confiscation of over $293 million (around CHF270 million) belonging to a shell company linked to Gulnara Karimova. The company, called Takilant, of which Karimova (daughter of the former president of Uzbek...

The Credit Suisse bank has fired the managers overseeing a multi-billion-dollar fund strategy linked to the now-defunct Greensill Capital. Switzerland’s second largest bank was forced to freeze and wind down a $10 billion (CHF9.2 billion) fund ran...

A Swiss court has allowed the extradition to Germany of Hanno Berger, a German banker accused of playing a key role in a years-long tax fraud. The scandal, known as "cum-ex," is Germany's biggest post-war fraud involving a share-trading scheme that ...

Internationally renowned Swiss artist Miriam Cahn says she wants to remove all her works on display at the Zurich Art Museum in response to the outcry over the Bührle collection. Paintings in the collection are suspected of being linked to art loote...

Swiss International Air Lines has offered to re-employ more than half of the 550 flying personnel it had sacked earlier this year. The company confirmed that it sent offers to more than 330 cabin crew members to work for the Swiss flag carrier, whic...

Health officials have warned of an imminent wave of Covid infections with the contagious Omicron variant in Switzerland over the next few weeks. Patrick Mathys of the Federal Office of Public Health told a news conference on Tuesday that the Omicron...

The Russian businessman extradited from Switzerland to the United States and four other Russians have been charged with carrying out a $82-million (CHF75 million) insider trading scheme using data stolen during hacks of US computer networks. US fede...