The government has allocated 5,000 places in Swiss federal asylum centres for people fleeing the war in Ukraine. The decision was announced by the State Secretary for Migration Christine Schraner Burgener at a press conference in Zurich on Monday. ...

A Swiss freelance journalist has been injured and robbed in the Mykolaiv region of southern Ukraine. According to the online media outlet Ukrayinska Pravda, the journalist was in a car travelling towards the city of Mykolaiv, near the Black Sea, whe...

Switzerland’s central bank has renewed its pledge to intervene in the currency markets to halt a rise in the franc after safe-haven inflows caused by the war in Ukraine briefly pushed the currency above parity with the euro. The euro/franc exchang...

The Fasnacht – Switzerland’s largest carnival – began in the northwest city on Monday after a two-year break due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The long-standing tradition began as always on the first Monday after Ash Wednesday. Festivities started...

Around 35 tonnes of emergency aid, including medical equipment and tents, sent from Switzerland to help victims of the war in Ukraine have arrived in the capital, Kyiv. “The aid is urgently needed for hospitals serving the Ukrainian population,”...

Millions of chickens on Swiss farms are treated with the types of antibiotics which, in human cases, are only used in exceptional cases. Some 5.2 million chickens were treated with ‘last-resort’ antibiotics in 2020 alone, write the SonntagsZeitu...

The Swiss armed forces need to be boosted and better prepared, and not just in the short term, argues Defence Minister Viola Amherd. Nato membership however is “not an option”. The promotion of peace internationally is “an important task for t...

Switzerland is activating emergency planning among national and cantonal authorities, as well as counting on the help of private citizens, to prepare for the arrival of Ukrainians fleeing the war, Karin Keller-Sutter has said. The justice minister t...

Following the introduction of strict new information laws in Russia, the Swiss public broadcaster no longer has journalists reporting directly from Moscow. “Due to the restrictive conditions for correspondents and the threatening consequences for ...

Huge numbers have marched for the second weekend in a row in Swiss cities to protest against the ongoing war in Ukraine. The biggest demonstration on Saturday was in the morning in Zurich, Switzerland’s biggest city, where organisers estimated tha...

The Swiss financial regulator has ordered protective measures to mitigate a risk of “liquidity problems” at the Zurich-based subsidiary of Russian bank Sberbank. The measures, which include a 60-day deferral of the bank’s obligations from depo...

Moves to cut red tape for non-EU foreign workers in Switzerland will not necessarily lead to more work visas being issued. On Friday, the government announced measures to make it easier to hire skilled workers from such countries as India, Britain, ...

The UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva has passed a resolution condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, calling for the “swift and verifiable” withdrawal of Russian troops and setting up a commission of inquiry on violations of human ri...

The Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA), a project that aims to pre-empt the societal impacts of technological change, has won the financial support of the Swiss government for the next 10 years. After a three-year pilot phase, the foun...

Swiss bank Credit Suisse says a request for investors to destroy certain documents is “in no way linked to the recent implementation of additional sanctions” on Russia. The statement by Credit Suisse comes after a report by the Financial Times e...

Claude Wild, who was evacuated from Kyiv earlier this week, has also given more details about the diplomatic pull out. “I’m sad for the Ukrainians, for my colleagues and for the country,” Claude Wild said in an interview given to the Blick-TV ...

Various cases of mistreatment at a Geneva school for young people with autism were the result of systemic failures in how the institution was set up, an external audit has found. The school at Mancy just outside Geneva, which opened in 2018, has bee...

Before a meeting of European Union ministers in Brussels on Thursday, Swiss Justice Minister Karin Keller-Sutter repeated her plan to activate a special permit for Ukrainians fleeing their country due to war. The Swiss S permit, for “people in nee...

Russian bank Sberbank will function as normal in Switzerland despite other parts of the group pulling out of the rest of Europe. The Zurich-based subsidiary is not part of Sberbank Europe Group that has been hit with sanctions from the European Unio...

Young people in Switzerland are generally satisfied with their lives. However, their habits have changed over the past ten years: they smoke less, have moved to the left politically and are less homophobic and racist. On the other hand, they drink mo...

Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) has posted an operating loss of CHF427.7 million ($465 million) for 2021. However, this is a third less than the CHF653.8 million lost in 2020. “The repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic substantially depr...

After the announcement yesterday of an official package of CHF8 million ($8.68 million), which includes relief supplies for the Ukrainian population, today some Swiss cantons, institutions and public announced further support. Cantons Bern and Zuric...

A leading Swiss-based publishing group, Ringier, has suspended its cooperation with Germany’s former chancellor, Gerhard Schröder. It said the measure was taken “by mutual agreement” and with immediate effect, according to a short statement p...

Swiss-based company Nord Stream 2, which is in charge of the gas pipeline project between Russia and Germany, has made employees redundant as a result of sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. More than 140 people have lost their jobs a...

Switzerland has evacuated its remaining diplomatic staff in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. The foreign ministry said the move was necessary because of the deteriorating security situation. The ambassador and four other diplomatic staff had left Ukrai...

Parliament has given the green light to create a cyber command centre for the Swiss armed forces. As part of an overhaul of the country’s cyber defence, the centre will be upgraded and staffed with up to 575 members by 2026. This is more than twic...

Several thousand people in Switzerland have again protested against Russia’s attack on Ukraine, amid calls to take in refugees fleeing the conflict. An estimated 20,000 demonstrators in the city of Zurich, including the mayor, Corine Mauch, accuse...

Parliament has called on the government to set the legal basis for an official memorial site for Swiss victims of Germany’s Nazi regime. The Senate on Tuesday followed the House of Representatives to tacitly approve a demand for a Holocaust memori...

Swiss-based Red Cross agencies have appealed for CHF250 million ($273 million) to provide food, water and shelter to millions of people in Ukraine, where the humanitarian situation is "deteriorating rapidly", and to those who have fled abroad. The I...

Retail sales of organic foods in Switzerland rose 17% to CHF3.24 billion ($3.54 billion) in 2020, reaching a market share of around 11% as the Covid-19 pandemic boosted demand, according to a government report. Just over a third of people polled for...