Celebrations have been launched to commemorate the 175th anniversary of the first time-table railway route in Switzerland. Transport Minister Simonetta Sommaruga and a delegation of dignitaries travelled the 23km stretch of railway line from the tow...

A burial site from the Bronze Age has been discovered in a mountain village near the town of Sion in south-western Switzerland. At least 18 graves, containing human bones and burial objects in stone-built coffin-like boxes from 2000 BC were unearthe...

The number of wolves in the Swiss Alps will continue to grow even if hunting regulations were to be eased, according to experts. The Wolf Switzerland group said more than 250 wolf packs were living in Europe’s Alpine environment last year, while t...

The teachers’ association has warned of a decline in education quality at Swiss schools due to a lack of certified staff. An increasing number of schools in primary education have had to resort to personnel who lack a professional qualification as...

Two bodies have been found in recent weeks in the high mountains, discovered as glaciers recede under summer temperatures. Alpinists found human bones last Wednesday on the Chessjen glacier in the southern canton of Valais, the Blick newspaper repor...

The Swiss Post’s e-vote system is opening itself to attacks by ethical hackers in an effort to weed out security flaws. The window for the test runs until September 2, during which time hackers will be able to launch attacks on the source code und...

Swiss Air-Rescue (Rega) flew a record number of rescue missions in July. This is not a statistical outlier but the reflection of a trend, according to Rega head Ernst Kohler. The organisation flew a total of 2,120 helicopter missions in July, Kohler...

Several hundred people in Switzerland have changed their official gender since the introduction of a simplified registry process at the beginning of the year. In the big cities alone, 350 people have done so. Eighty people changed their gender in Zu...

Switzerland needs to move closer to Europe, the Alpine nation’s “obvious partner”, says Simonetta Sommaruga. “Now there is war in Europe, we have been asking ourselves for weeks whether our foreign policy compass is right,” she said on Sat...

Economic relief packages due to the looming energy crisis are not planned in Switzerland. Measures such as tax relief are currently neither “necessary nor helpful”, says the government’s chief economist. The Swiss economy is developing well ev...

Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis and Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas have met in Bellinzona, southern Switzerland, where topics of discussion included the war in Ukraine and the use of new technologies in foreign policy. Cassis and Kallas p...

The Swiss sugar industry is expecting significantly higher yields this year as a result of favourable weather conditions in sugar beet cultivation. The measured beet yields of around 59 and 55 tonnes per hectare in the western and eastern sample plo...

Michael Koch's 'Drii Winter' will be Switzerland’s official entry with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Hollywood for the category 'Best International Film'. The decision was announced by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture on Fr...

Wreckage of a plane that crashed in 1968 has been found on the Aletsch glacier by a mountain guide. The parts were discovered on Thursday by a mountain guide between Jungfraufirn glacier and Konkordiaplatz glacier confluence that fall under the Fies...

A mine-launching shell from the First World War has been pulled out of Lake Zurich. Divers from the Zurich municipal police and the army recovered the shell from the lake bed on Friday morning. The projectile was first spotted on Tuesday by a recrea...

Hotels recorded big increases in guests in the first half of 2022, although numbers are still below pre-pandemic levels. A total of 16.9 million overnight stays were made in Swiss hotels between January and June, an increase of 47.3% on the same per...

A total of 9.4% of adults in possession of a special “S” permit are in work, with most employed in the restaurant sector. Overall, 3,130 Ukrainian refugees have found employment thanks to the special S protection status that allows them to live ...

The recently dismissed Ukrainian prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova has been proposed as her country’s new ambassador to Bern. “Yes, I signed the application for Ms. Venediktova’s appointment as our Ambassador to Switzerland,” said Ukrain...

Despite high fuel costs and staffing issues, Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) has posted a profit for the first time since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The airline posted an operating profit of CHF67 million ($69.9 million) for the first...

Several people have been infected with diphtheria at a centre for asylum seekers – the first known cases of the bacterial infection in Switzerland in nearly 40 years. Up to eight people living in a centre in the capital, Bern, contracted the disea...

Switzerland, a major global hub for gold, has followed the EU in banning imports of Russian gold as part of new sanctions due to the war in Ukraine. “The new measures primarily concern a ban on buying, importing or transporting gold and gold produ...

After a pilot project in 2021, authorities now want to systematically draw on the skills of “ethical hackers” to find flaws in government IT systems. “Often, standardised security tests are no longer sufficient to uncover hidden loopholes” i...

Swiss President Ignazio Cassis has called for common efforts to reduce nuclear risks worldwide and avert humanitarian and environmental disasters. “Nuclear risks are higher than ever before since the end of the Cold War. We should agree on measure...

Swiss State Secretary Livia Leu has held high-level talks in India focusing on bilateral relations and multilateral cooperation. The foreign ministry said both sides reaffirmed their intention to boost their partnership in the areas of digitalisatio...

A new survey has confirmed a growing role of debit and credit cards as popular payment method in Switzerland. Some 52% of respondents in a survey said either of the cards were absolutely indispensable for them, the independent online comparison serv...

The Swiss foreign ministry has opened a humanitarian office in the crisis-ridden Central African Republic. The new presence in the capital, Bangui, is meant to encourage and improve international cooperation in one of the poorest countries in the wo...

Most people in Switzerland maintain a somewhat distant relationship with their neighbours, but they trust them nevertheless, according to the first Swiss study into neighbourhoods. Only 12% of respondents said they knew their neighbours very well, s...

The Swiss financial regulator (FINMA) has extended previously imposed protective measures at the Zurich-based subsidiary of Russian bank Sberbank. These measures, intended to mitigate a risk of liquidity problems at Sberbank (Switzerland), will rema...

Switzerland’s seven government ministers have completed a marathon of speeches on August 1, Swiss National Day. In the current times of war, they invoked standing up for democracy. The ministers made a total of 16 appearances: 14 on Monday and two...

Several fires broke out in Sion, southwest Switzerland, on Sunday following the launching of pyrotechnic devices, despite these being banned. The fire services quickly put out the flames, while the police arrested suspects. No one was injured. The p...