The PlanetSolar catamaran, renamed Porrima, has run aground and remains stranded on a beach south of Mumbai in India, according to media reports. It was the first boat to complete a solar-powered round-the-world voyage. The news was first reported l...

Swiss President Ignazio Cassis will represent Switzerland at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in London next Monday. Cassis has accepted an invitation to attend the funeral, which will take place on September 19, according to the Keystone-SDA news...

The Swiss cultural sector received more than half a billion francs from the federal and cantonal authorities to help it cope with the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown. The largest portion of the bailout (CHF447.9 million, $468 million) was given to compan...

Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis is investing $300 million ($288 million) in biotherapeutics development, which includes a new $100 million biologics hub at its home base in Basel. A further $110 million will be spent on research and production...

Physicist Ursula Keller is to receive the prestigious Marcel Benoist prize and the Latsis prize for young researchers is to go to Kerstin Noëlle Vokinger. Keller, professor of experimental physics at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zur...

The Geneva director Alain Tanner, whose first feature, Charles mort ou vif (Charles, Dead or Alive), heralded the beginning of the New Swiss Cinema upon its release in 1970, died on Sunday, an association bearing his name has announced. Tanner was p...

By reducing grid connection fees and municipal duties, the federal government could help to keep electricity bills down, Stefan Meierhans told Le Matin Dimanche newspaper. Meierhans said it is possible for the government to change the framework cond...

Having two big players like UBS and Credit Suisse provides no “compelling” economic benefit for Switzerland, Sergio Ermotti has told the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper. “The strength of the country’s financial centre is its diversification, which ...

A deep geological repository for radioactive waste will be built in the northern Lägern region straddling cantons Aargau and Zurich, not far from the German border, the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (BFE) said on Saturday. The selection was confir...

The Children’s Museum Creaviva at the Zentrum Paul Klee, located in the Swiss capital, has won the prestigious Children in Museums Award together with a museum in Leeds, United Kingdom. The prize was presented to the two winners in Luxembourg on F...

St. Gallen native Margrith Bigler-Eggenberger, who made history in 1972 with her appointment to the Federal Supreme Court, died last Monday, her family announced on Saturday. Bigler-Eggenberger was first elected as a substitute judge to the country�...

The Swiss intelligence service should not be given additional powers to monitor for signs of terrorist activity, say NGOs, trade unions and left-leaning political groups. But political parties from the centre and right have given their backing to a ...

Switzerland’s procurement of F-35A fighter jets from the United States has been declared lawful by a parliamentary audit commission. But the House of Representatives body said on Friday that some government actions during the process were “worry...

Switzerland is no closer to regaining full access to European Union science and education collaborative programmes, despite a further round of exploratory talks between the two sides on Friday. The EU first banned, and later only partially re-admitt...

A Swiss pumped-storage power station, which can both produce electricity and store power from other sources, has been officially inaugurated. The Nant de Drance hydroelectric plant in western Switzerland has been operational since July. Its turbines...

The Swiss Solidarity fund has so far collected CHF2.1 million ($2.15 million) from the public to help bring relief to the victims of serious flooding in Pakistan. Swiss Solidarity, the charitable arm of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, SWI swissi...

Switzerland's first pilot project for the legal sale of cannabis products has been delayed after some of the initial stock failed quality control tests. The ‘Weed Care’ experiment in the city of Basel was supposed to launch on September 15. But ...

The Swiss authorities have recommended that people aged over 16, especially the most vulnerable, get a Covid-19 booster shot to contain a new wave of infections expected this autumn and winter. After a rise in new Covid infections in June and July d...

The president of the Swiss National Bank (SNB), Thomas Jordan, says the inflation outlook is more uncertain than normal and it is premature to say prices have peaked. “You cannot say we have passed the zenith and now it is certainly heading lower,...

The number of transfers in professional football has picked up significantly this summer after two years marked by the pandemic. A total of 9,717 international transfers involving professional players were completed, an increase of 16.2% year-on-yea...

The Swiss company behind the Russian gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 has received a four-month extension to try to repay its debts. The Zug cantonal court in Switzerland, where Nord Stream 2 AG is headquartered, granted the company a second extension, a...

Women in Switzerland earn 43.2% less than men and draw less pension due to higher rates of part-time work. The Gender Overall Earnings Gap (GOEG) study, requested by parliament in 2019, showed Switzerland performed relatively poorly compared to othe...

The Swiss foreign ministry raised concerns following the publication of a long-awaited United Nations report on human rights abuses against the Uyghur minority in western China, the government said on Wednesday. The report published by the UN Office...

Switzerland must strengthen its military cooperation with NATO in view of the war in Ukraine, while respecting its neutrality, according to a government report published on Wednesday. "Switzerland must be able to defend itself as much as possible," ...

Switzerland is to set up a hydropower reserve at the cost of consumers to insure against possible electricity shortages at the end of the winter, according to a decree adopted on Wednesday by the government. Power plants will have to store a certain...

The Swiss government believes current neutrality policy as defined in 1993 remains valid and gives Switzerland enough room for manoeuvre, it said on Wednesday. The policy implemented since 1993 “leaves Switzerland sufficient room for manoeuvre to ...

British actor Ben Kingsley will be awarded the Golden Icon Award at the upcoming Zurich Film Festival in a ceremony on September 29, the festival organisers said on Wednesday. This award, "given to personalities who have left a lasting mark on cinem...

A first group of patients from Ukraine has arrived for hospital treatment in Switzerland, according to the Swiss air rescue organisation Rega. The five civilians, who suffer from serious illnesses, were admitted to the university hospitals in Zurich...

Swiss households are set to see power bills rise by around 27% in 2023, with wide swings depending on municipality. "A typical household with consumption of 4,500 kWh will pay 27 centimes per kilowatt hour next year, 5.8 centimes more than in 2022,�...

An innovative pilot project testing the potential of electric cars to stabilise the power grid has been launched in Switzerland. For one year, the power of 50 electric vehicles will be fed back into the grid from their batteries when they are not ru...