An international research team including experts based in Zurich have suggested a new theory for planet formation and how differences in the chemical composition of planets and meteorites came about. Planets of the inner solar system – Mercury, Ve...

Staff at crèches and after-school care facilities should be among the first to be offered the vaccine, especially since more contagious variants of the coronavirus are circulating, says the Swiss Childcare Association, Kibesuisse. The system of chi...

Israeli billionaire Beny Steinmetz has been handed a five-year sentence and a CHF50 million (almost $56.5 million) fine over suspected corrupt business practices in Guinea. Steinmetz was alleged to have paid bribes to secure mining rights in the A...

Switzerland is to supply emergency shelters to families left homeless after a strong earthquake in Croatia in December. Thousands of people lost their homes in the 6.4 strength quake, which hit the Sisak-Moslavina region of central Croatia on Decemb...

Of the 459,700 doses of the vaccine from Pfizer and Moderna delivered to Switzerland, 169,783 have been used so far. On Friday, the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) finally shared up-to-date nationwide vaccination numbers. After several postp...

Five environmental activists have been acquitted by a Basel criminal court of charges relating to protest action that blocked access to a UBS bank building in Basel in 2019. For some charges, there was insufficient evidence, the judge said. The prot...

Libya's new political leadership - until the elections in December - will be decided on Swiss soil, it has been announced. Members of the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF) will meet in Switzerland in early February to elect their interim execu...

Author and dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt will feature on a commemorative silver coin to mark the centenary of his birth. “By issuing the 20-franc silver coin on the occasion of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's 100th birthday, Swissmint is honouring this ...

The world’s biggest art fair, Art Basel, has been postponed to the autumn due to the coronavirus. The international art organisation said on Thursday that the Basel show would be moved from June until September this year, “due to the ongoing imp...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she intends to hold discussions with Switzerland on possible controls at their shared border. The aim is to prevent the spread of Covid-19 or its mutations. “We will certainly have to discuss the situation ...

With the help of machine learning, Swiss researchers have found that foreign jobseekers are on average 6.5% less likely to be contacted by recruiters than Swiss people with identical requirements. Most studies on discrimination in recruitment have u...

The coronavirus pandemic left its mark on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in Switzerland last year. The volume of transactions halved, and the number of deals was also down. Overall, the number of transactions with Swiss participation fell from 402 t...

A special public prosecutor has been named in connection with the Crypto spying affair involving manipulated encryption devices which the CIA and the German intelligence agency used to spy on half the world. Peter Marti, a former judge and district ...

A review of 81 judgements in the past 15 years has found that more than two-thirds of gender discrimination appeals were rejected by Switzerland’s highest court. The findings have renewed calls for employees to have better access to justice. The s...

Former Julius Bär CEO Boris Collardi has had his knuckles rapped by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) following an investigation into money laundering. Collardi, who is now a partner at Geneva-based bank Pictet, says he has a...

The British mutation of the coronavirus first appeared in Switzerland in October, two months earlier than previously thought, the federal health office has confirmed. So far 479 infections with mutated coronaviruses have been recorded in Switzerland...

Compulsory and post-compulsory schools in Switzerland should not be closed immediately because of Covid-19, according to the government’s scientific taskforce and the Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education. The conference’s conclusions, w...

The Swiss government wants the state-owned bank to become a full-fledged commercial enterprise. A part of the public Swiss Post group, PostFinance has 2.7 million customers and CHF120 billion ($135 billion) in client assets, making it a “too big ...

Jacques Pitteloud, the Swiss ambassador to the United States, does not foresee an improvement in bilateral relations following the change of power in Washington. The Biden administration will “probably not have much time for Switzerland”, he says...

An air pollution mortality ranking of more than 1,000 European cities shows that urban Switzerland can do better. The ranking – by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health in collaboration with researchers from the Swiss Tropical and Public Heal...

The Swiss attorney general's office has requested legal assistance from Lebanon in the context of a probe into "aggravated money laundering" and possible embezzlement tied to the Lebanese central bank, Reuters reports from Beirut. The probe is looki...

A Syrian woman who suffered a stillbirth on deportation from Switzerland will not receive compensation, authorities have decided. But her lawyer is appealing, the Swiss public broadcaster SRF reports. This Federal Department of Finance decision not...

Infectious diseases, extreme weather events and cybersecurity problems pose key threats to society in the next two years, the World Economic Forum (WEF) warns. The Covid-19 pandemic looks set to have a lasting impact in the next ten years. “In 202...

A ten-year freeze on former Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s assets in Switzerland has expired, but Bern says the funds will not be released immediately. The freeze by Switzerland’s federal government expired at midnight on Monday...

The European Court of Human Rights has sanctioned Switzerland for heavily fining an illiterate Roma woman for begging in Geneva. She was sentenced in January 2014 to a fine of CHF500 ($563) for begging in Geneva on a public highway. The woman, who...

Seven people were killed by avalanches over the weekend and on Monday in French- and German-speaking ski areas. A Swedish man also died in a separate skiing accident in Verbier on Monday. An avalanche swept away ten skiers in Verbier’s Vacheret of...

The Swiss foreign ministry has expressed concern about the arrest of the Russian opposition politician, Alexei Navalny. “The justice system has to be independent from politics and it has to respect human rights,” the foreign ministry told the Sw...

Swiss watchmaker Tissot has joined calls for the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) to pull the planned world championships from Belarus over a crackdown on opposition groups. The announcement came shortly before the Swiss-based IIHF decided...

Federal asylum centres must do more to protect asylum seekers from violence and improve training for security personnel, says a government advisory group. During monitoring visits in 2019 and 2020, the National Commission for the Prevention of Tort...

Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis has reaffirmed the government’s aim to re-negotiate controversial points of a planned umbrella accord with the European Union. He said a so-called framework agreement regulating the more than 120 bilateral deals is ...