Switzerland has welcomed the selection of a new unified transitional authority for Libya. The body has been tasked with paving the way for Libyan elections later this year. “This is a major step forward toward reconciliation and lasting peace,” ...

A top Swiss court has confirmed a fraud conviction for a client of a prostitute who left without paying. This is being hailed as a significant change in case law for sex workers, who have gained the protection of the criminal justice system. The man...

The Swiss National Science Foundation is introducing quotas for women on its evaluation committees. This is to raise the visibility of women in research and take their perspectives better into account for research policy decisions. The decision come...

The bird flu virus has been detected in a seagull in the northeastern Swiss canton of Schaffhausen, near the German border, Swiss authorities say. This is the first case in Switzerland this winter. Measures were already taken on January 25 this y...

This year marks 50 years since women gained the right to vote in Switzerland. The event is to be commemorated with a special gold coin. “February 7, 2021 is the 50th anniversary of the introduction of women’s right to vote on a nationwide level....

The western Swiss canton of Vaud has become the latest to launch mass Covid-19 testing, with a pilot scheme in its three biggest ski resorts. Starting on Friday, the canton is offering free, voluntary testing in the run-up to a week of school holid...

Switzerland is to send more diplomatic staff abroad after the coronavirus pandemic highlighted the need for more personnel on the ground, Swiss public television SRF reported. The first year of the pandemic has shown that there were too few staff in...

Hate speech and insults are on the rise in Switzerland, especially towards politicians, reports national broadcaster RTS. The federal police received more than 1,200 reports of threats or insults against government members and federal parliamentari...

The federal government spends CHF4 million (around $4.4 million) a year to minimise the damage caused by predators like wolves and lynx. Of this amount some three million Swiss francs are being invested in the protection of herds and flocks, the gov...

While the overall number of foreigners in the country increased in 2020, the number of new arrivals fell. The coronavirus crisis has had an impact on annual immigration figures, according to figures released by the State Secretariat for Migration (...

The Swiss Teachers’ Association is demanding coronavirus tests be extended to schools across the whole of Switzerland. The federal government has rejected the idea, saying cantons have sovereignty regarding education. Cantons Basel Country, Zug an...

The money, worth CHF240 million, is part of illicit kickbacks on the sale of six French-made Lafayette warships to Taiwan in 1991. The decision of the Taiwanese Supreme Court at the end of 2019 confirming the illegal origin of the funds held in Swi...

The humanitarian charity Swiss Solidarity collected more than CHF43 million ($47.7 million) in donations last year for victims of the coronavirus pandemic in Switzerland. This is the largest amount since the CHF50 million collected after a devastatin...

Marmosets perceive interactions with fellow marmosets as contextualised conversations, according to Zurich researchers writing in the journal Science Advances. The small monkeys also draw conclusions from this, for example when choosing cooperative p...

The World Economic Forum’s special annual meeting – exceptionally being held in Singapore this year – has been pushed back by three months. The WEF conference will now convene from August 17-20. The coronavirus pandemic forced WEF to relocate ...

Interior Minister Alain Berset says Switzerland is unlikely to ease its anti-Covid restrictions before the end of February amid fears of new strains of the virus. He also said it was not realistic to expect that the measures, in place since mid-Janu...

The Swiss government has agreed to grant parliament a say on a controversial United Nations migration pact. “Assent to the Global Compact for Migration is in Switzerland’s interest,” said a statement published on Wednesday. Initially the gove...

The Swiss finance ministry has removed Britain from a list of countries requiring authorisation for its securities trading platforms. This decision follows the recognition of the equivalence of Swiss stock exchange regulations by the British parliam...

An 89-year-old passenger ship, out of commission owing to the coronavirus pandemic, has been re-purposed as a Covid-19 vaccination centre for thousands of residents from towns on Lake Constance. The 500-passenger MS Thurgau normally carries tourists...

Switzerland has joined international protests following a three-and-a-half year prison sentence for Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny by a court in Russia on Tuesday. “We call on Russia to uphold its international obligations and principles of the rul...

American pharmaceutical firm Bristol Myers Squibb is selling one of its Swiss medicine production facilities to the Chinese company WuXi STA. The Couvet factory in western Switzerland employs 100 staff manufacturing medicines in capsule and tablet f...

Swiss cheese continues to sell well abroad with exports increasing by 1.6% in 2020. The pandemic has not made a dent in the global appetite for cheese from the Alpine nation. A total of 77,124 tonnes was exported last year with a value of CHF693....

Switzerland is re-opening a mothballed facility to house disruptive asylum seekers. The high security Les Verrières centre in the western canton of Neuchâtel was first opened in December 2019 but was shut down six months later to save costs as the...

A new European Union regulation will no longer recognise medical device quality certificates obtained in Switzerland. It is feared that some Swiss manufacturers of medical devices will face additional barriers to export their products to the EU from ...

The United Nations special envoy to Myanmar, Christine Schraner Burgener, says the country risks sliding back into prolonged military dictatorship, international isolation and suppression of human rights. On Monday, the Swiss diplomat told Swiss pub...

Swiss International Air Lines is scaling back its Geneva flight operations to an "absolute minimum" until the end of February, citing coronavirus travel restrictions. Cuts are also being made at Zurich Airport. “Swiss International Air Lines (SWIS...

The risk of catching coronavirus on a 12-minute gondola ride is 100 times less than during a normal working day in a small two-person office, according to a Swiss study. Scientists at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technolo...

The number of asylum requests in Switzerland fell by almost a quarter (23%) to 11,041 people last year, annual statistics reported on Monday have revealed. The State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) said the decline was due to the coronavirus pandemi...

The Swiss foreign ministry has urged Myanmar’s military, which seized power on Monday in a coup, to “immediately suspend its actions”. It also called for the release of all government officials and civil society leaders. “The Swiss foreign m...

The Swiss government appears more concerned about the human rights situation in China according to Swiss media reports, but it has no plans to distance itself from the country. Instead, it wants to mediate more dialogue. According to a draft of Swit...