Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis and the European Commissioner for Budget and Administration Johannes Hahn have met in Brussels for informal exchanges. Despite the differences between Switzerland and the 27-state bloc, the tone remained amicable...

Swiss health experts have called on people to get vaccinated against Covid-19 to prevent another wave of the pandemic later this year. Patrick Mathys of the Federal Office of Public Health confirmed a rapid increase in the number of infections, but ...

Switzerland is ready to enter negotiations on association to the EU’s research and innovation programme “Horizon Europe”, says Swiss State Secretary Martina Hirayama. In a meeting with EU politicians, Hirayama suggested that European and world...

Switzerland has made progress in flood damage prevention, but the risk of high water levels remains real, according to a leading hydrologist. “The flooding disasters from 1987, 1999 and 2005 have raised awareness [of the risks],” says Andreas Zi...

Ski mountaineering will make its Olympic debut at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, a decision that bodes well for Switzerland, which has many of the world’s best athletes in this discipline. The Lausanne-based International Olympic Committee (IO...

There are mounting calls to extend the use of an official certificate to help prevent a new wave of infections with Covid-19 in Switzerland. Christoph Berger, president of the government’s advisory commission for vaccinations, said the Covid certi...

Tens of thousands of Swiss citizens are living in countries where they cannot get vaccinated, according to a report by Swiss public broadcaster SRF. The head of the Organisation of the Swiss Abroad (OSA) wants the government to ensure that expatriat...

The Swiss government’s cabinet secretary has called for better cooperation between politicians and scientists to handle crises. Walter Thurnherr who holds the title of federal chancellor said the Covid-19 pandemic had shown the need for more mutua...

A comprehensive inventory of Swiss glacial lakes found 1,200 have appeared since the end of the Little Ice Age (around 1850). Climate change is causing the Alpine glaciers to melt, according to the findings published last week by the aquatic researc...

Switzerland should make military service compulsory for women in the view of the president of the Swiss Officers' Association (SOG), which has roughly 22,000 members. According to Stefan Holenstein, "it is time that both genders have the same rights...

The uptick in Covid-19 cases since Switzerland relaxed its public health rules is now a source of concern. The rapid spread of the more infectious Delta variant is casting a cloud over the resumption of normal life across Europe. Anne Lévy, directo...

Switzerland’s overbursting rivers, swollen by excessive rainfall, have resulted in some hydroelectric power plants having to reduce operations. Nearly 60% of Switzerland’s electricity production is derived from hydropower, with 677 plants dotted...

Switzerland has reserved 3,000 doses of the GlaxoSmithKline monoclonal sotrovimab drug to treat patients infected with Covid-19. This adds to the 3,000 doses of a similar medicine, RegN-Cov 2, developed by Switzerland’s Roche and US biotech compan...

Swiss voters are to get a fresh chance to decide on reforming their increasingly underfinanced state pension system under a proposal that would raise both men’s and women’s retirement ages from 65 to 66 and then be linked to life expectancy. Age...

Guy Lachappelle, chairman of the Swiss Raiffeisen banking group, has become the latest high-ranking executive to lose his job at the company as a result of a scandal. A tearful Lachappelle announced his resignation on Thursday evening, admitting tha...

Almost one in six people in Europe is affected by persistent anxiety. Researchers in Switzerland have now localised micro-circuits in the brain whose malfunctions promote anxiety – a discovery that could transform the therapy of anxiety disorders. ...

Switzerland has sent 15 respirators and 60 oxygen concentrators to Tunisia, the fifth humanitarian aid shipment sent to various countries in recent weeks to help tackle the Covid-19 crisis. The shipment from Swiss Humanitarian Aid, worth nearly CHF...

Swiss Justice Minister Karin Keller-Sutter has demanded a rapid reform of the Schengen/Dublin agreements, which govern free movement and asylum issues. Speaking in Slovenia on Thursday at an informal meeting of EU interior ministers, Keller-Sutter s...

Fans of Pablo Picasso will soon be able to own a share in one of his paintings for less than $6,000 (CHF5,500) – although that won’t actually buy them the right to see the work, which will be stored under lock and key in Switzerland. Fillette au...

Last week’s ransomware attack on Swiss price comparison website Comparis resulted in a data breach and client data was most probably stolen, say Zurich police. Last Wednesday Comparis.ch, which has 80 million visits a year, was shut down by rans...

Ann Demeester is the new director of the Kunsthaus Zurich. The current director of the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, the Netherlands, will take up her post on January 1, 2023, succeeding Christoph Becker. “Ann Demeester is a highly regarded ambass...

The number of asylum requests in Switzerland this year is due to surpass the pre-Covid level, the authorities say. Further increases are expected in the coming years. Last year, asylum requests fell by almost a quarter to 11,041 owing to the pandemi...

Rackets, T-shirts, sports shoes and other historic tennis equipment belonging to Roger Federer have raised £3.4 million (CHF4.3 million) at auction. The money will go towards his charity. The combined proceeds of the Christie’s auction raised thr...

New research has enabled scientists to identify the most dangerous cancer cells found in Ewing’s sarcoma, an aggressive form of bone cancer. Researchers from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) have developed a technique to identify which...

Switzerland remains far from its target of shifting away from non-renewable fuel sources, despite a record-breaking increase in the number of solar panels installed last year. Almost 50% more solar panels were put up in Switzerland in 2020 than in 2...

Switzerland has been locked out of the European Union's flagship Horizon Europe research and innovation funding programme until further notice. The State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation said it had been informed by the European Co...

As Switzerland faces deforestation, monocultures and overfishing, the environmental organisation WWF Switzerland is calling on the Swiss National Bank (SNB) and the financial watchdog FINMA to take action. “A growing number of central banks have b...

The CEO of Switzerland’s state-controlled telecoms company has apologised for the massive outage of the country’s emergency service lines last week. “I apologise to the firefighters and everyone involved. The failure shook me a lot. That is ab...

Switzerland has announced more flood warnings after high winds and heavy rain battered the country between Monday night and Tuesday morning. The storms caused sections of the A2 motorway to temporarily close on Tuesday. Rain, hail and winds of up to...

The Swiss government’s Covid-19 advisory panel has warned about the recent increase in new infections due to the more contagious Delta variant. The science task force said the dominance of the Delta variant would likely result in an increasing num...