Several cantons have called for restaurants to be re-opened a month earlier than the official nationwide plan presented by the government earlier this week. Canton Graubünden wants restaurants to open their terraces from March 1. The canton has don...

The proportion of people living below the Swiss poverty line in 2019 grew to 8.7% of the population, the highest rate seen since 2014, according to a report published on Thursday. The Federal Statistical Office, which released the figures, said pove...

Switzerland has decided to suspend all further payments related to development cooperation in Myanmar following the recent military coup. However, programmes already underway in the Asian country will continue. The objective of the temporary halt o...

Swiss representations abroad will participate in the first ever Romansh week as part of an initiative to shine the spotlight on the country’s plurilingualism. The so-called “Romansh week” begins on Friday and is organised by the Federal Depar...

Switzerland is the best equipped country for online shopping, according to a United Nations comparison of more than 150 states. Last year, 97% of the Swiss population used the Internet, the annual study by the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and...

State Secretary and Swiss Ambassador to Moscow Yves Rossier has handed in his notice, the foreign ministry has confirmed. Wednesday also saw various ambassadorial positions reassigned around the world. Rossier, 60, left the foreign ministry at his o...

On its 75th birthday, the Swiss Federation for the Deaf is celebrating the changes it has achieved in society. However, it says there is still work to be done, especially in French-speaking Switzerland. The federation was founded on February 17, 194...

The state-run Swiss Innovation Agency, Innosuisse, is to play a bigger role in giving start-up companies a competitive edge. The government said the aim was to facilitate cooperation between science and the market and to promote new small and medium...

Prosecutors in Switzerland have appealed against federal court verdicts that cleared Jérôme Valcke, a former official at world football’s Zurich-based governing body FIFA, of bribery and acquitted Qatari soccer and broadcasting executive Nasser a...

The Swiss aerospace engineering company, Ruag Space, plans to shed up to 100 jobs by the end of the year. The company said the move was part of a reorganisation to focus on the European market as a leading supplier to the space industry and expand t...

Swiss wildlife wardens warn that off-piste skiing and snowshoeing* can put Alpine animals at risk especially at this time of year and people should respect the designated “quiet zones”, reports public broadcaster RTS. In mid-winter, wild animals...

Geneva Airport recorded a loss of CHF129.5 million ($145 million) in 2020, owing to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. This compares with a profit of CHF84.1 million in 2019, the airport said on Tuesday. The loss, which is the first in its ...

Bern actress Liselotte ‘Lilo’ Pulver has been awarded the Swiss cinema ‘prize of honour’ for a career that saw her star in films in France and the US as well as the German-speaking world. Pulver was born in 1929 in Bern, where she attended a...

Residential property prices in Switzerland rose sharply in the final quarter of 2020, and by an average 2.5% for the year as a whole, according to the Federal Statistics Office. This is according to the Swiss Residential Property Price Index publis...

The competition authority suspects the global credit card firm of using its position to prevent the rollout of a new, more uniform, ATM system across Switzerland. COMCO said on Tuesday it had launched an investigation on February 8 after a complaint...

Swiss sociologist and artist Urs Jaeggi died in Berlin on Saturday at the age of 89, his family announced on Monday. With his book Macht und Herrschaft in der BRD (Power and Rule in West Germany), which sold more than 400,000 copies, Jaeggi was cons...

The Swiss government is facing a difficult balancing act between lifting lockdown measures and preventing a third wave of infections. On Monday Interior Minister Alain Berset was criticised in the press for reportedly ignoring warnings of a second w...

The trial in Switzerland of a Liberian rebel commander facing allegations of rape, executions and cannibalism has resumed, with Liberian victims set to begin testifying this week in a landmark case under Swiss law. Alieu Kosiah, 45, a former command...

Swiss women who have been deployed in peace-building operations abroad without having completed recruit school should be able to join the militia army directly. The army has launched a project to this end. Eleven of the 28 women participating in the...

The share of foreign investment in Swiss commercial real estate fell from 15% before 2011 to 5% between 2017 and 2019, according to new research. The issue of foreigners buying cheap Swiss property during the Covid-19 pandemic is being discussed in B...

The vast majority of Swiss residents live in towns and cities. Over the next 20 years urban areas will continue to attract a growing number of new arrivals, many of whom will want to own their own property, a new survey shows. Some 85% of Swiss resi...

Cantonal ministers and business associations are putting mounting pressure on the Federal Council to ease pandemic restrictions. The federal government is due to meet on Wednesday to decide on the next steps. Calls are getting louder for the governm...

Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis has ended his week-long tour of North and West Africa with vists to Senegal and Gambia, where talks focused on economic development, climate change, human rights and water security. Following his visit to Algeria and ...

Senior cantonal doctors have expressed doubts about the federal government’s Covid-19 vaccination timetable. They say the goal of vaccinating anyone who wants to by early summer could be delayed to ‘late autumn’. Federal officials have reassur...

New international studies suggest that China has successfully cut production of ozone-harming chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) chemicals. Two years ago, scientists observed a mysterious and sharp up-tick in the levels of trichlorofluoromethane (CFC-11) emis...

The public prosecutor for canton Graubünden in eastern Switzerland must continue the criminal investigation into the major landslide in Bondo in 2017. The victims’ relatives have been successful in their appeal to the Swiss Federal Court. Eight h...

A general vaccination obligation in Switzerland would interfere “disproportionately with fundamental rights”, according to the National Advisory Commission on Biomedical Ethics (NCE). The commission also advised against mandatory vaccination for...

Alain Berset has called for the public to be patient during the coronavirus pandemic over the semi-lockdown. The health minister has, however, said that the government may consider loosening some of the measures. Calls have been mounting for the gov...

Swiss bank Credit Suisse has paid out $600 million (CHF534 million) to settle a legal dispute in the United States relating to the sale of mortgage backed financial products. Switzerland’s second largest bank said it was satisfied with the settlem...

The Geneva-based Martin Ennals Foundation announced Yu Wensheng as the winner of its annual global prize for human rights defenders in an online ceremony on Thursday evening. Yu, 54, was put behind bars in 2018 after spending ten years working on se...